"I blame myself enough; I can tell you that. I feel as though I had in a way destroyed myself." "Do not say that, my darling." "You will let me speak now; will you not, Papa? I wish to tell you everything, that you may understand all that I feel. I shall never get over it." "You will, dearest; you will, indeed." "Never! Perhaps I shall live on; but I feel that it has killed me for this world. I don't know how a girl is to get over it when she has said that she has loved any one. If they are married, then she does not want to get over it; but if they are not,--if he deserts her, or is unworthy, or both,--what can she do then, but just go on thinking of it till--she dies?" Sir Harry used with her all the old accustomed arguments to drive such thoughts out of her head. He told her how good was God to His creatures, and, specially, how good in curing by the soft hand of time such wounds as those from which she was suffering. She should "retrick her beams," and once more "flame in the forehead of the morning sky," if only she would help the work of time by her own endeavours. "Fight against the feeling, Emily, and try to conquer it, and it will be conquered." "But, Papa, I do not wish to conquer it. I should not tell you of all this, only for one thing." "What thing, dearest?" "I am not like other girls, who can just leave themselves alone and be of no trouble. You told me that if I outlived you--" "The property will be yours; certainly. Of course, it was my hope,--and is,--that all that shall be settled by your marriage before my death. The trouble and labour is more than a woman should be called on to support alone." "Just so. And it is because you are thinking of all this, that I feel it right to tell you. Papa, I shall never be married." "We will leave that for the present, Emily." "Very well; only if it would make a change in your will, you should make it. You will have to be here, Papa, after I am gone,--probably." "No, no, no." "But, if it were not so, I should not know what to do. That is all, Papa; only this,--that I beg your pardon for all the trouble I have caused you." Then she knelt before him, and he kissed her head, and blessed her, and wept over her.