In an instant afterwards, she humbly added,

"Forgive me any thing I may have said, that seems to chide my father."

"Bless you, bless you, dearest one!" was Roger's sobbing prayer, who
had listened to her wisdom breathlessly. "Ah, daughter," then exclaimed
the humbled, happy man, "I'll try to do all you ask me, Grace; but it is
a hard thing to feel myself so wicked, and to have to speak up boldly
like a Christian man."




CHAPTER XXXVIII.

EXPERIENCE.


THEN, with disjointed sentences, suited to the turmoil of his
thoughts, half in a soliloquy, half as talking to his daughter, Roger
Acton gave his hostile testimony to the worth of wealth.

"Oh, fool, fool that I have been, to set so high a price on gold! To
have hungered and thirsted for it--to have coveted earnestly so bad a
gift--to have longed for Mammon's friendship, which is enmity with God!
What has not money cost me? Happiness:--ay, wasn't it to have given me
happiness? and the little that I had (it was much, Grace, not little,
very much--too much--God be praised for it!) all, all the happiness I
had, gold took away. Look at our dear old home--shattered and scattered,