"I am pleased to learn from the servant that your father, Miss Monroe, is able to take a little exercise once more," said the rector.
"Oh! all danger is now past," exclaimed Ellen cheerfully. "But at one time, Mr. Tracy, I had made up my mind to lose him."
"I saw how much you were afflicted," observed the rector; "and I was grieved to hear you reproach yourself to some extent——"
"Reproach myself!" interrupted Ellen, blushing deeply. "You heard me reproach myself?"
"I did," answered the rector. "And now, forgive me, if—by virtue of my sacred calling—I make bold to remind you that Providence frequently tries us, through the medium of afflictions visited upon those whom we love, in order to punish us for our neglectfulness, our unkindness, or our errors, towards those so afflicted. Pardon me, Miss Monroe, for thus addressing you; but I should be unfaithful towards Him whom I serve, did I not avail myself of every opportunity to explain the lessons which his wise and just dispensations convey."
"Mr. Tracy," exclaimed Ellen, cruelly embarrassed by this language, "do you really believe that Providence punished my father for some misconduct on my part?"
"Judging by the reproach—the accusation which your lips uttered against yourself—perhaps in an unguarded moment—when you ministered with angelic tenderness at your father's sick-bed——"
"Sir—Mr. Tracy, this is too much!" cried Ellen, tears starting from her eyes, while her cheeks were suffused with blushes: "it is unmanly—it is ungenerous to take advantage of any expressions which might have been wrung from me in a moment of acute anguish."
"Pardon me, young lady," said the rector with apparent meekness: "heaven knows the purity of my intentions in thus addressing you. It is not always that my spiritual aid is thus rejected—that my motives are thus cruelly suspected."
"Forgive me, sir,—I was wrong to excite myself at words which were meant in kindness," said Ellen, completely deceived by this consummate hypocrisy.