"Then, my dear mother, I must say my uncle is wrong there, so far as common-sense is concerned; but still, somehow or other, I can understand it--surely this was not the only cause of estrangement!" My mother looked down, and moved one hand gently over the other, which was her way when embarrassed. "What was it, my own mother?" said I, coaxingly. "I believe--that is, I--I think that they were both attached to the same young lady." "How! you don't mean to say that my father was ever in love with any one but you?" "Yes, Sisty--yes, and deeply! and," added my mother after a slight pause, and with a very low sigh, "he never was in love with me; and what is more, he had the frankness to tell me so!" "And yet you--" "Married him--yes!" said my mother, raising the softest and purest eyes that ever lover could have wished to read his fate in;-- "Yes, for the old love was hopeless. I knew that I could make him happy. I knew that he would love me at last, and he does so! My son, your father loves me!" As she spoke, there came a blush as innocent as virgin ever knew, to my mother's smooth cheek; and she looked so fair, so good, and still so young, all the while, that you would have said that either Dusius, the Teuton fiend, or Nock, the Scandinavian sea-imp, from whom the learned assure us we derive our modern Daimones, "The Deuce" and Old Nick, had indeed possessed my father, if he had not learned to love such a creature. I pressed her hand to my lips, but my heart was too full to speak for a moment or so; and then I partially changed the subject. "Well, and this rivalry estranged them more? And who was the lady?" "Your father never told me, and I never asked," said my mother simply. "But she was very different from me, I know. Very accomplished, very beautiful, very high-born." "For all that, my father was a lucky man to escape her. Pass on. What did the Captain do?" "Why, about that time your grandfather died, and shortly after an aunt, on the mother's side, who was rich and saving, and unexpectedly left them each sixteen thousand pounds. Your uncle, with his share, bought back, at an enormous price, the old castle and some land round it, which they say does not bring him in three hundred a-year. With the little that remained, he purchased a commission in the army; and the brothers met no more, till last week, when Roland suddenly arrived." "He did not marry this accomplished young lady?" "No! but he married another, and is a widower." "Why, he was as inconstant as my father; and I am sure without so good an excuse. How was that?" "I don't know. He says nothing about it." "Has he any children?" "Two; a son--by the bye, you must never speak about _him_. Your uncle briefly said, when I asked him what was his family, 'a girl, ma'am. I had a son, but,--' 'He is dead,' cried your father, in his kind pitying voice.