n seen, were of natures that belied their origin
from so stern a stock,--were kept at nearly as great a distance from
him as any other subordinates of his regiment. But although he seldom
indulged in manifestations of parental regard towards those whom he
looked upon rather as inferiors in military rank, than as beings
connected with him by the ties of blood, Colonel de Haldimar was not
without that instinctive love for his children, which every animal in
the creation feels for its offspring. He, also, valued and took a pride
in, because they reflected a certain degree of lustre upon himself, the
talents and accomplishments of his eldest son, who, moreover, was a
brave, enterprising officer, and, only wanted, in his father's
estimation, that severity of carriage and hauteur of deportment,
befitting HIS son, to render him perfect. As for Charles,--the gentle,
bland, winning, universally conciliating Charles,--he looked upon him
as a mere weak boy, who could never hope to arrive at any post of
distinction, if only by reason of the extreme delicacy of his physical
organisation; and to have shown any thing like respect for his
character, or indulged in any expression of tenderness for one so far
below his estimate of what a soldier, a child of his, ought to be,
would have been a concession of which his proud nature was incapable.
In his daughter Clara, however, the gentleness of sex claimed that
warmer affection which was denied to him, who resembled her in almost
every attribute of mind and person. Colonel de Haldimar doated on his
daughter with a tenderness, for which few, who were familiar with his
harsh and unbending nature, ever gave him credit. She was the image of
one on whom all of love that he had ever known had been centered; and
he had continued in Clara an affection, that seemed in itself to form a
portion, distinct and apart, of his existence.

We have already seen, as stated by Charles de Haldimar to the
unfortunate wife of Halloway, with what little success he had pleaded
in the interview he had requested of his father, for the preserver of
his gallant brother's life; and we have also seen how equally
inefficient was the lowly and supplicating anguish of that wretched
being, when, on quitting the apartment of his son, Colonel de Haldimar
had so unexpectedly found himself clasped in her despairing embrace.
There was little to be expected from an intercession on the part of one
claiming so little ascendancy ove