urchased a mine in
Carinthia, on the borders of Styria, and worked it himself. His native
land displeased him, so that he would not have been 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
so