“I trust to see the day,” answered Mr. Markland, “when you will look back to this hour and smile at the vague fears that haunted your imagination.”

“Fears?  They have already embodied themselves in realities,” was the emphatic answer.  “The evil is upon us, Edward.  We have failed to guard the door of our castle, and the enemy has come in.  Ah, my husband! if you could see with my eyes, there would stand before you a frightful apparition.”

“And what shape would it assume?” asked Mr. Markland, affecting to treat lightly the fears of his wife.

“That of a beautiful girl, with white, sunken cheeks, and hollow, weeping eyes.”

An instant paleness overspread the face of Mr. Markland.

“Look there!” said Mrs. Markland, suddenly, drawing the attention of her husband to a picture on the wall.  The eyes of Mr. Markland fell instantly on a portrait of Fanny.  It was one of those wonders of art that transform dead colours into seeming life, and, while giving to every lineament a faultless reproduction, heightens the charm of each.  How sweetly smiled down upon Mr. Markland the beautiful lips!  How tender were the loving eyes, that fixed themselves upon him and held him almost spell-bound!

“Dear child!” he murmured, in a softened voice, and his eyes grew so dim that the picture faded before him.

“As given to us!” said Mrs. Markland, almost solemnly.

A dead silence followed.

“But are we faithful to the trust?  Have we guarded this treasure of uncounted value?  Alas! alas!  Already the warm cheeks are fading; the eyes are blinded with tears.  I look anxiously down the vista of years, and shudder.  Can the shadowy form I see be that of our child?”

“Oh, Agnes!  Agnes!” exclaimed Mr. Markland, lifting his hands, and partly averting his face, as if to avoid the sight of some fearful image.

There was another hushed silence.  It was broken by Mrs. Markland, who grasped the hand of her husband, and said, in a low, impressive voice—­

“Fanny is yet with us—­yet in the sheltered fold of home, though her eyes have wandered beyond its happy boundaries and her ears are hearkening to a voice that is now calling her from the distance.  Yet, under our loving guardianship, may we not do much to save her from consequences my fearful heart has prophesied?”

“What can we do?” Mr. Markland spoke with the air of one bewildered.

“Guard her from all further approaches of this man; at least, until we know him better.  There is a power of attraction about him that few so young and untaught in the world’s strange lessons as our child, can resist.”

“He attracts strongly, I know,” said Mr. Markland, in an absent way.

“And therefore the greater our child’s danger, if he be of evil heart.”

“You, wrong him, believe me, Agnes, by even this intimation.  I will vouch for him as a man of high and honourable principles.”  Mr. Markland spoke with some warmth of manner.