It is to be presumed the substance of this conversation was reported at head quarters, for the next morning John was summoned before his grandfather and his aunt in the library, when the former of these addressed him in the following terms. John De Lancaster and my grandson, attend to what I am about to say to you--I would have you to understand and remember that revenge is not amongst the attributes of a hero, or the virtues of a christian. It behoves me therefore to caution you against it: I hold it as my indispensible duty to apprise you of what is expected from a gentleman of your pure and unpolluted descent through successive generations from times of the remotest antiquity to the present moment, in which you are standing before me, the last and only hope, whereon I rest my fortune and my name. You conceive yourself injured and affronted by a rash and inconsiderate young man, your senior by some few years, who now inherits the title and estate of my late friend and neighbour Sir Owen ap Owen: upon this suspicion, for it amounts to nothing more, you meditate revenge. Are you quite convinced you can with honour own yourself affronted by him? I will not speak degradingly of any person’s family, whether it be Spanish, or whether it be Jewish; but to one, or to the other, of these we must resort for the pedigree of Sir David’s mother. I draw no inference from this; I leave it with you for your consideration. Recollect yourself however, my dear child; compute your age, your strength, and, if there were no other bar to your resentment, how are you to execute it? Puerile resentment--What is that? A boyish scuffle it may be; an interchange perhaps of blows; and what is the result of blows?--Eternal enmity--Can the spirit of a De Lancaster endure a blow? Impossible. Sacred and inviolable as the oath of the young Hannibal against Rome, would be his resolution to avenge himself upon the giver of that blow. Ah, sir, sir! exclaimed Cecilia, are you not going from your point, and justifying what you truly said was not fitting either for a hero or a christian? I beg you will allow me to send my nephew out of the room, for I have something to impart to you, that I would not wish him to hear. John, who knew too well what his aunt alluded to, instantly left the room; but the words were irrevocable; the fatal authority, so congenial with his feeling, had sunk into his heart never to be eradicated. As soon as he was gone Cecilia apologized to her father for the interruption she had been guilty of; she said, that knowing, as she did, that her nephew had for a considerable time past harboured resentment against young Owen for a blow, she could not but regret that he should hear a justification of his resentment from such high authority as she feared would outweigh any thing, that his tutor could advise against it.