s of Stonehenge as she now was, seeming by degrees to care
little what had become of them. Milly became extremely ambitious on the
boy's account; she pinched herself almost of necessaries to send him to
the Grammar School in the town to which they retired, and at twenty he
enlisted in a cavalry regiment, joining it with a deliberate intent of
making the Army his profession, and not in a freak of idleness. His
exceptional attainments, his manly bearing, his steady conduct, speedily
won him promotion, which was furthered by the serious war in which this
country was at that time engaged. On his return to England after the
peace he had risen to the rank of riding-master, and was soon after
advanced another stage, and made quartermaster, though still a young man.

His mother--his corporeal mother, that is, the Marchioness of
Stonehenge--heard tidings of this unaided progress; it reawakened her
maternal instincts, and filled her with pride. She became keenly
interested in her successful soldier-son; and as she grew older much
wished to see him again, particularly when, the Marquis dying, she was
left a solitary and childless widow. Whether or not she would have gone
to him of her own impulse I cannot say; but one day, when she was driving
in an open carriage in the outskirts of a neighbouring town, the troops
lying at the barracks hard by passed her in marching order. She eyed
them narrowly, and in the finest of the horsemen recognized her son from
his likeness to her first husband.

This sight of him doubly intensified the motherly emotions which had lain
dormant in her for so many years, and she wildly asked herself how she
could so have neglected him? Had she possessed the true courage of
affection she would have owned to her first marriage, and have reared him
as her son! What would it have mattered if she had never obtained this
precious coronet of pearls and gold leaves, by comparison with the gain
of having the love and protection of such a noble and worthy son? These
and other sad reflections cut the gloomy and solitary lady to the heart;
and she repented of her pride in disclaiming her first husband more
bitterly than she had ever repented of her infatuation in marrying him.

Her yearning was so strong, that at length it seemed to her that she
could not live without announcing herself to him as his mother. Come
what might, she would do it: late as it was, she would have him away from
that woman whom she be