He started up, and walked up and down the room, just as Ernest used to
do, unable to control the vehemence of his emotions.

"Father!" he exclaimed, "how I could have loved, revered, adored my
father, had he been what my youthful heart has so panted to embrace. I
loved my mother,--Heaven knows I did; but there always seemed majesty as
well as beauty in the name of father, and I longed to reverence, as well
as to love. Mr. Clyde was a good man, and I honored him; he was my
benefactor, and I was grateful to him,--but he wanted the intellectual
grandeur, to which my soul longed to pay homage. I was always forming an
image in my own mind of what a father should be,--pure, upright, and
commanding,--a being to whom I could look up as to an earthly divinity,
who could satisfy the wants of my venerating nature."

"It is thus I have done," I cried, struck by the peculiar sympathy of
our feelings. "In the dreams of my childhood, a vague but glorious form
reigned with the sovereignty of a king and the sanctity of a
high-priest, and imagination offered daily incense at its throne. Never,
till I read my mother's history, was the illusion dispelled. But how did
he welcome you, Richard? Surely he was glad and proud to find a son in
you."

"He is no longer capable of pride or joy. He is burnt out, as it were.
But he did at last show some emotion, when made to believe that I was
the son of Theresa." His hand trembled, and his hard, sunken eye
momentarily softened. "Did you come here to mock and upbraid me?" he
cried, concealing his sensibility under a kind of fierce sullenness.
"What wrong have I done you? I deserted you, it is true, but I saved you
from the influence of my accursed example, which might have dragged you
to the burning jaws of hell. Go, and leave me to my doom. Leave me in
the living grave my own unhallowed hands have dug. I want no sympathy,
no companionship,--and least of all, yours. Every time I look on you, I
feel as if coals of fire were eating in my heart."

"Remorse, Richard," I exclaimed, "remorse! Oh! he feels. Our
ministrations will not be in vain. Did you tell him that I was with you,
that I came to comfort and to do him good?"

"I did; but he bade me tell you, that if he wanted comfort, it could not
come through you,--that he would far rather his tortures were increased
than diminished, that he might, he said, become inured to sufferings,
which would continue as long as Almighty vengeance could inflict