Slowly and in silence, my father turned over the leaves of the book which, next to the Bible, I believe he most reverenced in the world, until he came to the last-written page but one—­the page which I knew, from its position, to be occupied by my name.  At the top, a miniature portrait of me, when a child, was let into the leaf.  Under it, was the record of my birth and names, of the School and College at which I had been taught, and of the profession that I had adopted.  Below, a large blank space was left for the entry of future particulars.  On this page my father now looked, still not uttering a word, still with the same ghastly calmness on his face.  The organ-notes sounded no more; but the trees rustled as pleasantly, and the roar of the distant carriages swelled as joyously as ever on the ear.  Some children had come out to play in the garden of a neighbouring house.  As their voices reached us, so fresh, and clear, and happy—­but another modulation of the thanksgiving song to God which the trees were singing in the summer air—­I saw my father, while he still looked on the page before him, clasp his trembling hands over my portrait so as to hide it from sight.

Then he spoke; but without looking up, and more as if he were speaking to himself than to me.  His voice, at other times clear and gentle in its tones, was now so hard and harsh in its forced calmness and deliberation of utterance, that it sounded like a stranger’s.

“I came here, this morning,” he began, “prepared to hear of faults and misfortunes which should pain me to the heart; which I might never, perhaps, be able to forget, however willing and even predetermined to forgive.  But I did not come prepared to hear, that unutterable disgrace had been cast on me and mine, by my own child.  I have no words of rebuke or of condemnation for this:  the reproach and the punishment have fallen already where the guilt was—­and not there only.  My son’s infamy defiles his brother’s birthright, and puts his father to shame.  Even his sister’s name—­”

He stopped, shuddering.  When he proceeded, his voice faltered, and his head drooped low.

“I say it again:—­you are below all reproach and all condemnation; but I have a duty to perform towards my two who are absent, and I have a last word to say to you when that duty is done.  On this page—­” (as he pointed to the family history, his tones strengthened again)—­“on this page there is a blank space left, after the last entry, for writing the future events of your life.  Here, then, if I still acknowledge you to be my son; if I think your presence and the presence of my daughter possible in the same house, must be written such a record of dishonour and degradation as has never yet defiled a single page of this book—­here, the foul stain of your marriage, and its consequences, must be admitted to spread over all that is pure before it, and to taint to the last whatever comes after.  This shall not be.  I have no faith or hope in you more.  I know you now, only as an enemy to me and to my house—­it is mockery and hypocrisy to call you son; it is an insult to Clara, and even to Ralph, to think of you as my child.  In this record your place is destroyed—­and destroyed for ever.  Would to God I could tear the past from my memory, as I tear the leaf from this book!”