"Admiral Bluewater is as anxious, as we are ourselves, to know his real state." "Ay, you women are all pity and feeling for baronets and rear-admirals," answered Dutton, throwing himself rudely into a chair, with his back towards the stranger, in an attitude completely to exclude the latter from his view; "while a husband, or father, might die a hundred deaths, and not draw a look of pity from your beautiful eyes, or a kind word from your devilish tongues." "Neither Mildred nor I, merit this from _you_, Dutton!" "No, you're both perfection; like mother, like child.

Haven't I been, fifty times, at death's door, with this very complaint of Sir Wycherly's, and did either of you ever send for an apothecary, even ?" "You have been occasionally indisposed, Dutton, but never apoplectic; and we have always thought a little sleep would restore you; as, indeed, it always has." "What business had you to _think_?
Surgeons think, and medical men, and it was your duty to send for the nearest professional man, to look after one you're bound both to honour and obey.

You are your own mistress, Martha, I do suppose, in a certain degree; and what can't be cured must be endured; but Mildred is my child; and I'll have her respect and love, if I break both your hearts in order to get at them." "A pious daughter always respects her parent, Dutton," said the wife, trembling from head to foot; "but love must come willingly, or, it will not come at all." "We'll see as to that, Mrs.Martha Dutton; we'll see as to that.

Come hither, Mildred; I have a word to say to you, which may as well be said at once." Mildred, trembling like her mother, drew near; but with a feeling of filial piety, that no harshness could entirely smother, she felt anxious to prevent the father from further exposing himself, in the presence of Admiral Bluewater.

With this view, then, and with this view only, she summoned firmness enough to speak.
"Father," she said, "had we not better defer our family matters, until we are alone ?" Under ordinary circumstances, Bluewater would not have waited for so palpable a hint, for he would have retired on the first appearance of any thing so disagreeable as a misunderstanding between man and wife.
But, an ungovernable interest in the lovely girl, who stood trembling at her father's knee, caused him to forget his habitual delicacy of feeling, and to overlook what might perhaps be termed almost a law of society.