, father! How unjust! How cruel! Do let him speak!
Convinced! Yes, on what grounds? Whose word is entitled to more credit than
that of Charles? That's it! The name--the name of the base slanderer. I
know it is some villain. Father! how _can_ you deny him the only means of
defense? 'Unpleasant rencounter!' yes, to the vile miscreants, no doubt.
'Confidence!' My life! isn't Charles worthy of confidence, too? His word
alone is worth a thousand oaths of such heartless slanderers as those that
stab in the dark! Don't get angry, Charles, he's my father. Nobly done!
How respectfully he acts when so abused and insulted! All will yet be
right. Ah! I'll tell him how I spurn the accusation! How my soul burns with
indignation that his fair name should be assailed! I am so glad he is
coming; I know he feels deeply the wrong--What!"

At this point the startled look of the poor girl alarmed the father. She
bent her head, in a listening attitude, as if eager to catch every word
that was spoken by some one in the distance. Ah, too well the wretched
parent knew on what her thoughts were running. Too well he knew where and
when the blow had fallen that smote his child to the dust--perhaps had
opened to her the gate of death. A deep, stifled, half sigh, half groan
escaped from her lips, and she murmured in a hoarse whisper:

"Father, father! you will kill your child. Oh, God! this is too much!
Turned from our door! without a word of comfort! How deadly pale he is! My
own parent to call him 'unworthy!' and then forbid him to speak!"

At this point a shriek from her lips would lift the father to his feet, the
cold drops of agony on his brow. That soul-rending cry he had heard before,
but it lost none of its horrors by being repeated. Alas, it told but too
plainly of the wreck his cruel words had made, and he trembled lest only
the beginning of sorrows was upon him. How he blamed himself for being so
rash and precipitate; and, as Eveline sunk back in exhaustion, the awful
thought kept forcing itself into his mind:

"If she dies, I am her murderer!" What a reflection for a parent over an
almost dying child! Who can measure the anguish it created in his breast?

There lay his precious child before him, prostrated by his own act,
hovering on the very brink of the grave, life trembling on a breath--and
he, oh, he might never whisper a word of comfort in her ear! Poor man! For
all this there was no repentance in his soul; it was only regret and