"Father!" exclaimed Mildred, bursting into tears.
"Nay—these tears shall not move me from my resolution. As a parent I had a right, Mildred, to expect obedience from you; but you saw him in the very despite of my commands: here, on the confines of the Dove Cote, you saw him."
"I did—I did."
"And you were silent, and kept your secret from your father's bosom."
"You forbade me to speak of him," replied Mildred, in a low and sobbing voice, "and banished me from your presence when I but brought his name upon my lips."
"He is a villain, daughter; a base wretch that would murder my peace, and steal my treasure from my heart."
Mildred covered her eyes with her hands, and trembled in silent agony.
"I have received letters," continued Lindsay, "that disclose to me a vile plot against my life. This same Butler—this furious and fanatic rebel—has been lurking in the neighborhood of my house, to watch my family motions, to pry into the character of my guests, to possess himself of my sacred confidences, to note the incoming and the out-going of my most attached friends, and thereupon to build an accusation of treason before this unholy and most accursed power that has usurped dominion in the land. I am to be denounced to these malignant masters, and to suffer such penalties as their passions may adjudge. And all this through the agency of a man who is cherished and applauded by my own daughter!"
"My dear father, who has thus abused your mind, and led your thoughts into a current so foreign from that calm judgment with which you have been accustomed to look upon the things of life?"
"Can you deny, Mildred, that this Butler followed Tyrrel to the Dove Cote; lay concealed here, close at hand; sought by discourse through some of his coadjutors with Tyrrel's servant, to learn the object of Tyrrel's visit; and offered gross outrage to the man when he failed to persuade him to betray his master? Can you deny this? Can you deny that he fled precipitately from his hiding-place when he could no longer conceal his purpose?—and, knowing these things, can you doubt he is a villain?"