ness, I suppose. You understand who I mean. Well, he shall stand
between me and my wishes--or rather between you and good fortune--no
longer."

Indignation, surprise, wonder, fear, resentment, and a hundred other
emotions filled the mind of the daughter during the delivery of this
address; but amid them all, there was a purpose as fixed as that of her
sire's to have a voice in the matter of her own disposal. But before
anything further transpired, the father cast his eyes out of the open
window, and seeing a gentleman approaching, said:

"There comes that beggarly dog now! I must go and meet him."

And without further ceremony or explanation, he immediately left the house.

It would be a difficult task to portray the feelings of the daughter at
this moment. She saw that her father was incensed, but the sorrow that this
circumstance would otherwise have engendered in her bosom, was lost in the
feeling that an outrage had been perpetrated upon her rights and
sensibilities, and she felt the blood of indignation coursing through her
veins, and mounting her temples and brow. How could she help these
emotions, when she _knew_ that injustice had been done--that she had been
insulted by an implication of falsehood, when she was conscious of a free,
full and honorable rectitude of purpose, and that, too, by her own father!
These thoughts rushed through her mind with lightning speed, and the tears
forced themselves to her eyes--tears half of sorrow, half of anger.

But now a new source of anxiety, mixed with alarming apprehensions, took
possession of her distracted mind. Her father had left the house abruptly,
and looking in the direction he had taken, she beheld him in violent
conversation with Charles Hadley, the only man for whom she had ever
entertained sentiments of tender regard, the only one to whose "tale of
love" she had listened with quickened pulses and beating heart, the only
one to whom she had plighted her faith, with whom exchanged vows of love
and constancy. And her parent had just termed him beggarly! What could be
the cause of his dislike? and for what purpose had he sought the young man
in so strange and unaccountable a mood? and what was the nature of the
interview between them?

Such were the thoughts that hurried across the mind of the young girl; and,
hardly knowing what she did, she stole up to her chamber-window, which was
in full view of the gentlemen, and placing her ear in a listening attitude,
be