ded arms.

"Oh! would this long day, this dreadful, _dreadful_ waiting for--_what_?
ever come to an end?" she asked herself over and over again.

Yet, when at last the expected step drew near, she shuddered, trembled,
and turned pale with affright, and, starting to her feet, looked this
way and that with a wild impulse to flee: then, as the door opened, she
dropped into her chair again, and covered her face with her shaking
hands.

She heard the door close: the step drew nearer, nearer, and stopped
close at her side. She dared not look up, but felt her father's eyes
gazing sternly upon her.

"Miserable child!" he said at length, "do you know what your terrible
temper has wrought?--that in your mad passion you have nearly or quite
killed your little sister? that, even should she live, she may be a
life-long sufferer, in consequence of your fiendish act?"

"O papa, don't!" she pleaded in broken accents, cowering and shrinking
as if he had struck her a deadly blow.

"You deserve it," he said: "indeed, I could not possibly inflict a worse
punishment than your conduct merits. But what is the use of punishing
you? nothing reforms you! I am in despair of you! You seem determined to
make yourself a curse to me instead of the blessing I once esteemed you.
What am I to do with you? Will you compel me to cage or chain you up
like a wild beast, lest you do some one a fatal injury?"

A cry of pain was her only answer, and he turned and left the room.

"Oh!" she moaned, "it's worse than if he had beaten me half to death! he
thinks I'm too bad, even to be punished; because nothing will make me
good: he says I'm a curse to him, so he must hate me; though he used to
love me dearly, and I loved him so too! I suppose everybody hates me
now, and always will. I wish I was dead and out of their way. But, oh!
no, I don't; for I'm not fit to die. Oh! what shall I do? I wish it was
I that was hurt instead of the baby. I'd like to go away and hide from
everybody that knows me; then I shouldn't be a curse and trouble to papa
or any of them."

She lifted her head, and looked about her. It was growing dusk. Quick as
a flash came the thought that now was her time; now, while almost
everybody was so taken up with the critical condition of the injured
little one; now, before the servants had lighted the lamps in rooms and
halls.

She would slip down a back stairway, out into the grounds, and away, she
cared not whither.

Always impulsive