So, after long years, the brother and sister met again; and Mark Felton was a little diverted from his anxiety about his son by the interest and affection with which his sister inspired him, and the strong hold which George Dallas gained upon the affections of a man who had been sorely wounded in his own hopes and expectations. He was not under any mistaken impression about his nephew. He knew that George had caused his mother the deepest grief, and had for a long time gone as wrong as a young man could go short of entering on a criminal career. But he divided the good from the evil in his character; he discerned something of the noble and the generous in the young man; and if he laid too much to the account of circumstances, and handled his follies too tenderly, it was because he had himself suffered from all the grief which profligacy, combined with cold and calculating meanness, can inflict upon a parent's heart. George Dallas yielded easily to the influence of happiness. His gay and pleasant manner was full of fascination, and of a certain easy grace which had peculiar charms for his Transatlantic uncle; and his love for his mother was a constant pleasure to her brother to witness, and an irresistible testimony to the unspoiled nature of the son. True, this affection had not availed to restrain him formerly; but the partial uncle argued that circumstances had been against the boy, and that he had not had fair play. It was not very sound reasoning, but there was nothing to contradict it just at present, and Mr. Felton was content to feel rather than to reason.