boy, beg of you to ask the Colonel what he thinks, and to try to find out yourself. And whatever you do, dear, don't trust to _that_ Mr. Pouncet; for it was quite clear to me by his letter that he had somehow done you wrong, and wanted to conceal it. Edmund says, 'Tell Roger, mamma, he's not to trust Scarsdale either;' but indeed I scarcely have the heart to say so, remembering that he's the dear good Colonel's nephew--only he was not so kind as he might have been, you know, and I have some reason to think he is fond of Amelia--which should surely keep him from doing anything that would harm her brother. "But, my dearest boy, come home. I have not seen you--my son--my baby--my first-born!--for _so_ many years, and my heart yearns for a sight of you. Oh, come to me! Let me see you under my own roof! Roger--my son--my dear boy--come home to your mother! There is no other friend who can have so close a claim upon my darling child! "Always your loving mother, "A. STENHOUSE." "You will go at once?" said the Colonel, with some gravity, as he gave the letter back into Roger's hand. Go at once! The words rung upon Susan's ear like a cannon-shot. She turned her blue eyes with a look of amazed alarm from her uncle to Roger; then she became suddenly very much busied with the duties of the breakfast table, swallowing down, as a very attentive observer might have noticed, something in her throat, and carefully keeping her eyes upon her tea-pot and coffee-pot. Roger had made no answer as yet. While the Colonel inclined his ear attentively across the table for the young man's reply, Roger was studying Susan's face; and it is not hard to explain that common paradox of youthful nature, which made Susan's silent signs of sudden disappointment and vexation the most exhilarating sight in the world to the young Rifleman. While Uncle Edward listened, and heard nothing, and fancied his own deaf ear in fault, Roger, quite otherwise occupied--thinking, it is to be feared, not much about his mother, and nothing at all about Mr. Pouncet--concentrated all his faculties on the honest face of Susan, with its womanly but unconcealable dismay. "Eh, Musgrave?" said the Colonel, stooping towards his young guest, and putting up his kind hand over his deaf ear. "I suppose so, sir," said Roger, in high spirits. Then, after a little pause, with sham sentiment, got up simply as a trap for Susan--"If one could only find out the secret of ubiquity, so that one might be able to content one's mother, and enjoy one's self, at the same time." Yielding to this temptation, Susan glanced up at the young hero for a moment, with some tender tearfulness about her eyes; but, finding nothing but triumph and delight in his, returned, disgusted, and much more inclined to cry than before, to the contemplation of her coffee-pot.