ere be?"

"There is the difference of the theatre, the contaminating atmosphere,
the people it attracts, the harm it does--your father, as you know, has
never been within a theatre in his life; is it likely that he can look
with calmness upon his daughter marrying a man whose livelihood is to be
gained in a scandalous and debasing profession?"

"Father, I cannot listen to your talking of Mike like that. If it is
wrong to make people innocently happy, to make them laugh and forget
their troubles, to--to--well, if it's wrong to be Mike--I'm sorry; but,
wrong or right, I love him, and nothing will ever make me give him up."

Mrs. Mesurier here interrupted, "I told you, James, how it would be. You
cannot change young hearts. The times are not the same as when you and I
were young; and, though I'm sure I don't want to go against you, I
think you are too hard on Esther. Love is love after all--and Mike's one
of the best-hearted lads that ever walked."

"Thank you, mother," said Esther, impulsively, throwing her arms round
her mother's neck, and bursting into tears, "I--I will never
give--give--him up."

"No, dear, no; now don't distress yourself. It will all come right. Your
father doesn't quite understand." And then a great tempest of sobbing
came over Esther, and swept her away to her own room.

The father and mother turned to each other with some anger.

"James, I'm surprised at your distressing the poor child like that
to-night; you might have known she would be sensitive, with Mike only
gone to-day! You could surely have waited till to-morrow."

"I am surprised, Mary, that you can encourage her as you did. You cannot
surely uphold the theatre?"

"Well, James, I don't know,--there are theatres and theatres, and actors
and actors; and there have been some very good men actors after all, and
some very bad men ministers, if it comes to that," she added; "and
theatre or no theatre, love's love in spite of all the fathers and
mothers in the world--"

"All right, Mary, I would prefer then that we spoke no more on the
matter for this evening," and James Mesurier turned to his diary, to
record, along with the state of the weather, and the engagements of the
day, the undutiful conduct of Esther, and a painful difference with
his wife.

Strange, that men who have themselves loved and begotten should thus for
a moment imagine that a small social prejudice, or a narrow religious
formula, can break the purpose of a young