his wretched body grew lean for want of food; for this all the world loathed him.  In his youth poverty crushed him; but his little girl, away at school, never knew the meaning of the word.  Widows went portionless, but she did not want; orphans starved, her platter was always full. He had been spattered by the coaches of the rich; but now his chariot, and her chariot, would take a drive.  They had called him Beast; but now they called him gentleman.

The hundreds who drank his wine and trifled with his sweets called him gentleman, and hundreds more were ready to go down on their knees to his own flesh and blood.  Now was the time to enjoy, now the day of happiness.  Money was a drug; in his abundance, he could never want.  He had love, grandeur, troops of friends; now he would live a monarch.  Flushed with victory, his eyes blazed, his voice rang clear and loud in its exultation, and his lank form swelled with defiance.  Springing to his feet, and clutching up a decanter, he waved it wildly around his head, and, challenging God or man to mar such peace, shivered it on the floor.

Wonder-stricken at the intensity of his vulgarity, and shocked at the sacrilege, I left; and from that moment Hardy Gripstone became a study.  Every step in his tortuous course, every phase of his ostentation, every enormity on good taste, was followed with ceaseless vigilance.  Excesses that would have startled the most thoughtless were pursued with restless activity; absurdities that drew forth a shout of ridicule were committed with provoking good humor.  No freak seemed exuberant, no folly preposterous, no extremity extravagance.  The joy of paternity, sinking deep into his nature, made every peculiarity more glaringly apparent.  Money had been his idol, its accumulation the summit of his ambition; its reckless sacrifice in his daughter’s honor appeared the only adequate expression of his love.  The intervals of his devotion were passed in idle boasting, and to me he detailed every incident.  There was something really touching in the abject way in which he mentioned each trifle concerning her.  Little circumstances connected with her daily life were described as one would describe the traits of some rare animal.  His career of degradation seemed to have blunted every idea of responsibility.  He looked upon her as a superior being, and her adornment as a sacred duty.  The richness of her toilet, the magnificence of her equipage, the glory of her beauty, became an inexhaustible surprise and delight.  The utter lack of congeniality, the barrier of caste that divided them, was indescribably sad.  Rapturous admiration, gentle amazement, blind idolatry, meek bewilderment, the one twisted by brutality to a living distortion, the other lifted by refinement to the embodiment of womanly grace; and yet they were father and daughter.  To do her justice, she strove in every way to testify her love and gratitude for her