The heavy sound of her father's footsteps, which sometimes kept her awake the livelong night, his pale haggard face in the morning, and her mother's nervous, anxious manner, told her that ruin was hanging over them.
In the midst of her reverie, Henry returned.

He had delivered the letter, and now, restless and unquiet, he sat down to await its answer.

It came at last,--his rejection, yet couched in language so kind and conciliatory, that he could not feel angry.

Twice,--three times he read it over, hoping to find some intimation that possibly she might relent; but no, it was firm and decided, and while she thanked him for the honor he conferred upon her, she respectfully declined accepting it, assuring him that his secret should be kept inviolate.
"There's some comfort in that," thought he, "for I wouldn't like to have it known that I had been refused by a poor unknown girl," and then, as the conviction came over him that she would never he his, he laid his head upon the table, and wept such tears as a spoiled child might weep when refused a toy, too costly and delicate to be trusted in its rude grasp.
Erelong, there was another knock at the door, and, hastily wiping away all traces of his emotion, Henry admitted his father, who had come to talk of their future prospects, which were even worse than he had feared.

But he did not reproach his wayward son, nor hint that his reckless extravagance had hastened the calamity which otherwise might possibly have been avoided.