ded, not from that
poor Sir William who had been killed in so bad a cause, but from the
great printer, who was from a younger branch of the same family, and
to whose descendants the estate came in the reign of Henry VIII. It was
upon this that your Uncle Roland quarrelled with him,--and, indeed, I
tremble to think that they may touch on that matter again."

"Then, my dear mother, I must say my uncle was wrong there so far as
common-sense is concerned; but still, somehow or other, I can understand
it. Surely, this was not the only cause of estrangement?"

My mother looked down, and moved one hand gently over the other, which
was her way when embarrassed. "What was it, my own mother?" said I,
coaxingly.

"I believe--that is, I--I think that they were both attached to the same
young lady."

"How! you don't mean to say that my father was ever in love with any one
but you?"

"Yes, Sisty,--yes, and deeply! And," added my mother, after a slight
pause, and with a very low sigh, "he never was in love with me; and what
is more, he had the frankness to tell me so!"

"And yet you--"

"Married him--yes!" said my mother, raising the softest and purest eyes
that ever lover could have wished to read his fate in; "yes, for the old
love was hopeless. I knew that I could make him happy. I knew that he
would love me at last, and he does so! My son, your father loves me!"

As she spoke, there came a blush, as innocent as virgin ever knew, to
my mother's smooth cheek; and she looked so fair, so good, and still
so young all the while that you would have said that either Dusius, the
Teuton fiend, or Nock, the Scandinavian sea-imp, from whom the learned
assure us we derive our modern Daimones, "The Deuce," and Old Nick, had
possessed my father, if he had not learned to love such a creature.

I pressed her hand to my lips; but my heart was too full tot speak for a
moment or so, and then I partially changed the subject.

"Well, and this rivalry estranged them more? And who was the lady?"

"Your father never told me, and I never asked," said my mother, simply.
"But she was very different from me, I know. Very accomplished, very
beautiful, very highborn."

"For all that, my father was a lucky man to escape her. Pass on. What
did the Captain do?"

"Why, about that time your grandfather died; and shortly after an aunt,
on the mother's side, who was rich and saving, died, and unexpectedly
left each sixteen thousand pounds. Your uncle,