"Then you had better stay,--relinquish all thoughts of scientific discoveries, and settle contentedly on an estate in the country; employing your time in regulating your farm, settling the disputes of your neighbours, and bringing up your children, if you should happen to have any." "How can you torment me so?--If you could imagine the struggle in my bosom, between inclination and duty, you would pity me." "Do you think your presence necessary to your father's happiness?" "No--if Edmund be with him, he will never think of me." "And do you not think--nay, are you not certain, that an union with Rosabella would make you miserable?" "It is impossible to doubt it. Her violent temper, and the mystery which hangs over the fate of her father, which she cannot bear to have even alluded to, forbid the thought of happiness as connected with her." "It is strange, so little should be known of her father. I never heard the particulars of his story." "No human being knows the whole, I believe, but the duke and my father. However, I remember to have heard it rumoured when I was a child, that he had committed some fearful crime, and that he was either executed, or had destroyed himself." "Then it is not surprising that it should pain Rosabella to hear him spoken of. But to return to our subject: your answers have removed the only doubts that can arise; and after what you have confessed yourself, I cannot imagine what further hesitation you can feel--" At this moment they were both startled; and the words were arrested on the doctor's lips by a gentle tap at the door. It was old Abelard the butler. Half ashamed of the unphilosophic terror he had evinced, the doctor felt glad to be able to hide his emotion under the appearance of anger, and demanded peevishly, what was the matter. "Have I not told you a hundred times," continued he, "that I do not like to be interrupted at my studies! and that nothing is more disagreeable than to have one's attention distracted, when it has been fixed upon an affair of importance!" "I do not attempt to controvert the axiom you have just propounded," returned Abelard, speaking in a slow precise manner, as though he weighed every syllable before he drawled it forth: "for undeniable facts do not admit of contradiction. However, as the message with which I stand charged at the present moment relates to master Edric, instead of yourself, I humbly opine, no blame can attach itself to me, on account of the unpremeditated interruption of which you allege me culpable." "And what have you to say to me?" demanded Edric. "That the worthy gentleman, your respectable progenitor, requests you instantly to put in exercise your locomotive powers to join him on the terrace, to the end, that there your superior visual faculties may afford _soulagement_ to the mental anxiety under which he at present labours, by aiding him to develop the intelligence conveyed to him by the telegraphic machine."