tterly of the
one great error of his past life.

He was little like the kind, courteous master of Whitestone Hall, whom
none named but to praise, as he stood there watching the immovable
face of his daughter. All the bitterness of his nature was by passion
rocked. No look of pain or anguish touched the dark beauty of that
southern face at the mention of her mother's name.

"You have spoken well," she said. "I am her child. You speak of love,"
she cried, contemptuously. "Have you not told me, a thousand times,
you never cared for my mother? How, then, could I expect you to care
for me? Have you not cried out unceasingly for the golden-haired young
wife and the babe you lost, and that you wished Heaven had taken you
too? Did I ever hear my mother's name upon your lips except with a
sneer? Do you expect these things made that mother's child more fond
of you, were you twenty times my father?"

She stood up before him, proudly defiant, like a beautiful tragedy
queen, the sunlight slanting on the golden vines of her amber satin
robe, on the long, dark, silken curls fastened with a ruby star, and
on the deep crimson-hearted passion-roses that quivered on her heaving
breast. There was not one feature of that gloriously dark face that
resembled the proud, cold man sitting opposite her.

He knew all she had said was quite true. He had tried so hard to love
this beautiful queenly girl from her infancy up. He was tender of
heart, honest and true; but an insurmountable barrier seemed ever
between them; each year found them further apart.

Basil Hurlhurst lived over again in those few moments the terrible
folly that had cursed his youth, as he watched the passion-rocked face
before him.

"Youth is blind and will not see," had been too bitterly true with
him. It was in his college days, when the world seemed all gayety,
youth and sunshine to him, he first met the beautiful face that was to
darken all of his after life. He was young and impulsive; he thought
it was love that filled his heart for the beautiful stranger who
appeared alone and friendless in that little college town.

He never once asked who or what she was, or from whence she came, this
beautiful creature with the large, dark, dreamy eyes that thrilled his
heart into love. She carried the town by storm; every young man at the
college was deeply, desperately in love. But Basil, the handsomest and
wealthiest of them all, thought what a lark it would be to steal a
m