ady of the Church of South Europe, as she would call the Roman
communion, that was no need why she should not welcome her as a
daughter-in-law: and accordingly she writ to her new daughter a very
pretty, touching letter (as Esmond thought, who had cognizance of it
before it went), in which the only hint of reproof was a gentle
remonstrance that her son had not written to herself, to ask a fond
mother's blessing for that step which he was about taking. "Castlewood
knew very well," so she wrote to her son, "that she never denied him
anything in her power to give, much less would she think of opposing a
marriage that was to make his happiness, as she trusted, and keep him out
of wild courses, which had alarmed her a good deal: and she besought him
to come quickly to England, to settle down in his family house of
Castlewood ('It is his family house,' says she, to Colonel Esmond, 'though
only his own house by your forbearance'), and to receive the accompt of
her stewardship during his ten years' minority." By care and frugality,
she had got the estate into a better condition than ever it had been since
the Parliamentary wars; and my lord was now master of a pretty, small
income, not encumbered of debts, as it had been, during his father's
ruinous time. "But in saving my son's fortune," says she, "I fear I have
lost a great part of my hold on him." And, indeed, this was the case; her
ladyship's daughter complaining that their mother did all for Frank, and
nothing for her; and Frank himself being dissatisfied at the narrow,
simple way of his mother's living at Walcote, where he had been brought up
more like a poor parson's son, than a young nobleman that was to make a
figure in the world. 'Twas this mistake in his early training, very
likely, that set him so eager upon pleasure when he had it in his power;
nor is he the first lad that has been spoiled by the over-careful fondness
of women. No training is so useful for children, great or small, as the
company of their betters in rank or natural parts; in whose society they
lose the overweening sense of their own importance, which stay-at-home
people very commonly learn.

But, as a prodigal that's sending in a schedule of his debts to his
friends, never puts all down, and, you may be sure, the rogue keeps back
some immense swingeing bill, that he doesn't dare to own; so the poor
Frank had a very heavy piece of news to break to his mother, and which he
hadn't the courage to introd