your wishes; and when they are devoured by agony,
and smothered by disgrace, can you sufficiently pity them, blind
artificers of their own ruin?

"Four months ago I was a very poor girl, but proud and happy, because
by my own work I could support my mother and myself. Her health failed
rapidly, and life hung upon an operation and certain careful subsequent
treatment, which it required one hundred dollars to secure. I was
competing for a prize that would lift us above want, but time pressed;
the doctor urged prompt action, and my mother desired me to come South,
see her father, deliver a letter and beg assistance. As long as
possible, I resisted her entreaties, because I shrank from the
degradation of coming as a beggar to the man who, I knew, had
disinherited and disowned his daughter.

"Finally, strangling my rebellious reluctance, I accepted the bitter
task. My mother kissed me good-bye, laid her hands on my head and
blessed me for acceding to her wishes; and so--following the finger of
Duty--I came here to be trampled, mangled, destroyed. When I arrived, I
found I could catch a train going north at 7.15, and I bought a return
ticket, and told the agent I intended to take that train. I walked to
'Elm Bluff,' and after waiting a few moments was admitted to Gen'l
Darrington's presence. The letter which I delivered was an appeal for
one hundred dollars, and it was received with an outburst of wrath, a
flood of fierce and bitter denunciation of my parents. The interview
was indescribably painful, but toward its close, Gen'l Darrington
relented. He opened his safe or vault, and took out a square tin box.
Placing it on the table, he removed some papers, and counted down into
my hand, five gold coins--twenty dollars each. When I turned to leave
him, he called me back, gave me the morocco case, and stated that the
sapphires were very costly, and could be sold for a large amount. He
added, with great bitterness, that he gave them, simply because they
were painful souvenirs of a past, which he was trying to forget; and
that he had intended them as a bridal gift to his son Prince's wife;
but as they had been bought by my mother's mother as a present for her
only child, he would send them to their original destination, for the
sake of his first wife, Helena.

"I left the room by the veranda door, because he bade me do so, to
avoid what he termed 'the prying of servants.' I broke some clusters of
chrysanthemums blooming in the