‘Unfortunate girl,’ at length she said, gently withdrawing herself from my enthusiastic caresses, ‘I believe you innocent; but a mother’s heart is more indulgent than the world. And, ah! there is yet one to be appeased. Hark! I hear footsteps. It is your father. Softly—stand out of sight! He comes, but must not know you yet.’ Hastily throwing a veil over me, my mother urged me into the summer-house, and the next moment my father and the father of Ellen came from the house. They were in conversation, and by the words which I overheard, it seemed that the latter had been endeavoring to persuade my father to join the wedding party. ‘But at any rate,’ said he, ‘for half an hour you might.’ ‘No,’ returned my father mournfully, ‘I should only mar the festal hour. I am the scathed tree of the heath that cannot drop. The bolt that struck off my branches has left my old trunk erect in wretched loneliness.’ ‘’Tis a shame, neighbor,’ observed his companion, ‘it is a shame, I say, for a strong mind like yours to give itself up to sorrow in this way. You might as well put a pistol to your head at once, for you will be sure to kill yourself by it, sooner or later, and self-murder in one form is quite as criminal as in another.’ ‘When you have seen the being for whom you’ve lived,’ retorted my father, ‘the object of every solicitude—the child you’ve reared with unceasing watchfulness, wrenched from you by a villain’s grasp, then come to me and talk of patience, and I’ll listen.’ ‘Well, well, I’ll not weary you any longer,’ observed Mr. Greenly; ‘from my soul I’m grieved to see you thus abandoned to fruitless sorrow. Farewell, my friend, and may days be at hand when we shall see you smile once more.’ Thus saying, and grasping the hand of my father most cordially, the father of Ellen retired through the gate. ‘Smile,’ soliloquized the former, as his friend left him; ‘smile! Oh, happy father!—happy to see his daughter safe in her native innocence—safe from the bane of wealth. I once hoped that such a fate would beam on me; but fate was jealous. Lost, lost, wretched girl!’ While my unhappy father was thus speaking, my mother entered the summer-house, and leading me forth, she placed her finger on her lips to enjoin me to silence. We stood aside, and watched him, unobserved. ‘As I gaze there,’ he continued, ‘methinks I see her in her days of innocence, when first her little steps began: laughing, she ran, with arms extended towards me; then I trembled lest her young feet should fail, and she should fall. But she passed through those fearful times unharmed. She escaped those thousand dangers. Now she falls—falls to the earth, never to rise! She’s gone—she’s lost! My Clara! Oh, my child!’ My heart was ready to burst, and I was almost choked with endeavouring to repress the heavy sobs that heaved my bosom. My father threw himself into a chair, and my mother advanced towards him, and touched him on the shoulder.