"'What did you do that for, you wretched child?'
"'Do what?' I whispered, overawed.
"'Deny it, if you dare, and I'll break every bone in your body, you lynx! What will your father say?' she continued. 'Pick up every piece, and go and show it to him. Say you broke it, and ask his forgiveness! Do you hear me?'
"I hesitated and trembled.
"'Dare you disobey me?' she angrily exclaimed, with menacing gesture.
"'I am afraid of my father,' I whispered again, scarcely knowing whether I really did the mischief or not.
"'And well you may be," she continued fearlessly, seeing that she was gaining the mastery over me; 'but the sooner you seek his forgiveness, the sooner you will obtain it. Go at once, I tell you.'
"Oh! pity me, Lizzie! pity me, for from that fatal moment, I have been the slave, the serf, of a stronger will-a will that has withered and crushed out, by slow degrees, the last trace of moral courage that might have beautified and strengthened my character; crushed it out, and left me a cowardly, miserable, helpless girl! But to return.
"Involuntarily I stooped down, and began to pick up the pieces of the fragile horns, and the eyes of the elk's head, that lay scattered around upon the soft carpet, really wondering if, indeed, I did break it.
"'Now you have gathered up the pieces, go at once to your father; and mind you tell him you broke it. Do you hear me?'
"I glided out of the room, away from the presence of the woman who had so cruelly imposed upon my helplessness. Trembling with fear, and a sense of my supposed guilt, I approached my father, who was by this time comfortably seated in the family sitting-room, reading the morning paper.
"I crept to him and held out the fragments.
"'The d-l to pay! Who broke this?' he almost shouted in anger.
"'I did,' I murmured; and the rest of my story unspoken, my father struck me a blow for the first and last time in his life. It sent me reeling against a table; the sharp corner struck my forehead and cut a terrible gash. Here, I will show it to you. It is plainly visible, and always will be."
Leah lifted the glossy dark hair from her smooth pale forehead, and displayed the long, hard scar, that was so carefully concealed by the ebon folds. "I always wear my hair combed to hide it."
"Oh! Leah, Leah," sighed Lizzie, "how dreadful!"
"At sight of the blood that flowed freely from the wound, my father caught me in his arms, and kissing my blood-stained face, exclaimed again and again:
"'Fool, wretch, devil, that I am! Not for all the world would I have shed a drop of this precious blood. I beg your forgiveness, my darling-a thousand times, my child!' My cries, though suppressed, brought my mother to the room. With a well-assumed air of innocence and tenderness, she sought to wipe away the blood from my face, and bind up the gash upon my forehead. I all the while abstractedly wondering if I really did break the pipe; such was my weakness, such the power that was over and around my young life, and is yet, even to this very hour.
"My father gathered up the scattered fragments of the broken treasure and cast them into the fire; and from that day to this, he has never alluded in any manner to that occurrence. Always kind and tender to me, he seems to be ever endeavoring to atone for some wrong, and his long-continued silence assures me how vividly and regretfully he remembers his violence toward me."
"Shocking!" ejaculated Lizzie with emotion.
"Yes, it is shocking, dear Lizzie; for the horrible truth is ever before me, and this hated scar is the seal of the first lie of my tender young life. I never comb my hair away from my face, so morbidly am I impressed with the fear that those who see it will read the cause of its existence. Oh! Lizzie, that falsehood, and that cruel deception imposed upon a helpless child, were terrible indeed, too terrible to be borne.
"But I must proceed. I have dwelt thus minutely upon this first unhappy incident of my childhood, because it is a sort of guide-post to a long and dreary waste of years. It forms the headstone of my departed freedom, for, as I have said, in that evil moment when I yielded to her wicked, imperious will, I lost all moral power, and to this day, am worse than her vassal. Try as I may, I cannot shake off the habit; it has become second nature, and her influence now is so withering that I dare not make resistance; and yet, I despise myself for my weakness. Pity me, Lizzie, do not blame me! There's a moral want about me somewhere, Heaven knows, that no human agency can supply.
"My mother's assumed fondness for me led my father to believe that she loved me truly, and was tender and kind as she should be. He never dreamed of her deception. And to this day, he knows nothing of it, for I have never told him any of my trials and sorrows, since the day he struck me that undeserved blow. I love my father tenderly, and yet I cannot, dare not, unfold to his blinded vision the facts that have so long been concealed from him. No, Lizzie, I would rather suffer on as I must do, than darken his life by such a discovery.
"Thus you see something of how the years passed on. I, a helpless, ill-used orphan, growing older and and stronger day by day, and yet morally weaker and weaker, with no will or power of resistance, till I wonder sometimes that I am not an imbecile indeed.
"I thank the great God for my school-days. They have been days of pleasure and benefit to me. They have taken me from that home where I withered as the dew withers before the glaring sun, and cast me among pleasant friends, who seem to love me, and at least are true and kind. True and kind! Dear Lizzie, you cannot comprehend the significance of that expression. To my starved, wretched heart, these words are the fulness of all speech. I comprehend their meaning, and regard them as I do the burning stars afar, shining dimly upon a darkened world.
"Yes; again I say, I thank the great God for these school-days, that led me to know you, Lizzie-you, to whom my heart has learned to turn as a wounded, helpless bird would turn to its mother's sheltering wing for safety and protection."
Touched by Leah's story, and her protestations of love, Lizzie bowed her head in her hands, and a few tears fell through the slender fingers. Observing these tears, Leah bent forward and kissed them away, saying, "These are the first tears I ever saw fall for me." Then she continued:
"It is not necessary to dwell on the innumerable instances of cruelty and wrong that have marked my life, from the period just mentioned, on to the present. It is enough to say that many events in my home-life have left their searing impress on my heart and brain; and many, I thank God, have faded from my memory. But when I was fifteen, about the time you and I entered this seminary, an event took place, that has deeply wounded my heart, and will leave it sore forever. It was this:
"Very early on the morning of my fifteenth birthday, my father came to my chamber and congratulated me with many kisses, giving me his blessing. Then he said:
"'My daughter, I have here the miniature of your mother, taken before your birth. I had it set in diamonds then, for you, my child, little dreaming she would so soon be taken from us both. I have kept it securely locked away, waiting till you were old enough properly to appreciate its value. Now to-day, on your fifteenth birth-day, I have called forth the treasure, and give it to you forever. Take it; keep it carefully, my child, for the sake of the living as well as the dead.' My father laid the miniature in my hand, and turned away with ill-disguised emotion. Softly, and with trembling hand, I opened the casket that contained the treasure, and for the first time since her death, my eyes rested upon the dimly remembered features of my angel mother.
"O Lizzie Heartwell! At the first glimpse of that sweet, but half-forgotten face, I fell, like a helpless thing that I was, to the floor, prostrate with emotion. How long I remained thus overcome by sorrow and weeping, I know not. I knew nothing till the old familiar voice, harsh, cold, and cruel, fell upon my ear as the door opened.