He could not resist the gentle
tones of her voice, and at the spell his calmed spirit trembled into
comparative repose. Armstrong acknowledged it to himself as an augury
of good.

I cannot be wholly evil, he thought, if the approach of a pure angel
gives me pleasure. The touch of Ithuriel's spear reveals deformity
where it exists; in me it discloses beauty.

With her he could talk over the ordinary affairs of the day with
calmness, though it is singular, considering the perfect confidence
between them, that he never adverted to the communication of Holden,
notwithstanding he knew it would possess the highest interest for her.
It betrays, perhaps, the weakened and diseased condition of a mind,
wincing like an inflamed limb at the apprehension of a touch.

As the father listened and looked at his child, he felt transported
into a region whither the demons could not come. They could not endure
her purity; they could not abide her brightness. Her influence was a
barrier mightier than the wall that encircled Paradise, and over which
no evil thing could leap. He therefore kept her by him as much as
possible. He manifested uneasiness when she was away. His consolation
and hope was Faith. As the Roman prisoner drank life from the pure
fountains to which he had given life, so Armstrong drew strength from
the angelic spirit his own had kindled.

Yet was his daughter unconscious of the whole influence she exerted,
nor had she even a distant apprehension of the chaos of his mind.
How would she have been startled could she have beheld the seething
cauldron! But into that, only the Eye that surveys all things could
look.

Thus several days passed by. An ordinary observer would have noticed
no change in Armstrong, except that his appetite diminished, and he
seemed restless. Doctor Elmer and Faith both remarked these symptoms,
but they did not alarm the former, though they grieved the latter.
Accustomed to repose unlimited confidence in the medical skill of
the physician, and too modest to have an opinion adverse to that
of another older than herself, and in a department wherewith he was
familiar, and she had no knowledge except what was colored by filial
fears and affection, and, perhaps, distorted by them out of its
reasonable proportions, Faith went on from day to day, hoping that
a favorable change would take place, and that she should have
the happiness of seeing her dear father restored to his former
cheerfulness.

It is