opened.

She looked up eagerly, and read the answer in Adelaide's face, ere she
heard the coldly spoken, stern message--

"Your papa says you very well know the conditions on which you will be
admitted to his presence, and that they are as unalterable as the laws of
the Medes and Persians."

The tears gushed from Elsie's eyes, and she turned away with a gesture of
despair.

"Elsie," said her aunt, "let me advise you to give up at once; for I am
perfectly certain you never can conquer your father."

"Oh, Aunt Adelaide! that is not what I want," murmured the child, in low,
broken accents.

But Adelaide went on without noticing the interruption--

"He is worse, and growing worse all the time, Elsie; his fever has been
very high ever since yesterday afternoon--and we all know that it is
nothing but your misconduct that has caused this relapse."

Elsie could bear no more, but rushing away to her own room, and locking
herself in, she gave way without restraint to her feelings of distress
and anguish.

Knowing that she was not expected in the school-room--as she had paid no
attention to study since the beginning of her father's illness--she did