"He refused food, and turned in disgust from every former pursuit. Hitherto he had ardently longed for the return of his mother; and it seemed to him that, give his limbs but a manlier growth, let a few years go over, and he should find and bring her back in triumph. But that contumely and disgrace should fall on that dear mother's head--how could he avert that? The evil was remediless, and death was slight in comparison. One day he walked up to his father, and fixing his clear young eyes upon him, said, 'I know what you think, but it is not true. Mamma would come back if she could. When I am a man I will find and bring her back, and you will be sorry then!' "What more he would have said was lost in sobs. His heart had beat impetuously as he had worked on himself to address his father, and assert his mother's truth; but the consciousness that she was indeed gone, and that for years there was no hope of seeing her, broke in--his throat swelled, he felt suffocated, and fell down in a fit." CHAPTER XVIII Lady Cecil had broken off her tale on their return from their morning drive. She resumed it in the evening, as she and Elizabeth sat looking on the summer woods; and the soft but dim twilight better accorded with her melancholy story. "Poor Gerard! His young heart was almost broken by struggling passions, and the want of tenderness in those about him. After this scene with his father, his life was again in the greatest danger for some days, but at last health of body returned. He lay on his little couch, pale and wasted, an altered child--but his heart was the same, and he adhered tenaciously to one idea. 'Nurse,' he said, one day, to the woman who had attended him from his birth, 'I wish you would take pen and paper, and write down what I am going to say. Or, if that is too much trouble, I wish you would remember every word, and repeat it to my father. I cannot speak to him. He does not love mamma as he used; he is unjust, and I cannot speak to him--but I wish to tell every little thing that happened, that people may see that what I say is true, and be as sure as I am that mamma never meant to go away.