hear enough.

And how proud was Melissa to speak of the bright young artist, who till
now had been the sun of her joyless life! There was much that was good
to be said about him: for the best masters rated his talent highly in
spite of his youth; his comrades were faithful; and none knew so well as
he how to cheer his father's dark moods. Then, there were many amiable
and generous traits of which she had been told, or had herself known.
With his very first savings, he had had the Genius with a reversed torch
cast in bronze to grace his mother's grave, and give his father pleasure.
Once he had been brought home half dead after saving a woman and child
from drowning, and vainly endeavoring to rescue another child. He might
be wild and reckless, but he had always been faithful to his art and to
his love for his family.

Agatha's eyes opened widely when Melissa told her anything good about her
brother, and she clung in terror to her new friend as she heard of her
excited orgy with her lover.

Scared as though some imminent horror threatened herself, she clasped
Melissa's hand as she listened to the tale of the dangers Alexander had
so narrowly escaped.

Such things had never before reached the ears of the girl in her retired
Christian home beyond the lake; they sounded to her as the tales of some
bold seafarer to the peaceful husbandman on whose shores the storm has
wrecked him.

"And do you know," she exclaimed, "all this seems delightful to me,
though my father, I am sure, would judge it hardly! When your brother