should see my way in this."

He accordingly rang the bell, when a well-powdered footman, in rich
livery, entered.

"Let Miss Gourlay understand that I wish to see her."

This he uttered in a loud, sharp tone of voice, for it was in such he
uniformly addressed his dependents.

The lackey bowed and withdrew, and, in the course of a few minutes, his
daughter entered the study, and stood before him. At the first
glance, she saw that something had discomposed him, and felt a kind of
instinctive impression that it was more or less connected with herself.

Seldom, indeed, was such a contrast between man and woman ever
witnessed, as that which presented itself on this occasion. There
stood the large, ungainly, almost misshapen father, with a countenance
distorted, by the consequences of ill-suppressed passion, into a deeper
deformity--a deformity that was rendered ludicrously hideous, by a
squint that gave, as we have said, to one of his eyes, as he looked at
her, the almost literal expression of a dagger. Before him, on the other
hand, stood a girl, whose stature was above the middle height, with a
form that breathed of elegance, ease, and that exquisite grace
which marks every look, and word, and motion of the high-minded and
accomplished lady. Indeed, one would imagine that her appearance would
have soothed and tranquillized the anger of any parent capable of
feeling that glowing and prideful tenderness, with which such an
exquisitely beautiful creature was calculated to fill a parent's heart.
Lucy Gourlay was a dark beauty--a brunette so richly tinted, that the