My father's confession had somewhat impaired my esteem for Lady Ellinor, and had left on my mind the uneasy impression that she _had_ trifled with his deep, and Roland's impetuous, heart. The conversation that had just passed allowed me to judge her with more justice--allowed me to see that she had really shared the affection she had inspired in the student, but that ambition had been stronger than love--an ambition, it might be, irregular and not strictly feminine, but still of no vulgar nor sordid kind. I gathered, too, from her hints and allusions, her true excuse for Roland's misconception of her apparent interest in himself: she had but seen, in the wild energies of the elder brother, some agency by which to arouse the serener faculties of the younger. She had but sought, in the strange comet that flashed before her, to fix a lever that might move the star. Nor could I withhold my reverence from the woman who, not being married precisely from love, had no sooner linked her nature to one worthy of it, than her whole life became as fondly devoted to her husband's as if he had been the object of her first romance and her earliest affections. If even her child was so secondary to her husband--if the fate of that child was but regarded by her as one to be rendered subservient to the grand destinies of Trevanion--still it was impossible to recognise the error of that conjugal devotion without admiring the wife, though one might condemn the mother. Turning from these meditations, I felt a lover's thrill of selfish joy, amidst all the mournful sorrow comprised in the thought that I should see Fanny no more. Was it true as Lady Ellinor implied, though delicately, that Fanny still cherished a remembrance of me--which a brief interview, a last farewell, might re-awaken too dangerously for her peace? Well, that was a thought that it became me not to indulge. What could Lady Ellinor have heard of Roland and his son? Was it possible that the lost lived still? Asking myself these questions, I arrived at our lodgings, and saw the Captain himself before me, busied with the inspection of sundry specimens of the rude necessaries an Australian adventurer requires. There stood the old soldier, by the window, examining narrowly into the temper of hand-saw and tenor-saw, broad axe and drawing-knife; and as I came up to him, he looked at me from under his black brows, with gruff compassion, and said peevishly-- "Fine weapons these for the son of a gentleman!--one bit of steel in the shape of a sword were worth them all." "Any weapon that conquers fate is noble in the hands of a brave man, uncle!" "The boy has an answer for everything," quoth the Captain, smiling, as he took out his purse and paid the shopman. When we were alone, I said to him--"Uncle, you must go and see Lady Ellinor; she desires me to tell you so." "Pshaw!" "You will not?" "No!" "Uncle, I think that she has something to say to you with regard to--to--pardon me!--to my cousin."