on her
residence for some time abroad, in a genial climate and extreme quiet;
but in vain did Mrs. Greville endeavour to believe that affection for
his daughter and herself occasioned this unwonted acquiescence; it was
too clearly to be perceived that he was pleased at their separation from
himself, for it gave him more liberty. She wrote to her son, imploring
him in the most earnest and affectionate manner to return home for the
Easter vacation, that she might see him for a few days before she left
England--perhaps never to return. Ruined from earliest boyhood by weak
indulgence, Alfred Greville felt sometimes a throb of natural feeling
for his mother, though her counsels were of no avail. Touched by the
mournful solemnity and deep affection breathing in every line, he
complied with her request, and spent four or five days peacefully at
home. He appeared shocked at the alteration he found in his sister, and
was kinder than he had previously been in his manner towards her. He had
lately become heir to a fortune and estate, left him by a very old and
distant relative of his father, and it was from this he had determined,
he told his father, to go to Cambridge and cut a dash there with the
best of them. He was now eighteen, and believed himself no
inconsiderable personage, in which belief he was warmly encouraged by
his mistaken father. It was strange that, with such an income, he
permitted the favourite residence of his mother and sister to be
sold--but so it was. The generous feelings of his early childhood had
been completely blunted, and to himself alone he intended to appropriate
that fortune, when a portion would yet have removed many of Mrs.
Greville's anxious fears for the future. Alfred intended, when he was of
age, to be one of the first men of fashion; but he did not consider,
that if he "cut a dash" at college, with the _eclat_ he wished, that
before three years had passed, he would not be much richer than he had
been when the fortune was first left him.

"Mother, you will drive me from you," he one day exclaimed, in passion,
as she endeavoured to detain him. "If you wish ever to see me, let me
take my own way. Advice I will not brook, and reproach I will not bear;
if you love me, be silent, for I will not be governed."

"Alfred, I will speak!" replied his almost agonized parent, urged on by
an irresistible impulse. "Child of my love, my prayers! Alfred, I will
not see you go wrong, without one effort, one st