utinous son who had
already thrown off his authority; on the other hand, there was much
in Gabriel, mutinous and even menacing as he had lately become, that
promised an unscrupulous tool or a sharp-witted accomplice, with
interests that every year the ready youth would more and more discover
were bound up in his plotting father's. This last consideration, joined,
if not to affection, still to habit,--to the link between blood and
blood, which even the hardest find it difficult to sever,--prevailed. He
extended his pale hand to Gabriel, and said gently,--

"I will take you, if we rightly understand each other. Once again in my
power, I might constrain you to my will, it is true. But I rather confer
with you as man to man than as man to boy."

"It is the best way," said Gabriel, firmly.

"I will use no harshness, inflict no punishment,--unless, indeed, amply
merited by stubborn disobedience or wilful deceit. But if I meet with
these, better rot on a dunghill than come with me! I ask implicit
confidence in all my suggestions, prompt submission to all my requests.
Grant me but these, and I promise to consult your fortune as my own, to
gratify your tastes as far as my means will allow, to grudge not your
pleasures, and when the age for ambition comes, to aid your rise if I
rise myself,--nay, if well contented with you, to remove the blot from
your birth, by acknowledging and adopting you formally as my son."

"Agreed! and I thank you," said Gabriel. "And Lucretia is going? Oh, I
so long to see her!"

"See her--not yet; but next week."

"Do not fear that I should let out about the letter. I should betray
myself if I did," said the boy, bluntly betraying his guess at his
father's delay.

The evil scholar smiled.

"You will do well to keep it secret for your own sake; for mine, I
should not fear. Gabriel, go back now to your master,--you do right,
like the rats, to run from the falling house. Next week I will send for
you, Gabriel!"

Not, however, back to the studio went the boy. He sauntered leisurely
through the gayest streets, eyed the shops and the equipages, the fair
women and the well-dressed men,--eyed with envy and longings and visions
of pomps and vanities to come; then, when the day began to close, he
sought out a young painter, the wildest and maddest of the crew to whom
his uncle had presented their future comrade and rival, and went with
this youth, at half-price, to the theatre, not to gaze on the actor