ture of the relentless parent who
sees but one straight course to success in this world and the next. Then
the teacher and the matured adviser; and then--oh, bitter change! the
man whose hopes he had crossed--whose life he had undone, and all for
her who now came stealing upon the scene with her slim, white, jewelled
hand forever lifted up between them. And she! Had he ever seen her more
clearly? Once more the dainty figure stepped from fairy-land, beauteous
with every grace that can allure and finally destroy a man. And as he
saw, he trembled and wished that these moments of awful waiting might
pass and the test be over which would lay bare his father's heart and
justify his fears or dispel them forever.

But the crisis, if crisis it was, was one of his own making and not to
be hastened or evaded. With one quick glance at his father's window, he
turned in his impatience towards the sea whose restless and continuous
moaning had at length struck his ear. What was in its call to-night that
he should thus sway towards it as though drawn by some dread magnetic
force? He had been born to the dashing of its waves and knew its
every mood and all the passion of its song from frolicsome ripple to
melancholy dirge. But there was something odd and inexplicable in
its effect upon his spirit as he faced it at this hour. Grim and
implacable--a sound rather than a sight--it seemed to hold within its
invisible distances the image of his future fate. What this image was
and why he should seek for it in this impenetrable void, he did not
know. He felt himself held and was struggling with this influence as
with an unknown enemy when there rang out, from the hall within, the
preparatory chimes for which his ear was waiting, and then the nine slow
strokes which signalized the moment when he was to look for his father's
presence at the window.

Had he wished, he could not have forborne that look. Had his eyes been
closing in death, or so he felt, the trembling lids would have burst
apart at this call and the revelations it promised.

And what did he see? What did that window hold for him?

Nothing that he might not have seen there any night at this hour. His
father's figure drawn up behind the panes in wistful contemplation of
the night. No visible change in his attitude, nothing forced or unusual
in his manner. Even the hand, lifted to pull down the shade, moves
with its familiar hesitation. In a moment more that shade will be down
and-