"Papa, don't be so kind," she faltered; "I—I don't deserve it, for I have—disobeyed you."
"Is it possible! when? where? and how? Can it be that you have seen and spoken with that—scoundrel, Elsie?"
"Yes, papa." Her voice was very low and tremulous, her heart throbbed almost to suffocation, her bosom heaved tumultuously, and her color came and went with every breath.
He rose and paced hurriedly across the room two or three times, then coming back to her side, "Tell me all about it," he said sternly—"every action, every word spoken by either, as far as you can recall it."
She obeyed in the same low, tremulous tones in which she had answered him before, her voice now and then broken by a half-smothered sob, and her eyes never once meeting his, which she felt were fixed so severely upon her tearful, downcast face.
He cross-questioned her till he knew all that had passed nearly as well as if he had been present through the whole interview, his tones growing more and more stern and angry.
"And you dared to permit all that, Elsie?" he exclaimed when she had finished; "to allow that vile wretch to put his arm around you, hold your hand in his, for half an hour probably, and even to press his lips again and again to yours or to your cheek; and that after I had told you I would not have him take such a liberty with you for half I am worth; and—"
"Not to my lips, papa."
"Then it is not quite so bad as I thought, but bad enough certainly; and all this after I had positively forbidden you to even so much as exchange the slightest salutation with him. What am I to think of such high-handed rebellion?"
"Papa," she said beseechingly, "is not that too hard a word? I did not disobey deliberately—I don't think anything could have induced me to go into that room knowing that he was there. I was taken by surprise, and when he had got hold of my hand I tried in vain to get it free."