seemed to herself like a criminal awaiting execution. Softly she opened
the door and stepped out in front of her father, stopping him in his
walk.

"Papa," she said, with pale, trembling lips, looking beseechingly up
into his face, "whatever you are going to do to me, won't you please do
it at once and let me have it over?"

He took her hand and, sitting down, drew her to his side, putting his
arm around her.

"My little daughter," he said very gravely, but not unkindly, "my
responsibility in regard to your training weighs very heavily on my
mind; it is plain to me that you will make either a very good and useful
woman, or one who will be a curse to herself and others; for you are too
energetic and impulsive, too full of strong feeling to be lukewarm and
indifferent in anything.

"You are forming your character now for time and for eternity, and I
must do whatever lies in my power to help you to form it aright; for
good and not for evil. You inherit a sinful nature from me, and have
very strong passions which must be conquered or they will prove your
ruin. I fear you do not see the great sinfulness of their indulgence,
and that it may be that I am partly to blame for that in having passed
too lightly over such exhibitions of them as have come under my notice:
in short, that perhaps if I had been more justly severe with your
faults you would have been more thoroughly convinced of their
heinousness and striven harder and with greater success to conquer them.

"Therefore, after much thought and deliberation, and much prayer for