“You decide lightly, Ethel. One would say that you did not know that life is a serious matter.”
“Am I wrong then, sir, to do justice to the generous Ordener?”
Schumacker frowned, with a dissatisfied air.
“I cannot approve, my daughter, of such admiration for a stranger whom you may never see again.”
“Oh,” said the young girl, upon whose soul these cold words fell like a heavy weight, “do not believe it. We shall see him again. Was it not for your sake that he went forth to brave such danger?”
“Like yourself, I confess that I was at first deceived by his promises. But no; he will never go upon his mission, and therefore he will never return to us.”
“He did go, sir; he did go.”
The tone in which the young girl pronounced these words was almost that of one offended and insulted. She felt herself outraged in her Ordener’s person. Alas! she was only too sure in her own soul of the truth which she asserted.
The prisoner replied, seemingly unmoved: “Very well. If he has really gone to fight that brigand, if he has rushed into such danger, it comes to the same thing,—he will never return.”
Poor Ethel! how often a word indifferently uttered, painfully galls the hidden wound in an anxious and tortured heart! She bent her pale face to hide from her father’s stern gaze the tears which, in spite of all her efforts, fell from her burning eyes.