"Sail away, madam, into the remotest part of the earth to be seen no more--to be heard of no more," said the Admiral, trying to master his face as he spoke. But he failed and turned his head from his companions, and would have buried his face in his hands but that he would not have them know that his love for his son was deeper than his horror at his conduct. The silence that followed was eloquent with recognition of the poor old gentleman's trouble. Lucy left her chair, and going close to the Admiral said, yet not so low but that Captain Acton overheard her: "It will not be as you say, Sir William. Indeed it must not be. So fine a character besmirched by acts into which a very bitter necessity has forced him, ought not to be found in the common garb of a humble working merchant sailor, nor buried in some distant parts where he can never shine as a man of fine and heroic spirit fit to fill the highest position in the service he has left; and above all, and which is best, sir, capable of bitter regret, of deep feeling, of exerting the power by which the humbled man is alone able to struggle--I mean the power of self-regeneration." She spoke like a young wild-eyed prophetess; her tones had a vigorous, dramatic clearness which made her voice new to her father's ears. Her language, which seemed exalted beyond her age, beyond anything one would look for in the lips of so calm, modest, and undemonstrative a girl, she appeared to make peculiarly appropriate to her years and sex, by her delivery, her melodies of accentuation, the easy grasp with which, it was clear, she held a subject that was deep in human nature. The Admiral rose, and addressing her as though she were the consort of a king, said: "Madam, as the father of the person you speak of, I ask Almighty God, who is merciful and knows the human heart, to bless you for your words." Captain Acton was silent. He was astonished. He had never observed his daughter as Aunt Caroline did. He was wanting in feminine sagacity where the heart is concerned. He saw that if his daughter was not in love with Mr Lawrence, she was dangerously near that passion; she seemed to him to have been transformed into a sweetheart by usage which would have made the heart of most young women fierce with hate and horror. She was under a spell which she thought to break by the practice of an inherited art, as miraculous in effect as it had been unsuspected in being, and she had left her kidnapper seemingly as enamoured of him as though his behaviour from the beginning had been strictly honourable and chivalrous, an additament to the passion which his gallant record, his lofty bearing, and his handsome looks had inspired in her.