earnest,
when I open! To resume--so I leave Bath with a light conscience. Mixed
with pleasant recollections is the transient regret that you were not
a spectator of the meeting of the Wilts and Denewdney streams. Jorian
compared them to the Rhone and the--I forget the name of the river
below Geneva--dirtyish; for there was a transparent difference in the
Denewdney style of dress, and did I choose it I could sit and rule those
two factions as despotically as Buonaparte his Frenchmen. Ask me what I
mean by scaling billows, Richie. I will some day tell you. I have done
it all my life, and here I am. But I thank heaven I have a son I love,
and I can match him against the best on earth, and henceforward I live
for him, to vindicate and right the boy, and place him in his legitimate
sphere. From this time I take to looking exclusively forward, and I
labour diligently. I have energies.

'Not to boast, darling old son, I tell truth; I am only happy when
my heart is beating near you. Here comes the mother in me pumping
up. Adieu. Lebe wohl. The German!--the German!--may God in his
Barmherzigkeit!--Tell her I never encouraged the girl, have literally
nothing to trace a temporary wrinkle on my forehead as regards
conscience. I say, may it please Providence to make you a good German
scholar by the day of your majority. Hurrah for it! Present my humble
warm respects to your aunt Dorothy. I pray to heaven nightly for one of
its angels on earth. Kunst, Wissenschaft, Ehre, Liebe. Die Liebe.
Quick at the German poets. Frau: Fraulein. I am actually dazzled at the
prospect of our future. To be candid, I no longer see to write. Gruss'
dich herzlich. From Vienna to you next. Lebe wohl!'

My aunt Dorothy sent a glance at the letter while I was folding it
evidently thinking my unwillingness to offer it a sign of bad news or
fresh complications. She spoke of Miss Penrhys.

'Oh! that's over,' said I. 'Heiresses soon get consoled.'

She accused me of having picked up a vulgar idea. I maintained that it
was my father's.

'It cannot be your father's,' said she softly; and on affirming that
he had uttered it and written it, she replied in the same tone, more
effective than the ordinary language of conviction, 'He does not think
it.'

The rage of a youth to prove himself in the right of an argument was
insufficient to make me lay the letter out before other eyes than my
own, and I shrank from exposing it to compassionate gentle eyes that
wo