CHAPTER V.
"I'll do whate'er thou wilt, I'll be silent; But oh! a reined tongue, and a bursting heart, Are hard at once to bear." JOANNA BAILLIE'S BASIL.
Mr.Dinsmore's recovery was not very rapid.

It was several weeks after he was pronounced out of danger ere he was able to leave his room; and then he came down looking so altered, so pale, and thin, and weak, that it almost broke his little daughter's heart to look at him.
Very sad and lonely weeks those had been to her, poor child! She was never once permitted to see him, and the whole family treated her with marked coldness and neglect.

She had returned to her duties in the school-room--her father having sent her a command to that effect, as soon as he was sufficiently recovered to think of her--and she tried to attend faithfully to her studies, but more than once Miss Day had seen the tears dropping upon her book or slate, and reproved her sharply for not giving her mind to her lessons, and for indulging in what she called her "babyish propensities." Mr.Dinsmore made his first appearance in the family circle one morning at breakfast, a servant assisting him down stairs and seating him in an easy-chair at the table, just as the others were taking their places.
Warm congratulations were showered upon him from all sides.

Enna ran up to him, exclaiming, "I'm _so_ glad to see you down again, brother Horace;" and was rewarded with a smile and a kiss; while poor little Elsie, who had been directed, she knew not why, to take her old seat opposite to his, was unable to utter a word, but stood with one hand on the back of her chair, pale and trembling with emotion, watching him with eyes so blinded by tears that she could scarcely see.

But no one seemed to notice her, and her father did not once turn his eyes that way.
She thought of the morning when she had first met him there, her poor little heart hungering so for his love; and it seemed as if she had gone back again to that time; and yet it was worse; for now she had learned to love him with an intensity of affection she had then never known, and having tasted the sweetness of his love, her sense of suffering at its loss was proportionally great; and utterly unable to control her feelings, she silently left the room to seek some place where she might give her bursting heart the relief of tears, with none to observe or reprove her.
Elsie had a rare plant, the gift of a friend, which she had long been tending with great care, and which had blossomed that morning for the first time.
The flower was beautiful and very fragrant, and as the little girl stood gazing upon it with delighted eyes, while awaiting the summons to breakfast, she had said to Chloe, "Oh! how I should like papa to see it! He is so fond of flowers, and has been, so anxious for this one to bloom." But a deep sigh followed as she thought what a long, long time it was likely to be before her father would again enter her room, or permit her to go into his.