nd patient. Hush! there is a step on the stairs. Speak
out, Basil, for my sake--pray, pray, speak out, and then leave the rest
to me."

She hurriedly left the room. The next minute, my father entered it.

Perhaps my guilty conscience deceived me, but I thought he looked at me
more sadly and severely than I had ever seen him look before. His voice,
too, was troubled when he spoke. This was a change, which meant much in
him.

"I have come to speak to you," he said, "on a subject about which I had
much rather you had spoken to me first."

"I think, Sir, I know to what subject you refer. I--"

"I must beg you will listen to me as patiently as you can," he rejoined;
"I have not much to say."

He paused, and sighed heavily. I thought he looked at me more kindly. My
heart grew very sad; and I yearned to throw my arms round his neck, to
give freedom to the repressed tears which half choked me, to weep out on
his bosom my confession that I was no more worthy to be called his son.
Oh, that I had obeyed the impulse which moved me to do this!

"Basil," pursued my father, gravely and sadly; "I hope and believe that
I have little to reproach myself with in my conduct towards you. I think
I am justified in saying, that very few fathers would have acted towards
a son as I have acted for the last year or more. I may often have
grieved over the secresy which has estranged you from us; I may even
have shown you by my manner that I resented it; but I have never used my
authority to force you into the explanation of your conduct, which you
have been so uniformly unwilling to volunteer. I rested on that implicit
faith in the honour and integrity of my son, which I will not yet
believe to have been ill-placed, but which, I fear, has led me
to neglect too long the duty of inquiry which I owed to your own
well-being, and to my position towards you. I am now here to atone for
this omission; circumstances have left me no choice. It deeply concerns
my interest as a father, and my honour as the head of our family, to
know what heavy misfortune it was (I can imagine it to be nothing else)
that stretched my son senseless in the open street, and afflicted him
afterwards with an illness which threatened his reason and his life.
You are now sufficiently recovered to reveal this; and I only use my
legitimate authority over my own children, when I tell you that I must
now know all. If you persist in remaining silent, the relations between
us must