The Land Claim — page 72: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

68 THE LAND-CLAIM. your professions of sorrow. I have other business with you to-day, which concerns your welfare, though you do not deserve that I should consult it. Take a chair, and listen to what I have to say.” “ Will you never forgive me?” she asked, passionately. “Oh, father! father! I do not care about-my own welfare, if you will not be reconciled to me. Iam so sorry; I wish so much to please you; and I will be so obedient to you that you can not help but love me a little.” “Don’t talk about obedience,” he said, abruptly, “ daughter of a disobedient mother! Yet you shall obey me at last, and the time for it has come to-day.” He paused for a moment, while Alicia seated herself, - according to a sign from him, at a little distance away, and endeavored to restrain her tears. “The French trader,” he resumed, with/a sneer at the word, “has taken a fancy to your pretty face. He wishes to adopt you, he says, which means, I suppose, that when he can shake off the Indian women he has about him, he will marry you. In the mean time, you are to be sent out of the way of other and younger admirers, under a pretense of going to school.” Seeing that his daughter sat silent, and showed no signs of surprise, or grief, or resentment, as he believed she must, the cruel father was goaded on by this patient submission to even a greater desire for her humiliation than had at first actuated him. “You have already begun, I hear, in your mother’s ways. Last night you were out in comggny with the man who caused your father to be arrested as a murderer.” “Don’t say any more, father, don’t!” cried Alicia, entreat- ingly. “Mr. Allen is your friend now, and hopes to prove your innocence, he says. He has been kinder to me than a brother, and I can not help liking him very much. Bat if it displeases you I will not see him again,” she murmured, with quivering lips. “Mr. Mauvais will not give you the opportunity,” returned the relentless man. “Father,” said Alicia, approaching him, and sinking on her knees, “if I give up Mr. Allen, and do as you wish with Commicloooks.conrn