“I have done so,” said Gomer, with a manner as cold as his own. “I will repeat it. Grahame has fled, it is not known whither, although a hot search has been made for him. The sheriff is in possession of his house in London, at my suit. His eldest daughter fled from his house and became a mother before she knew she was a wife; his second daughter has eloped with the Duke of St. Allborne, and is now his kept mistress. The proud mother--the destroyer of her husband, and, so far as she could be, the cause of her children’s ruin---is confined to her bed with a wasting illness and a crushed brain; she is a hopeless idiot. The son is in prison, arrested at the suit of a tailor, who has been discounting bills for him, which he has dishonoured. That is the condition of the proud Grahames. I ask you, are you satisfied? Are your feelings of revenge glutted by this wholesale wreck of the family?” “There--there was, I think, another daughter,” said Wilton, in a low, hesitating tone. “You do not mention her.” Nathan shrugged his shoulders, and said, tartly, “You mean the youngest, Evangeline, a simple, artless, innocent girl, with a foolishly affectionate nature She is pretty and engaging, and has been giving clandestine meetings to a young lawyer’s clerk. If he happens to be a scoundrel, it is not difficult to prophecy what will be her fate. Again I ask you, are you satisfied?” Old Wilton rose up; he pressed his clenched fist upon his heart. In a hoarse voice, he exclaimed-- “I am shocked, I am horrified, Gomer. I contemplated this situation with a vile satisfaction. I am terrified at its realization. My vengeance! ugh! it is gorged. We must interpose--stay the further progress of their misery. We will save this child--this Evangeline, and rescue, too, the rest from destitution and perdition. Oh, pride! accursed pride! it has triumphed over the reason and the conscience of both Grahame and his wife. Had they listened to the gentle pleadings of nature, rather than to the dictates of an overweening, selfish, unfeeling, arrogant pride, home and family-might at this moment have been to them a source of the purest domestic felicity. What is it now?--I shudder to reflect upon it. The happiness of their children could never have been an element in their worldly calculations; on the contrary, they have trampled on the natural affections, and have considered their offspring rather as appendages to their state than as children part and parcel of themselves. Oh, it is terrible! it is terrible!”