"Take a
sup of this, and you'll be better, child."

She opened her heavy eyes, and shook her head.

"You said you would have mercy, father, if I promised?"

"Yes, yes; all shall be forgotten. We will not even speak of it to one
another."

"And you will pardon _him_? You will not hurt my Richard?"

"Your Richard!"

"Yes, for he was mine once. You will not bear witness against him before
the judge? Is he not punished enough in losing me? Am _I_ not punished?"

"Silence!" exclaimed the old man, in a terrible voice. His hand,
trembling with passion, had struck against the strong-box, and at its
touch his wrath broke out in flame. "That man is dead to you henceforth!
You gave your promise without conditions. Moreover, his fate is in the
hands of the law, and not in mine."

CHAPTER XXV.

AN UNEXPECTED GUEST.

Six days had come and gone since her lover's departure from Gethin, but
no tidings of him had reached Harry's ears. Solomon had returned on the
second day, and been closeted with her father for some hours, doubtless
in consultation about Richard; but not a word had been spoken of him, in
her presence, by either. She dared not mention him to her father, and
still less could she apply for information to his rival, her now
affianced bridegroom. How much, or how little, her father had disclosed
concerning him to Sol she did not know; but the latter had evidently
closed with the terms which she had in her late strait accepted on her
own part. The bans had been put up in the church upon the hill, and in a
month she would be this man's wife. She had been congratulated upon the
coming event by all the neighbors. Some had slyly hinted--little
guessing the pain they gave to that sore heart--at her late "goings-on"
with that young gentleman-painter; they had almost suspected at one time
that he would have supplanted her old flame; but they were glad to see
matters as they were. Solomon was a steady, sagacious man, as every body
knew, and would get on in the world; and what he gained he would not
waste in foolish ways. Such an old friend of her father's, too. Nothing
could be more fitting and satisfactory in all respects. Solomon,
notoriously a laggard in love, was likened to the tortoise, who had won
the race against the hare.

To have to listen to all this well-meant twaddle was misery indeed.
Perhaps, upon the whole, good honest dullness does unknowingly inflict
more grievous wounds than the barbed satiric t