ss.

Her husband groaned, and clasped his hand over his face to conceal
the agony that was intolerable, and in an instant, ere the mother
could suspect or frustrate her design, the girl broke from her hand,
sprang forward and threw herself on Cuthbert's bosom, clasping her
arms around his neck, and sobbing:

"My father! Take me just once to your heart! Call me daughter; let
me once in my life hear the blessed words from my own father's lips!"

He strained her to his bosom, and kissed the pure face, while tears
trickled over his cheeks and dripped down on hers. Her mother made a
step forward to snatch her back, but at sight of his tears, of the
close embrace in which he held her, the wife turned away, unable to
look upon the spectacle and preserve her composure.

A heavy fall startled all present, and a glance showed them General
Laurance lying insensible on the carpet.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

In the clear, cold analytical light which the "_Juventui Mundi_"
pours upon the nebulous realm of Hellenic lore and Heroic legend, we
learn that Homer knew "no destiny fighting with the gods, or unless
in the shape of death, defying them,"--and that the "Nemesis often
inaccurately rendered as revenge, was after all but self-judgment, or
sense of moral law." Even in the dim Homeric dawn, Conscience found
personification.

Aroused suddenly to a realization of the wrongs and wretchedness to
which his inordinate pride and ambition had chiefly contributed, the
Nemesis of self-judgment had opened its grim assize in General
Laurance's soul, and he cowered before the phantoms that stood forth
to testify.

No father of ordinary prudence and affection could have failed to
oppose the reckless folly of his son's ill-starred marriage, or
hesitated to save him, if compatible with God's law and human
statutes, from the misery and humiliation it threatened to entail.
But when he made a football of marriage vows, and became auxiliary
to a second nuptial ceremony, striving by legal quibbles to cancel
what only Death annuls, the hounds of Retribution leaped from their
leash.

The deepest, strongest love of his life had bloomed in the sunset
light, wearing the mellow glory of the aftermath; and his heart clung
to the beautiful dream of his old age, with a fierce tenacity that
destroyed it, when rudely torn away by the awful revelations of
"Infelice." To lose at once not only his lovely idol, but that
darling fetich--Laurance _prestige_;