Elizabeth heard all this with considerable coldness. "It grieves me," she said, "to repay intended kindness with something like repulse. I have no wish to speak of the past; nor to remind you that if I was not brought up in obedience to you all, it was because my father was disowned, my mother abandoned; and I, a little child, an orphan, was left to live and die in dependance. I, who then bore your name, had become a subject of niggard and degrading charity. Then, young as I was, I felt gratitude, obedience, duty, all due to the generous benefactor who raised me from this depth of want, and made me the child of his heart. It is a lesson I have been learning many years; I cannot unlearn it now. I am his; bought by his kindness; earned by his unceasing care for me, I belong to him--his child--if you will, his servant--I do not quarrel with names--a child's duty I pay him, and will ever. Do not be angry with me, dear aunt, if I may give you that name--dearest Lady Cecil, do not look so imploringly on me--I am very unhappy. Mr. Falkner a prisoner, accused of the most hideous crime--treated with ignominy--he whose nerves are agonized by a touch--whose frame is even now decaying through sickness and sorrow--and I, and every hope, away. I am very unhappy. Do not urge me to what is impossible, and thrice, thrice wicked. I must go to him; day and night I shall have no peace till I am at his side; do not, for my sake do not, dispute this sacred duty." It was not thus that the two ladies could be led to desist; they soothed her, but again returned to the charge. Lady Cecil brought a thousand arguments of worldly wisdom, of feminine delicacy. Mrs. Raby insinuated the duty owed to her family, to shield it from the disgrace she was bringing on it. They both insisted on the impossibility, on the foolish romance of her notions. Had she been really his daughter, her joining him in prison was impracticable--out of all propriety. But Elizabeth had been brought up to regard feelings, rather than conventional observances; duties, not proprieties. All her life Falkner had been her law, rule, every tie to her; she knew and felt nothing beyond. When she had followed him to Greece--when she had visited the Morea, to bear him, dying, away--when at Zante she had watched by his sick couch, the world, and all the Rabys it contained, were nothing to her; and now, when he was visited by a far heavier calamity, when, in solitude and misery, he had, besides her, no one comfort under heaven, was she to adopt a new system of conduct, become a timid, home--bred young lady, tied by the most frivolous rules, impeded by fictitious notions of propriety and false delicacy? Whether they were right and she were wrong--whether, indeed, such submission to society--such useless, degrading dereliction of nobler duties, was adapted for feminine conduct, and whether she, despising such bonds, sought a bold and dangerous freedom, she could not