Page:The New Monthly Magazine - Volume 098.djvu/348

336 Christian?" asked the old man, slowly, and apparently with a painful effort.

"Yes, grandfather—yes. I cannot deny the truth," sobbed the weeping girl, as she bathed his hands with her tears.

"You also, Benjamina!—you also, daughter of my Rachel!—the last hope of my old days, you also!"

Tears choked his further utterance, and the old man covered his head with his garment, turned away, and tottered towards the door.

"Farewell, then, for this world!" said Benjamina to her sorrow-stricken lover, as with a strong effort she withdrew herself from his encircling arms. "Yonder—above! where love, and justice, and mercy rule—where Jehovah and Christ are one—we shall be united for evermore!—Father, I will go with you!" she said, as she hastened after the old man. "Take me with you, and let me die in your arms, but curse me not in the hour of death, for my soul has only bent to the will of the Most High."

"Lost, for this world!" sighed the young man, as the door closed upon her he loved so much; and all hope seemed extinguished for them on earth.

" is the matter with yon, my son? You go about like one in a dream, and as if the world in which yon live were nothing to you," said the old doctor one day to his son, the young painter, shortly after their guests had left them. If you cannot conquer your love, and if the girl return your affection in an equal degree, I am willing to withdraw ray objection to your marriage, and old Philip Moses is too worthy a man to wish to make you both miserable."

"I honour him for the unshaken sincerity of his religions feelings," replied his son, "although these will bring me to the grave. I have had a long conversation with him, father; I might have rebelled against his severity, but his mildness has overcome me, and taken from me my last hope. I know that from a sense of gratitude he might bring himself even to join our hands; but the heart of the old man would break in doing so, and I should have to look upon myself as the murderer both of him and of Benjamina. He is immovable in his adherence to his creed; and even though he might give Benjamina to me himself, he would curse her in his heart for having deserted the faith of her forefathers."

"But she has already deserted that faith in her own mind; she loves you; and the old man knows all this, yet he has not condemned her."

"Still he might do so, if she were openly to throw off Judaism. He loves her as he does his own soul, but he would deem his soul doomed to perdition if it could stray from Jehovah, as he calls his peculiar worship."

"Well, have patience, my son. The old man's days are numbered. My medical knowledge enables me to tell you that death is already creeping over him."

"Ah, father! you do not know Benjamina; though her heart should break, she would be as true to the dead as she is to the living. But I would not that a knowledge of my grief should add to her sufferings, or deprive her of the peace she may perhaps acquire in the performance of