408 THE TWIN SISTERS. 



struggles they had made to reconcile themselves to his presence 

 might have proved eventually successful, spite even of his un- 

 kindness; but when they were toiling by day and by night, and 

 found no thanks, no spark of human kindness, bitter feelings were 

 now largely mixed up with their fears of him. He entered into no 

 conversation with them, no detail of his or their past life, none of 

 his or their present or future prospects, but moved in and about the 

 house like some evil spirit, coming and going they knew not whence 

 nor whither. 



Jane, who had hitherto borne up, now felt doubly miserable as she 

 looked upon her sister : her woman's soul was roused, and, ad- 

 dressing her father, she implored him to have pity upon them : she 

 knelt in her young beauty before him, clasped his knees, and from 

 lips on which 



" Persuasion dwelt, 

 And the fresh sweetness of the vernal hours/' 



prayed that he would cease his constant demands demands too great 

 for their utmost efforts to supply, and implored him to look at his 

 withering child and have compassion. He listened coldly. Rising 

 from her suppliant posture, with kindling eyes she declared, that if 

 the same conduct were continued, they would again have recourse to 

 that asylum to which his barbarity had once before driven them. 

 After breaking the heart of their mother, she told him, he had come 

 upon them as a blight, and had ruined and destroyed a happiness which, 

 without him, they might have long continued to enjoy. He rose 

 and left the house without answering her appeal. Retribution was, 

 however, at hand ; the punishment for his wanton destruction of so 

 much pure enjoyment was hovering over him. 



CHAPTER IV. 



" Condole thee here 



With silence only, and a dying bed." 



DANIEL'S ROSAMOND. 



The tyrant father remained away two days, and the sisters were 

 indulging the fond expectation that they were at last freed from an 

 oppression so unmerited and so strangely unnatural. Poor girls ! 

 their grief and shame, great as they were, would have been redoubled, 

 could their innocent hearts have even conceived how he was wasting 

 their hard-won earnings. On the evening of the second day he 

 again came, to their great sorrow, again came, fiend-like, to disturb 

 their peace : but he appeared ill, and immediately retired. Imputing 

 it to the exhaustion of continued inebriation, no pity was felt or 

 expressed, and the twin sisters remained grieving silently and plying 

 their tasks. After a time they were disturbed by loud groans, as of 

 one in great agony, proceeding from the room occupied by their 

 father : starting up, under the influence of charitable feeling, they 

 both went to him : he lay writhing on the bed, with convulsed limbs, 

 distorted features, and eyes that glared in the dim light with a 



