he has gone
away without seeing me. You have begun to break both our hearts, with
your reason and your prudence. One comfort, mine will break first; I
have not his fortitude. Oh, my poor Henry! He has gone away, hanging
his head, broken-hearted: that is what you have DONE for me. After that,
what are words? Air--air--and you can't feed hungry hearts with air."

"Well, my child, I am sorry now I did not bring him in here. But I
really did it for the best. I wished to spare you further agitation."

"Agitation!" And she opened her eyes with astonishment. "Why, it is
you who agitate me. He would have soothed me in a moment. One kind and
hopeful word from him, one tender glance of his dear eye, one pressure
of his dear hard hand, and I could have borne anything; but that drop of
comfort you denied us both. Oh, cruel! cruel!"

"Calm yourself, Grace, and remember whom you are speaking to. It was an
error in judgment, perhaps--nothing more."

"But, then, if you know nothing about love, and its soothing power, why
meddle with it at all?"

"Grace," said Mr. Carden, sadly, but firmly, "we poor parents are all
prepared for this. After many years of love and tenderness bestowed
on our offspring, the day is sure to come when the young thing we have
reared with so much care and tenderness will meet a person of her own
age, a STRANGER; and, in a month or two, all our love, our care, our
anxiety, our hopes, will be nothing in the balance. This wound is in
store for us all. We foresee it; we receive it; we groan under it; we
forgive it. We go patiently on, and still give our ungrateful children
the benefit of our love and our experience. I have seen in my own family
that horrible mixture, Gentility and Poverty. In our class of life,
poverty is not only poverty, it is misery, and meanness as well. My
income dies with me. My daughter and her children shall not go back to
the misery and meanness out of which I have struggled. They shall be
secured against it by law, before she marries, or she shall marry under
her father's curse."

Then Grace was frightened, and said she should never marry under her
father's curse; but (with a fresh burst of weeping) what need was there
to send Henry away without seeing her, and letting them comfort each
other under this sudden affliction? "Ah, I was too happy this morning,"
said the poor girl. "I was singing before breakfast. Jael always told me
not to do that. Oh! oh! oh!"

Mr. Carden kept silenc