Adelaide had then ventured a plea in her behalf, but the reply was:  “I don’t pity her at all; it is all her own doing.”

“So much the harder is it for her to bear, I presume,” urged Adelaide.

“There, Adelaide, that will do now!  Let me hear no more about it,” replied her lady mother, and there the matter dropped.

Poor little Elsie tried to be submissive and forgiving, but she could not help feeling it terribly hard and cruel, and almost more than she could bear, thus to be kept away from her sick and dying father.

It was long ere sleep visited her weary eyes that night; hour after hour she lay on her pillow, pouring out prayers and tears on his behalf, until at length, completely worn out with sorrow, she fell into a deep and heavy slumber, from which she waked to find the morning sun streaming in at the windows, and Chloe standing gazing down upon her with a very happy face.

She started up from her pillow, asking eagerly, “What is it, mammy?  Oh! what is it? is my papa better?”

“Yes, darling Massa Horace much better dis mornin’; de doctor say ’he gwine git well now for sartin, if he don’t git worse again.’”

“Oh, mammy!  It seems too good to be true!  Oh, how very, very good God has been to me!” cried the little girl, weeping for very joy.

For a moment, in the intensity of her happiness, she forgot that she was still in disgrace and banishment—­forgot everything but the joyful fact that her father was spared to her.  But, oh! she could not forget it long.  The bitter recollection soon returned, to damp her joy and fill her with sad forebodings.

CHAPTER V.

“I’ll do whate’er thou wilt, I’ll be silent;
But oh! a reined tongue, and a bursting heart,
Are hard at once to bear.”

JOANNA BAILLIE’S BASIL.

Mr. Dinsmore’s recovery was not very rapid.  It was several weeks after he was pronounced out of danger ere he was able to leave his room; and then he came down looking so altered, so pale, and thin, and weak, that it almost broke his little daughter’s heart to look at him.

Very sad and lonely weeks those had been to her, poor child!  She was never once permitted to see him, and the whole family treated her with marked coldness and neglect.  She had returned to her duties in the school-room—­her father having sent her a command to that effect, as soon as he was sufficiently recovered to think of her—­and she tried to attend faithfully to her studies, but more than once Miss Day had seen the tears dropping upon her book or slate, and reproved her sharply for not giving her mind to her lessons, and for indulging in what she called her “babyish propensities.”

Mr. Dinsmore made his first appearance in the family circle one morning at breakfast, a servant assisting him down stairs and seating him in an easy-chair at the table, just as the others were taking their places.