Seite:Marsh Hallig 1856.djvu/271

271

REPENTANCE.

thorn behind which the most watchful love but forces
in the deeper, since it must seem like calculation, to the
heart once so cruelly deceived."
  Hold could not make much objection, and perhaps,
too, Godber was in the right. At any rate the pastor
saw that Maria's feelings were much the same, for she
answered every allusion to the renewal of their former
connection, with a negative which could not have pro-
ceeded from any doubt that Godber would again seek
her hand. Besides, they both seemed to enjoy such a
childlike cheerful contentment, that whoever had seen
them, without being acquainted with the bitter expe-
riences of their lives, would have regarded it as the
ingenuous hopefulness of youth, when in fact, it was
the fruit of entire submission to the will of God, and
the reflection of a heart filled with his peace.
  "Let us leave the solution of this difficulty to time,"
said the pastor to his wife.
  "To time? yes, if time were only ours."