Her whole heart was in her boy. She often feared that she loved
him too much--more than God Himself--yet she could not bear to
pray to have her love for her child lessened. But she would kneel
down by his little bed at night--at the deep, still
midnight--with the stars that kept watch over Rizpah shining down
upon her, and tell God what I have now told you, that she feared
she loved her child too much, yet could not, would not, love him
less; and speak to Him of her one treasure as she could speak to
no earthly friend. And so, unconsciously, her love for her child
led her up to love to God, to the All-knowing, who read her
heart.
It might be superstition--I dare say it was--but, some-how, she
never lay down to rest without saying, as she looked her last on
her boy, "Thy will, not mine, be done"; and even while she
trembled and shrank with infinite dread from sounding the depths
of what that will might be, she felt as if her treasure were more
secure to waken up rosy and bright in the morning, as one over
whose slumbers God's holy angels had watched, for the very words
which she had turned away in sick terror from realising the night
before.
Her daily absence at her duties to the Bradshaw children only
ministered to her love for Leonard. Everything does minister to
love when its foundation lies deep in a true heart, and it was
with an exquisite pang of delight that, after a moment of vague
fear,
("Oh, mercy! to myself I said, If Lucy should be dead!")
she saw her child's bright face of welcome as he threw open the
door every afternoon on her return home.
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