"By coloring photographs; by furnishing designs for Christmas and Easter cards, and occasionally (not often), by selling drawings used for decorating china, and wallpaper. At one time, I had regular pay for singing in a choir, but diphtheria injured my throat, and when I partly recovered my voice, the situation had been given to another person." "I am informed also that before long, you intend to astonish the world with a wonderful picture, which shall distance such laggards as Troyon, Dore, and Ary Scheffer?" She was looking, not at him, but out through the glass door, at the glowing western sky, where distant pine trees printed their silhouettes. Now her gaze came back to his face, and he noted a faint quiver in her full throat. "If God will mercifully spare my mother to me, my loftiest and holiest ambition shall be to distance the wolfish cares and woes that have hunted her, ever since she became a widow. Any and all honest labor that can contribute to her comfort, will be welcome and sweet to me." "The laws of heredity must be occult and complex. The offspring of a rebellious and disobedient child, is certainly entitled to no filial instincts; and some day the strain will tell, and you will overwhelm your mother with ingratitude, black as that which she showed me." "When I do, may God eternally forsake me!" A brief silence ensued, and the old man drummed on the table, with the fingers of his right hand. "Who educated you?" "My dear father." "It seems there are two of you. Where is your brother?" "At present, I do not know exactly where he is, but I think in the far West; possibly in Montana--probably in Canada." "How does he earn his bread? By daubing, or fiddling?" "Since he earns it honestly, that is his own affair. We have not heard from him for some months." "I thought so! He inherits the worthless vagabond strain of--" "He is his mother's idol, and she glories in his resemblance to you, sir; and to your father; hence his name--Robert L. Darrington." "Then she must have one handsome child! I am not surprised that he is the favorite." "Bertie certainly is her darling, and he is very handsome; not in the very least degree like me." For the first time, their eyes met in a friendly glance, and a covert smile stirred the General's lips; but as he put out his hand toward her, she moved a step beyond his reach. "Beryl, you consider me a dreadful, cruel old tyrant?" She made no reply. "Answer me." "You are my mother's father; and that word--father, means so much to me, that it shall shield even you, from the shadow of disrespect." "Oh! very dutiful indeed, but dead as the days when daughters obeyed, and honored their fathers! Beggarly foreign professors wiped all that out of the minds of wealthy girls at boarding schools--just as they changed their backwoods pronunciation of French and Italian. Don't evade my question."