"Harry, I am horrified at you; it is a dishonour to your poor father's memory; it is shocking to think of it; and if you have been so lost to duty as to fall into so unnatural an entanglement, it is surely the least you owe to both parents to give it up."
"Mother! I cannot see it as you do; my father fully exonerated Mr. Crawfurd—you have told me so a hundred times. No one, not you, his widow, mourned my father as Mr. Crawfurd mourned—nay, mourns him to this day."
"Harry, do you wish to see a bloody guest present at your wedding?"
"Mother, that is a baseless, cruel horror. You would not wish me to maintain a hereditary feud on the principle of my forefathers. I cannot tell what the Christian religion teaches if it does not enjoin forgiveness of injuries."
"I hope I am a Christian, Harry, and I have tried to forgive my enemies, but it is one thing to make every allowance for them and entertain charitable feelings towards them, and another to ally myself with them, and constitute them my closest friends. Harry, the whole neighbourhood would shrink from the idea of what you contemplate."
"If my principles and my heart said Yes, not the neighbourhood, but the whole world might cry No, and I would not feel bound to listen to the clamour."
"A young man's improper boast, Harry, and since you force me to it, not the world alone—I tell you nature objects to that girl—that girl of them all; how can you look her in the face and think of love?"
"Would you have me think of hate? Since you make the allusion, I declare to you, mother, that mark appeals to you and me in another fashion. Cain's brand! do they call it? And who set the brand, and when, on Cain's brow? Sovereign clemency, after the wanderer's punishment was more than he could bear, if the reflection of my father's blood was transmitted to so innocent and noble a proxy, it must have been designed to teach such as you and me New Testament lessons of perfect charity."
"Harry, I have never been able to look that girl in the face."
"Mother, I pray never to forget that face, although it remain like an angel's face to me, because it is the fairest example of the human face divine that I ever hope to behold."