as a warning against the passions which, when
once called into force, he dreaded to find equally ungovernable in his
present master.

Mr. Morville had been his great pride and glory, and, in fact, had been
so left to his care, as to have been regarded like a son of his own. He
had loved him, if possible, better than Guy, because he had been more
his own; he had chosen his school, and given him all the reproofs which
had ever been bestowed on him with his good in view, and how he had
grieved for him was never known to man. It was the first time he had
ever talked it over, and he described, with strong, deep feeling, the
noble face and bearing of the dark-eyed, gallant-looking stripling, his
generosity and high spirit tainted and ruined by his wild temper and
impatience of restraint. There seemed to have been a great sweetness of
disposition, excellent impulses, and so strong a love of his father, in
spite of early neglect and present resentment, as showed what he might
have been with only tolerable training, which gave Guy's idea of him
more individuality than it had ever had before, and made him better
understand what his unhappy grandfather's remorse had been. Guy doubted
for a moment whether it had not been selfish to make Markham narrate the
history of the time when he had suffered so much; and Markham, when he
had been led into telling it, and saw the deepening sadness on his young
master's countenance, wished it had not been told, and ended by saying
it was of no use to stir up what was better forgotten.

He would have regretted the telling it still more if he had known how
Guy acted it all over in his solitude; picturing his father standing an
outcast at the door of his own home, yielding his pride and resentment
for the sake of his wife, ready to do anything, yearning for
reconciliation, longing to tread once more the friendly, familiar hall,
and meeting only the angry repulse and cruel taunt! He imagined
the headlong passion, the despair, the dashing on his horse in
whirlwind-like swiftness, then the blow--the fall--the awful stillness
of the form carried back to his father's house, and laid on that table
a dead man! Fierce wrath--then another world! Guy worked himself up in
imagining the horror of the scene, till it was almost as if he had been
an actor in it.

Yet he had never cared so much for the thought of his father as for
his mother. His yearning for her which he had felt in early days at
Hollywell, ha