When Lindsay had left the parlor Mildred besought her brother, in the most earnest terms, to be more guarded against giving expression to any sentiment which might bring their father's thoughts to the existing war. Her own observation had informed her of the nature of the struggle that agitated his mind, and her effort was continually directed to calm and soothe his feelings by the most unremitting affection, and thus to foster his resolution against taking any part in those schemes in which, she shrewdly guessed, it was the purpose of the emissaries of the royal party to involve him. Her attachment to Arthur Butler she feared to mention to her father, whilst her self-respect and her conviction of her duty to a parent who loved her with unbounded devotion, would not allow her altogether to conceal it. Upon this subject, Lindsay had sufficiently read her heart to know much more about it than she chose to confess; and it did not fail to kindle up in his mind a feverish excitement, that occasionally broke forth in even a petulant reproof, and to furnish the only occasion that had ever arisen of serious displeasure against his daughter. The unhappy association between this incident in the life of Mildred, and the current of a feeling which had its foundation in a weak piece of superstition, to which I have alluded in a former chapter, gave to the idea of Mildred's marriage with Butler a fatal complexion in Lindsay's thoughts. "For what purpose," he asked himself, "but to avert this ill-omened event could I have had such an extraordinary warning?" It had occurred to him that the surest method of protecting his family against this misfortune would be to throw Mildred into other associations, and encourage the growth of other attachments, such as might be expected to grow up in her heart out of the kindness of new friendships. He had even meditated removing her to England, but that plan became so repulsive to him when he found the mention of it distasteful to his children, and it suited so little his own fondness for the retirement he had already cultivated, that he had abandoned it almost as soon as it occurred to him. His next alternative was to favor--though he did so with no great zeal--the proposal lately made by Tyrrel. He little knew the character of the woman he had to deal with. Never was more devotion enshrined in a woman's heart than in Mildred's. Never was more fixed and steady purpose to encounter all hazards and hold cheap all dangers more deeply rooted in man's or woman's resolution, than was Mildred's to cherish the love and follow the fortunes of Arthur Butler. This conflict between love and filial duty sadly perplexed the daughter's peace; and not less disturbing was the strife between parental affection and the supposed mandate of fate, in the breast of the father.