t she now
might well call, home. Often, in some strange dialect of Hindostan, did
they converse together, of old times and distant shores; none but Emily
might read him to sleep--none but Emily wake him in the morning with
a kiss--none but Emily dare approach him in his gouty torments--none
but Emily had any thing like intimate acquaintance with that moody
iron-hearted man.

As to his sons, or the two young men he might presume to be his sons, he
neither knew them, nor cared to know. Bare civilities, as between man
and man, constituted all which their intercourse amounted to: what were
those young fellows, stout or slim, to him? mere accidents of a
soldier's gallantries and of an ill-assorted marriage. He neither had,
nor wished to have, any sympathies with them: Julian might be as bad as
he pleased, and Charles as good, for any thing the general seemed to
heed: they could not dive with him into the past, and the sports of
Hindostan: they reminded him, simply, of his wife, for pleasures of
Memory; of the grave, for pleasures of Hope: he was older when he looked
at them: and they seemed to him only living witnesses of his folly as
lieutenant, in the choice of Mrs. Tracy. I will not take upon myself to
say, that he had any occasion to congratulate himself on the latter
reminiscence.

So he quickly acquiesced in Julian's wish for a commission, and
entirely approved of Charles's college schemes. After next September,
the funds should be forthcoming: not but that he was rich enough, and
to spare, any month in the year: but he would be vastly richer then,
from prize-money, or some such luck. It was more prudent to delay
until September.

With reference to Emily--no, no--I could see at once that General
Tracy never had any serious intention to part with Emily; but she had
all manner of masters at home, and soon made extraordinary progress.
As for the matter of his sons falling in love with her, attractive in all
beauty though she were, he never once had given it a thought: for, first,
he was too much a man of the world to believe in such ideal trash as
love: and next, he totally forgot that his "boy, or boys," had human
feelings. So, when his wife one day gave him a gentle and triumphant
hint of the state of affairs, it came upon him overwhelmingly, like an
avalanche: his yellow face turned flake-white, he trembled as he stood,
and really seemed to take so natural a probability to heart as the most
serious of evils.

"My