Well, I have taken him into the village, preserving his incognito. I have entered with him into cottages, and turned the talk upon Roland. You know how your uncle is adored; you know what anecdotes of his bold, warm-hearted youth once, and now of his kind and charitable age, would spring up from the garrulous lips of gratitude! I made him see with his own eyes, hear with his own ears, how all who knew Roland loved and honored him,--except his son. Then I took him round the ruins (still not suffering him to enter the house); for those ruins are the key to Roland's character,--seeing them, one sees the pathos in his poor foible of family pride. There, you distinguish it from the insolent boasts of the prosperous, and feel that it is little more than the pious reverence to the dead, "the tender culture of the tomb." We sat down on heaps of mouldering stone, and it was there that I explained to him what Roland was in youth, and what he had dreamed that a son would be to him. I showed him the graves of his ancestors, and explained to him why they were sacred in Roland's eyes. I had gained a great way when he longed to enter the home that should have been his and I could make him pause of his own accord and say, "No, I must first be worthy of it." Then you would have smiled--sly satirist that you are--to have heard me impressing upon this acute, sharp-witted youth all that we plain folk understand by the name of Home,--its perfect trust and truth, its simple holiness, its exquisite happiness, being to the world what conscience is to the human mind. And after that I brought in his sister, whom till then he had scarcely named, for whom he scarcely seemed to care,--brought her in to aid the father and endear the home. "And you know," said I, "that if Roland were to die, it would be a brother's duty to supply his place,--to shield her innocence, to protect her name! A good name is something, then. Your father was not so wrong to prize it. You would like yours to be that which your sister would be proud to own!" While we were talking, Blanche suddenly came to the spot, and rushed to my arms. She looked on him as a stranger, but I saw his knees tremble. And then she was about to put her hand in his, but I drew her back. Was I cruel? He thought so. But when I dismissed her, I replied to his reproach: "Your sister is a part of Home. If you think yourself worthy of either, go and claim both; I will not object." "She has my mother's eyes," said he, and walked away. I left him to muse amidst the ruins, while I went in to see your poor mother and relieve her fears about Roland and make her understand why I could not yet return home.