"Don't judge of her by yourself, Rose," he retorted, laughing, to conceal his annoyance, which was greatly increased when the General's butler, just as Audley was ascending to his own room to dress for dinner, handed him a letter on a silver salver. It was from his father; written in his usual clear and precise hand. Audley for a time left it on the toilette table; then he tore it open, with an air of irritation, as these paternal missives were rarely pleasant ones, being always filled with advice, varied by reprehension. "Fathers have flinty hearts--and, by Jove, here is one!" muttered Audley, while his brows contracted. "I have seen in the public prints," ran the letter, "all about your adventure with the daughter of those strange people who live at Porthellick. The woman Devereaux is, as her name imports, too probably some designing French adventuress. Mabel Trecarrel has written to your sister Gartha, that you are quite smitten with the daughter; but I give you my distinct advice and notice to take heed of what you are about, and to join us in London without delay. You left the Hussars, even in India, because of the expense of the corps, neither tentage nor loot" (loot! the governor means batta) "being sufficient to maintain you. Disobey me in the matter of this girl Devereaux, and _I shall cut off_ even the slender allowance I promised you, for the Cornish Light Infantry." Audley crushed up the letter in his hand, for it came, at that particular moment, like a sentence of death. And Downie Trevelyan could write thus of the loving and amiable little family circle at the villa, knowing all he did, and suspecting more! To fear, or to find that his brother Richard, so long deemed an eccentric bachelor, had a family ready made and at hand to succeed him in the honours of Rhoscadzhel and Lamorna was bad enough. These interlopers who came between his own family and the line of Trevelyan might (perhaps) be set aside; but to find that his eldest son had become entangled with one of those so-called Devereaux, proved too much for the equanimity of the far-seeing lawyer. CHAPTER XIX. THE GREATER SORROW. At the very time when Mabel Trecarrel was singing to tease Audley, Sybil was beginning a song of a very different character and calibre to soothe or amuse her mamma. It was a grand old Hungarian ballad, with an accompaniment like a crash of trumpets at times; and was one she had picked up during their wanderings on the banks of the Danube; but she had only got the length of the first two verses, when her mother's tears arrested her. "Was it the vine with clusters bright That clung round Buda's stateliest tower? No, 'twas a lady fair and white, Who hung around an armed knight; It was their sad, their parting hour. "They had been wedded in their youth, Together they had spent life's bloom; That hearts so long entwined by truth Asunder should be torn in ruth-- It was a cruel and boding doom!"