father the friend of his only child?
I know not how to reply to you, sir; you have placed me in a position of
almost unexampled distress and pain. I cannot, without an apparent want
of respect and duty, give expression to what I know and feel."

"Why not, you foolish girl, especially when you see me in such
good-humor? Take courage. You will find me more indulgent than you
imagine. Imitate your lover yonder."

She looked at him, and her eyes sparkled through her tears with shame,
but not merely with shame, for her heart was filled with such an
indignant and oppressive sense of his falsehood as caused her to weep
and sob aloud for two or three minutes.

"Come, my dear child, I repeat--imitate your lover yonder. Confess; but
don't weep thus. Surely I am not harsh to you now?"

"Papa," she replied, wiping her eyes, "the confidence which you solicit,
it is not in my power to bestow. Do not, therefore, press me on this
subject. It is enough that I have already confessed to you that my
affections are engaged. I will now add what perhaps I ought to have
added before, that this was with the sanction of my dear mamma. Indeed,
I would have said so, but that I was reluctant to occasion reflections
from you incompatible with my affection for her memory."

"Your mother, madam," he added, his face blackening into the hue of his
natural temper, "was always a poor, weak-minded woman. She was foolish,
madam, and indiscreet, and has made you wicked--trained you up to
hypocrisy, falsehood, and disobedience. Yes, madam, and in every
instance where you go contrary to my will, you act upon her principles.
Why do you not respect truth, Miss Gourlay?"

"Alas, sir!" she replied, stung and shocked by his unmanly reflections
upon the memory of her mother, whilst her tears burst out afresh, "I am
this moment weeping for my father's disregard of it."

"How, madam! I am a liar, am I? Oh, dutiful daughter!"

"Mamma, sir, was all truth, all goodness, all affection. She was at once
an angel and a martyr, and I will not hear her blessed memory insulted
by the very man who, above all others, ought to protect and revere it.
I am not, papa, to be intimidated by looks. If it be our duty to defend
the absent, is it not ten thousand times more so to defend the dead?
Shall a daughter hear with acquiescence the memory of a mother, who
would have died for her, loaded with obloquy and falsehood? No, sir!
Menace and abuse myself as much as you wish, but I