"You'll be happy about it--you'll forgive us, won't you, papa?" she
said, turning at the door.
The old gentleman shuffled heavily up to her, and kissed her on the
forehead.
"God bless you, and God's will be done, my darling!" said he; but at
that moment he could say no more.
An hour afterward, however, when the professor knocked the ashes out of
his second pipe, and laid his hand upon the latch of Bressant's door,
the expression upon his strongly-cut features was neither gloomy nor
severe. There was a look in his eyes of benignant sweetness, all the
more impressive because it made one wonder how it could find a place
beneath such stern eyebrows and so deeply lined a forehead. But, cutting
off an offending right hand, although a bitter piece of work enough for
the time being, may, in its after-effect, work as gracious a miracle in
an older and more forbidding gentleman even than Professor Valeyon.