reigned alone in the merciless heavens. Pride humbled to the dust;
ambition shivered into fragments; love (or the passion mistaken for it)
blasted into ashes; life, at the first onset, bereaved of its holiest
ties, forsaken by its truest guide; shame that writhed for revenge; and
remorse that knew not prayer,--all, all blended, yet distinct, were in
that awful spectacle of the guilty son.

And I had told but twenty years, and my heart had been mellowed in the
tender sunshine of a happy home, and I had loved this boy as a stranger;
and lo, he was Roland's son! I forgot all else, looking upon that
anguish; and I threw myself on the ground by the form that writhed
there, and folding my arms round the breast which in vain repelled me, I
whispered, "Comfort, comfort: life is long. You shall redeem the past,
you shall efface the stain, and your father shall bless you yet!"




CHAPTER II.


I could not stay long with my unhappy cousin, but still I stayed long
enough to make me think it probable that Lord Castleton's carriage would
have left the inn; and when, as I passed the hall, I saw it standing
before the open door, I was seized with fear for Roland,--his emotions
might have ended in some physical attack. Nor were those fears without
foundation. I found Fanny kneeling beside the old soldier in the parlor
where we had seen the two women, and bathing his temples, while Lord
Castleton was binding his arm; and the marquis's favorite valet, who,
amongst his other gifts, was something of a surgeon, was wiping the