“My father!” she passionately exclaimed, “it must not be. I cannot, cannot wed him—oh, God! teach me in this hour what I shall say. The time has come—I can no longer keep silent! Father—I have striven to be dutiful, I have tried to please you; nay, sometimes I have grieved my conscience rather than disobey you—but it cannot be so any longer. No!” she wildly said, and her eyes glowed, her whole frame trembled with the violence of her emotion, “I am your child, and, as such, I am bound as far as I can to obey you, but I have another father, even _God_, and to him, before you, before all the world, I owe allegiance. I have solemnly pledged myself to obey his will as I have been taught it; I am a member of His church—yes, my father, I am a Protestant, a Puritan, if so in derision you call those who acknowledge no supreme head but _Christ, no infallible guide_ but the Bible; and can you ask me, in obedience to your will, to renounce my faith, to abjure my church, to forsake that which is dearer to me than all the world beside? No, you will not, you cannot be so cruel, so unjust, so harsh!” “Cease, cease this idle ranting, Lady Mabel. As your father, it is my duty to bring you into the true church, from which, but for my carelessness, you should never have wandered. Is not the opinion of your father, and your sovereign, of more value than your own unenlightened prejudices? Is it not your duty to obey your only parent, at the expense only of the sacrifice of a mere form of worship? “Nay, _speak_ not; I will hear no complaints, no refusals: you shall marry D’Alençon on the day I have fixed, or I will deprive your old Puritan teacher of his living, and send him forth a _beggar_.” With a faint shriek Mabel sprung forward, and fell at her father’s feet, clasping his knees with her cold hands, and lifting her despairing eyes to his face. “Spare, oh! spare me this trial, my father; I will do aught else to please you, but, oh! do not ask me solemnly to confess a faith I have not, or to promise a love that I can never, never give: let me be your own Mabel—let me live with you, and cheer your declining years? I ask no high station, I covet no wealth—only let me be at peace with God, and my own soul! In pity hear me, O father; for her sake, whose name I bear, do not revenge my denial of your wishes on the head of that innocent old man—do not send his gray hairs in sorrow to the grave?” For a moment, one moment only, the proud heart of the aspiring man was softened, as he called to mind one who had also knelt before him, and implored him to let her once more see her childhood’s friends; but the next, the vision of a coronet over that pale brow, round which the long dark curls were falling, and he coldly said—