made more odious in the
eyes of the old man, were narrated; the idleness and insubordination
at first, then the reckless pursuit of pleasure, the craving for
excitement, the defiance of rule and authority, till folly had become
vice, and vice had led to crime.

He had fought no fewer than three duels, and only one had been
bloodless. His misery after the first had well-nigh led to a reform;
but time had dulled its acuteness--it had been lost in fresh scenes
of excitement--and at the next offence rage had swept away such
recollections. Indeed, so far had he lost the natural generosity of his
character, that his remorse had been comparatively slight for the last,
which was the worst of all, since he had forced the quarrel on his
victim, Captain Wellwood, whose death had left a wife and children
almost destitute. His first awakening to a sense of what his course had
been, was when he beheld his only child, in the prime of youth, carried
lifeless across his threshold, and attributed his death to his own
intemperance and violence. That hour made Sir Guy Morville an old and a
broken-hearted man; and he repented as vigorously as he had sinned.

From the moment he dared to hope that his son's orphan would be spared,
he had been devoted to him, but still mournfully, envying and pitying
his innocence as something that could not last.

He saw bright blossoms put forth, as the boy grew older; but they were
not yet fruits, and he did not dare to believe they ever would be.
The strength of will which had, in his own case, been the slave of his
passions, had been turned inward to subdue the passions themselves, but
this was only the beginning--the trial was not yet come. He could hope
his grandson might repent, but this was the best that he dared to think
possible. He could not believe that a Morville could pass unscathed
through the world, or that his sins would not be visited on the head of
his only descendant; and the tone of his narration was throughout such
as might almost have made the foreboding cause its own accomplishment.

The effect was beyond what he had expected; for a soul deeply dyed
in guilt, even though loathing its own stains, had not the power of
conceiving how foul was the aspect of vice, to one hitherto guarded from
its contemplation, and living in a world of pure, lofty day-dreams. The
boy sat the whole time without a word, his face bent down and hidden
by his clasped hands, only now and then unable to repress