nturer, baffled in his
treason, and unpitied by all good men. This should persuade you,
Mildred, to renounce your unnatural attachment, and to think no more of
one whose cause heaven has never sanctioned, and whose condition in life
should forbid all pretension to your regard--one, above all, repulsive
even to loathing to the thoughts of your father."

"I loved him, father, in his happiest and brightest day," said Mildred,
firmly; "I cannot desert him in his adversity. Oh, speak to me no more!
Let me go to my chamber; I am ill and cannot bear this torrent of your
displeasure."

"I will not detain you, Mildred. In sorrow and suffering, but still with
a father's affection as warmly shining on you as when, in earliest
infancy, I fondled thee upon my knee, I part with thee now. One kiss,
girl. There, let that make peace between us. For your sake and my own, I
pledge my word never to distress you with this subject again. Destiny
must have its way, and I must bide the inevitable doom."

With a heavy heart and an exhausted frame, Mildred slowly and tearfully
withdrew.

Lindsay remained some time fixed upon the spot where his daughter had
left him. He was like a man stupefied and astounded by a blow. His
conference had ended in a manner that he had not prepared himself to
expect. The imputed treachery of Butler, derived from Tyrrel's letters,
had not struck alarm into the heart of Mildred, as he had supposed it
could not fail to do. The wicked fabrication had only recoiled upon the
inventor; and Mildred, with the resolute, confident, and unfaltering
attachment of her nature, clung with a nobler devotion to her lover. To
Lindsay, in whose mind no distrust of the honesty of Tyrrel could find
shelter; whose prejudices and peculiar temperament came in aid of the
gross and disgraceful imputation which the letters inferred, the
constancy and generous fervor of his daughter towards the cause of
Butler seemed to be a mad and fatal infatuation.

Ever since his first interview with Mildred on the subject of her
attachment, his mind had been morbidly engrossed with the reflections to
which it had given rise. There was such a steadiness of purpose apparent
in her behavior, such an unchangeable resolve avowed, as seemed to him,
in the circumstances of her condition, to defy and stand apart from the
ordinary and natural impulses by which human conduct is regulated. He
grew daily more abstracted and moody in his contemplations; and as st