the
patron changed his original intention, entered him as a pupil in the
studio of a distinguished French painter, and afterwards bade him
perfect his taste by the study of Italian and Flemish masterpieces.

"He was still abroad, when--" here Mrs. Cameron stopped, with visible
effort, suppressed a sob, and went on, whisperingly, through teeth
clenched together--"when a thunderbolt fell on the house of the patron,
shattering his fortunes, blasting his name. The son, unknown to the
father, had been decoyed into speculations which proved unfortunate: the
loss might have been easily retrieved in the first instance; unhappily
he took the wrong course to retrieve it, and launched into new hazards.
I must be brief. One day the world was startled by the news that a firm,
famed for its supposed wealth and solidity, was bankrupt. Dishonesty
was alleged, was proved, not against the father,--he went forth from
the trial, censured indeed for neglect, not condemned for fraud, but a
penniless pauper. The--son, the son, the idolized son, was removed from
the prisoner's dock, a convicted felon, sentenced to penal servitude;
escaped that sentence by--by--you guess--you guess. How could he escape
except through death?--death by his own guilty deed?"

Almost as much overpowered by emotion as Mrs. Cameron herself, Kenelm
covered his bended face with one hand, stretching out the other blindly
to clasp her own, but she would not take it.

A dreary foreboding. Again before his eyes rose the old gray
tower,--again in his ears thrilled the tragic tale of the Fletwodes.
What was yet left untold held the young man in spell-bound silence. Mrs.
Cameron resumed,--

"I said the father was a penniless pauper; he died lingeringly
bedridden. But one faithful friend did not desert that bed,--the youth
to whose genius his wealth had ministered. He had come from abroad
with some modest savings from the sale of copies or sketches made in
Florence. These savings kept a roof over the heads of the old man and
the two helpless, broken-hearted women,--paupers like himself,--his own
daughter and his son's widow. When the savings were gone, the young man
stooped from his destined calling, found employment somehow, no matter
how alien to his tastes, and these three whom his toil supported never
wanted a home or food. Well, a few weeks after her husband's terrible
death, his young widow (they had not been a year married) gave birth to
a child,--a girl. She did no