Returning homeward, he felt impelled to prolong his tour, he visited some of the lakes of Westmoreland, and the mountain scenery of Derbyshire. The thought of return was painful, so he lingered on the way, and wrote for his letters to be forwarded to him. He had been some weeks without receiving any from Elizabeth, and he felt extreme impatience again to be blessed with the sight of her handwriting--he felt how passionately he loved her--how to part from her was to part from every joy of life; he called himself her father--his heart acknowledged the tie in every pulsation; no father ever worshipped a child so fervently; her voice, her smile--and dear loving eyes, where were they?--they were far, but here was something--a little packet of letters, that must for the present stand in lieu of the dearer blessing of her presence. He looked at the papers with delight--he pressed them to his lips--he delayed to open them, as if he did not deserve the joy they would communicate--as if its excess would overpower him. "I purpose parting from her," he thought; "but still she is mine, mine when she traced those lines--mine as I read the expressions of her affection; there are hours of delight garnered for me in those little sealed talismans that nothing future or past can tarnish, and yet the name of Neville will be there!" The thought brought a cold chill with it, and he opened the letters hastily to know the worst. Elizabeth had half forgotten the pain with which Falkner had at one time shrunk from a name become so dear to her; when she wrote, her heart was full of Gerard's story--and, besides, she had had letters from her father speaking of him with kindness, so that she indulged herself by alluding to it--to the disappearance of his mother and Gerard's misery; the trial--the brutality of Sir Boyvill; and last, to the resolution formed in childhood, brooded over through youth, now acted upon, to discover his mother's destroyer. "Nor is it," she wrote, "any vulgar feeling of vengeance that influences him--but the purest and noblest motives. She is stigmatized as unworthy--he would vindicate her fame. When I hear the surmises, the accusations cast on her, I feel with him. To hear a beloved parent accused of guilt, must indeed be the most bitter wo; to believe her innocent, and to prove her such, the only alleviation. God grant that he may succeed!--and though I wish no ill to any human being, yet rather may the height of evil fall on the head of the true criminal, than continue to cloud the days of a being whose soul is moulded in sensibility and honour!" "Thus do you pray, heedless Elizabeth! May the true criminal feel the height of evil; may he--whom you have saved from death--endure tortures compared to which a thousand deaths were nothing! Be it so! you shall have your wish!"