“The tone which I may assume toward you, Miss Gourlay, must be regulated by your own obedience.”

“But in what have I ever failed in obedience to you, my dear papa?”

“Perhaps you compliment your obedience prematurely, Lucy—­it has never yet been seriously tested.”

Her beautiful face crimsoned at this assertion; for she well knew that many a severe imposition had been placed upon her during girlhood, and that, had she been any other girl than she was, her very youth would have been forced into opposition to commands that originated in whim, caprice, and selfishness.  Even when countenanced, however, by the authority of her other parent, and absolutely urged against compliance with injunctions that were often cruel and oppressive, she preferred, at any risk, to accommodate herself to them rather than become the cause of estrangement or ill-feeling between him and her mother, or her mother’s friends.  Such a charge as this, then, was not only ungenerous, but, as he must have well known, utterly unfounded.

“I do not wish, sir,” she replied, “to make any allusion to the past, unless simply to say, that, if severe and trying instances of obedience have been exacted from me, under very peculiar circumstances, I trust I have not been found wanting in my duty to you.”

“That obedience, Miss Gourlay, which is reluctantly given, had better been forgotten.”

“You have forced me to remember it in my own defence, papa; but I am not conscious that it was reluctant.”

“You contradict me, madam.”

“No, sir; I only take the liberty of setting you right.  My obedience, if you recollect, was cheerful; for I did not wish to occasion ill-will between you and mamma—­my dear mamma.”

“I believe you considered that you had only one parent, Miss Gourlay?”

“That loved me, sir, you would add.  But, papa, why should there be such a dialogue as this between you and your daughter—­your orphan daughter, and your only child?  It is not natural, Something, I see, has discomposed your temper; I am ignorant of it.”

“I made you aware, some time ago, that the Earl of Cullamore and I had entered into a matrimonial arrangement between you and his son, Lord Dunroe.”

A deadly paleness settled upon her countenance at these words—­a paleness the more obvious, as it contrasted so strongly with the previous rich hue of her complexion, which had been already heightened by the wanton harshness of her father’s manner.  The baronet’s eyes, or rather his eye, was fixed upon her with a severity which this incident rapidly increased.

“You grow pale, Miss Gourlay; and there seems to be something in this allusion to Lord Dunroe that is painful to you.  How is this, madam?  I do not understand it.”

“I am, indeed, pale, and I feel that I am; for what is there that could drive the hue of modesty from the cheek of a daughter, sooner than the fact of her own father purposing to unite her to a profligate?  You seldom jest, papa; but I hope you do so now.”