A few moments elapsed, and then measured footsteps in the hall made the young girl’s heart beat quick as she listened. They approached the drawing-room door; it was opened, and with a cold and stately politeness Mr. D. entered, holding the letters in his hand. He approached Mr. Whitney, who had risen to receive him, and now resumed his seat. “Sir,” he said, gravely drawing a chair and seating himself opposite to the young man, “there are the letters with which you have honored me; they are perfectly satisfactory.” There was something so chill and cutting in the measured tones and unbending courtesy with which this was said, that it had all the effect of an insult without yielding an excuse for resentment. Whitney took the letters, and the color mounted to his temples. “I trust,” he said, “that there was nothing in the letters, or in the manner of presenting them, that could give offence?” Before answering, Mr. D. turned his eyes upon Myra, who sat pale and dismayed in a corner of the sofa, and made a motion of the head that she should leave the room. The young girl arose trembling in every limb, and left the room; but while she stood upon the threshold struggling for strength to move on, her father spoke. “May I ask you, sir, why those letters were presented to my daughter?” Whitney’s voice was low but firm, as he answered: “I have received much kindness from your family, sir, within the last two months, and could not leave the city, as I am about to do, without giving Mrs. D. and your daughter all the proof in my power that their hospitality had not been unworthily bestowed.” “And was this your only motive, sir?” “It was my only motive.” “And have you not presumed to place yourself on an equality with my daughter? Have you not taken advantage of her youth and my absence to ingratiate yourself in her favor? In short, sir, have you not presumed upon the hospitality awarded by my wife, and offered address to my child, every way distasteful to her family?” “No, sir, no, I have not thus presumed.” Myra heard no more—a sharp sense of humiliation, a thousand confused thoughts flashed through her brain, and with a pang at her heart such as she had never dreamed of before, she darted up the stairs. White and gasping for breath, she paused at the top, made a grasp at the baluster for support, and, for the first time in her life, fainted upon the floor.