For ten years, Lenora, this has been my occupation and my hope.

What I had forgotten or never learned, I studied at night to teach you next morning; I labored hard that I might not only instruct you wisely but that you might acquire easily; and, at the same time, I strove by every honest means to conceal from you every thing that could give a hint or cause a suspicion by which your life might be shadowed.

Oh, Lenora,--shall I confess it ?--I have suffered hunger and undergone the most cruel privations; I have passed half my nights mending my clothes, working in the garden, studying and practising in the dark, so as to hide our poverty from you and the world.

But all that was nothing; in the silence of night I was not forced to blush before any one.

By day I had to encounter all kinds of insults, and, with a bleeding heart, swallow affront and humiliation." Lenora looked at her father with eyes moistened by compassion.