"I was next commanded never to presume to give the most distant hint either to himself or any one else, that he had ever been suspected, or even thought of consequence,--never to mention the name of Fitzosbourne to him, or to say that he or myself had resided in the family. When he arrived at the age of fifteen, I might, if I were so inclined, give up my task, and should have proper security for receiving my salary during the rest of my life, even if the boy should luckily die before the age fixed upon to release me from my engagements. If I chose the trouble, I might teach him to read and write; but it was a matter of little consequence:--the less such people knew, the better.--ignorance to them was happiness, and knowledge only a burthen, of which it was better not to be possessed. "I had been unwarily drawn into the snare from which I now wanted judgement, courage, resolution, to disentangle myself. The influence and unbounded power my lady ever held over me,--her consequence, and my humble station, arose to my terrified imagination, and I dared not venture to expostulate against a plan sanctioned by the Lady Blanch, and approved by father Paul, with whom it was equally dangerous to contend. "Of the identity of the young lord I never cherished a doubt; and, if I had, the restoration of his sweet features to their former beauty and expression, which was now beginning to take place, would have banished them as soon as they arose; yet the fear of offending kept me silent: the oath I had taken hung over me with terror;--every struggle I made with conscience was over-ruled by worldly motives. I would not be perjured, but I consented to be ten times worse. Alas! I little suspected, when I took that sacred, yet unhallowed oath, that I was sentencing myself and a helpless innocent to years of hopeless imprisonment,--to a kind of living death, and burthening my conscience with the heavy crime of being the vile agent in assisting to rob the best, the most amiable of all God's creatures of his title, a noble estate, and even of that freedom which the poorest of his father's vassals enjoyed." "Dear Albert, (cried Walter,) do not abuse yourself so unjustly: represent not your actions in colours that do not belong to them. If I suffered, you did the same; the barbarous hands which robbed me of liberty, and the all-cheering light of heaven, deprived you also of your's. Had it not been for your unremitting and watchful care, your more than parental tenderness, I had long ere now been numbered with the dead, and my existence and injuries lost in eternal oblivion." "My noble boy, (exclaimed the Baron,) there spoke the soul of your angelic mother! Just so would she have shewn her grateful sense of benefits received.--Go on, my friend, regard not the feelings you excite; they are due to the sufferings of this injured youth, and to the virtues of his generous guardian and protector."