"I do not think I agree with you, Elinor," he said at last. "I think it would have been better had he always known that his father lived, and who he was, and what family he belonged to; that is not to say that you were to thrust him into his father's arms. And I think now that, though we cannot redeem the past, it should be done as soon as possible, and that he should know before he goes to school. I think the effect will be less now than if the discovery bursts upon him when he is a young man, when he finds, perhaps, as may well be, that his position and all his prospects are changed in a moment, when he may be called upon without any preparation to assume a name and a rank of which he knows nothing." "Not a name. He has always borne his true name." "His true name may be changed at any moment, Elinor. He may become Lord Lomond, and the heir----" "My dear," said Mrs. Dennistoun, growing red, "that is a chance we have never taken into account." "What has that to do with it?" she said. "Is his happiness and his honour to be put in comparison with a chance, a possibility that may never come true? John, for the sake of everything that is good, let him wait till he is a man and knows good from evil." "It is that I am thinking of, Elinor; a boy of fourteen often knows good from evil much better than a youth of twenty-one, which is, I suppose, what you call a man. My opinion is that it would be better and safer now." "No!" she said. "And no! I will never consent to it. If you go and poison my boy's mind I will never forgive you, John." "I have no right to do anything," he said; "it is of course you who must decide, Elinor: I advise only; and I might as well give that up," he added, "don't you think? for you are not to be guided by me." And she was of course supreme in everything that concerned her son. John, when he could do no more, knew how to be silent, and Mrs. Dennistoun, if not so wise in this respect, was yet more easily silenced than John. And Philip Compton went to the old grammar-school among the dales, where was the young and energetic head-master, who, as Elinor anticipated, found this one pupil like a pearl among the pebbles of the shore, and spared no pains to polish him and perfect him in every way known to the ambitious schoolmaster of modern times. CHAPTER XXXIII.