“I loved him, father!” she said at length, raising her eyes to the minister’s face. “Had he ever spoken of love to you? Paul says not!” “Never.” She let fall her eyes, and drooped more than ever. I almost thought she would fall. “I could not have believed it,” said he, in a hard voice, yet sighing the moment he had spoken. A dead silence for a moment. “Paul! I was unjust to you. You deserved blame, but not all that I said.” Then again a silence. I thought I saw Phillis’s white lips moving, but it might have been the flickering of the candlelight—a moth had flown in through the open casement, and was fluttering round the flame; I might have saved it, but I did not care to do so, my heart was too full of other things. At any rate, no sound was heard for long endless minutes. Then he said,—“Phillis! did we not make you happy here? Have we not loved you enough?” She did not seem to understand the drift of this question; she looked up as if bewildered, and her beautiful eyes dilated with a painful, tortured expression. He went on, without noticing the look on her face; he did not see it, I am sure. “And yet you would have left us, left your home, left your father and your mother, and gone away with this stranger, wandering over the world.” He suffered, too; there were tones of pain in the voice in which he uttered this reproach. Probably the father and daughter were never so far apart in their lives, so unsympathetic. Yet some new terror came over her, and it was to him she turned for help. A shadow came over her face, and she tottered towards her father; falling down, her arms across his knees, and moaning out,— “Father, my head! my head!” and then slipped through his quick-enfolding arms, and lay on the ground at his feet. I shall never forget his sudden look of agony while I live; never! We raised her up; her colour had strangely darkened; she was insensible. I ran through the back-kitchen to the yard pump, and brought back water. The minister had her on his knees, her head against his breast, almost as though she were a sleeping child. He was trying to rise up with his poor precious burden, but the momentary terror had robbed the strong man of his strength, and he sank back in his chair with sobbing breath.