She, however, spoke first, simply saying: "Has anything discomposed you, papa ?" "I have been discomposed, Miss Gourlay"-- for he seldom addressed her as Lucy--"and I wish to have some serious conversation with you.

Pray be seated." Lucy sat.
"I trust, Miss Gourlay," he proceeded, in a style partly interrogatory and partly didactic--"I trust you are perfectly sensible that a child like you owes full and unlimited obedience to her parents." "So long, at least, sir, as her parents exact no duties from her that are either unreasonable or unjust, or calculated to destroy her own happiness.

With these limitations, I reply in the affirmative." "A girl like you, Miss Gourlay, has no right to make exceptions.

Your want of experience, which is only another name for your ignorance of life, renders you incompetent to form an estimate of what constitutes, or may constitute, your happiness." "Happiness!--in what sense, sir ?" "In any sense, madam." "Madam!" she replied, with much feeling.

"Dear papa--if you will allow me to call you so--why address me in a tone of such coldness, if not of severity?
All I ask of you is, that, when you do honor me by an interview, you will remember that I am your daughter, and not speak to me as you would to an utter stranger." "The tone which I may assume toward you, Miss Gourlay, must be regulated by your own obedience." "But in what have I ever failed in obedience to you, my dear papa ?" "Perhaps you compliment your obedience prematurely, Lucy--it has never yet been seriously tested." Her beautiful face crimsoned at this assertion; for she well knew that many a severe imposition had been placed upon her during girlhood, and that, had she been any other girl than she was, her very youth would have been forced into opposition to commands that originated in whim, caprice, and selfishness.