all others.

And here I must a little digress from the chronological course of my
explanatory narrative to inform the reader that when Lady Ellinor had
her interview with Roland, she had been repelled by the sternness of his
manner from divulging Vivian's secret. But on her first attempt to
sound or conciliate him, she had begun with some eulogies on Trevanion's
new friend and assistant, Mr. Gower, and had awakened Roland's
suspicions of that person's identity with his son,--suspicions which had
given him a terrible interest in our joint deliverance of bliss
Trevanion. But so heroically had the poor soldier sought to resist his
own fears, that on the way he shrank to put to me the questions that
might paralyze the energies which, whatever the answer, were then so
much needed. "For," said he to my father, "I felt the blood surging to
my temples; and if I had said to Pisistratus, 'Describe this man,' and
by his description I had recognized my son, and dreaded lest I might be
too late to arrest him from so treacherous a crime, my brain would have
given way,--and so I did not dare!"

I return to the thread of my story. From the time that Vivian confided
in Lady Ellinor, the way was cleared to his most ambitious hopes; and
though his acquisitions were not sufficiently scholastic and various to
permit Trevanion to select him as a secretary, yet, short of sleeping at
the house, he was little less intimate there than I had been.

Among Vivian's schemes of advancement, that of winning the hand and
heart of the great heiress had not been one of the least sanguine. This
hope was annulled when, not long after his intimacy at her father's
house, she became engaged to young Lord Castleton. But he could not see
Miss Trevanion with impunity (alas! who, with a heart yet free, could be