The Remittance Man by Ambrose Pratt — Read

Major Reay had kept his promise to Jan Digby. He had faithfully related, to his daughter all that had passed on the eventful morning of Jan's third and last arrest. But he had not withdrawn his interdict upon their loves, and even while fulfilling his promise to Jan, he had sternly bidden Marion remember his former warning. For a while the girl had been prostrated with grief, and her father had been terribly anxious concerning her. On the morning of Jan's trial she had remained for hours in a death-like swoon. She awoke from it to weep in a silent despairing fashion that wrung the Major's heart. But not once did she complain, nor did she even ask him to relent. The days that followed were dismal beyond compare. Marion was always in her room; not ill, but sorely pining. She grew pale and thin, a veritable shadow of her former self. She seemed always to wish to be alone.

The Major found the silence of the house intolerable after Jack returned to school. He used to pace the floor of his study hour by hour, sunk in bitter meditation. His great fear was that Marion would contract consumption, the disease which had killed her mother; or perhaps fade into gradual decline from grief. There were times when, tortured by the sight of her white thin face and big sorrowful eyes, sitting opposite to him at meals, their only rendezvous, he would in sheer despair have been glad to give her in marriage to the worst of criminals, if only he might thereby call back the color to her cheeks, and to her lips the old glad smile. The poor old gentleman, torn between duty and affection, and his whole nature crying out with loneliness, at last began to drink more brandy than was good for him.