And Fanny laid her head down upon the breast of her parent, and wept bitterly.

Mr. Markland was at a loss what answer to make.  So entire a change in the feelings of his daughter toward Mr. Lyon was unsuspected, and he scarcely knew how to explain the fact.  Fascinated as she had been, he had looked for nothing else but a clinging to his image even in coldness and neglect.  That she would seek to obliterate that image from her heart, as an evil thing, was something he had not for an instant expected.  He did not know how, treasured up in tenderest infancy, through sunny childhood, and in sweetly dawning maidenhood, innocence and truth had formed for her a talisman by which the qualities of others might be tested.  At the first approach of Mr. Lyon this had given instinctive warning; but his personal attractions were so great, and her father’s approving confidence of the man so strong, that the inward monitor was unheeded.  But, after a long silence following a series of impassioned letters, to find herself alluded to in this cold and distant way revealed a state of feeling in the man she loved so wildly, that proved him false beyond all question.  Like one standing on a mountain-top, who suddenly finds the ground giving way beneath his feet, she felt herself sweeping down through a fearfully intervening space, and fell, with scarcely a pulse of life remaining, on the rocky ground beneath.  She caught at no object in her quick descent, for none tempted her hand.  It was one swift plunge, and the shock was over.

“No, father,” she said, in a calmer voice, lifting her face from his bosom—­“it is not pride, nor womanly indignation at a deep wrong.  I speak of him as he is now known to me.  Oh, beware of him!  Let not his shadow fall darker on our household.”

The effect of this conversation in no way quieted the apprehensions of Mr. Markland, but made his anxieties the deeper.  That Lyon had been false to his child was clear even to him; and the searching questions of Fanny he could not banish from his thoughts.

“All things confirm the necessity of my journey,” he said, when alone, and in close debate with himself on the subject.  “I fear that I am in the toils of a serpent, and that escape, even with life, is doubtful.  By what a strange infatuation I have been governed!  Alas! into what a fearful jeopardy have I brought the tangible good things given me by a kind Providence, by grasping at what dazzled my eyes as of supremely greater value!  Have I not been lured by a shadow, forgetful of the substance in possession?”

CHAPTER XXXI.