"I have been considering for two months. Let me decide for you now, for you are not able to do so wisely. Write at once to Cornelia, that is your duty as well as your pleasure. But before you go to her, there are things indispensable to be done. Will you ask Doctor Moran for his child, and not be able to show him that you can care for her as she deserves to be cared for? Lawyers will not be hurried, there will be consultations, and engrossings, and signings, and love--in your case--will have to wait upon law." "'Tis hard for love, and harder perhaps for anger to wait. For I am in a passion of wrath at Van Ariens. I long to be near him. Oh what suffering his envy and hatred have caused others!" "And himself also. Be sure of that, or he had not tried to find some ease in a kind of confession. Doctor Roslyn will tell you that it is an eternal law, that wherever sin is, sorrow will answer it." "The man is hateful to me." "He has done a thing that makes him hateful; but perhaps for all that, he has been so miserable about it, as to have the pity of the Uncondemning One. I hear your father coming. I am sure you will have his sympathy in all things." She left the room as the Earl entered it. He was in unusually high spirits. Some political news had delighted him, and without noticing his son's excitement he said-- "The Commons have taken things in their own hands, George. I said they would. They listen to the King and the Lords very respectfully, and then obey themselves. Most of the men in the Lower House are unfit to enter it." "Well, sir, the Lords as a rule send them there--you have sent three of them yourself--and unfit men in public places, suppose prior unfitness in those who have the places to dispose of. But the government is not interesting. I have something else, father, to think about." "Indeed, I think the government is extremely interesting. It is very like three horses arranged in tandem fashion--first, you know, the King, a little out of the reach of the whip; then the Lords follow the King, and the Commons are in the shafts, a more ignoble position, but yet--as we see to-day, possessing a special power of upsetting the coach." "Father, I have very important news from America. Will you listen to it?" "Yes, if you will tell it to me straight, and not blunder about your meaning." "Sir, I have just discovered that a letter sent to me more than two years ago, has been knowingly and purposely detained from me." "By whom?" "A man into whose hands it fell by misdirection." "Did the letter contain means of identifying it, as belonging to you?" "Ample means." "Then the man is outside your recognition. You might as well go to the Bridewell, and seek a second among its riff-raff of scoundrels. Tell me shortly whom it concerns." "Miss Moran." "Oh indeed! Are we to have that subject opened again?"