"You ought to be in bed, Emmeline."

"I cannot sleep."

"Go, and talk to me another time."

"No, it must be now. You have helped me when I struggled to rise into a
clearer world, and I think, humble as I am, I can help you now. I have
had a thought this night that if you do not pray for him and bless
him...it will end miserably. My friend, have you done so?"

He was stung and offended, and could hardly help showing it in spite of
his mask.

"Have you done so, Austin?"

"This is assuredly a new way of committing fathers to the follies of
their sons, Emmeline!"

"No, not that. But will you pray for your boy, and bless him, before the
day comes?"

He restrained himself to pronounce his words calmly:--"And I must do
this, or it will end in misery? How else can it end? Can I save him from
the seed he has sown? Consider, Emmeline, what you say. He has repeated
his cousin's sin. You see the end of that."

"Oh, so different! This young person is not, is not of the class poor
Austin Wentworth allied himself to. Indeed it is different. And he--be
just and admit his nobleness. I fancied you did. This young person has
great beauty, she has the elements of good breeding, she--indeed I think,
had she been in another position, you would not have looked upon her
unfavourably."

"She may be too good for my son!" The baronet spoke with sublime
bitterness.

"No woman is too good for Richard, and you know it."

"Pass her."

"Yes, I will speak only of him. He met her by a fatal accident. We
thought his love dead, and so did he till he saw her again. He met her,
he thought we were plotting against him, he thought he should lose her
for ever, and is the madness of an hour he did this...."

"My Emmeline pleads bravely for clandestine matches."

"Ah! do not trifle, my friend. Say: would you have had him act as young
men in his position generally do to young women beneath them?"

Sir Austin did not like the question. It probed him very severely.

"You mean," he said, "that fathers must fold their arms, and either
submit to infamous marriages, or have these creatures ruined."

"I do not mean that," exclaimed the lady, striving for what she did mean,
and how to express it. "I mean that he loved her. Is it not a madness at
his age? But what I chiefly mean is--save him from the consequences. No,
you shall not withdraw your hand. Think of his pride, his sensitiveness,
his great wild nature--wild when he is set wrong: think how