is
own prospects, given him an alternative in the benevolence of Madame de
Merville. But Gawtrey had been so earnest on the subject, that he felt
as if he had no right to hesitate. And was it not a sort of atonement to
any faults the son might have committed against the parent, to place by
the old man's hearth so sweet a charge?

The strange and peculiar mind and character of Fanny made him, however,
yet more anxious than otherwise he might have been. She certainly
deserved not the harsh name of imbecile or idiot, but she was different
from all other children; she felt more acutely than most of her age, but
she could not be taught to reason. There was something either oblique
or deficient in her intellect, which justified the most melancholy
apprehensions; yet often, when some disordered, incoherent, inexplicable
train of ideas most saddened the listener, it would be followed by
fancies so exquisite in their strangeness, or feelings so endearing in
their tenderness, that suddenly she seemed as much above, as before she
seemed below, the ordinary measure of infant comprehension. She was like
a creature to which Nature, in some cruel but bright caprice, has given
all that belongs to poetry, but denied all that belongs to the common
understanding necessary to mankind; or, as a fairy changeling, not,
indeed, according to the vulgar superstition, malignant and deformed,
but lovelier than the children of men, and haunted by dim and struggling
associations of a gentler and fairer being, yet wholly incapable to
learn the dry and hard elements which make up the knowledge of actual
life.

Morton, as well as he could, sought to explain to Simon the
peculiarities in Fanny's mental constitution. He urged on him the
necessity of providing for her careful instruction, and Simon promised
to send her to the best school the neighbourhood could afford; but, as
the old man spoke, he dwelt so much on the supposed fact that Fanny was
William's daughter, and with his remorse, or affection, there ran so
interwoven a thread of selfishness and avarice, that Morton thought it
would be dangerous to his interest in the child to undeceive his error.
He, therefore,--perhaps excusably enough--remained silent on that
subject.

Gawtrey had placed with the superior of the convent, together with an
order to give up the child to any one who should demand her in his true
name, which he confided to the superior, a sum of nearly L300., which he
solemnly s