maiden and the sighs of her heart-broken father.

"What I have yet to say," continued the poor gentleman, "is not so
painful as what I have already told you: it concerns only myself.
Perhaps it would be better if I said nothing about it; but I need a
friend who possesses all my confidence and can sympathize with me
thoroughly in all I have undergone for the last ten years.

"Listen, then, Lenora. Your mother was no more; she was gone;--she who
was my last staff in life! I remained at Grinselhof alone with you, my
child, and with my promise,--a promise made to God and to the dead! What
should I do to fulfil it? Quit my hereditary estate? wander away seeking
my fortune in foreign lands, and work for our mutual support? That would
not do, for it would have devoted you at once to the chances of a
wretched uncertainty. I could not think of such a course with any degree
of satisfaction; nor was it till after long and anxious reflection that
a ray of hope seemed to promise us both a happy future.

"I resolved to disguise our poverty more carefully than ever, and to
devote my time to the most elaborate cultivation of your mind. God made
you beautiful in face and person, Lenora; but your father was anxious to
initiate you into the mysteries of science and art, and, while he
endowed you with a knowledge of the world, to make you virtuous, pious,
and modest. I desired to make you an accomplished woman, and I hoped
that the nobility of your blood, the charms of your beauty, the
treasures of your heart and intellect, would compensate in society for
the portion that was denied you. Thus was it, my child, that I thought
in time, you would make a suitable alliance which would restore you to
the position you hold by birth. For ten years, Lenora, this has been my
occupation and my hope. What I had forgotten or never learned, I studied
at night to teach you next morning; I labored hard that I might not only
instruct you wisely but that you might acquire easily; and, at the same
time, I strove by every honest means to conceal from you every thing
that could give a hint or cause a suspicion by which your life might be
shadowed. Oh, Lenora,--shall I confess it?--I have suffered hunger and
undergone the most cruel privations; I have passed half my nights
mending my clothes, working in the garden, studying and practising in
the dark, so as to hide our poverty from you and the world. But all that
was nothing; in the silence of night I was not