is is indeed a strange misconception of yours. If
we can remove it, all may be well yet. Need there now be any secrets
between us? [persuasively]. Sit down, and tell me all, cousin."

After some hesitation, Vivian complied; and by the clearing of his brow
and the very tone of his voice I felt sure that he was no longer seeking
to disguise the truth. But as I afterwards learned the father's tale
as well as now the son's, so, instead of repeating Vivian's
words, which--not by design, but by the twist of a mind habitually
wrong--distorted the facts, I will state what appears to me the real
case, as between the parties so unhappily opposed. Reader, pardon me if
the recital be tedious; and if thou thinkest that I bear not hard enough
on the erring hero of the story, remember that he who recites, judges as
Austin's son must judge of Roland's.

CHAPTER III.

Vivian.

At The Entrance of Life Sits--The Mother.

It was during the war in Spain that a severe wound, and the fever which
ensued, detained Roland at the house of a Spanish widow. His hostess
had once been rich; but her fortune had been ruined in the general
calamities of the country. She had an only daughter, who assisted to
nurse and tend the wounded Englishman; and when the time approached for
Roland's departure, the frank grief of the young Ramouna betrayed
the impression that the guest had made upon her affections. Much of
gratitude, and something, it might be, of an exquisite sense of honor,
aided, in Roland's breast, the charm naturally produced by the beauty
of his young nurse, and the knightly compassion he felt for her ruined
fortunes and desolate condition.

In one of those hasty impulses common to a generous nature--and which
too often fatally vindicate the rank of Prudence amidst the tutelary
Powers of Life--Roland committed the error of marriage with a girl of
whose connections he knew nothing, and of whose nature little more than
its warm, spontaneous susceptibility. In a few days subsequent to these
rash nuptials, Roland rejoined the march of the army; nor was he able to
return to Spain till after the crowning victory of Waterloo.

Maimed by the loss of a limb, and with the scars of many a noble wound
still fresh, Roland then hastened to a home, the dreams of which had
soothed the bed of pain, and now replaced the earlier visions of renown.
During his absence a son had been born to him,--a son whom he might rear
to take the place he had left