Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 440, page 19 by Various Authors
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ce more in his keen glance. His youth was, he said, renewed in little Annie. He could even bear to speak, though still with remorseful emotion, of his own lost child. 'No fear, Sharp,' he said, 'that I make that terrible mistake again. Annie will fall in love, please God, with no unlettered, soulless booby! Her mind shall be elevated, beautiful, and pure, as her person--she is the image of her mother--promises to be charming and attractive. You must come and see her.' I promised to do so; and he went his way. At one of these interviews--the first it must have been--I made a chance inquiry for his son-in-law, Hamblin. As the name passed my lips, a look of hate and rage flashed out of his burning eyes. I did not utter another word, nor did he; and we separated in silence.
It was evening, and I was returning in a gig from a rather long journey into the country, when I called, in redemption of my promise, upon James Dutton. Annie was really, I found, an engaging, pretty, blue-eyed, golden-haired child; and I was not so much surprised at her grandfather's doting fondness--a fondness entirely reciprocated, it seemed, by the little girl. It struck me, albeit, that it was a perilous thing for a man of Dutton's vehement, fiery nature to stake again, as he evidently had done, his all of life and happiness upon one frail existence. An illustration of my thought or fear occurred just after we had finished tea. A knock was heard at the outer-door, and presently a man's voice, in quarrelling, drunken remonstrance with the servant who opened it. The same deadly scowl I had seen sweep over Dutton's countenance upon the mention of Hamblin's name, again gleamed darkly there; and finding, after a moment or two, that the intruder would not be denied, the master of the house gently removed Annie from his knee, and strode out of the room.
'Follow grandpapa,' whispered Mrs Rivers, a highly respectable widow of about forty years of age, whom Mr Dutton had engaged at a high salary to superintend Annie's education. The child