order on every leaf--headed, sometimes
merely by representations of the Knight's favourite weapon; sometimes by
copies of the Baron's effigy on his tombstone in a foreign land. As
the history advanced to later dates, beautiful miniature portraits were
inlaid at the top of each leaf; and the illuminations were so managed as
to symbolize the remarkable merits or the peculiar tastes of the subject
of each biography. Thus, the page devoted to my mother was surrounded
by her favourite violets, clustering thickest round the last melancholy
lines of writing which told the story of her death.

Slowly and in silence, my father turned over the leaves of the book
which, next to the Bible, I believe he most reverenced in the world,
until he came to the last-written page but one--the page which I knew,
from its position, to be occupied by my name. At the top, a miniature
portrait of me, when a child, was let into the leaf. Under it, was the
record of my birth and names, of the School and College at which I had
been taught, and of the profession that I had adopted. Below, a large
blank space was left for the entry of future particulars. On this page
my father now looked, still not uttering a word, still with the same
ghastly calmness on his face. The organ-notes sounded no more; but
the trees rustled as pleasantly, and the roar of the distant carriages
swelled as joyously as ever on the ear. Some children had come out to
play in the garden of a neighbouring house. As their voices reached
us, so fresh, and clear, and happy--but another modulation of the
thanksgiving song to God which the trees were singing in the summer
air--I saw my father, while he still looked on the page before him,
clasp his trembling hands over my portrait so as to hide it from sight.

Then he spoke; but without looking up, and more as if he were speaking
to himself than to me. His voice, at other times clear and gentle in its
tones, was now so hard and harsh in its forced calmness and deliberation
of utterance, that it sounded like a stranger's.

"I came here, this morning," he began, "prepared to hear of faults and
misfortunes which should pain me to the heart; which I might never,
perhaps, be able to forget, however willing and even predetermined
to forgive. But I did _not_ come prepared to hear, that unutterable
disgrace had been cast on me and mine, by my own child. I have no words
of rebuke or of condemnation for this: the reproach and the punishment
hav