"I don't blame you, child," her father resumed, blushing for the evasion he had practised. "It would be cruel of me to wish you to stay in a home where you cannot live in peace. I am grieved, Amy, but I can do nothing. What can a man do between women who disagree?"
"Find out which is wrong!" was the answer that rose to her lips, but she suppressed it. She had already exhausted words to him. She had poured out her pain, her love, her entreaties, and they had been to him as the idle wind. She had been wronged and insulted, and he would not see it. She turned away with a feeling of despair.
"At least, let us part as a father and daughter should," he said in a trembling voice.
She held out one hand to him, and with the other covered her face, unable to utter a word; then broke away, and shut herself into her chamber. There are times when entire reparation only is tolerable, and we demand full justice, or none.
So they parted, and never met again, though they corresponded regularly, and wrote kind if not confidential letters. The only sign the daughter ever had of any change of opinion in her father regarding the cause of their separation was when he requested her to send her letters to his office and not to the house. After that they both wrote more freely.
In her new home, Amy did not find all sunshine. Miss Clinton was old and notional, and had too great a fondness for thinking for others as well as herself. Consequently, when the young lady favored the addresses of a poor artist who had been employed to paint her portrait, there was an explosion. With her father's consent, Amy married Carl Owen, and her cousin discarded her. There was one year of happiness; then the young husband died, and left his wife with an infant son.
In her trouble, Mrs. Owen made the acquaintance of Mrs. Edith Yorke, who became to her a helpful friend; and in little more than a year she married that lady's eldest son, Charles. From that moment her happiness was assured. She found herself surrounded by thoroughly congenial society, and blest with the companionship of one who was to her father, husband, and brother, all she had ever lost or longed for. Mr. Yorke adopted her son as his own, and, so far from showing any jealousy of his predecessor, was the one to propose that the boy should retain his own father's name in addition to the one he adopted.
As daughters grew up around them, he appeared to forget that Carl was not his own son, at least so far as pride in him went. Probably he showed more fondness for his girls.
Mr. Arnold died shortly after his daughter's second marriage, and his wife followed him in a few years. By their death Mrs. Yorke became the owner of her old home. But she had no desire to revisit the scene of so much misery, and for years the house was left untenanted in the care of a keeper. Nor would they ever have gone there, probably, but for pecuniary losses which made them glad of any refuge.
Mr. Charles Yorke appreciated the value of money, and knew admirably well how to spend it; but the acuteness which can foresee and make bargains, and the unscrupulousness which is so often necessary to insure their success, he had not. Consequently, when in an evil hour he embarked his inherited wealth in speculation, it was nearly all swept away.