“Have you thought well of what you do?”
“I have tried not to think of him, father, except as the master to whom I am dutifully bound. The effort has not helped me to strength.”
“A good girl, a good girl, even as thy mother was,” he said, dropping into reverie, from which she roused him by unrolling the paper.
“The Lord forgive me, but—but thy love might not have been vainly given had I kept fast hold of all I had, as I might have done—such power is there in money!”
“It would have been worse for me had you done so, father; for then I had been unworthy a look from him, and without pride in you. Shall I not read now?”
“In a moment,” he said. “Let me, for your sake, my child, show you the worst. Seeing it with me may make it less terrible to you. His love, Esther, is all bestowed.”
“I know it,” she said, calmly.
“The Egyptian has him in her net,” he continued. “She has the cunning of her race, with beauty to help her—much beauty, great cunning; but, like her race again, no heart. The daughter who despises her father will bring her husband to grief.”
“Does she that?”
Simonides went on: