on
their poverty; he had left them to suffer, perhaps to die. The will
which he had thought would never be read was there to prove his
treachery. Believing that his fellow-trustee was dead, he had betrayed
his sacred trust. Charlotte could scarcely imagine a darker crime. Her
father, who looked so noble, who was so tender and good to her, who bore
so high a character in the eyes of the world, was a very bad man. This
was her first fact. Her second seemed, just because of the first, even a
shade darker. This father, whom she had loved, this poor, broken-down,
guilty father, who, like a broken idol, had fallen from his high estate
in her heart, was _dying_. Ah! she knew it now; that look on his old
face could only belong to the dying. How blind she had been! how
ignorant! But the Wrights' words had torn the veil from her eyes; the
guilty man was going fast to judgment. The God whom he had sinned
against was about to demand retribution. Now she read the key to his
unhappiness, his despair. No wonder, no wonder, that like a canker it
had eaten into his heart. Her father was certainly dying; God himself
was taking his punishment into His own hands. Charlotte's third fact,
though the most absolutely personal of the whole, scarcely tortured her
as the other two did to-night. It lay so clearly and so directly in her
path, that there was no pausing how best to act. The way for action was
too clear to be even for an instant disobeyed. Into this fire she must
walk without hesitation or pause. Her wedding-day could not be on the
twentieth; her engagement must be broken off; her marriage at an end.
What! she, the daughter of a thief, ally herself to an upright,
honorable man! Never! never! Whatever the consequences and the pain to
either, Hinton and she must part. She did not yet know how this parting
would be effected. She did not know whether she would say farewell to
her lover telling him all the terrible and bitter disgrace, or with a
poor and lame excuse on her lips. But however she did it, the thing must
be done. Never, never, never would she drag the man she loved down into
her depths of shame.

To-night she scarcely felt the full pain of this. It was almost a
relief, in the midst of all the chaos, to have this settled line of
action around which no doubt must linger. Yes, she would instantly break
off her engagement. Now she turned her thoughts to her two former facts.
Her father was guilty. Her father was dying. She, in an