“True love excludes no natural duty,” she said.
And he: “Love discerns unerringly what is and what is not duty.”
“In the case of a father, can there be any doubt?” she asked, the answer shining in her confident aspect.
“There are many things that fathers may demand of us!” he interjected bitterly.
She had a fatal glimpse here of the false light in which his resentment coloured the relations between fathers and children; and, deeming him incapable of conducting this argument, she felt quite safe in her opposition, up to a point where feeling stopped her.
“Devotedness to a father I must conceive to be a child's first duty,” she said.
Sir Purcell nodded: “Yes; a child's!”
“Does not history give the higher praise to children who sacrifice themselves for their parents?” asked Cornelia.
And he replied: “So, you seek to be fortified in such matters by history!”
Courteous sneers silenced her. Feeling told her she was in the wrong; but the beauty of her sentiment was not to be contested, and therefore she thought that she might distrust feeling: and she went against it somewhat; at first very tentatively, for it caused pain. She marked a line where the light of duty should not encroach on the light of our human desires. “But love for a parent is not merely duty,” thought Cornelia. “It is also love;—and is it not the least selfish love?”