"Father, even if you found out her hiding-place, what could you do? What form could your revenge take?" she asks him, mournfully, as she has done many times before.
"I cannot tell—but some way would be opened. I should find some vulnerable point at which to strike," he answers, moodily.
She twines her fair, white arms about his neck, and presses her fresh young lips to his clouded brow.
"Father, this long brooding over your revenge, this hatred, nourished in your heart, is sapping your life," she sighs. "I beg you, for my sake, to give it up, dear father. Give it up, and leave it to Heaven!"
He looks at the beautiful, tearful eyes and the sweet face, pale now with its sorrow.
"Vera, you come to me with your mother's face, your mother's voice, and ask me not to avenge her ruined life, her broken heart, her mournful death," he answers, bitterly. "Child, you know not what you ask. What can you know of the pangs I have endured? Have you forgotten, too, the indignities heaped upon you in your young, defenseless life?"
The dark eyes filled with smouldering wrath.
"No, father, never!" she cries; "but it is all past. Mother is safe in Heaven, you and I are together. Let us forget those wicked ones. Surely God will punish them for the ruin they have wrought."
"I will not listen to you, Vera," he says, putting her from him, resolutely. "I have sworn to break Marcia Cleveland's heart if it be not made of stone. If I fail—listen to me, darling—if I fail, I shall bequeath my revenge and my oath to you in dying."
She pales and shivers through all her slight young frame, as if some dim foreboding came to her of the nearing future—that future in whose black shadow her feet already tread, it comes so near.