The sister did not reply aloud to her father's renewed objurgation. She merely sobbed a little and took from her bosom a crumpled note and read it over again for perhaps the fiftieth time, muttering low as she did so: "Oh, father, father! If you knew how far you would need to go to seek poor Carlton and make him even more miserable than he is, and how little chance you have of ever seeing him again while you live--perhaps you would not speak so cruelly of him." Then she kissed the crumpled note again and put it back into her bosom, and tried to compose herself once more to that sleep which the tropical heat invited and her aching heart forbade. From the tone of that letter, it would seem that Elsie had written to her brother, to his place of business in the city, when fully aware of the unreasonable indignation which moved her father, advising him not to risk serious personal insult by coming home until he should again hear from her,--and that he had replied, from a place much farther away, informing her of his intention to put seas between himself and the eyes of all who had looked upon his disgrace. But better even this long separation--thought the young girl--than a return which would induce words between father and son, never to be forgiven or forgotten while either held life and memory. Years might mellow the recollection and change the feeling--years when the country should no longer make demands upon her children to breast the battle storm in her behalf, and when the eloquent voice in the halls of justice and the active, busy life in deeds securing the common welfare, might be sufficient to win new honor and blot away any recollection of that single sad misstep in the career of manhood. Poor, gentle, loving, faithful little Elsie Brand!--it may be long before we have occasion to look upon her again, and indeed she becomes henceforth but a comparative shadow; so let it be put upon record here that she seemed "faithful among the faithless" in practising the great lessons of hope and charity. The father might utter curses to be set down against his own soul in the day when human words as well as human actions must be called into judgment; friends might look askance and enemies gloat over the disgrace of one who had before stood high above them in all the details of honorable character; even the sweetheart, whose pulses had once beaten so close to his that the twin currents seemed flowing into one--even she might find some poor excuse of pride to falsify her by-gone boast that she loved him better than all the world, and let that hollow, wordy "honor" work their eternal separation: all this might be, but the _sister_ had no such license to waver in the course of her affection towards one who had been fondled by the same hands in babyhood and drawn sustenance from the same maternal bosom as herself. And no treason, all this, to the truths and the eternities of other loves. All other relations may sooner change than that