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Captain Acton was silent. He was astonished. He had never observed his daughter as Aunt Caroline did. He was wanting in feminine sagacity where the heart is concerned. He[Pg 385] saw that if his daughter was not in love with Mr Lawrence, she was dangerously near that passion; she seemed to him to have been transformed into a sweetheart by usage which would have made the heart of most young women fierce with hate and horror. She was under a spell which she thought to break by the practice of an inherited art, as miraculous in effect as it had been unsuspected in being, and she had left her kidnapper seemingly as enamoured of him as though his behaviour from the beginning had been strictly honourable and chivalrous, an additament to the passion which his gallant record, his lofty bearing, and his handsome looks had inspired in her., "But we can't go now. I dassent leave them preserves. If I do Ma'll skin me. Anyways, ain't we goin' to let Elgin an' Fatty in on it, Bill?", At six o'clock, greatly wearied, Captain Acton mounted his mare at "The Swan" stables and rode home. He was very pale. Indeed this man loved his daughter, who was his only child. His immediate question, put with bright-eyed passion to the servant who came to the door, was, "Has Miss Lucy returned?".