te reaches
her." Emily said no more, but sealed and directed the note, which she
immediately despatched to the post-office; and on the following day it
reached little Birdie.

From the time when the secret of Clarence's birth had been discovered,
until the day she had received his note, she never mentioned his name. At
the demand of her father she produced his letters, miniature, and even the
little presents he had given her from time to time, and laid them down
before him without a murmur; after this, even when he cursed and denounced
him, she only left the room, never uttering a word in his defence. She
moved about like one who had received a stunning blow--she was dull, cold,
apathetic. She would smile vacantly when her father smoothed her hair or
kissed her cheek; but she never laughed, or sang and played, as in days
gone by; she would recline for hours on the sofa in her room gazing
vacantly in the air, and taking apparently no interest in anything about
her. She bent her head when she walked, complained of coldness about her
temples, and kept her hand constantly upon her heart.

Doctors were at last consulted; they pronounced her physically well, and
thought that time would restore her wonted animation; but month after month
she grew more dull and silent, until her father feared she would become
idiotic, and grew hopeless and unhappy about her. For a week before the
receipt of the note from Clarence, she had been particularly apathetic and
indifferent, but it seemed to rouse her into life again. She started up
after reading it, and rushed wildly through the hall into her father's
library.

"See here!" exclaimed she, grasping his arm--"see there--I knew it! I've
felt day after day that it was coming to that! You separated us, and now he
is dying--dying!" cried she. "Read it--read it!"

Her father took the note, and after perusing it laid it on the table, and
said coldly, "Well--"

"Well!" repeated she, with agitation--"Oh, father, it is not well! Father!"
said she, hurriedly, "you bid me give him up--told me he was
unworthy--pointed out to me fully and clearly why we could not marry: I
was convinced we could not, for I knew you would never let it be. Yet I
have never ceased to love him. I cannot control my heart, but I could my
voice, and never since that day have I spoken his name. I gave him up--not
that I would not have gladly married, knowing what he was--because you
desired it--because I saw either your h