a tragic look.

"I've set my heart on you, Polly, and I never can stand it not
to get what I've set my heart on. If I lost you, I'd go straight
to ruin."

She might have been a great deal older and wiser and still not
have seen in this a confirmation of her father's judgment of her
lover. And her parents had unconsciously driven her into a
mental state in which, if he had committed a crime, it would have
seemed to her their fault rather than his. The next day she
opened the subject with her mother--the subject that was never
out of their minds.

"I can't forget him, mother. I CAN'T give him up." With the
splendid confidence of youth, "I can save him--he'll do anything
for my sake." With the touching ignorance of youth, "He's done
nothing so very dreadful, I'm sure--I'd believe him against the
whole world."

And in the evening her mother approached her father. She was in
sympathy with Pauline, though her loyalty to her husband made her
careful not to show it. She had small confidence in a man's
judgments of men on their woman-side, great confidence in the
power of women to change and uplift men.

"Father," said she, when they were alone on the side porch
after supper, "have you noticed how hard Polly is taking IT?"

His eyes and the sudden deepening of the lines in his face