ted him the
outward appearances of a gentleman,--an independence modest, indeed, but
independence still. We were all gone from London. One letter to me with
the postmark of the town near which Colonel Vivian lived, sufficed to
confirm my belief in his parentage and in his return to his friends.
He then presented himself to Trevanion as the young man whose pen I had
employed in the member's service; and knowing that I had never mentioned
his name to Trevanion,--for without Vivian's permission I should not,
considering his apparent trust in me, have deemed myself authorized to
do so,--he took that of Gower, which he selected, haphazard, from an old
Court Guide as having the advantage--in common with most names borne by
the higher nobility of England--of not being confined, as the ancient
names of untitled gentlemen usually are, to the members of a single
family. And when, with his wonted adaptability and suppleness, he had
contrived to lay aside or smooth over whatever in his manners would be
calculated to displease Trevanion, and had succeeded in exciting the
interest which that generous statesman always conceived for ability,
he owned candidly one day, in the presence of Lady Ellinor,--for, his
experience had taught him the comparative ease with which the sympathy
of woman is enlisted in anything that appeals to the imagination,
or seems out of the ordinary beat of life,--that he had reasons for
concealing his connections for the present; that he had cause to believe
I suspected what they were, and, from mistaken regard for his welfare,
might acquaint his relations with his whereabout. He therefore begged
Trevanion, if the latter had occasion to write to me, not to mention
him. This promise Trevanion gave, though reluctantly,--for the
confidence volunteered to him seemed to exact the promise; but as he
detested mystery of all kinds, the avowal might have been fatal to any
further acquaintance, and under auspices so doubtful, there would have
been no chance of his obtaining that intimacy in Trevanion's house which
he desired to establish, but for an accident which at once opened that
house to him almost as a home.

Vivian had always treasured a lock of his mother's hair, cut off on her
death-bed; and when he was at his French tutor's, his first pocket-money
had been devoted to the purchase of a locket, on which he had caused to
be inscribed his own name and his mother's. Through all his wanderings
he had worn this relic;