o his knees, and covered her face. Every one stabbed at
that poor heart. In a minute or so her father spoke again.

"I don't mean what I say. I often don't mean it now. Ellinor, you must
forgive me, my child!" He stooped, and lifted her up, and sat down,
taking her on his knee, and smoothing her hair off her hot forehead.
"Remember, child, how very miserable I am, and have forgiveness for me.
He had none, and yet he must have seen I had been drinking."

"Drinking, papa!" said Ellinor, raising her head, and looking at him with
sorrowful surprise.

"Yes. I drink now to try and forget," said he, blushing and confused.

"Oh, how miserable we are!" cried Ellinor, bursting into tears--"how very
miserable! It seems almost as if God had forgotten to comfort us!"

"Hush! hush!" said he. "Your mother said once she did so pray that you
might grow up religious; you must be religious, child, because she prayed
for it so often. Poor Lettice, how glad I am that you are dead!" Here
he began to cry like a child. Ellinor comforted him with kisses rather
than words. He pushed her away, after a while, and said, sharply: "How
much does he know? I must make sure of that. How much did you tell him,
Ellinor?"

"Nothing--nothing, indeed, papa, but what I told you just now!"

"Tell it me again--the exact words!"

"I will, as well as I can; but it was last August. I only said, 'Was it
right for a woman to marry, knowing that disgrace hung over her, and
keeping her lover in ignorance of it?'"

"That was all, you are sure?"

"Yes. He immediately applied the case to me--to ourselves."

"And he never wanted to know what was the nature of the threatened
disgrace?"

"Yes, he did."

"And you told him?"

"No, not a word more. He referred to the subject again to-day, in the
shrubbery; but I told him nothing more. You quite believe me, don't you,
papa?"

He pressed her to him, but did not speak. Then he took the note up
again, and read it with as much care and attention as he could collect in
his agitated state of mind.

"Nelly," said he, at length, "he says true; he is not good enough for
thee. He shrinks from the thought of the disgrace. Thou must stand
alone, and bear the sins of thy father."

He shook so much as he said this, that Ellinor had to put any suffering
of her own on one side, and try to confine her thoughts to the necessity
of getting her father immediately up to bed. She sat by him till he went
to