“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 tell you, that while I have life and the power of speech, I will fling back, even into a father’s face, the falsehoods—­the gross and unmanly falsehoods—­with which he insults her tomb, and calumniates her memory and her virtues.  Do not blame me, sir, for this language; I would be glad to honor you if I could; I beseech you, my father, enable me to do so.”

“I see you take a peculiar—­a wanton pleasure in calling me a liar.”

“No, sir, I do not call you a liar; but I know you regard truth no farther than it serves your own purposes.  Have you not told me just now, that the gentleman in the Mitre Inn has made certain disclosures to you concerning himself and me?  And now, father, I ask you, is there one word of truth in this assertion?  You know there is not.  Have you not sought my confidence by a series of false pretences, and a relation of circumstances that were utterly without foundation?  All this, however, though inexpressibly painful to me as your daughter, I could overlook without one word of reply; but I never will allow you to cast foul and cowardly reproach upon the memory of the best of mothers—­upon the memory of a wife of whom, father, you were unworthy, and whom, to my own knowledge, your harshness and severity hurried into a premature grave.  Oh, never did woman pay so dreadful a penalty for suffering herself to be forced into marriage with a man she could not love, and who was unworthy of her affection!  That, sir, was the only action of her life in which her daughter cannot, will not, imitate her.”