is past treatment of him.

Mr. and Mrs. Sclater had called upon them the moment they were
settled in the cottage; but Mr. Galbraith would see nobody. When
the gate-bell rang, he always looked out, and if a visitor appeared,
withdrew to his bedroom.

One brilliant Saturday morning, the second in the session, the
ground hard with an early frost, the filmy ice making fairy caverns
and grottos in the cart-ruts, and the air so condensed with cold
that every breath, to those who ate and slept well, had the life of
two, Mrs. Sclater rang the said bell. Mr. Galbraith peeping from
the window, saw a lady's bonnet, and went. She walked in, followed
by Gibbie, and would have Ginevra go with them for a long walk.
Pleased enough with the proposal, for the outsides of life had been
dull as well as painful of late, she went and asked her father. If
she did not tell him that Sir Gilbert was with Mrs. Sclater, perhaps
she ought to have told him; but I am not sure, and therefore am not
going to blame her. When parents are not fathers and mothers, but
something that has no name in the kingdom of heaven, they place the
purest and most honest of daughters in the midst of perplexities.

"Why do you ask me?" returned her father. "My wishes are nothing to
any one now; to you they never were anything."

"I will stay at home, if you wish it, papa,--with pleasure," she
replied, as cheerfully as she could after such a reproach.

"By no means. If you do, I shall go and dine at the Red Hart," he
answered--not having money enough in his possession to pay for a
dinner there.

I fancy he meant to be kind, but, like not a few, alas! took no
pains to look as kind as he was. There are many, however, who seem
to delight in planting a sting where conscience or heart will not
let them deny. It made her miserable for a while of course, but she
had got so used to his way of breaking a gift as he handed it, that
she answered only with a sigh. When she was a child, his
ungraciousness had power to darken the sunlight, but by repetition
it had lost force. In haste she put on her little brown-ribboned
bonnet, took the moth-eaten muff that had been her mother's, and
rejoined Mrs. Sclater and Gibbie, beaming with troubled pleasure.
Life in her was strong, and their society soon enabled her to
forget, not her father's sadness, but his treatment of her.

At the end of the street, they found Donal waiting them--without
greatcoat or muffler, the pict