wen was about to answer with unusual animation, my father re-entered
the apartment.

"You were right," he said, "Owen, and I was wrong; we will take more time
to think over this matter.--Young man, you will prepare to give me an
answer on this important subject this day month."

I bowed in silence, sufficiently glad of a reprieve, and trusting it
might indicate some relaxation in my father's determination.

The time of probation passed slowly, unmarked by any accident whatever. I
went and came, and disposed of my time as I pleased, without question or
criticism on the part of my father. Indeed, I rarely saw him, save at
meal-times, when he studiously avoided a discussion which you may well
suppose I was in no hurry to press onward. Our conversation was of the
news of the day, or on such general topics as strangers discourse upon to
each other; nor could any one have guessed, from its tenor, that there
remained undecided betwixt us a dispute of such importance. It haunted
me, however, more than once, like the nightmare. Was it possible he would
keep his word, and disinherit his only son in favour of a nephew whose
very existence he was not perhaps quite certain of? My grandfather's
conduct, in similar circumstances, boded me no good, had I considered the
matter rightly. But I had formed an erroneous idea of my father's
character, from the importance which I recollected I maintained with him
and his whole family before I went to France. I was not aware that there
are men who indulge their children at an early age, because to do so
interests and amuses them, and who can yet be sufficiently severe when
the same children cross their expectations at a more advanced period. On
the contrary, I persuaded myself, that all I had to apprehend was some
temporary alienation of affection--perhaps a rustication of a few weeks,
which I thought would rather please me than otherwise, since it would
give me an opportunity of setting about my unfinished version of Orlando
Furioso, a poem which I longed to render into English verse. I suffered
this belief to get such absolute possession of my mind, that I had
resumed my blotted papers, and was busy in meditation on the
oft-recurring rhymes of the Spenserian stanza, when I heard a low and
cautious tap at the door of my apartment. "Come in," I said, and Mr. Owen
entered. So regular were the motions and habits of this worthy man, that
in all probability this was the first time he had ever been