A Private Chivalry by Francis Lynde

WHEN a great misfortune threatens, the heavens are darkened and the smaller ills are obscured; but when the eclipse passes, the lesser evils magnify themselves, assuming abnormal proportions in a field wherein they are no longer secondary. What time Judge Langford was oppressed by the fear that his son had added a murder to the sum of his iniquities, the disgrace consequent upon the dragging of the family name into the public prints seemed trifling. But when it became apparent that William was not to be hanged, the lesser misfortune demanded a hearing, and the judge shut himself up in his library to mourn over the wreck of the good name he had builded.

To him in his sorrowful seclusion came Dorothy, grief-stricken and incoherent, staggering under a burden of remorseful anguish too heavy to be borne alone. The judge loved his elder daughter with an affection which was both tenderer and less prideful than that shared by the younger; and he postponed his private grief in the effort to measure and assuage hers.