vants, bred like ladies, quietly left the room.

Mrs. Custis, growing paler, exclaimed:

"Daniel Custis, have you lost everything in that furnace?"

"Everything!"

"And my money, too?"

"Yes."

"Merciful God!"

Before the weak lady could fall Vesta's arm was around her, and her
finger on the table-bell. Servants entered and Mrs. Custis was carried
out, her daughter following.

When Vesta returned her father was walking up and down the floor with
his long silk handkerchief in both hands, weeping bitterly, and speaking
broken syllables. She looked at him a moment with all the might of a
daughter, first called on to act alone in a great crisis. The feeling
she was wont to hold towards him, of perfect pride, had received a blow
in her mother's expression: "Your father's habits have mastered him
beyond reclamation."

Could this be true; that he, the grand, the kind, the gentleman, was
beneath the diver's reach, the plummet's sounding, where light could not
pierce, nor Hope overtake? _Her_ father, the first gentleman in
Somerset, a drunkard, going ever downward towards the gutter, and no ray
of heaven to beam upon his grave!

She saw his danger now: it was written on his face, where the image of
God shone dim that had once been crowned there. Hair thinner, and very
gray; the rich, dark eyes intimidated, as if manly confidence was gone;
the skin no more the pure scroll of regular life written in the healthy
fluid of the heart, but faded, yet spotted with alcohol; on the nose and
lips signs of coarser sensuality; the large skeleton bent and the
nervous temperament shattered. This father had been until this moment
Vesta's angel. Now, there might not be an angel in the universe to fly
to his rescue. Deep, dreadful humility descended into the daughter's
spirit.

"God forgive me!" she thought, "how blind and how proud and sinful I
have been!"

She walked over to her father tenderly and kissed him, and then, drawing
his weaker inclination by hers, brought him to a sofa, placed a pillow
for him, and made him stretch his once proud form there. Procuring a
bowl of water, she washed his face free of tears with a napkin, and
bathed it in cologne. The voluptuous nature of the Judge yielded to the
perfume and the easy position, and he sobbed himself to sleep like an
exhausted child.

Sitting by the sleeping bankrupt, watching his breast rise and fall, and
hearing his coarse snoring, as if fiends within were snarling in ri