"No, no," he said at last. "I was wrong. I will not see the letter. You have your secrets: I have mine. Claire, my child, there is a veil, drawn down by you, over that night's work. I dare not lift it, I dare not look." "Once more, father," she said, "had we not better let it rest? I am content; I make no murmur against my fate." "No," he said, flashing out again into anger; "but--hush!--stop!--I must not," he whispered hoarsely. "These strange fits. I cannot bear them." He threw back and shook his head excitedly. "I should go mad--I should go mad." "Father!" "There, I am calm again, my child. I am not myself sometimes. There-- there--it is past." He bent over and raised her to his breast, where she laid her head, uttering a piteous sigh. "Stricken," he whispered; "stricken, my child. The workings of a terrible fate. Don't reproach--don't think ill of me, Claire. Some day the light may come--no, no," he cried wildly; "better the darkness. I am so weak--so torn by the agony I have endured. So weak, so pitiful a man; but, with all this wretched vanity and struggle for place, my miserable heart has been so full of love for you all--for my little May." Claire shivered. "No, no," he cried excitedly. "Claire, my child, don't speak. Hush! listen, my child. There have been cases where, in self-abnegation--the sins of others--have been borne--by the innocent--the innocent! Oh, my child, my child!" His head dropped upon his daughter's shoulder, and he burst into a fit of sobbing, the outpourings of a flood of anguish that he fought vainly to restrain. "Father, dear father!" she whispered, as her arms tightened around him. "Claire, my child--my child!" "Yes," she said, as she seemed to be growing stronger and more firm; "your child--not your judge. Father, I see my duty clearly now. Your help and comfort to the end." Volume Two, Chapter XIX. PEACE AND SYMPATHY. "And I thought that there would be no more rest and comfort here, my child. Claire, one night--" "No, no, dearest," she cried, as she laid her soft white hand upon his lips; "the past cannot be recalled." "Only this little revelation," he said, as he kissed the soft hand and held it to his cheek, "then the past shall be as dead with us. One night--since that night--I said to myself that I could bear no more, and I locked myself in my room; but something seemed to stay my hand--a something seemed to bid me live on, even in my pitiful, degraded state; and always--I cannot tell you how--your face seemed to be before my eyes. I tried to put it from me, but it was there. I fought against it, for I was enraged with you one minute, trembling with dread of what I dare not see the next; but still your face seemed to be there, my child, and I said at last that I would live it down or face it, if the dread time that haunts me always, as if lying in my path, should at last leap out." "Father!"