"I am ruined! I am quite, quite ruined! And what's more I've speculated with Bernard's money--and it's all gone! It's all gone! And to-morrow they'll all know! Everything will come out--and I shall be arrested!"
"Oh, John! John! What shall we do!" It was her mother's voice, speaking in anguish.
Tremblingly poor Doris drew back, away from the window, feeling overwhelmed with horror and consternation. What had she heard? Bernard, her lover, ruined by her father! She felt quite stunned.
How long she stayed there in the dark, afraid to enter by the library window lest her appearance just then should grieve her parents, and uncertain what to do, she never knew; but at last she found herself standing under her own bedroom window.
There was a pear-tree against the wall. A boy would have thought nothing of climbing it and of entering the room through the window; Doris herself had often done that as a child, but now she hesitated, feeling so much older because she had received her first offer that day from the man whom she loved devotedly, and because, since then, great shame and pain had overwhelmed her in learning that it was against him--of all men in the world!--her father had sinned. Therefore she felt it impossible to climb that tree, as a child, or a light-hearted girl, might easily have done. So she stood beneath it, with bowed head, feeling stunned with misery and utterly incapable of effort.
Above her the stars looked down, and the lights of the village shone, here and there, at a little distance, while the night wind stirred the trees and shrubs close by, and gently swept the hair from off her brow. Just so had she often seen and felt the sights and voices of the night from her bedroom window up above; but everything was different now. No longer a child, she was a girl engaged to marry Bernard Cameron, whom she had always loved, and whom her father had plundered of all that made his life pleasant and that was to make their marriage possible.
For a moment Doris felt angry with her parent, but only for a moment: he was too dear to her, and through her mind surged memories of his kindness in the past and of his pride and joy in her, his only child. It might have been that in speculating with Bernard's money he was animated by the thought of still further enriching the son of his old friend. At least Doris was quite certain that her father had not meant to do him such an injury.
"But oh, father, if only you had not done this thing," thought the poor girl distractedly, "how happy we should be! But now, what shall we do? What will poor Bernard do? And I, oh! what shall I do?"
For a little while she stood crying under the old pear-tree, and then a prayer ascended to the throne of Grace from her poor troubled heart.
CHAPTER III.