When Agatha inquired of her about her father, Melissa briefly replied,
that since her mother's death he was often moody and rough, but that he
had a good, kind heart. The Christian girl, on the contrary, spoke with
enthusiasm of the warm, human loving-kindness of the man to whom she
owed her being; and the picture she drew of her home life was so fair,
that the little heathen could hardly believe in its truth. Her father,
Agatha said, lived in constant warfare with the misery and suffering of
his fellow-creatures, and he was, in fact, able to make those about him
happy and prosperous. The poorest were dearest to his loving heart, and
on his estate across the lake he had collected none but the sick and
wretched. The care of the children was left to her, and the little ones
clung to her as if she were their mother. She had neither brother nor
sister.--And so the conversation turned on Alexander, of whom Agatha
could never hear enough.

And how proud was Melissa to speak of the bright young artist, who till
now had been the sun of her joyless life! There was much that was good
to be said about him: for the best masters rated his talent highly in
spite of his youth; his comrades were faithful; and none knew so well as
he how to cheer his father's dark moods. Then, there were many amiable
and generous traits of which she had been told, or had herself known.
With his very first savings, he had had the Genius with a reversed
torch cast in bronze to grace his mother's grave, and give his father
pleasure. Once he had been brought home half dead after saving a woman
and child from drowning, and vainly endeavoring to rescue another child.
He might be wild and reckless, but he had always been faithful to his
art and to his love for his family.

Agatha's eyes opened widely when Melissa told her anything good about
her brother, and she clung in terror to her new friend as she heard of
her excited orgy with her lover.

Scared as though some imminent horror threatened herself, she clasped
Melissa's hand as she listened to the tale of the dangers Alexander had
so narrowly escaped.

Such things had never before reached the ears of the girl in her retired
Christian home beyond the lake; they sounded to her as the tales of some
bold seafarer to the peaceful husbandman on whose shores the storm has
wrecked him.

"And do you know," she exclaimed, "all this seems delightful to me,
though my father, I am sure, would judge it hardly! Wh