ould that keep us apart?"

"Because you are thinking of him too, and think so differently! You
hate him; but I love him."

"I do not hate him. It is not that I hate him. I hate his vices."

"So do I."

"I know that he is not a fit man for you to marry. I have not been
able to tell you the things that I know of him."

"I do not wish to be told."

"But you might believe me when I assure you that they are of a nature
to make you change your feelings towards him. At this very moment he
is attached to--to--another person."

Emily Hotspur blushed up to her brows, and her cheeks and forehead
were suffused with blood; but her mouth was set as firm as a rock,
and then came that curl over her eye which her father had so dearly
loved when she was a child, but which was now held by him to be so
dangerous. She was not going to be talked out of her love in that
way. Of course there had been things,--were things of which she knew
nothing and desired to know nothing. Though she herself was as pure
as the driven snow, she did not require to be told that there were
impurities in the world. If it was meant to be insinuated that he was
untrue to her, she simply disbelieved it. But what if he were? His
untruth would not justify hers. And untruth was impossible to her.
She loved him, and had told him so. Let him be ever so false, it
was for her to bring him back to truth or to spend herself in the
endeavour. Her father did not understand her at all when he talked to
her after this fashion. But she said nothing. Her father was alluding
to a matter on which she could say nothing.

"If I could explain to you the way in which he has raised money for
his daily needs, you would feel that he had degraded himself beneath
your notice."

"He cannot degrade himself beneath my notice;--not now. It is too
late."

"But, Emily,--do you mean to say then that, let you set your
affections where you might,--however wrongly, on however base a
subject,--your mamma and I ought to yield to them, merely because
they are so set?"

"He is your heir, Papa."

"No; you are my heir. But I will not argue upon that. Grant that he
were my heir; even though every acre that is mine must go to feed his
wickedness the very moment that I die, would that be a reason for
giving my child to him also? Do you think that you are no more to
me than the acres, or the house, or the empty title? They are all
nothing to my love for you."

"Papa!"

"I do not think that