"If she is not, it will be her own fault," observed Mr. Torrens harshly, as he paced the room. "She would have the young man—she set her heart upon him—and I have yielded. I suppose you are now sorry that she is gone; and yet I dare swear you thought me a brutal tyrant for separating the love-sick pair a few weeks ago."
"My dearest, dearest father!" exclaimed Rosamond, profoundly afflicted and even annoyed at the manner in which she was addressed,—"wherefore speak to me thus! Have I ever given you any reason to suppose that I was so undutiful as——"
"As to run away from the house with your sister—eh?" interrupted Mr. Torrens in a biting, satirical tone. "A young lady who could take such a step, would not be very particular in her observations on her father's conduct."
"Heavens! how have I deserved these reproaches—at least to-day?" asked Rosamond, bursting into an agony of tears. "Shall not the past be forgotten? will you ever continue, my dear father, to recall those events which are naturally so painful——"
"Well, well—let us say no more about it, Rosamond," cried Mr. Torrens, ashamed of having vented his ill-humour upon his daughter.
And he paced the room in a manner denoting a strange and indomitable agitation.
The fact was that the miserable father recoiled in horror from the atrocity he had agreed to perpetrate; and, with an idiosyncracy so common amongst men who tremble upon the verge of committing a fearful crime, he turned on the intended victim as if she were the wilful and conscious cause of those black feelings that raged within his breast. He had not moral courage sufficient to retreat while it was yet time:—he dared not make the comparatively small sacrifice of himself to avoid the immeasurably greater one which involved the immolation of his daughter.
Rosamond was already deeply afflicted at parting with her sister—that sister from whom she had never been separated until now:—but she was doomed to experience additional sources of grief in the harsh manner and alarming agitation of her father.
At length, unable any longer to endure the state of suspense and uncertainty in which she was suddenly plunged concerning him, she rose from her seat—advanced timidly towards him—and, throwing one of her snowy arms over his shoulder, murmured in a plaintive tone, "Father—dearest father, what dreadful cause of sorrow oppresses you now? Are you fearful that Adelais will not be happy—that Clarence will not always be good and kind to her? Oh! yes, dearest father—I am sure he will——"
"I am not thinking of the daughter who is gone," exclaimed Mr. Torrens, suddenly interrupting the maiden, and speaking in a tone no longer harsh, but positively wild with despair: "my thoughts are intent on the daughter who is left behind!"