Fanny, with a countenance radiant with joy, took his hand and led him to his room. Poor child! with that instinct of woman which never deserted her, she had busied herself the whole day in striving to deck the chamber according to her own notions of comfort. She had stolen from her little hoard wherewithal to make some small purchases, on which the Dowbiggin of the suburb had been consulted. And what with flowers on the table, and a fire at the hearth, the room looked cheerful. She watched him as he glanced around, and felt disappointed that he did not utter the admiration she expected. Angry at last with the indifference which, in fact, as to external accommodation, was habitual to him, she plucked his sleeve, and said,-- “Why don’t you speak? Is it not nice?--Fanny did her best.” “And a thousand thanks to Fanny! It is all I could wish.” “There is another room, bigger than this, but the wicked woman who robbed us slept there; and besides, you said you liked the churchyard. See!” and she opened the window and pointed to the church-tower rising dark against the evening sky. “This is better than all!” said Vaudemont; and he looked out from the window in a silent reverie, which Fanny did not disturb. And now he was settled! From a career so wild, agitated, and various, the adventurer paused in that humble resting-nook. But quiet is not repose--obscurity is not content. Often as, morn and eve, he looked forth upon the spot, where his mother’s heart, unconscious of love and woe, mouldered away, the indignant and bitter feelings of the wronged outcast and the son who could not clear the mother’s name swept away the subdued and gentle melancholy into which time usually softens regret for the dead, and with which most of us think of the distant past, and the once joyous childhood!