that such things, as it was with you, are but a very small part of a
man's life.'

'I am not one of the five hundred men, whom any one of five hundred
women might have equally pleased,' said Dr. Spencer; 'but it is so
far true, that the positive pain and envy wore out, and would not
have interfered with my after life, but for my own folly. No, Ethel;
it was not the loss of her that embittered and threw away my
existence; it was my own rash vow, and its headstrong fulfilment,
which has left me no right to your father's peaceful spirit.'

'How little we guessed!' said Ethel. 'So cheerful and ready as you
always are.'

'I never trouble others, he said abruptly. 'Neither man nor woman
ever heard a word of all this; and you would not have heard it now,
but for that sea; and you have got your mother's voice, and some of
her ways, since you have grown older and more sedate.'

'Oh, I am so glad!' said Ethel, who had been led to view her likeness
to her father as natural, that to her mother as acquired.

Those were the last words of the conversation; but Ethel, leaning
from her window to listen to the plash of the waves, suspected that
the slowly moving meteor she beheld, denoted that a cigar was
soothing the emotions excited by their dialogue. She mused long over
that revelation of the motives of the life that had always been noble
and generous in the midst of much that was eccentric and wayward, and
constantly the beat of the waves repeated to her the half-
comprehended words, 'Never threaten Providence.'