"Oh, father! father! And is it from you this question comes?" exclaimed Fanny, clasping her hands together and then pressing them tightly against her bosom. "He spoke of you in his letter with great kindness," said Mr. Markland. "I know that he has been deeply absorbed in a perplexing business; and this may be the reason why he has not written." "Father,"--Fanny's words were uttered slowly and impressively--"if you are in any manner involved in business with Mr. Lyon--if you have any thing at stake through confidence in him--get free from the connection as early as possible. He is no true man. With the fascinating qualities of the serpent, he has also the power to sting." "I fear, my daughter," said Mr. Markland, "that too great a revulsion has taken place in your feelings toward him; that wounded pride is becoming unduly active." "Pride!" ejaculated Fanny--and her face, that had flushed, grew pale again--"pride! Oh, father! how sadly you misjudge your child! No--no. I was for months in the blinding mazes of a delicious dream; but I am awake now--fully awake, and older--how much older it makes me shudder to think--than I was when lulled into slumber by melodies so new, and wild, and sweet, that it seemed as if I had entered another state of existence. Yes, father, I am awake now; startled suddenly from visions of joy and beauty into icy realities, like thousands of other dreamers around me. Pride? Oh, my father!" And Fanny laid her head down upon the breast of her parent, and wept bitterly. Mr. Markland was at a loss what answer to make. So entire a change in the feelings of his daughter toward Mr. Lyon was unsuspected, and he scarcely knew how to explain the fact. Fascinated as she had been, he had looked for nothing else but a clinging to his image even in coldness and neglect. That she would seek to obliterate that image from her heart, as an evil thing, was something he had not for an instant expected. He did not know how, treasured up in tenderest infancy, through sunny childhood, and in sweetly dawning maidenhood, innocence and truth had formed for her a talisman by which the qualities of others might be tested. At the first approach of Mr. Lyon this had given instinctive warning; but his personal attractions were so great, and her father's approving confidence of the man so strong, that the inward monitor was unheeded. But, after a long silence following a series of impassioned letters, to find herself alluded to in this cold and distant way revealed a state of feeling in the man she loved so wildly, that proved him false beyond all question. Like one standing on a mountain-top, who suddenly finds the ground giving way beneath his feet, she felt herself sweeping down through a fearfully intervening space, and fell, with scarcely a pulse of life remaining, on the rocky ground beneath. She caught at no object in her quick descent, for none tempted her hand. It was one swift plunge, and the shock was over.