e
way as lying on his side of the question, pride was severely shocked
by so unexpected a show of indifference. And its exhibition was the
more annoying, manifested, as it was, just at the moment when he had
become most painfully aware that all his worldly possessions were
beyond his control, and might pass from his reach forever.

"Can there be such baseness in the man?" he exclaimed, mentally,
with bitterness, as the thought flitted through his mind that Lyon
had deliberately inveigled him, and, having been an instrument of
his ruin, now turned from him with cold indifference.

"Impossible!" he replied, aloud, to the frightful conjecture. "I
will not cherish the thought for a single moment."

But a suggestion like this, once made to a man in his circumstances,
is not to be cast out of the mind by a simple act of rejection. It
becomes a living thing, and manifests its perpetual presence. Turn
his thought from it as he would, back to that point it came, and the
oftener this occurred, the more corroborating suggestions arrayed
themselves by its side.

Mr. Markland was alone in the library, with Mr. Lyon's hastily read
letters before him, and yet pondering, with an unquiet spirit, the
varied relations in which he had become placed, when the door was
quietly pushed open, and he heard light footsteps crossing the room.
Turning, he met the anxious face of his daughter, who, no longer
able to bear the suspense that was torturing her, had overcome all
shrinking maiden delicacy, and now came to ask if, enclosed in
either of his letters, was one for her. She advanced close to where
he was sitting, and, as he looked at her with a close observation,
he saw that her countenance was almost colourless, her lips rigid,
and her heart beating with an oppressed motion, as if half the blood
in her body had flowed back upon it.

"Fanny, dear!" said Mr. Markland, grasping her hand tightly. As he
did so, she leaned heavily against him, while her eyes ran eagerly
over the table.

Two or three times she tried to speak, but was unable to articulate.

"What can I say to you, love?" Her father spoke in a low, sad,
tender voice, that to her was prophetic of the worst.

"Is there a letter for me?" she asked, in a husky whisper.

"No, dear."

He felt her whole frame quiver as if shocked.

"You have heard from Mr. Lyon?" She asked this after the lapse of a
few moments, raising herself up as she spoke, and assuming a
calmness of exterio