a most unfortunate attachment, which came near resulting in a
clandestine marriage. Although the world would have judged her harshly,
and the marriage could only have been exceedingly disastrous to her
future life, the motherless girl was not very much to blame. Even among
the mature there is a proverbial blindness in these matters. She was
immature, misled by her imagination, and the victim of uncurbed romantic
fancies. But, after all, the chief incentive to her folly was a natural
craving for the love and sympathy which she had never found in her own
home. To her chilled young heart these gifts were so sweet and
satisfying that she was in no mood to criticise the donor, even had
her knowledge of the world enabled her to do so. Thus far, in his care
of Christine, Mr. Ludolph had conformed to the foreign ideas of
seclusion and repression, and the poor girl, unguided, unguarded by
kind womanly counsel, was utterly unsophisticated, and she might have
easily become the prey of the unscrupulous man whose chief incentive
had been her father's wealth. Mr. Ludolph fortunately discovered the
state of affairs in time to prevent gossip. Under his remorseless
logic, bitter satire, and ridicule her young dream was torn to shreds.
The man whom she had surrounded with a halo of romance was shown to
be worthless and commonplace. Her idol had chiefly been a creature of
the imagination, and when the bald, repulsive truth concerning him had
been proved to her in such a way that she could not escape conviction,
she was equally disgusted with him and herself.

For some weeks Mr. Ludolph treated his daughter with cold distrust.
"She will be like her mother, I suppose," he thought. "Already she has
begun to deceive me and to imperil everything by her folly;" and his
heart was full of bitterness toward his child. Thus the poor girl dwelt
in a chilled and blighting atmosphere at a time when she most sorely
needed kindness and wise guidance.