History records a remarkable victim in the ill fated Cassier. When
grief falls on the irreligious soul, it seeks relief in crime. The
shadow of death that fell on his family circle, and the flight of his
son in daring forgetfulness of his parental authority, which he had
overrated, broke the last link of Christian forbearance in his
unbelieving heart; when wearied of blaspheming the providence of God,
he quaffed the fatal cup which hell gives as a balm to its sorrow-
stricken votaries.

A cloud of oblivion must hide from the tender gaze of the young and the
innocent the harrowing scenes that brought misery on his home, ruin on
his financial condition, and a deeper hue to the moral depravity of
his blighted character.

One look of sympathy at our young heroines, and we will pass on to the
thrilling course of events.

Like beautiful yachts on a stormy lake, without pilot, without hands
to steady the white sail to catch the favorable wind, Alvira and Aloysia
were tossed on a sea of trial which cast a baneful shadow over their
future destinies. Tears had cast the halo of their own peculiar beauty
over their delicate features; mourning and sombre costume wrapt around
them the gravity of sorrow and the adulation of a universal sympathy,
pretended or real, supplied the attentions that flattered and pleased
when they led the giddy world of fashion. The silence of grief hung
around the magnificent saloons, once so gay; the wardrobe that contained
the costly apparel, the casket that treasured the pearls of Ceylon and
gems of Golconda, were all closed and neglected. The treatment of
their father was an agony of domestic trouble, in which they were tried
as in a furnace.