room of his daughter, he laid a suit of pearls on her table.
Constance looked up in her father's face, tearfully: there was something in his voice so kind, so subdued, so different from its ordinary careless and sarcastic tone; and the expression on his features was equally unusual. Touched and encouraged for the first time in her life, she flung herself, unbidden, into her father's arms, and he held her tenderly to his heart.
"Are you happy, my child?" asked he in a low broken whisper.
"Happy! my dearest father," exclaimed she, hiding her face on his arm, where she still hung, till he could only see the back of her neck, and even that was rosy with one deep blush—"unutterably happy! Even to myself I never dared own, till now, how much I loved my cousin. When others taunted me with faults which, God knows, I felt but too bitterly, Norbourne always took my part. From him I never heard an unkind word. I have often cried myself to sleep in his arms. As I grew older, I loved him but the more,
