e, too, and every other son and daughter parted from
them!"

"I never encouraged one moment Judge Custis's expenditure," said
Meshach, "though I lent him money. The first time he came to me to
borrow, my mind was in a liberal disposition, for you had just entered
it with your innocent attentions. I supposed he wanted a temporary
accommodation, and I gave it to him at the lowest rate one Christian
would charge another."

"You say that I influenced you to lend my father money? Why, sir, I was
a child. He has been borrowing from you since my earliest
recollections."

The creditor took from his breast-pocket a large leather wallet, and,
arising, laid its contents on the table. He opened a piece of folded
paper, and drew from it two objects; one a lock of blue-black hair like
his own, and the other a pressed and faded rose.

"This flower," said Milburn, with reverence, "Judge Custis's daughter
fastened in my derided hat. I kept it till it was dead, and laid it away
with my mother's hair, the two religious objects of my life. That faded
rose made me your father's creditor, Miss Custis."

Vesta took the rose, and looked at him with surprise and inquiry.

"Oh, why did not this flower speak for us?" she said; "to open your lips
after that, to save my father? Then you informed yourself, and knew that
he was hurrying to destruction, but still you gave him money at higher
interest."

Milburn looked at her with diminished courage, but sincerity, and
answered: "Your voice sang between us, Miss Custis, every time he came.
I did not admit to myself what it was, but the feeling that I was being
drawn near you still opened my purse to your father, till he has drained
me of the profits of years, which I gave him with a lavish fatality,
though grasping every cent from every source but that. I did know, then,
he could not probably repay me, but every Sabbath at the church you
sang, and that seemed some compensation. I was bewitched; indistinct
visions of gratitude and recognition from you filled the preaching with
concourses of angels, all bearing your image, and hovering above me. The
price I paid for that unuttered and ever-repelled hope has been
princely, but never grudged, and it has been pure, I believe, or Heaven
would have punished me. The more I ruined myself for your father, the
more successful my ventures were in all other places; if you were my
temptation, it had the favor or forgiveness of the God in whose temple
it was