"O, you will not ruin my father," I shrieked.—"You will save him."
Burley took my hands within his own, and bent down, until I felt his breath upon my cheeks—
"Yes, I will save him," he whispered,—"That is, for a price,—your hand, my dear."
His look could not be mistaken. At the same moment, my father raised his face from his hands,—it was pallid, distorted, stamped with despair.
"It is the only way, Marion," he said in a broken voice,—"Otherwise your father must rot in a felon's cell."
Amid all the misfortunes of a varied and changeful life, the agony of that moment has never once been forgotten. I felt the blood rush to my head—
"Be it so," I cried,—and fell like a dead woman on the floor, at the feet of Mr. Issachar Burley.