Elsie stood like a statue; her hands clasped, and her eyes fixed upon the floor.  She had grown very pale while her father was speaking, and there was a slight quivering of the eyelids and of the muscles of the mouth, but she showed no other sign of emotion.

“Did you hear me, Elsie?” he asked.

“Yes, papa,” she murmured, in a tone so low it scarcely reached his ear.

“Well, have you anything to say for yourself before I send you back to your room?” he asked in a somewhat softened tone.

He felt a little alarmed at the child’s unnatural calmness; but it was all gone in a moment.  Sinking upon her knees she burst into a fit of passionate weeping.  “Oh! papa, papa!” she sobbed, raising her streaming eyes to his face, “will you never, never love me any more?—­must I never come near you, or speak to you again?”

He was much moved.

“I did not say that, Elsie,” he replied.  “I hope most sincerely that you will come to me before long with the confessions and promises I require; and then, as I have told you so often, I will take you to my heart again, as fully as ever.  Will you not do it at once, and spare me the painful necessity of putting my sentence into execution?” he asked, raising her gently, and drawing her to his side.

“Dear papa, you know I cannot,” she sobbed.

“Then return at once to your room; my sentence must be enforced, though it break both your heart and mine, for I will be obeyed. Go!” he said, sternly putting her from him.  And weeping and sobbing, feeling like a homeless, friendless outcast from society, Elsie went back to her room.

The next two or three weeks were very sad and dreary ones to the poor little girl.  Her father’s sentence was rigidly enforced; she scarcely ever saw him excepting at a distance, and when once or twice he passed her in going in and out, he neither looked at nor spoke to her.  Miss Day treated her with all her former severity and injustice, and no one else but the servants ever addressed her.

She went out every day for an hour or two, in obedience to her father’s command, but her walks and rides were sad and lonely; and during the rest of the day she felt like a prisoner, for she dared not venture even into the garden, where she had always been in the habit of passing the greater part of her leisure hours, in the summer season.

But debarred from all other pleasures, Elsie read her Bible more and more constantly, and with ever increasing delight; it was more than meat and drink to her; she there found consolation under every affliction, a solace for every sorrow.  Her trial was a heavy one; her little heart often ached sadly with its intense longing for an earthly father’s love and favor; yet in the midst of it all, she was conscious of a deep, abiding peace, flowing from a sweet sense of pardoned sin, and a consciousness of a Saviour’s love.