In Eloise this 'love-sick swain' discovers the 'congenial female' for whom he has long been seeking. Admiring her beauty, he hangs upon the music of her lips, pining for the time when he shall be permitted to salute them. Nothing in her history moderates his passion for Nempere's abandoned mistress. In his judgment it is nothing to her disadvantage that she has been seduced, and is on the point of giving birth to a child of shame. When she answers his prayer for their immediate union by saying: 'Know you not that I have been another's?' he replies with passionate fervour: 'Oh, suppose me not the slave of such vulgar and narrow-minded prejudice. Does the frightful vice and ingratitude of Nempere sully the spotless excellence of my Eloise's soul?' When Eloise gives birth to Nempere's son, Fitzeustace officiates by turns as the mother's doctor and the infant's nurse. At moments when he is necessarily 'absent from the apartment of the beloved Eloise, his whole delight is to gaze on the child, and trace in its innocent countenance the features of the mother he adores.' Eloise having at length consented to become his wife, this Irish gentleman remarks: 'But before we go to England, before my father will see us, it is necessary that we should be married. Nay, do not start, Eloise: I view it in the light that you do; I consider it as but a chain which, although it keeps the body, still leaves the soul unfettered; it is not so with love. But still, Eloise, to those who think like us, it is, at all events, harmless; 'tis but yielding to the prejudices of the world wherein we live, and procuring moral expediency at a slight sacrifice of what we conceive to be right.' Thus admonished, Eloise consents to the slight sacrifice of what she conceives to be right, and promises to pass to her Fitzeustace's conjugal embraces through the narrow gate of lawful matrimony, instead of by the broad and higher way of Free Love. 'Well, well,' she says reluctantly, 'it shall be done, Fitzeustace; but take the assurance of my promise that I cannot love you more.' Partly, in palliation of the lady's weakness and Fitzeustace's excessive care for the world's opinion in this business, the author of the romance remarks in his own person: 'They soon agreed on a point, in their eyes of so trifling importance, and arriving in England, tasted that happiness, which love and innocence alone can give. Prejudice may triumph for awhile, but virtue will be eventually the conqueror.'