'There are very few who would have thought me worth lecturing.'
'Ah, Louis! if I did not like you so well for what you are, I should still feel the right to lecture you, when I remember the night I carried you to your father, and tried to make him believe that you would be his comfort and blessing. I think you have taught him the lesson at last!'
'You have done it all,' said Louis, with deep feeling.
'And now, may I say what more I want to see in you? If you could acquire more resolution, more manliness—will you pardon my saying so?'
'Ah! I have always found myself the identical weak man that all books give up as a hopeless case,' said Louis, accepting the imputation more easily than she could have supposed possible.
'No,' she said, vigorously, 'you have not come to your time of life without openings to evil that you could not have resisted if you had been really weak.'
'Distaste—and rather a taste for being quizzed,' said Louis.
'Those are not weakness. Your will is indolent, and you take refuge in fancying that you want strength. Rouse yourself, not to be drifted about—make a line for yourself.'
'My father will have me walk in no line but his own.'
'You have sense not to make duty to him an excuse for indolence and dislike of responsibility. You have often disappointed yourself by acting precipitately; and now you are throwing yourself prone upon him, in a way that is unwise for you both.'