"She loves you, sir."
"Yes, she loves me as a father, and by that love I have unconsciously controlled her. But that power has gone from me. Our minds are strangers; they used not to be so. Once she hid nothing from me; now as I watch her I see in her eyes the attempt to hide her thoughts, and I cannot express to you my agony in knowing that her heart and mind are not open to me, as they have hitherto been. If I knew--if I only knew, I should be satisfied; for then I might protect her. Sometimes I think that another kind of love has come to her, and has shadowed the love she bore for me. But for whom? Do you know?"
He asked the question in a singular tone of fierceness and entreaty; but Joshua was thinking of Dan, and did not reply. Have I the right to speak? he thought; and an affirmative answer did not come clearly to his mind.
"You are silent," continued Basil in a quieter tone. "Are you concealing any thing from me?"
"What should I conceal from you, sir?" asked Joshua in reply, after a pause.
Basil Kindred sighed, as the words so hesitatingly spoken came from Joshua's lips.
"Young men are often thoughtless in their actions," he said mildly, as if wishful to rob the remark of direct significance; "they do not know the depth and earnestness of some womanly natures. Listen, I will tell you my story; it may be a lesson and a warning to you."
CHAPTER XXI.
LOVE'S SACRIFICE.
When I was a young man, I was an enthusiast. My mother had died when I was a child. My father was a clergyman, and wished to educate me for the church. But my heart was not in my studies, and I did not satisfy his expectations. I was too fond of poetry and plays, my tutors told him; sterner studies were distasteful to me, and they met with nothing but disappointment from so unwilling a pupil. I was also difficult to control; would indeed submit to no control. On several occasions when a company of players came to the place in which I was being educated, I had stolen away to the theatre, remaining there until nearly midnight. My tutors spoke the truth. From the first night that I stepped inside the walls of a theatre and saw a tragedy, my fate was fixed. I was fascinated, entranced. I had never conceived any thing so grand, so noble, so heroic. Mine was a pure passion; glitter possibly had its effect upon my mind, but no base ingredient was mixed with my determination to become an actor. What nobler calling could there be than that which clothed the noblest of all the arts with living fire, which made dead heroes speak and move and live again? My father received the report with displeasure. He looked upon a theatre as the abode of all the vices. He spoke to me and expostulated with me, and I argued with him until I angered him. Then he took me from school, and kept me at home, so that he might wean me from my wicked notions. I had not been home a month before a company of players paid our town a visit. I was aglow with excitement. My father warned me not to go; I told him frankly that I would. He locked me in my bedroom; and I made a rope of the sheets, and let myself out of the window. I came home late, and my father opened the door for me. He was so strict a disciplinarian, that my disobedience was a crime in his eyes. He told me so sternly, and told me also that unless I complied with the rules of his house, and with his commands as a father, I must find a home elsewhere. He had other children, and he declared that I should not contaminate them by my example. When I ventured to expostulate with him, he stopped me peremptorily. There was no sign of tenderness in his manner. He was harsh and hard. He forgot that I inherited some share of his own determination, and that I was as likely to be immovable in my ideas as he was in his. I felt that I could have answered him by arguments as forcible as his, and, with the not uncommon egotism of youth, I believed that I could have convinced him. But he would not listen to me, and I was compelled to sit silent and inwardly rebellious while he laid down the hard rules by which my life was to be guided. The glittering splendor of the play I had witnessed that night was vivid to my mind while his cold words fell upon my ears. The tragedian upon whose musical impassioned utterances I had hung entranced, was one of the greatest that ever trod the stage; the play I had seen was one of the grandest of England's grandest poet. What! was it a crime to come within the influence of such a teacher? I could not believe it; I would not believe it. My father said my inclinations were sinful, impious, misbegotten, and preached to me sternly, uncompromisingly, until my heart--beating with indignation at his injustice--was as hard to him as his was to me. Then he left the room with a cold goodnight, and I went to bed. But before I went to sleep, I took from my box the volume of Shakspeare containing the play that I had seen, and as I read the noble verse, the men and women who took part therein came and inspired me with the nobility of their speech.