Miss Hardcastle, fully convinced that nothing could be gained in favour of prudence and circumspection during the influence of hopes so sanguine in favour of love, suffered her friend’s earnestness to abate, without opposing her fond belief by producing those difficulties which she foresaw would arise to baffle her intentions and to disturb her brother’s happiness. She soon quitted the room, in order to consider those steps necessary to its security, and the conduct she had to pursue. But Lucy Hardcastle had been taught to consider a positive duty as liable to no appeal from inclination. She knew, that, in order to prevent Miss Cowley’s growing attachment to her brother, her parents had yielded up a point, on which depended their highest satisfactions. Her mother had frequently mentioned losing sight of her son, as one of those privations which had exercised her fortitude in a peculiar degree; and that she could never have supported his absence from his father’s tuition, and her own love, but from the considerations of the duty she owed to Mr. Hardcastle, and the reverence she felt for his judgment. With this example before her, Lucy hastily repaired to her father and ingenuously imparted to him her own suspicions. “Disposed as I am,” continued she smiling, “to favour those lovers, I think it my duty, my dear Sir, to refer myself to you. I shall soon be Rachel’s confidant, and governed as I shall be, by my affection for her and for my brother, I may be led to oppose your will, and frustrate your plans of wisdom and prudence. I am certain that their early attachment is confirmed and strengthened by their respectively discovering the improvements which time has produced in both.”