incoherently enough at first, but clearly and manfully
as I went on. Now I know that it is not the custom of lovers to confide
in fathers and uncles. Judging by those mirrors of life, plays and
novels, they choose better,--valets and chambermaids, and friends whom
they have picked up in the street, as I had picked up poor Francis
Vivian: to these they make clean breasts of their troubles. But fathers
and uncles,--to them they are close, impregnable, "buttoned to the
chin." The Caxtons were an eccentric family, and never did anything like
other people. When I had ended, I lifted up my eyes and said pleadingly,
"Now tell me, is there no hope--none?"

"Why should there be none?" cried Captain Roland, hastily--"the De
Caxtons are as good a family as the Trevanions; and as for yourself,
all I will say is, that the young lady might choose worse for her own
happiness."

I wrung my uncle's hand, and turned to my father in anxious fear, for
I knew that, in spite of his secluded habits, few men ever formed a
sounder judgment on worldly matters, when he was fairly drawn to look
at them. A thing wonderful is that plain wisdom which scholars and
poets often have for others, though they rarely deign to use it for
themselves. And how on earth do they get at it? I looked at my father,
and the vague hope Roland had excited fell as I looked.

"Brother," said he, slowly, and shaking his head, "the world, which
gives codes and laws to those who live in it, does not care much for a
pedigree, unless it goes with a title-deed to estates."

"Trevanion was not richer than Pisistratus when he married Lady
Ellinor," said my uncle.

"True, but Lady Ellinor was not then an heiress; and her father
viewed these matters as no other peer in England perhaps would. As for
Trevanion himself, I dare say he has no prejudices about station, but he
is strong in common-sense. He values himself on being a practical man.
It would be folly to talk to him of love, and the affections of youth.
He would see in the son of Austin Caxton, living on the interest of some
fifteen or sixteen thousand pounds, such a match for his daughter as no
prudent man in his position could approve. And as for Lady Ellinor--"

"She owes us much, Austin!" exclaimed Roland, his face darkening.

"Lady Ellinor is now what, if we had known her better, she promised
always to be,--the ambitious, brilliant, scheming woman of the world. Is
it not so, Pisistratus?"

I said nothing,--I fe