‘Remember it is my father you are speaking of,’ said Ben, hastily, his pride and his affection all in arms. Home and its associations had been as things before the deluge to him ten minutes ago. How they rushed back upon him now at the very sound of this old man’s voice! His father,--ah, yes, his father, had been very hard upon him; but, still, was not to be breathed against by any living man save himself. ‘Well said, Ben,’ said his uncle; ‘well said, my boy! I like that. To be sure he was your father, and my poor sister’s husband. But I may say I wish he had made a will like other people. Why, you might have been enjoying your own, a fine young Squire, among the best of them, if some one had not put such devilish nonsense in his head.’ As the sailor spoke, the phantasmagoria of those six months rolled away, as it were, from Ben’s eyes. A vision of what he might have been rose before him. A man, important to so many people, with power and influence in his hands, with a voice perhaps in the ruling of his country, with all kinds of private interests at least to take charge of, dependants to protect, friends to support and assist; and instead he had spent his time in the little parlour at Guildford Street, madly possessed with one woman’s image, dead and useless to every creature in the world. Was this his father’s fault? ‘I’d rather not think on the subject,’ he said. ‘My father, no doubt, meant well by us. He meant to teach us to depend on ourselves, to rouse our energies----’ ‘Well, my dear fellow, well,’ said Captain Ormerod, with an impatient sigh, ‘I hope he has done so, that’s all. I should have said you looked more as if you had been asleep and dreaming than anything else. And it was not your poor mother’s fault, you may be sure, whoever was to blame. You might have written home.’ ‘I should,’ said Ben, with compunction. ‘I will write at once. I am very sorry. How is my mother?’ his voice faltered in spite of himself as he named her. He had not so much as remembered he had a mother in the absorption of his passion. He almost thought he could see her now on her sofa smiling at him. Poor weakly woman! Not of sufficient mark in the world to be remembered even by her son; but yet giving the lie very distinctly, now he came to think of it, to his bitter identification of Mrs. Tracy as the type of mothers. It seemed strange to him to be able to recollect so clearly, all in a moment, that he had a mother of his own. ‘That’s right, my boy,’ said the Captain; ‘and now tell me what you have been doing with yourself all this time.’