"We cannot help the past, mother," said Haldane, eagerly, "let us turn our eyes to the future, which is all aglow with hope. I feel that God has forgiven me, and the thought fills my heart with a tumult of joy. Your warm embrace assures me that you have also forgiven the wrong, the shame, and sorrow you have received at my hands. Henceforth it shall be my life-effort that you receive the reverse of all this. I at last feel within me the power to live as a true man ought."
"I trust your hopes may be realized, Egbert; I do, indeed; but you were so confident before--and then we all know what followed," concluded his mother, with a shudder.
"My present feeling, my present motives, in no respect resemble my condition when I started out before. I was then a conceited fool, ignorant of myself, the world, and the task I had attempted. But now I feel that all is different. Mother," he exclaimed with a rush of emotion, "I feel as if heaven had almost begun in my heart! why, then, do you cloud this bright hour with doubts and fears?"
"Well, my son, we will hope for the best," said his mother, endeavoring to throw off her despondency, and share in the spirit which animated her pastor. "But I have dwelt so long in sorrow and foreboding that it will require time before I can recover my old natural tone. These sudden and strong alternations of feeling and action on your part puzzle and disquiet me, and I cannot see why one brought up as you have been should not maintain a quiet, well-bred deportment, and do right as a matter of course, as your sisters do. And yet, if Dr. Marks truly thinks that you mean to do right from this time forward, I shall certainly take courage; though how we are going to meet what has already occurred I hardly see."
"I do, indeed, believe that your son intends to do right, and I also believe that the Lord intends to help him--which is of far greater consequence," said Dr. Marks. "I will now bid you good-night, as to-morrow is the Sabbath; and let me entreat you, my dear madam, in parting, to further by your prayer and sympathy the good work which the Lord has begun."
Haldane insisted on seeing the old gentleman safely back to his study. Their ride was a rather quiet one, each being busy with his own thoughts. The good man had found his enthusiasm strangely quenched in the atmosphere in which Mrs. Haldane dwelt, and found that, in spite of himself, he was sharing in her doubts and fears as to the future course of the erratic and impulsive youth at his side. He blamed himself for this, and tried to put doubt resolutely away. By a few earnest words he sought to show the young man that only as the grace of God was daily asked for and daily received could he hope to maintain the Christian life.