rt-rending tones.

"'I am getting tired of this absurd theatrical scene,' said the
Chevalier indifferently but impatiently; but at this moment the
door flew open and in burst a girl in a white night-dress, her
hair dishevelled, her face pale as death,--burst in and ran to
old Vertua, raised him up, took him in her arms, and cried, 'O
father! O father! I have heard all, I know all! Have you really lost
everything--everything, really? Have you not your Angela? What need
have we of money and property? Will not Angela sustain you and tend
you? O father, don't humiliate yourself a moment longer before this
despicable monster. It is not _we_, but _he_, who is poor and miserable
in the midst of his contemptible riches; for see, he stands there
deserted in his awful hopeless loneliness; there is not a heart in all
the wide world to cling lovingly to his breast, to open out to him when
he despairs of his own life, of himself. Come, father. Leave this house
with me. Come, let us make haste and be gone, that this fearful man may
not exult over your trouble.'

"Vertua sank half fainting into an easy-chair. Angela knelt down before
him, took his hands, kissed them, fondled them, enumerated with
childish loquacity all the talents, all the accomplishments, which she
was mistress of, and by the aid of which she would earn a comfortable
living for her father; she besought him from the midst of burning tears
to put aside all his trouble and distress, since her life would now
first acquire true significance, when she had to sew, embroider, sing,
and play her guitar, not for mere pleasure, but for her father's sake.

"Who, however hardened a sinner, could have remained insensible at the
sight of Angela, thus radiant in her divine beauty, comforting her old
father with sweet soft words, whilst the purest affection, the most
childlike goodness, beamed from her eyes, evidently coming from the
very depths of her heart?

"Quite otherwise was it with the Chevalier. A perfect Gehenna of
torment and of the stinging of conscience was awakened within him.
Angela appeared to him to be the avenging angel of God, before whose
splendour the misty veil of his wicked infatuation melted away, so that
he saw with horror the repulsive nakedness of his own miserable soul.
Yet right through the midst of the flames of this infernal pit that was
blazing in the Chevalier's heart passed a divine and pure ray, whose
emanations of light were the sweetest rapture