e her wrongly at this moment. He knew that she loved
John Bold; he fully sympathised in her affection; day after day he
thought more of the matter, and, with the tender care of a loving
father, tried to arrange in his own mind how matters might be so
managed that his daughter's heart should not be made the sacrifice to
the dispute which was likely to exist between him and Bold. Now, when
she spoke to him for the first time on the subject, it was natural
that he should think more of her than of himself, and that he should
imagine that her own cares, and not his, were troubling her.

He stood silent before her awhile, as she gazed up into his face, and
then kissing her forehead he placed her on the sofa.

"Tell me, Nelly," he said (he only called her Nelly in his kindest,
softest, sweetest moods, and yet all his moods were kind and sweet),
"tell me, Nelly, do you like Mr Bold--much?"

She was quite taken aback by the question. I will not say that she
had forgotten herself, and her own love in thinking about John Bold,
and while conversing with Mary: she certainly had not done so. She
had been sick at heart to think that a man of whom she could not but
own to herself that she loved him, of whose regard she had been so
proud, that such a man should turn against her father to ruin him.
She had felt her vanity hurt, that his affection for her had not kept
him from such a course; had he really cared for her, he would not have
risked her love by such an outrage. But her main fear had been for
her father, and when she spoke of danger, it was of danger to him and
not to herself.

She was taken aback by the question altogether: "Do I like him, papa?"

"Yes, Nelly, do you like him? Why shouldn't you like him? but that's
a poor word;--do you love him?" She sat still in his arms without
answering him. She certainly had not prepared herself for an avowal
of affection, intending, as she had done, to abuse John Bold herself,
and to hear her father do so also. "Come, my love," said he, "let us
make a clean breast of it: do you tell me what concerns yourself, and
I will tell you what concerns me and the hospital."

And then, without waiting for an answer, he described to her, as he
best could, the accusation that was made about Hiram's will; the
claims which the old men put forward; what he considered the strength
and what the weakness of his own position; the course which Bold had
taken, and that which he presumed he was a