ptuously. He was seized with a divine rage. How had Sibyll
dared to secrete from him this hoard; how presumed to waste upon
the base body what might have so profited the eternal mind? In his
relentless ardour, in his sublime devotion and loyalty to his abstract
idea, there was a devouring cruelty, of which this meek and gentle
scholar was wholly unconscious. The grim iron model, like a Moloch,
ate up all things,--health, life, love; and its jaws now opened for
his child. He rose from his bed,--it was daybreak,--he threw on his
dressing-robe, he strode into his daughter's room; the gray twilight
came through the comfortless, curtainless casement, deep sunk into the
wall. Adam did not pause to notice that the poor child, though she had
provoked his anger by refitting his dismal chamber, had spent nothing in
giving a less rugged frown to her own.

The scanty worm-worn furniture, the wretched pallet, the poor attire
folded decently beside,--nothing save that inexpressible purity and
cleanliness which, in the lowliest hovel, a pure and maiden mind gathers
round it; nothing to distinguish the room of her whose childhood had
passed in courts from the but of the meanest daughter of drudgery and
toil! No,--he who had lavished the fortunes of his father and big child
into the grave of his idea--no--he saw nothing of this self-forgetful
penury--the diamond danced before him! He approached the bed; and oh!
the contrast of that dreary room and peasant pallet to the delicate,
pure, enchanting loveliness of the sleeping inmate. The scanty covering
left partially exposed the snow-white neck and rounded shoulder; the
face was pillowed upon the arm, in an infantine grace; the face was
slightly flushed, and the fresh red lips parted into a smile,--for in
her sleep the virgin dreamed,--a happy dream! It was a sight to have
touched a father's heart, to have stopped his footstep, and hushed his
breath into prayer. And call not Adam hard--unnatural--that he was not
then, as men far more harsh than he--for the father at that moment was
not in his breast, the human man was gone--he himself, like his model,
was a machine of iron!--his life was his one idea!

"Wake, child, wake!" he said, in a loud but hollow voice. "Where is the
gold thou hast hidden from me? Wake! confess!"

Roused from her gracious dreams thus savagely, Sibyll started, and saw
the eager, darkened face of her father. Its expression was peculiar
and undefinable, for it was not