Filial obligation is often a point upon which those parents lay the heaviest stress who have done the least to develop the relation between them and their children. The first duty is from the parent to the child. This unfulfilled, the duty of the child remains untaught.

“I am sorry to go against you, papa,” said Barbara, “but I cannot marry Mr. Lestrange.”

“Stuff and nonsense! Why not?”

“Because I do not love him.”

“Fiddlesticks! I did not love your mother when I married her! You don’t dislike him, I know! Now don’t tell me you do, for I won’t believe you!”

“He is always kind to me, and I am sorry he should want what is not mine to give him.”

“Not yours to give him! What do you mean by that! If it is not yours, it is mine! Have you not learned yet that when I make up my mind on an issue, it is done?”

Where husband and wife are not one, it is impossible for the daughter to be one with both, or perhaps with either. The constant and foolish bickering to which Barbara had been a witness throughout her childhood had tended to poison rather than nourish respect. Whether Barbara failed to yield as much as Mr. Wylder had a right to claim, I leave to the judgment of others, reserving my own, and remarking only that, if his judgment be founded on principles differing from mine, our judgments cannot agree.

Though the idea of parent must be venerated, a parent is not God. We must leave father and mother and all for God—that is, for what is right, which is his very will—only let us be sure it is for God, and not for self. If the parent has been the parent of good thoughts and right judgments in the child, those good thoughts and right judgments will be on the parent’s side. If he has been the parent of evil thoughts and false judgments, they may be for him or against him, but in the end they will work for division. Any general decay of filial affection must originate with the parents.

“I am not a child, I am a woman,” said Barbara. “And I owe it to him who made me a woman to take care of myself.”

“Mind what you say. I have rights, and will enforce them.”

“Over my person?” returned Barbara, her eyes sending out a flash that reminded him of her mother, and made him angrier than ever.

“If you do not consent here and now,” he said sternly, “to marry Mr. Lestrange—that is, if, after your mother’s insolence to lady Ann—”

“My mother’s insolence to lady Ann!” exclaimed Barbara, drawing herself, in her indignation, to the height of her small person.

“—if, as I say,” her father went on, “he should now condescend to ask you—I swear—”

“You had better not swear, papa!”

“I swear you shall not have a foot of my land.”

“Oh, is that all? There you are in your right, and I have nothing to say.”