fellow-creature,
hurried, I fear, in the very midst of his profligacy, into eternity! The
thought is insupportable; and I know not, unless I can strictly preserve
my incognito, whether I am at this moment liable, if apprehended, to pay
the penalty which the law exacts. The only consolation that remains
for me is, that the act was not of my seeking, but arrogantly and
imperiously forced upon me."

CHAPTER VII. The Baronet attempts by Falsehood

The Baronet attempts by Falsehood to urge his Daughter into an Avowal of
her Lover's Name.

Sir Thomas Gourlay, after his unpleasant interview with the stranger,
rode easily home, meditating upon some feasible plan by which he hoped
to succeed in entrapping his daughter into the avowal of her lover's
name, for he had no doubt whatsoever that the gentleman at the inn and
he were one and the same individual. For this purpose, he determined
to put on a cheerful face, and assume, as far as in him lay, an air of
uncommon satisfaction. Now this was a task of no ordinary difficulty for
Sir Thomas to encounter. The expression of all the fiercer and darker
passions was natural to such a countenance as his; but even to imagine
such a one lit up with mirth, was to conceive an image so grotesque and
ridiculous, that the firmest gravity must give way before it. His frown
was a thing perfectly intelligible, but to witness his smile, or rather
his effort at one, was to witness an unnatural phenomenon of the most
awful kind, and little short of a prodigy. If one could suppose the sun
giving a melancholy and lugubrious grin through the darkness of a total
eclipse, they might form some conception of the jocular solemnity which
threw its deep but comic shadow over his visage. One might expect the
whole machinery of the face, with as much probability as that of a mill,
to change its habitual motions, and turn in an opposite direction. It
seemed, in fact, as if a general breaking up of the countenance was
about to take place, and that the several features, like a crew of
thieves and vagabonds flying from the officers of justice, were all
determined to provide for themselves.

Lucy saw at a glance that her father was about to get into one of those
tender and complacent moods which were few and far between, and, made
wise by experience, she very properly conjectured, from his appearance,
that some deep design was concealed under it. Anxious, therefore, to
avoid a prolonged dialogue, and fee