tural that I should decline the advice of a gentleman who had no kind of right to offer it.”
“I will not say that I had no kind of right, sir, for it happened that, at the time, I filled a public office in our town, and certain matters came under my knowledge, partly because of my filling that situation. But I used my own judgment, and I decided that I was not warranted in saying more to you than one acquaintance might say, in private friendship, to another. It might have been better had I been less scrupulous, but that consideration is now beside the question. Let me go on to say that subsequent circumstances seemed to show that you had been more fortunate than I thought you deserved to be. Each of your daughters married, and married well, and appeared to lead a happy life. There was, therefore, no more to be said.”
Mr. Vernon made no reply.
“I heartily wish,” continued Berry, “that it had never been my fortune to hear again of any of the ladies, except that they continued to be good wives to the husbands whom they had been so fortunate as to secure.”
“Mr. Berry,” said Vernon, reddening, “I do not sit here to listen to anything implying that any husband whom a daughter of mine could marry was not at least as much honoured in the marriage as she could be.”
“Those words and that look, Mr. Vernon, would well become a father who had fulfilled his duties to his children, instead of bringing them up with no care except what a day-school could afford, but from you they are simply vain and arrogant. Hear me out, sir. The politics of Europe, and of America,” he added with a glance at the paper, “have engrossed your attention so much, that you have not had enough time for so unimportant a question as the position of your own children. A stranger, therefore, has to call upon you, and inform you that of the three children whom you brought up so well, and whose alliance did so much honour to their husbands, one has disgraced her husband, and has fled from France to England to avoid his vengeance, and another has abandoned her home, and fled to Paris, and, as her husband has reason to believe, for the same cause that drove away her sister.”
Archibald Vernon, who, at the outset of this brutal speech, had gazed fiercely at Berry, and seemed but to await its close in order to lay a violent hand upon him, turned suddenly pale as the last sentences were uttered, bowed his head into his hands, and broke into weeping.
Mr. Berry looked on with a cold eye.
“I have seen a good deal of suffering in my time,” he said in an under-voice, and as he walked to the other end of the room, “but I never noticed that a man who cried suffered long.”
And he compared his watch with the clock upon the mantelpiece.
“You have no doubt as to what you are telling me, I am sure,” said Mr. Vernon, raising his head, and speaking in a voice of distress.
“I wish for their sakes, and for that of their sister, that I had any doubt,” said Berry, from the hearthrug.
“But—but,” said Archibald Vernon, rising, and approaching him, “you have not mentioned a name. Which—which—is it Mrs. Urquhart?” he added, in a troubled whisper.
“Mrs. Hawkesley is in her house, and doing her duty,” was Barry’s indirect reply.
It were harsh to say that a ray of comfort shot through the mind of the father at this assurance—yet it was Beatrice who had the charge and care of his welfare, and it was to her that he turned in any of his small and self-made troubles—let it be said only that the news that his eldest child had gone would have grieved him more deeply than the fate of the others.
“And such is destiny,” said Vernon, placing his handkerchief to his eyes, and returning to the couch, on which he threw himself in a despairing manner.
“Destiny!” repeated Berry, again glancing at his watch.
“I have nothing to reproach myself with, Mr. Berry,” said Vernon, rising again after some minutes, during which his companion watched him calmly, and without a single word or sign of sympathy. “I repeat that I have nothing to reproach myself with. I acted upon my own conviction that I was pursuing a right course, and if circumstances over which I have had no control have brought grief and sorrow, I can only mourn, but I have no right to condemn the system on which I proceeded. Still, it is sad—most sad.”
And again he covered his eyes with his hands.
“I will give him a quarter of an hour,” said Berry, “to convince himself that all is well.”
“Yes, Berry,” said Mr. Vernon, in a melancholy tone, “I am cut to the very soul, but I will not be untrue to my principles. Poor girls, poor girls. The fault is not with me. I am not responsible—deeply, profoundly as I feel the grief. You have differed from me, Berry, as to the mode in which children should be educated, but you will do me the justice to own that I adhered sedulously and conscientiously to my system. I held, and I hold still, that the heart of a child is the flower-garden which it is not for man to lay out according to his own presumptuous fancies—”
“But he should leave it to the devil to sow tares in,” said Berry, roughly.
“The devil,” said Vernon, raising his hand in deprecation of its being supposed that he believed in such a being, though he was then in too much distress to argue the question. “We have thought differently, my dear Berry, and your views now seem to be triumphant. Poor Laura, poor Bertha!”
“He is comforting, fast,” muttered Berry.
“I have not been to blame, I solemnly declare,” said Archibald Vernon. “I have sacrificed myself, indeed, and my opportunities, for my children. It was in compliance with the will of narrow-minded relatives, who meant, I am sure for the best, but who were bigoted beyond description, that I buried myself for years in Lipthwaite, where my talents were unavailable, and I could take no part in the great questions of the day. I went further, and if there be any blame attaching to me, it is in this, that I yielded to the will of those relatives, and for the sake of the comforts which their money gave to my dear ones, I per-
