“Why did you defy me, child?”

“I did not, sir, until you treated me worse than the servants; worse than you did Charon even.”

“How?”

“How, indeed!  You left me in your own house without one word of good-by, when you expected to be absent an indefinite time.  Did you suppose that I would remain there an hour after such treatment?”

He smiled again, and said in the low, musical tone which she had always found so difficult to resist.

“Come back, my child.  Come back to me!”

“Never, sir! never!” answered she resolutely.

A stony hue settled on his face; the lips seemed instantly frozen, and, removing his hand from her shoulder, he said, as if talking to a perfect stranger:  “See that Clara Sanders needs nothing; she is far from being well.”

He left her; but her heart conquered for an instant, and she sprang down two steps and caught his hand.  Pressing her face against his arm, she exclaimed brokenly: 

“Oh, sir! do not cast me off entirely!  My friend, my guardian, indeed I have not deserved this!”

He laid his hand on her bowed head, and said calmly: 

“Fierce, proud spirit!  Ah! it will take long years of trial and suffering to tame you.  Go, Beulah!  You have cast yourself off.  It was no wish, no work of mine.”

He lifted her head from his arm, gently unclasped her fingers, and walked away.  Beulah dried the tears on her cheek, and, composing herself by a great effort, returned to Clara.  The latter still sat in an easy-chair, and leaned back with closed eyes.  Beulah made no effort to attract her attention, and sat down noiselessly to reflect upon her guardian’s words and the separation which, she now clearly saw, he intended should be final.  There, in the gathering gloom of twilight, sat Clara Sanders, nerving her heart for the dreary future; solemnly and silently burying the cherished hopes that had irised her path, and now, looking steadily forward to coming years, she said to her drooping spirit:  “Be strong and bear this sorrow.  I will conquer my own heart.”  How is it that, when the human soul is called to pass through a fierce ordeal, and numbing despair seizes the faculties and energies in her sepulchral grasp, how is it that superhuman strength is often suddenly infused into the sinking spirit?  There is a mysterious yet resistless power given, which winds up and sets again in motion that marvelous bit of mechanism, the human will; that curiously intricate combination of wheels; that mainspring of action, which has baffled the ingenuity of philosophers, and remains yet undiscovered, behind the cloudy shrine of the unknown.  Now, there are times when this human clock well-nigh runs down; when it seems that volition is dead; when the past is all gilded, the future all shrouded, and the soul grows passive, hoping nothing, fearing nothing.  Yet when the slowly swinging pendulum seems about to rest, even then an unseen hand touches the secret