Falkner's thoughts became busy on this with new ideas. It was at once pleasing and painful to hear of the virtues of Gerard Neville. The pleasure was derived from the better portion of human nature--the pain from the worst; a lurking envy, and dislike to excellence derived in any degree from one he hated, and with such sentiment he regarded the father of Gerard. Still he was the son of the angel he worshipped and had destroyed; she had loved her child to adoration, and to know that he grew up all she would have wished would console her wandering, unappeased spirit. He remembered his likeness to her, and that softened him even more. Yet he thought of the past--and what he had done; and the very idea of her son lamenting for ever his lost mother filled him with renewed and racking remorse. That Elizabeth should now for the third time be thrown in his way, was strange, and his first impulse was to recall her. It was well that Gerard should be noble-minded, endowed with talent, a rare and exalted being--but that she should be brought into near contact with him was evil: between Falkner and Gerard Neville there existed a gulf unfathomable, horrific, deadly; and any friendship between him and his adopted child must cause disunion between her and Falkner. He had suffered much, but this last blow, a cause for disuniting them, would tax his fortitude too much. Yet thus it was to be taxed. He received a letter from Lady Cecil, of which Elizabeth was ignorant. Its ostensible object was to give good tidings of her fair guest's health, and to renew her invitation to him. But there was a covert meaning which Falkner detected. Lady Cecil, though too young to be an inveterate matchmaker, yet conceived and cherished the idea of the marriage of Neville and Elizabeth. In common parlance, Gerard might look higher; but so also might Elizabeth, apparently the only daughter and heiress of a man of good birth and easy fortune. But this went for little with Lady Cecil; Gerard's peculiar disposition--his devotion to his dead mother--his distaste to all society--the coldness he had hitherto manifested to feminine attractions, made the choice of a wife difficult for him. Elizabeth's heroic and congenial character; her total inexperience in the world, and readiness to sympathize with sentiments which, to the ordinary class of women, would appear extravagant and foolish; all this suited them for each other. Lady Cecil saw them together, and felt that intimacy would produce love. She was delighted; but thinking it right that the father should have a voice, she wrote to Falkner, scarcely alluding to these things, but with a delicate tact that enabled her to convey her meaning, and Falkner, jumping at once to the conclusion, saw that his child was lost to him for ever.