patrician heaven that my obscure, portionless youth had dared
to lift its presumptuous eyes? But what is this? "Indian Intelligence:
Skilful retreat of the Sepoys under Captain de Caxton"! A captain
already! What is the date of the newspaper!--three months ago. The
leading article quotes the name with high praise. Is there no leaven of
envy amidst the joy at my heart? How obscure has been my career,--how
laurelless my poor battle with adverse fortune! Fie, Pisistratus! I
am ashamed of thee. Has this accursed Old World, with its feverish
rivalries, diseased thee already? Get thee home, quick, to the arms of
thy mother, the embrace of thy father; hear Roland's low blessing that
thou hast helped to minister to the very fame of that son. If thou wilt
have ambition, take it,--not soiled and foul with the mire of London.
Let it spring fresh and hardy in the calm air of wisdom, and fed, as
with dews, by the loving charities of Home.

CHAPTER III.

It was at sunset that I stole through the ruined court-yard, having left
my chaise at the foot of the hill below. Though they whom I came to seek
knew that I had arrived in England, they did not, from my letter, expect
me till the next day. I had stolen a march upon them; and now, in
spite of all the impatience which had urged me thither, I was afraid to
enter,--afraid to see the change more than ten years had made in those
forms for which, in my memory, Time had stood still. And Roland had,
even when we parted, grown old before his time. Then my father was
in the meridian of life, now he had approached to the decline. And my
mother, whom I remembered so fair, as if the freshness of her own heart
bad preserved the soft bloom to the cheek,--I could not bear to
think that she was no longer young. Blanche, too, whom I had left a
child,--Blanche, my constant correspondent during those long years of
exile, in letters crossed and recrossed, with all the small details that
make the eloquence of letter-writing, so that in those epistles I had
seen her mind gradually grow up in harmony with the very characters, at
first vague and infantine, then somewhat stiff with the first graces of
running-hand, then dashing off free and facile; and for the last year
before I left, so formed yet so airy, so regular yet so unconscious of
effort, though in truth, as the calligraphy had become thus matured,
I had been half vexed and half pleased to perceive a certain reserve
creeping over the style,--w