“Dear Ellinor,—Words have passed between your father and me which have obliged me to leave his house, I fear, never to return to it. I will write more fully to-morrow. But do not grieve too much, for I am not, and never have been, good enough for you. God bless you, my dearest Nelly, though I call you so for the last time.—R. C.”
“Papa, what is it?” Ellinor cried, clasping her hands together, as her father sat silent, vacantly gazing into the fire, after finishing the note.
“I don’t know!” said he, looking up at her piteously; “it’s the world, I think. Everything goes wrong with me and mine: it went wrong before that night—so it can’t be that, can it, Ellinor?”
“Oh, papa!” said she, kneeling down by him, her face hidden on his breast.
He put one arm languidly round her. “I used to read of Orestes and the Furies at Eton when I was a boy, and I thought it was all a heathen fiction. Poor little motherless girl!” said he, laying his other hand on her head, with the caressing gesture he had been accustomed to use when she had been a little child. “Did you love him so very dearly, Nelly?” he whispered, his cheek against her: “for somehow of late he has not seemed to me good enough for thee. He has got an inkling
