Alicia interrupted the painful and unfeeling harangue.  It was neither, she said, for Sir Edmund’s advantage nor to gratify his mother’s pride, but to perform the dictates of her own conscience, that she had resigned him; she even ventured to declare that the sharpest pang which that resignation had cost her was the firm conviction that it would inflict upon him a deep and lasting sorrow.

Lady Audley, convinced that moderate measures would be most likely to ensure a continuation of Alicia’s obedience, expressed herself grieved at the necessity of parting with her, and pleased that she should have the good sense to perceive the propriety of such a separation.

Sir Duncan Malcolm, the grandfather of Alicia, had, in the few communications that had passed between Lady Audley and him, always expressed a wish to see his granddaughter before he died.  Her ladyship’s antipathy to Scotland was such that she would have deemed it absolute contamination for her niece to have entered the country; and she had therefore always eluded the request.

It was now, of all plans, the most eligible; and she graciously offered to convey her niece as far as Edinburgh.  The journey was immediately settled; and before Alicia left her aunt’s presence a promise was exacted with unfeeling tenacity, and given with melancholy firmness, never to unite herself to Sir Edmund unsanctioned by his mother.

Alas! how imperfect is human wisdom!  Even in seeking to do right how many are the errors we commit!  Alicia judged wrong in thus sacrificing the happiness of Sir Edmund to the pride and injustice of his mother; but her error was that of a noble, self-denying spirit, entitled to respect, even though it cannot claim approbation.  The honourable open conduct of her niece had so far gained upon Lady Audley that she did not object to her writing to Sir Edmund,

“DEAR SIR EDMUND—­A painful line of conduct is pointed out to me by duty; yet of all the regrets I feel not one is so poignant as the consciousness of that which you will feel at learning that I have forever resigned the claims you so lately gave me to your heart and hand.  It was not weakness—­it could not be inconstancy—­that produced the painful sacrifice of a distinction still more gratifying to my heart than flattering to my pride.

“Need I remind you that to your mother I owe every benefit in life?  Nothing can release me from the tribute of gratitude which would be ill repaid by braving her authority and despising her will.  Should I give her reason to regret the hour she received me under her roof, to repent of every benefit she has hitherto bestowed on me; should I draw down a mother’s displeasure, what reasonable hopes could we entertain of solid peace through life?  I am not in a situation which entitles me to question the justice of Lady Audley’s will; and that will has pronounced that I shall never be Sir Edmund’s wife.

“Your first impulse may perhaps be to accuse me of coldness and ingratitude in quitting the place and country you inhabit, and resigning you back to yourself, without personally taking leave of you; but I trust that you will, on reflection, absolve me from the charge.