But stay, let me be cautious--is there such a person?
May this communication not be a false one--written to mislead or provoke me?
Lucy knows that I am determined she shall marry Lord Dunroe, and I am not aware that she entertains any peculiar objection to him.

In the mean time, I will have some conversation with her, in order to ascertain what her present and immediate feeling on the subject is.

It is right that I should see my way in this." He accordingly rang the bell, when a well-powdered footman, in rich livery, entered.
"Let Miss Gourlay understand that I wish to see her." This he uttered in a loud, sharp tone of voice, for it was in such he uniformly addressed his dependents.
The lackey bowed and withdrew, and, in the course of a few minutes, his daughter entered the study, and stood before him.

At the first glance, she saw that something had discomposed him, and felt a kind of instinctive impression that it was more or less connected with herself.
Seldom, indeed, was such a contrast between man and woman ever witnessed, as that which presented itself on this occasion.

There stood the large, ungainly, almost misshapen father, with a countenance distorted, by the consequences of ill-suppressed passion, into a deeper deformity--a deformity that was rendered ludicrously hideous, by a squint that gave, as we have said, to one of his eyes, as he looked at her, the almost literal expression of a dagger.