‘ I have done so, Bertha,’ pleaded Caleb. ‘There is one person that you know, my dove—’
‘ Oh father! why do you say, I know?’ she answered, in a term of keen reproach. ‘What and whom do I know! I who have no leader! I so miserably blind.’
In the anguish of her heart, she stretched out her hands, as if she were groping her way; then spread them, in a manner most forlorn and sad, upon her face.
‘ The marriage that takes place to-day,’ said Caleb, ‘is with a stern, sordid, grinding man. A hard master to you and me, my dear, for many years. Ugly in his looks, and in his nature. Cold and callous always. Unlike what I have painted him to you in everything, my child. In everything.’
‘ Oh why,’ cried the Blind Girl, tortured, as it seemed, almost beyond endurance, ‘why d
