God forbid, Miss Haredale,' said the good gentleman, with great emotion, 'that there should be in your gentle breast one causeless ground of quarrel with him.

You should know, and you will see, that he was in no fault here.' There appeared something so very candid, so scrupulously honourable, so very truthful and just in this course something which rendered the upright person who resorted to it, so worthy of belief--that Emma's heart, for the first time, sunk within her.

She turned away and burst into tears.
'I would,' said Mr Chester, leaning over her, and speaking in mild and quite venerable accents; 'I would, dear girl, it were my task to banish, not increase, those tokens of your grief.

My son, my erring son,--I will not call him deliberately criminal in this, for men so young, who have been inconstant twice or thrice before, act without reflection, almost without a knowledge of the wrong they do,--will break his plighted faith to you; has broken it even now.

Shall I stop here, and having given you this warning, leave it to be fulfilled; or shall I go on ?' 'You will go on, sir,' she answered, 'and speak more plainly yet, in justice both to him and me.' 'My dear girl,' said Mr Chester, bending over her more affectionately still; 'whom I would call my daughter, but the Fates forbid, Edward seeks to break with you upon a false and most unwarrantable pretence.