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Bear And Forbear
by
Mrs. Canning sat alone with her child that evening, in the handsomely-furnished apartments she had hired on arriving in Paris.
“He told you that he knew Aunt Hannah?” she said, rousing up from a state of deep thought.
“Yes, ma. He said he used to know her.”
“I wonder”–
A servant opened the door, and said that a gentleman wished to see Mrs. Canning.
“Tell him to walk in,” the mother of Lilly had just power to say. In breathless suspense she waited for the space of a few seconds, when the man who had spoken to Lilly in the Gardens of the Tuileries entered and closed the door after him.
Mrs. Canning raised her eyes to his face. It was her husband! She did not cry out nor spring forward. She had not the power to do either.
“That’s him now, mother!” exclaimed Lilly.
“It’s your father!” said Mrs. Canning, in a deeply breathed whisper.
The child sprung toward him with a quick bound and was instantly clasped in his arms.
“Lilly, dear Lilly!” he sobbed, pressing his lips upon her brow and cheeks. “Yes! I am your father!”
The wife and mother sat motionless and tearless with her eyes fixed upon the face of her husband. After a few passionate embraces, Canning drew the child’s arms from about his neck, and setting her down upon the floor, advanced slowly toward his wife. Her eyes were still tearless, but large drops were rolling over his face.
“Margaret!” he said, uttering her name with great tenderness.
He was by her side in time to receive her upon his bosom, as she sunk forward in a wild passion of tears.
All was reconciled. The desolate hearts were again peopled with living affections. The arid waste smiled in greenness and beauty.
In their old home, bound by threefold cords of love, they now think only of the past as a severe lesson by which they have been taught the heavenly virtue of forbearance. Five years of intense suffering changed them both, and left marks that after years can never efface. But selfish impatience and pride were all subdued, and their hearts melted into each other, until they became almost like one heart. Those who meet them now, and observe the deep, but unobtrusive affection with which they regard each other, would never imagine, did they not know their previous history, that love, during one period of that married life, had been so long and so totally eclipsed.