unwilling to see Chillon enter the Austrian service, which the young man
was inclined for, subsequent to his return to his parents from one of
the English public schools, notwithstanding his passionate love for Old
England. But Lord Levellier explained the mystery in a letter to his
half-forgiven sister, praising the boy for his defence of his mother's
name at the school, where a big brutal fellow sneered at her, and
Chillon challenged him to sword or pistol; and then he walked down to
the boy's home in Staffordshire to force him to fight; and the father
of the boy made him offer an apology. That was not much balm to Master
Chillon's wound. He returned to his mother quite heavy, unlike a young
man; and the unhappy lady, though she knew, him to be bitterly sensitive
on the point of honour, and especially as to everything relating to her,
saw herself compelled to tell him the history of her life, to save him,
as she thought, from these chivalrous vindications of her good name.
She may have even painted herself worse than she was, both to excuse her
brother's miserliness to her son and the world's evil speaking of her.
Wisely or not, she chose this course devotedly to protect him from
the perils she foresaw in connection with the name of the once famous
Countess Fanny in the British Isles. And thus are we stricken by the
days of our youth. It is impossible to moralize conveniently when one is
being hurried by a person at one's elbow.

So the young man heard his mother out and kissed her, and then he went
secretly to Vienna and enlisted and served for a year as a private in
the regiment of Hussars, called, my papers tell me, Liechtenstein, and
what with his good conduct and the help of Kirby's friends, he would
have obtained a commission from the emperor, when, at the right moment
to keep a sprig of Kirby's growth for his country, Lord Levellier sent
word that he was down for a cornetcy in a British regiment of dragoons.
Chillon came home from a garrison town, and there was a consultation
about his future career. Shall it be England? Shall it be Austria?
Countess Fanny's voice was for England, and she carried the vote,
knowing though she did that it signified separation, and it might be
alienation--where her son would chance to hear things he could not
refute. She believed that her son by such a man as Kirby would be of use
to his country, and her voice, against herself, was for England.

It broke her heart. If she failed t