Poor Alice! her spirit was very willing, but her nerves were very weak. So it was with a pang of fear that Alice heard her father at the breakfast table one morning announce the expected arrival of General Garnet that evening. Yes, Colonel Chester, thinking that now perhaps sufficient time had elapsed since her mother’s death—and sufficient strength and cheerfulness had returned to his daughter—had recalled her suitor. Alice was trembling violently—she dared not look up. She had been taught to love and venerate her father above all earthly beings, and next to God. She loved and venerated him still, and kept her thoughts reverently away from investigating his motive and judging his conduct. She had been taught to bow with implicit and reverential obedience to his will. To oppose him had not been easy in her thought—it was terrible in practice. It would have been terrible to her had her father been a man of moderate temper and self-control; but he was a man of violent and ungovernable passion; and Alice was in an agony of terror when she faltered out: “Father, if General Garnet comes here only as your guest, I will welcome him with every possible attention; I will try to make him feel at home, and endeavor to render his sojourn with us in every other way agreeable; but if he comes here as my suitor——” Here her voice died away. “Well!” It is impossible to convey the short, curt, galvanic strength and abruptness with which he jerked, as it were, this syllable out, and brought Alice up. It was like throwing the lasso suddenly around her neck, and jerking her up face to face with him. And such a face! It is impossible to paint the grim determination of the locked jaws, armed with the wiry stubble beard, bristled up with fierceness, and the ferocity of the darkly-gathered frown that screwed his glance upon her pallid face, that screwed it into her very brain. Alice turned deadly sick, her eyes filmed over, and she sank back in her chair. She did not faint or lose consciousness, for the next instant she felt her father’s iron hand upon her fragile shoulder, and her father’s awful voice in that low, deep, suppressed tone of fierce, immutable determination, saying: “Miss Chester, it is not as your suitor, but as your husband, that General Garnet will come this evening. I command you to receive him as such.” And he left her. CHAPTER V. THE HUSBAND’S AUTHORITY. Yet haply there will come a weary day, When overtasked at length, Both Love and Hope beneath the weight give way; Then with a statue’s smile, a statue’s strength, Stands the mute sister, Patience, nothing loth, And both supporting does the work of both. _—Coleridge._