Chapter 25 - Page 2

women, sad partners in a grief that time might intensify, instead of making less, stood each leaning her face down upon the other's shoulder and wept silently, then raised their eyes and looked wistfully at each other.

"The path of duty is very rough sometimes; but if we must walk it to save another, we cannot stay our feet and be guiltless before God," said Mrs. Whitford. "It has taken many days since I saw this path of suffering and humiliation open its dreary course for me to gather up the strength required to walk in it with steady feet. Every day for more than a week I have started out resolved to see you, but every day my heart has failed. Twice I stood at your door with my hand on the bell, then turned, and went away. But the task is over, the duty done, and I pray that it may not be in vain."

What was now to be done? When Mr. Birtwell was informed of this interview, he became greatly excited, declaring that he should forbid any further intercourse between the young people. The engagement, he insisted, should be broken off at once. But Mrs. Birtwell was wiser than her husband, and knew better than he did the heart of their daughter.

Blanche had taken more from her mother than from her father, and the current of her life ran far deeper than that of most of the frivolous girls around her. Love with her could not be a mere sentiment, but a deep and all-pervading passion. Such a passion she felt for Ellis Whitford, and she was ready to link her destinies with his, whether the promise were for good or for evil. To forbid Ellis the house and lay upon her any interdictions, in regard to him would, the mother knew, precipitate the catastrophe they were anxious to avert.

It was not possible for either Mr. or Mrs. Birtwell to conceal from their daughter the state of feeling into which the visit of Mrs. Whitford had thrown them, nor long to remain passive. The work of separation must be commenced without delay. Blanche saw the change in her parents, and felt an instinct of danger; and when the first intimations of a decided purpose to make a breach between her and Ellis came, she set her face like flint against them, not in any passionate outbreak, but with a calm assertion of her undying love and her readiness to accept the destiny that lay before her. To the declaration of her mother that Ellis was doomed by inheritance to the life of a drunkard, she replied:

"Then he will only the more need my love and care."

Persuasion, appeal, remonstrance, were useless. Then Mr. Birtwell interposed with authority. Ellis was denied the house and Blanche forbidden to see him.

This was the condition of affairs at the time Mrs. Birtwell became so deeply interested in Mr. Ridley and his family. Blanche had risen, in a measure, above the deep depression of spirits consequent on the attitude of her parents toward her betrothed husband, and while showing no change in