“Father,” cried Louis, “you wrong him. My sins and transgressions are my own. Mountain high as they are, they shall not crush another. Mine is the sorrow and guilt, and mine be the penalty. I do not extenuate my own offences, but I will not criminate others. I beseech you, sir, to recall what you have just uttered, for how can I close those doors upon a friend, which have so lately been opened for him with ungrudging hospitality?”
Mittie’s countenance lighted up with an indescribable expression. She caught her brother’s hand, and pressing it in both hers, exclaimed—
“Nobly said, Louis. He who can hear an absent friend defamed, without defending him, is worthy of everlasting scorn.”
But Helen, terrified at the outburst of her father’s anger, and overwhelmed with grief for her brother’s humiliation, bowed her head and wept in silence.
Mr. Gleason turned his eyes, where the lightning still gleamed, from Louis to Mittie, as if trying to read her inscrutable countenance.
“Tell me, Mittie,” he cried, “the whole length and breadth of the interest you have in this young man. I have suffered you to elude this subject too long. I have borne with your proud and sullen reserve too long. I have been weak and irresolute in times past, but thoroughly aroused to a sense of my authority and responsibility as a father, as well as my duty as a man, I command you to tell me all that has passed between you and Bryant Clinton. Has he proffered you marriage? Has he exchanged with you the vows of betrothal? Have you gone so far without my knowledge or approval?”
“I cannot answer such questions, sir,” she haughtily replied, the hot blood rushing into her face and filling her forehead veins with purple. “You have no right to ask them in this presence. There are some subjects too sacred for investigation, and this is one. There are limits even to a father’s authority, and I protest against its encroachments.”
Those who are slow to arouse to anger are slow to be appeased. The flame that is long in kindling generally burns with long enduring heat. Mr. Gleason had borne, with unexampled patience, Mittie’s strange and wayward temper. For the sake of family peace he had sacrificed his own self-respect, which required deference and obedience in a child. But having once broken the spell which had chained his tongue, and meeting a resisting will, his own grew stronger and more determined.
“Do you dare thus to reply to me, your father?” cried he; “you will find there are limits to a father’s indulgence, too. Trifle not with my anger, but give me the answer I require.”
“Never, sir, never,” cried she, with a mien as undaunted as Charlotte Corday’s, that “angel of assassination,” when arraigned before the tribunal of justice.