On the morning of her visit, Lady Cecil had received a letter from Gerard: it was incoherent, and had been written by snatches in the carriage on his way to Dromore. Its first words proclaimed his mother's innocence, and the acknowledgment of her wrongs by Sir Boyvill himself. As he went on, his pen lingered--he trembled to write the words, "Our friend, our Elizabeth, is the daughter of the destroyer." It was unnatural, it was impossible--the very thought added acrimony to his detestation of Falkner--it prevented the compassion his generous nature would otherwise have afforded, and yet roused every wish to spare him, as much as he might be spared, for his heroic daughter's sake. He felt deceived, trepanned, doomed. In after life we are willing to compromise with fate--to take the good with the bad--and are satisfied if we can at all lighten the burden of life. In youth we aim at completeness and perfection. Ardent and single-minded, Neville disdained prejudices; and his impulse was, to separate the idea of father and daughter, and to cherish Elizabeth as a being totally distinct from her parentage. But she would not yield to this delusion--she would cling to her father--and if he died by his hand, he would for ever become an object of detestation. Well has Alfieri said, "There is no struggle so vehement as when an upright but passionate heart is divided between inclination and duty." Neville's soul was set upon honour and well-doing; never before had he found the execution of the dictates of his conscience so full of bitterness and impatience. Something of these feelings betrayed themselves in his letter. "We have lost Elizabeth," he wrote; "for ever lost her! Is there no help for this? No help for her? None! She clings to the destroyer's side, and shares his miserable fate--lost to happiness--to the innocence and sunshine of life. She will live a victim and die a martyr to her duties; and she is lost to us for ever!" Lady Cecil read again and again--she wondered--she grieved--she uttered impatient reproaches against Gerard for having sought the truth; and yet her heart was with him, and she rejoiced in the acknowledged innocence of Alithea. She thought of Elizabeth with the deepest grief--had they never met--had she and Gerard never seen each other, neither had loved, and half this wo had been spared. How strange and devious are the ways of fate--how difficult to resign one's self to its mysterious and destructive course! Naturally serene, though vivacious--kind-hearted, but not informed with trembling insensibility--yet so struck was Lady Cecil by the prospects of misery for those she best loved, that she wept bitterly, and wrung her hands in impatient, impotent despair. At this moment Mrs. Raby was announced.