et in the prime of life, and the heir cannot wait till nature
leaves him fatherless. Frank; Frank this is so unlike you. Can
London have ruined already a disposition so honest and
affectionate?--No; I cannot believe it. There must be some mistake.
Clear it up, I implore you; or, though as a mother I pity you, as a
wife I cannot forgive."

Even Randal was affected by the letter; for, as we know, even Randal
felt in his own person the strength of family ties. The poor squire's
choler and bluffness had disguised the parental heart from an eye that,
however acute, had not been willing to search for it; and Randal, ever
affected through his intellect, had despised the very weakness on which
he had preyed. But the mother's letter, so just and sensible (allowing
that the squire's opinions had naturally influenced the wife to
take what men of the world would call a very exaggerated view of
the every-day occurrence of loans raised by a son, payable only at
a father's death),--this letter, I say, if exaggerated according to
fashionable notions, so sensible if judged by natural affections,
touched the dull heart of the schemer, because approved by the quick
tact of his intelligence.

"Frank," said he, with a sincerity that afterwards amazed himself, "go
down at once to Hazeldean; see your mother, and explain to her how this
transaction really happened. The woman you loved, and wooed as wife,
in danger of an arrest, your distraction of mind, Levy's counsels, your
hope to pay off the debt, so incurred to the usurer, from the fortune
you would shortly receive with the marchesa. Speak to your mother,--she
is a woman; women have a common interest in forgiving all faults that
arise from the source of their power over us men,--I mean love. Go!"

"No, I cannot go; you see she would not like to look on my face. And I
cannot repeat what you say so glibly. Besides, somehow or other, as I am
so dependent upon my father,--and he has said as much,--I feel as if
it would be mean in me to make any excuses. I did the thing, and must
suffer for it. But I'm a in--an--no--I 'm not a man here." Frank burst
into tears.

At the sight of those tears, Randal gradually recovered from his strange
aberration into vulgar and low humanity. His habitual contempt for his
kinsman returned; and with contempt came the natural indifference to the
sufferings of the thing to be put to use. It is contempt for the worm
that makes the angler fix it on