But Ettie Berton did not die. Perhaps it would have been quite as well for her if she had died before the impotent and frantic rage of her father had still further darkened the pathetically appealing, love-hungry little heart, whose every beat had been a throbbing, eager desire to be liked, to please, to acquiesce; to the end that she should escape blame, that she might sail on the smooth and pleasant sea of general praise and approval. Alas, the temperament which had brought her the dangerous stimulus of praise, for self-effacement, had joined hands with opportunity to wreck the child's life--and no one was more bitter in his denunciation than her father's friend and her aforetime admirer--Representative King. "If she was a daughter o' mine I'd kill her," he repeated to his own household day after day. "She sh'd never darken _my_ door agin. That's mighty certain. It made me mad the other day to hear Berton talk about takin' her back home. The old fool! What does he want of her? An' what kind of an example that I'd like t' know t' set t' decent girls? I told him right then an' there if he let his soft heart do him that a'way I was done with him for good an' all, n' if I ketch you a goin' up there t' see her agin, you can just stay away from here, that's all!" This last had been to Francis, and Francis had shut her teeth together very hard, and the glitter in her eyes might have indicated to a wiser man that it was not chiefly because of his presence there that this daughter cared to return to her home after her clandestine visits to Ettie Berton. A wiser man, too, might have guessed that the prohibition would not prohibit, and that poor little Ettie Berton would not be deserted by her loyal friend because of his displeasure. "I have told her that she may live with us by and by," said Gertrude to Seldon Avery one afternoon; "but that is no solution of the problem. And besides it is her father's duty to care for her and to do it without hurting the child's feelings, too. Can't you go to him and have a talk with him? You say he seems a kind-hearted, well-meaning, easily-led man. Beside, he has no right to blame her. He has done more than any one else in this state to make the path of the cashier easy and smooth. If it were not for poor little Ettie I should be heartily glad of it all--of the lesson for him. Can't you go to him and to that Mr. King and make them see the infamy of their work, and force them to undo it? Can't you? Is there no way?" Avery had gone. He argued in vain. "Why do you blame the cashier," he had said to Berton. "He has committed no legal offence. Our laws say he has done no wrong. Then why blame him? Why blame Ettie? She is a mere yielding, impulsive child, and, surely, if he has done no wrong she has not. If--"