Little dreamed the artless girl that her father was watching every glance of her eye, and that already, in his ambitious mind, a resolution was formed as inflexible as iron, a plan for her aggrandizement, which no prayers, or tears, or entreaties of hers could alter in the minutest particulars.
Not many weeks had passed since that evening, and the young duke had sought Mabel’s side at every festive occasion, yet still to her he had never breathed his love. Something there was in her simple purity that almost awed him; her calm dignity prevented all courtly gallantries, while her apparent indifference kept back an impassioned declaration. To her father, therefore, he resolved to speak first, and it was with difficulty Lord Arlington concealed his delight, when the prospect of his daughter’s alliance with the blood-royal of France was first presented to him as a certain thing; for, to his mind, the possibility of Mabel’s opposition would have seemed absurd. The proposal was at once accepted, and the day fixed upon for the nuptials, which were to be celebrated according to the Romish form; and, previous to the ceremony, the young pair were to confess and receive mass, after the custom of that church.
The next day, the happy father called his daughter to the library, and there proceeded to lay before the astonished girl her brilliant prospects; not to ask her consent, not even to inquire whether she loved D’Alençon, but with the iron tone of one who expects no opposition, and to whom denial would be of no avail. Mabel heard at first as one in a dream, her eyes dilated, her bosom heaved, but when he went on, and named the day that had been fixed upon, she seemed to feel as one who has heard his doom, but whose lips will cry for mercy, though there is no hope.
“My father!” she passionately exclaimed, “it must not be. I cannot, cannot wed him—oh, God! teach me in this hour what I shall say. The time has come—I can no longer keep silent! Father—I have striven to be dutiful, I have tried to please you; nay, sometimes I have grieved my conscience rather than disobey you—but it cannot be so any longer. No!” she wildly said, and her eyes glowed, her whole frame trembled with the violence of her emotion, “I am your child, and, as such, I am bound as far as I can to obey you, but I have another father, even God, and to him, before you, before all the world, I owe allegiance. I have solemnly pledged myself to obey his will as I have been taught it; I am a member of His church—yes, my father, I am a Protestant, a Puritan, if so in derision you call those who acknowledge no supreme head but Christ, no infallible guide but the Bible; and can you ask me, in obedience to your will, to renounce my faith, to abjure my church, to forsake that which is dearer to me than all the world beside? No, you will not, you cannot be so cruel, so unjust, so harsh!”
“Cease, cease this idle ranting, Lady Mabel. As your father, it is my duty to bring you into the true church, from which, but for my carelessness, you should never have wandered. Is not the opinion of your father, and your sovereign, of more value than your own unenlightened prejudices? Is it not your duty to obey your only parent, at the expense only of the sacrifice of a mere form of worship?
“Nay, speak not; I will hear no complaints, no refusals: you shall marry D’Alençon on the day I have fixed, or I will deprive your old Puritan teacher of his living, and send him forth a beggar.”
With a faint shriek Mabel sprung forward, and fell at her father’s feet, clasping his knees with her cold hands, and lifting her despairing eyes to his face.
“Spare, oh! spare me this trial, my father; I will do aught else to please you, but, oh! do not ask me solemnly to confess a faith I have not, or to promise a love that I can never, never give: let me be your own Mabel—let me live with you, and cheer your declining years? I ask no high station, I covet no wealth—only let me be at peace with God, and my own soul! In pity hear me, O father; for her sake, whose name I bear, do not revenge my denial of your wishes on the head of that innocent old man—do not send his gray hairs in sorrow to the grave?”
For a moment, one moment only, the proud heart of the aspiring man was softened, as he called to mind one who had also knelt before him, and implored him to let her once more see her childhood’s friends; but the next, the vision of a coronet over that pale brow, round which the long dark curls were falling, and he coldly said—
“You have but to choose. I ask no dreadful sacrifice at your hands: methinks it were to many rather a pleasant prospect to be Duchess D’Alençon, and you will remember your own impressions of him were decidedly agreeable. However, he will be satisfied when you are his, I doubt not; I will leave you to meditate, and remember, in a life of forty years, your father was never known to give up any thing on which his will was fixed.”