Two persons sat in the parlor of a handsome house situated in a pleasant street of the capital of our Old Dominion. The afternoon of a summer's day was deepening into twilight, but the waning light sufficed to show the features of the occupants. There was no hazard in pronouncing them father and daughter. The square forehead, indicative rather of keenness of perception and shrewd sense, than high intellectual faculties; the full, grey eye; flexible lips, and heavily moulded chin were the same in both, although softened in the younger, until her face might have been deemed pretty, had the observer omitted to remark an occasional steel-like spark, struck from the clear eyes, and a compression of the mouth, betokening a sleeping demon whom it would be dangerous to arouse from his lair. A turbulent light flashed there now. She had thrown herself into the corner of a sofa, after many restless wanderings through the apartment, and the shapely foot, oscillating rapidly, beat with its toe, a tattoo agitato upon the floor. Her father was immersed in thought or apathy. She repeated a question in a voice which savored of peevishness, before he withdrew his eyes from the watch-key, the twirling of which had been his occupation for a quarter of an hour. "At what hour will your ward arrive, sir?" "She must be here in a short time. They have travelled slowly. The journey might have been accomplished as well in one day, as two." "You said her escort was a clergyman, I think. Gentlemen of the cloth are not famous for inconveniencing themselves to gratify others," responded the young lady. "They inveigh against the emptiness and vanity of sublunary things; yet I know no class of men who enjoy 'creature comforts' more." "Confounded humbugs!" was the rejoinder, and a muttered something about "priest-craft" and "blind leaders of the blind" finished the sentence so charitably begun. Another pause was ended by the daughter. "Miss Ross' father was an early friend of yours,--a college chum,--was he not?" "He was,--and a clever fellow into the bargain;" said her father, with a touch of feeling in his tone. "At his death, he left to me the management of his child's property,--(a snug operation I have made of it, too!) In the event of the mother's decease, I was appointed sole guardian, an office for which, it must be said, I have little partiality. If Mrs. Ross had given her up to me ten years ago, I might have made something of her; but she said a mother was the proper guide for her daughter. Women are wonderfully self-sufficient,--always undertaking what it would puzzle sensible men to do, and perfectly satisfied with the style in which it is done." If there was any meaning in the severity of this remark, the face and voice of the listener betrayed no consciousness. "How old is Miss Ross?" "What is your age?" and seeing her hesitate--"What does the Family Bible say? I want no school-girl airs." "I am fifteen sir," raising her eyes coolly to his.