Elsie told her in a few words, and Chloe, without finding any fault with Mr. Dinsmore, strove to comfort the sorrowing child, assuring her of her own unalterable affection, and talking to her of the love of Jesus, who would help her to hear every trial, and in his own good time remove it.

Elsie grew calmer as she listened to her nurse’s words; her sobs and tears gradually ceased, and at length she allowed Chloe to bathe her face, and smooth her disordered hair and dress; but she refused to eat, and lay on her couch all the afternoon, with a very sad little face, a sob now and then bursting from her bosom, and a tear trickling down her cheek.  When the tea-bell rang, she reluctantly yielded to Chloe’s persuasions, and went down.  But it was a sad, uncomfortable meal to her, for she soon perceived, from the cold and averted looks of the whole family, that the cause of her banishment from her papa’s room was known.  Even her Aunt Adelaide, who was usually so kind, now seemed determined to take no notice of her, and before the meal was half over, Enna, frowning at her across the table, exclaimed in a loud, angry tone, “Naughty, bad girl!  Brother Horace ought to whip you!”

“That he ought,” added her grandfather, severely, “if he had the strength to do it; but he is not likely to gain it, while worried with such a perverse, disobedient child.”

Elsie could not swallow another mouthful, for the choking sensation in her throat; and it cost her a hard struggle to keep back the tears that seemed determined to force their way down her cheek at Enna’s unkind speech; but the concluding sentence of her grandfather’s remark caused her to start and tremble with fear on her father’s account; yet she could not command her voice sufficiently to speak and ask if he were worse.

There was, indeed, a very unfavorable change in Mr. Dinsmore, and he was really more alarmingly ill than he had been at all.  Elsie’s resistance to his authority had excited him so much as to bring on a return of his fever; her absence fretted him, too, for no one else seemed to understand quite as well how to wait upon him; and besides, he was not altogether satisfied with himself; not entirely sure that the course he had adopted was the right one.  Could he only have got rid of all doubts of the righteousness and justice of the sentence he had pronounced upon her, it would have been a great relief.  He was very proud, a man of indomitable will, and very jealous of his authority; and between these on the one hand, and his love for his child and desire for her presence, on the other, a fierce struggle had been raging in his breast all the afternoon.

As soon as she dared leave the table Elsie stole out into the garden, there to indulge her grief, unseen by any but the eye of God.