a secret, that in the end
she might reap the benefit of his injured cousin's wealth," was the
rejoinder.

"Oh, no, father!" replied the young man, warmly. "I could not wrong
Ida by a suspicion of that kind. She is too good and pure-hearted to
countenance deception, and," he added, after a moment's hesitation,
"I cannot give her up and wreck both her own happiness and mine, for
the sake of her parent's faults."

These words aroused Captain Sydney's indignation. He accused his son
of want of spirit in refusing to resent the occurrences that clouded
his youth; and when Harry responded that he felt them deeply, but
could not on their account brand himself with dishonor, by breaking
the troth already plighted to Ida Lindsay, his father parted from him
in anger, declaring that if his son married Ida, he might never expect
his blessing.

The thought of uniting his son by indissoluble ties to the child of
his early foe, was, indeed, repugnant to the heart of Captain Sydney;
and while he remembered his resolve uttered on the night when he went
forth from his uncle's roof a desolate, friendless and dishonored
being--dishonored through the machinations of his cousin Alfred--he
was determined that it should be fulfilled, even though in so doing he
thwarted the earnest wishes of the one dearest to him.

A few days afterward Captain Sydney departed upon one of his
accustomed voyages, and was absent several months. On his return he
found his son just recovering from a lingering fever, brought on, as
the physician averred, by distress of mind. He looked very pale and
thin, and his father could scarcely help feeling a sensation akin to
reproach, as he gazed upon that colorless cheek and wasted form. He
knew that this indisposition was occasioned by the manner in which he
had treated his son's engagement, for, through the medium of a friend,
he had learned that Ida Lindsay had nobly refused longer to encourage
attentions, which, as she learned from Harry, were tendered in
opposition to his father's desires. Alfred Lindsay, too, had died a
few weeks before, and the object of his resentment being no more,
Captain Sydney began to feel less reluctant to the match which he had
at first looked upon with such violent disapprobation. Conscience told
him he had acted cruelly in thus casting a blight over his child's
sweetest hopes, and he was determined that he would now do all in his
power to further them. And when Harry grew strong enough