He sat a moment with downcast eyes after she had communicated to him her design. His face expressed emotion. He seemed both pained and embarrassed, and quite at a loss what to say. In fact, his wife had proposed this very plan, and was anxious that Amy should go, and he had entertained the project. Therefore he could not express surprise. For the first time, perhaps, a feeling of shame overcame him. He was obliged to deceive! His pride, revolting at that shame, made him impatient. Unwilling to acknowledge himself in the wrong, he wished to appear injured. "If you mean to deprive me of my only child, and would rather live with strangers than with your own father, I will not oppose you," he said. "But I think you might have shown some confidence in me, and told me your wishes before." Amy's impulse had been, at the first sight of his emotion, to throw herself into his arms, and forgive him everything, or take upon herself all the blame. But at these words she recoiled. Her silence was better than any answer could have been. "I don't blame you, child," her father resumed, blushing for the evasion he had practised. "It would be cruel of me to wish you to stay in a home where you cannot live in peace. I am grieved, Amy, but I can do nothing. What can a man do between women who disagree?" "Find out which is wrong!" was the answer that rose to her lips, but she suppressed it. She had already exhausted words to him. She had poured out her pain, her love, her entreaties, and they had been to him as the idle wind. She had been wronged and insulted, and he would not see it. She turned away with a feeling of despair. "At least, let us part as a father and daughter should," he said in a trembling voice. She held out one hand to him, and with the other covered her face, unable to utter a word; then broke away, and shut herself into her chamber. There are times when entire reparation only is tolerable, and we demand full justice, or none. So they parted, and never met again, though they corresponded regularly, and wrote kind if not confidential letters. The only sign the daughter ever had of any change of opinion in her father regarding the cause of their separation was when he requested her to send her letters to his office and not to the house. After that they both wrote more freely. In her new home, Amy did not find all sunshine. Miss Clinton was old and notional, and had too great a fondness for thinking for others as well as herself. Consequently, when the young lady favored the addresses of a poor artist who had been employed to paint her portrait, there was an explosion. With her father's consent, Amy married Carl Owen, and her cousin discarded her. There was one year of happiness; then the young husband died, and left his wife with an infant son.