"They are to be mine to-night, father - in one hour. The moment they become mine they will be yours."

"Why, Vessy," said the Judge, "if they are yours even to keep a minute, the shortest way with them is up the chimney!"

He made a stride forward to take them from her hand. She laid them in her lap and looked at him so calmly that he stopped.

"You may burn the house, papa," she said, "it is still your own. But these papers you could only burn by a crime. It would be cheating an honorable man."

"Honorable! Who?" the Judge exclaimed.

"He who is to be my husband."

"You marry Meshach Milburn!" shouted the Judge, "O curse of God! - not him?"

"Yes, this night," answered Vesta; "I respect him. I hold these obligations by his trust in me. They are my engagement ring."

Judge Custis raised a loud howl like a man into whom a nail is driven, and fell at his daughter's feet and clasped her knees.

"This is to torture me," he cried; "he has not dared to ask you, Vesta?"

"Yes, and my word is passed, father. Shall that word, the word of a Custis, be less than a Milburn's faith. By the love he bore me, Mr. Milburn gave me these debts for my dower - a rare faith in one so prudent. If I do not marry him, they will be given back to him this night."

"Then give them back, my child, and save your soul and your purity, lest I live to be cursed with the sight of my noble daughter's shame? This marriage will be unholy, and the censure to follow it will be the bankruptcy of more than our estate - of our simple fame and old family respect. We have friends left who would help us. If you marry Milburn, they will all despise and repudiate us."

"I do not believe it," said Vesta. "The sense and courage of that gentleman - he is a gentleman, for I have seen him, and a gentleman of many gifts - will compel respect even where false pride and family pretension appear to put him down. Who that underrates him will make any considerable sacrifice to assist us? Your sons, - will they do it? Then by what right do they decide my marriage choice? No, father, I only do my part to support our house in its extremity, as these gentlemen and others have done before."

She pointed to the old portraits of Custises on the wall. If any of them looked dissatisfied, he met a countenance haughty as his own.

"Vesta," her father called, "you know you do not love this man?"

Looking back a minute at the longing in his face, which now wore the solicitude of personal affection, she melted under it.