The Highland monthly - National Library of Scotland

5^8 The Highland Monthly.
" ' Let the father suffer through the broken heart of his
son ;' these are father's words ; and I swore an oath—whaf
a horrible Httle oath it was !—to ' do my best. He will
then have an object-lesson of what a broken heart '— is po' r
dad, his heart must really have been broken. They say a
broken heart makes people queer, if it does not kill. D.id
is queer; very queer sometimes. Poor dad! I wonder
what a broken heart feels like—when one loves heart and
soul, as the saying is, and then finds his love which she
has basked in, transferred to somebody else ! It seems so
very dreadful in story books ! Oh ! how I would hate the
man ;
'
how Mr Richard
The atmosphere did give some indication of a frosty
tendency, but unless the reflection came from the russet
beech over yonder, there was nothing to suggest the cause
of the blush which here surged up on her neck and
features. Besides, not even those midges, though trouble-
somely merry, could surely compel any young lady to
jump up, all of a sudden, from such a dramatic and
absorbing train of thought, and make an attack upon
the furniture; which, judging from radical character of the
re-arrangement, seemed, in this boudoir, to have got
thoroughly out of sympathy with the feminine idea of
things. At last everything, even to a dust speck, defied
further interference, and Miss Somerton paused in the
middle of the floor, biting her pretty red lips. Despite the
physical efforts she had put forth, her thoughts followed
the same groove.
" I hate to play the part," she said aloud, with a stamp
of the foot, " what possibly can be the good of it ?
" It must be done ;
and
about the good of it, leave that
to me," said a familiar voice at the door-way, and wheel-
ing round, she confronted her father !
" You here, father !"
" Why not, child? I came in search of you."
" Well, but you came so— so suddenly, and its all so
very—very mysterious," replied Julia apologetically, break-
ing down into violent sobbing.
'