d not refrain its scorn?

Mabel was sitting alone when her father returned. She had no idea that
any thing had been discovered; but the instant she saw his face, she
cast herself on her knees, crying--"I am innocent; indeed I have done no
wrong!"

He griped her arm and raised her up, gazing straight and steadfastly at
her for some moments: then he gave his verdict--"Guilty of having
brought shame on your house; not guilty of sin, I know, or _this_ should
only half atone," and he drew out the blade that had never been wiped
since it drank her lover's blood.

She slid slowly down out of his grasp, never speaking, but bearing in
her eyes the awful look of horror that became frozen there forever. The
second picture might have been taken then, though it was not painted
till long afterward. She never thenceforth, while her father lived, left
the wing of the manor-house in which her rooms lay; neither did he, nor
any one else, except the two servants who attended her, look upon her
face. People pitied her very much at first, and then forgot her
entirely. Once the superior of a Belgian convent, a relation of the
family, offered to admit Mabel, if she chose to take the vows. Perhaps
Sir Ewes Tresilyan was more gratified than he liked to show, for the
best blood in Europe was to be found in that sisterhood; but his reply
was not a gracious one:

"I thank the abbess," he wrote; "but _we_ are used to choose for our
gifts the most precious thing we have--not the most worthless. I will
not lighten my house from a heavy burden, by offering it to God."

He relented, however, when he was dying, and sent for his daughter. Very
reluctantly she came. He had prepared, I believe, a pompous and proper
oration, wherein he was to pardon her and even bestow a sort of
qualified blessing; but the wan face and wild, hollow eyes, not seen for
twelve years, frightened all his grandeur out of his head; and the
obstinate, narrow-minded tyrant collapsed all at once into a foolish,
fond old man. Something too late (that's one comfort) to avail him much.
In Mabel's nature, soft and yielding as it appeared, there was the black
spot that nothing but harshness and cruelty could have brought out--the
utter incapacity of relenting, which had given rise to the rude rhyme
known through three counties--

In Tresilyan's face
Fault finds no grace.

So, when the sick man cried out to her, through his sobs, to kiss him
and forgive him, the dreary, monoto