"Then give them back, my child, and save your soul and your purity, lest I live to be cursed with the sight of my noble daughter's shame? This marriage will be unholy, and the censure to follow it will be the bankruptcy of more than our estate—of our simple fame and old family respect. We have friends left who would help us. If you marry Milburn, they will all despise and repudiate us."
"I do not believe it," said Vesta. "The sense and courage of that gentleman—he is a gentleman, for I have seen him, and a gentleman of many gifts—will compel respect even where false pride and family pretension appear to put him down. Who that underrates him will make any considerable sacrifice to assist us? Your sons,—will they do it? Then by what right do they decide my marriage choice? No, father, I only do my part to support our house in its extremity, as these gentlemen and others have done before."
She pointed to the old portraits of Custises on the wall. If any of them looked dissatisfied, he met a countenance haughty as his own.
"Vesta," her father called, "you know you do not love this man?"
Looking back a minute at the longing in his face, which now wore the solicitude of personal affection, she melted under it.
"No, father," she said, with a burst of tears. "I love you."
She threw her arms around him and kissed him long and fondly, both weeping together. He went into a fit of grief that admitted of no conversation till it was partly spent, and at last lay with his gray hairs folded to her heaving bosom, where the compensation of his love made her sacrifice more precious.
"I feel that I am doing right, father," she said tenderly "Till now I have had my doubts. No other young heart is wronged by my taking this step; I have never been engaged, and it now seems providential, as I could not then have gone to your assistance without injuring myself and another; and your debts are too great for any but this man to settle them. Your life has been one long sacrifice for me, and not a cloud has darkened above me till this day, giving me the first shower of sorrow, which I trust will refresh my soul, and make its humility grow. Oh, father, it would rejoice me so much if you could respond to my sacrifice with a better life!"
"God help me, I will!" he sobbed.
"That is very comforting to me. I will not enumerate your omissions, dear father, but if this important step in my life does not arrest some sad tendencies I see in you, the disappointment may break me down. Intemperance in you—a judge, a gentleman, a husband, and a father—is a deformity worse than Mr. Milburn's honest, unfashionable hat. Do you not feel happier that my husband is not to be a drunkard?"