your absence. Poor child! I believe she is
mortal fond of you."

"Of me, Ruth?"

"Of you, sir. I am sure Miss Clary is over head and ears in love with
you. Arn't it natural? Two handsome young creatures living in the same
house together, walking, and talking, and singing and playing, all the
time with each other. Why, Master Anthony, if you don't love the dear
child, you must be very deceitful, after making so much of her."

The old woman left him, still muttering to herself some anathema
against the deceitfulness of men; while Anthony, shocked beyond measure
at the disclosure of a secret which he had never suspected, threw
himself upon the sofa, and yielding to the overpowering sense of misery
which oppressed him, wept--even as a woman weeps--long and bitterly.

"Why," he thought, "why am I thus continually the sport of a cruel
destiny? Are the sins of my parents indeed visited upon me? Is every one
that I love, or that loves me, to be involved in one common ruin?"

And then he wished for death, with a longing, intense, sinful desire,
which placed him upon the very verge of self-destruction. He went to
Frederic's bureau, and took out his pistols, and loaded them, then
placed himself opposite to the glass, and deliberately took aim at his
head. But his hand trembled, and the ghastly expression of his face
startled him--so wan, so wild, so desperate. It looked not of earth,
still less like a future denizen of heaven.

"No, not to-night," he said. "He the stern father may relent, or fill up
the full measure of his iniquities. The morrow; God knoweth what it may
bring for me. If all should fail me, then this shall be my friend. Yes,
even in his presence will I fling at his feet the loathed life he gave!"

He threw himself upon the sofa, but not to sleep. Hour after hour passed
onward towards eternity. One, two, three, spoke out the loud voice of
Time, and it sounded in the ears of the watcher like his knell.

And she, the fair child--she who had, at sixteen, outlived the fear of
death. Had he won her young spirit back to earth, to mar its purity with
the stains of human passion? There was not a feeling in his heart at
that moment so sad as this. How deeply he regretted that he ever had
been admitted to that peaceful home.

But was she not a Wildegrave, and was not misery hers by right of
inheritance? And then he thought of his mother--thought of his own
desolate childhood--of his poor uncle--of his selfish but sti