He found Mrs Mowbray with her heart shut up, not softened by sorrow. The hands once stretched forth with kindness to welcome him, were now stiffly laid one upon the other; and 'How are you, sir?' coldly articulated, was followed by as cold a 'Pray sit down.'
'Why, how ill you look!' exclaimed the doctor.
'I attend more to my feelings than my looks,' with a deep sigh, answered Mrs Mowbray.
'Your feelings are as bad as your looks, I dare say.'
'They are worse, sir,' said Mrs Mowbray piqued.
'There was no need of that,' replied the doctor: 'but I am come to point out to you one way of getting rid of some of your unpleasant feelings:—see, and forgive your daughter.'
Mrs Mowbray started, changed colour, and exclaimed with quickness, 'Is she in England?' but added instantly, 'I have no daughter:—she, who was my child, is my most inveterate foe; she has involved me in disgrace and misery.'
'With a little of your own help she has,' replied the doctor. 'Come, come, my old friend, you have both of you something to forget and forgive; and the sooner you set about it the better. Now do write, and tell Adeline, who is by this time in London, that you forgive her.'
'Never:—after having promised me not to hold converse with that villain without my consent? Had I no other cause of complaint against her;—had she not by her coquettish arts seduced the affections of the man I loved:—never, never would I forgive her having violated the sacred promise which she gave me.'
'A promise,' interrupted the doctor, 'which she would never have violated, had not you first violated that sacred compact which you entered into at her birth.'