e by mechanical routine,
to take care of others, should he live to buy the grade of a colonel."

The plans thus promptly formed Alban Morley briefly explained to Lionel
when the boy came to breakfast in Curzon Street; requesting him to
obtain Mrs. Haughton's acquiesence in that exercise of the discretionary
powers with which he had been invested by Mr. Darrell. To Lionel the
proposition that commended the very studies to which his tastes directed
his ambition, and placed his initiation into responsible manhood among
scenes bright to his fancy, because new to his experience, seemed of
course the perfection of wisdom. Less readily pleased was poor Mrs.
Haughton, when her son returned to communicate the arrangement, backing
a polite and well-worded letter from the Colonel with his own more
artless eloquence. Instantly she flew off on the wing of her "little
tempers." "What! her only son taken from her; sent to that horrid
Continent, just when she was so respectably settled! What was the good
of money if she was to be parted from her boy! Mr. Darrell might take
the money back if he pleased; she would write and tell him so. Colonel
Morley had no feeling; and she was shocked to think Lionel was in
such unnatural hands. She saw very plainly that he no longer cared for
her,--a serpent's tooth," etc. But as soon as the burst was over, the
sky cleared and Mrs. Haughton became penitent and sensible. Then her
grief for Lionel's loss was diverted by preparations for his departure.
There was his wardrobe to see to; a patent portmanteau to purchase and
to fill. And, all done, the last evening mother and son spent together,
though painful at the moment, it would be happiness for both hereafter
to recall! Their hands clasped in each other, her head leaning on his
young shoulder, her tears kissed so soothingly away, and soft words of
kindly motherly counsel, sweet promises of filial performances. Happy,
thrice happy, as an after remembrance, be the final parting between
hopeful son and fearful parent at the foot of that mystic bridge,
which starts from the threshold of home,--lost in the dimness of the
far-opposing shore!--bridge over which goes the boy who will never
return but as the man.

CHAPTER XII.

The pocket-cannibal baits his woman's trap with love-letters, and a
widow allured steals timidly towards it from under the weeds.

Jasper Losely is beginning to be hard up! The infallible calculation
at rouge-et-noir has