"And yet I say nothing but the truth, father!" answered the anxious maiden.
"Lead me, then, rapidly to him, Molly! You fill me with curiosity, less through your mysterious words than through the strange anxiety that speaks in your excited voice, and in every line of your quivering face. You try in vain to conceal your uneasiness from me.—Can it possibly be," said he, as if suddenly overcome by some dim divination of the truth,—"Can it be that—Yet no; that would be indeed impossible!"
As he suddenly interrupted himself, he pushed the hair, with a restless motion, from his high and broad brow.
"What an idea! Only the vain creation of an excited fancy! And yet if it were he! The mere thought of such a possibility drives all the blood back from my throbbing heart!"
As he spoke, he covered his eyes with both his hands, as if to exclude some sight of horror, the view of which would blast his eyes for ever!
Molly softly approached him, and, throwing her arms tenderly round him, she murmured as lightly as if she feared the sound or meaning of her own words,—
"My dear father, even suppose it should be the man who drove us from our wretched hovel,—who took from us the last of our miserable possessions; suppose it should be the rich landlord, who, in addition to his barbarous conduct, insulted you with the most shameful, the most humiliating words; would you,—could you, render evil for evil? Could you have suffered him to remain exposed to all the horrors of the storm which raged so pitilessly yesterday, wounded and dying; and would you have refused him your aid? O my father, to whom I have always looked up almost as to one of the Holy Ones of heaven, whom in all the trying circumstances of life I have always seen pursue a course so noble, I am sure, very sure, if you had been here, you too would have offered him assistance; and your daughter, in sheltering the unfortunate old man, in doing everything to alleviate his condition which it was possible for her to do, has only fulfilled the divine lessons which you imprinted upon her heart; she was only striving to resemble you; for you have ever been her fairest, highest model, in the practise of every self-sacrificing virtue."
For the first time, Molly ventured to look up to the face of her agitated father. Pale, as if already frozen by the stroke of death, he leaned against the steep cliff. Motionless, as if becoming part of the stone itself, his staring eyes moved not in their strained sockets; his long, flaccid arms hung loosely down at his side; the spirit seemed about to leave his powerful body for ever!
"Father!" shrieked Molly, in a tone of utter despair.