without an elevated character and a generous heart: do you censure them for extending the mind, and giving a more vast, more general influence to virtue itself?"--"Virtue!" she repeated, with a bitter smile; "I know not what you mean by the word, so applied. The virtue of a young woman, who flies from her father's home, establishes herself in Italy, leads the _freest_ life, receives all kinds of homage, to say no worse, sets an example pernicious to others as to herself, abandoning her rank, her family, her name----"--"Madam," interrupted Oswald, "she sacrificed her name to you, and to your daughter, whom she feared to injure."--"She knew that she dishonored it, then," replied the step-mother.--"This is too much," said Oswald, violently: "Corinne Edgarmond will soon be Lady Nevil, and we shall then see if you blush to acknowledge the daughter of your Lord. You confound with the vulgar herd a being gifted like no other woman--an angel of goodness, tender and diffident at heart, as she is sublime of soul. She may have had her faults, if that innate superiority that could not conform with common rules be one, but a single deed or word of hers might well efface them all. She will more honor the man she chooses to protect her than could the empress of a world."--"Be that man, then, my Lord!" said Lady Edgarmond, making an effort to restrain her feelings: "satirize me as narrow-minded; nothing you say can change me. I understand by morality, an exact observance of established rules; beyond which, fine qualities misapplied deserve at best but pity."--"The world would have been very sterile, my Lady," said Oswald, "had it always thoughts you do of genius and enthusiasm: human nature would have become a thing of mere formalities. But, not to continue this fruitless discussion, I will only ask, if you mean to acknowledge your daughter-in-law, when she is my wife?"--"Still less on that account," answered her Ladyship: "I owe your father's memory my exertions to prevent so fatal a union if I can."--"My father!" repeated Nevil, always agitated by that name.--"Are you ignorant," she continued, "that he refused her, ere she had committed any actual fault? foreseeing, with the perfect sagacity that so characterized him, what she would one day become?"--"How, madam! what more know you of this?"--"Your father's letter to Lord Edgarmond on the subject," interrupted the lady, "is in the hands of his old friend, Mr. Dickson. I sent it to him, when I heard of your connection with this Corinne, that you might read it on your return: it would not have become me to retain it." Oswald, after a few moments' silence, resumed: "I ask your Ladyship but for an act of justice, due to yourself, that is, to receive your husband's daughter as she deserves."--"I _shall_ not, in any way, my Lord, contribute to your misery. If her present nameless and unmatronized existence be an obstacle to your marrying her, God, and your father, forbid that I