been one of the most successful men in the money-
getting world: he had had no sentimental sufferings, no illness. The
heaviest trouble that had befallen him was the death of his first wife.
But he married my mother soon after; and I remember he seemed exactly the
same, to my keen childish observation, the week after her death as
before. But now, at last, a sorrow had come--the sorrow of old age,
which suffers the more from the crushing of its pride and its hopes, in
proportion as the pride and hope are narrow and prosaic. His son was to
have been married soon--would probably have stood for the borough at the
next election. That son's existence was the best motive that could be
alleged for making new purchases of land every year to round off the
estate. It is a dreary thing onto live on doing the same things year
after year, without knowing why we do them. Perhaps the tragedy of
disappointed youth and passion is less piteous than the tragedy of
disappointed age and worldliness.

As I saw into the desolation of my father's heart, I felt a movement of
deep pity towards him, which was the beginning of a new affection--an
affection that grew and strengthened in spite of the strange bitterness
with which he regarded me in the first month or two after my brother's
death. If it had not been for the softening influence of my compassion
for him--the first deep compassion I had ever felt--I should have been
stung by the perception that my father transferred the inheritance of an
eldest son to me with a mortified sense that fate had compelled him to
the unwelcome course of caring for me as an important being. It was only
in spite of himself that he began to think of me with anxious regard.
There is hardly any neglected child for whom death has made vacant a more
favoured place, who will not understand what I mean.

Gradually, however, my new deference to his wishes, the effect of that
patience which was born of my pity for him, won upon his affection, and
he began to please himself with the endeavour to make me fill any
brother's place as fully as my feebler personality would admit. I saw
that the prospect which by and by presented itself of my becoming
Bertha's husband was welcome to him, and he even contemplated in my case
what he had not intended in my brother's--that his son and daughter-in-
law should make one household with him. My softened feelings towards my
father made this the happiest time I had known since ch