ion, and you have already put it to profit. My dear boy," added
Vance, with unusual warmth, "I honour you; at your age, on leaving
school, to have shut yourself up, translated Greek and Latin per sheet
for a bookseller, at less than a valet's wages, and all for the purpose
of buying comforts for your mother; and having a few pounds in your own
pockets, to rove your little holiday with me and pay your share of the
costs! Ah, there are energy and spirit and life in all that, Lionel,
which will found upon rock some castle as fine as any you have built in
air. Your hand, my boy."

This burst was so unlike the practical dryness, or even the more
unctuous humour, of Frank Vance, that it took Lionel by surprise, and
his voice faltered as he pressed the hand held out to him. He answered,
"I don't deserve your praise, Vance, and I fear the pride you tell me to
put under lock and key has the larger share of the merit you ascribe to
better motives. Independent? No! I have never been so."

VANCE.--"Well, you depend on a parent: who, at seventeen does not?"

LIONEL.--"I did not mean my mother; of course, I could not be too proud
to take benefits from her. But the truth is simply this--, my father
had a relation, not very near, indeed,--a cousin, at about as distant
a remove, I fancy, as a cousin well can be. To this gentleman my mother
wrote when my poor father died; and he was generous, for it is he who
paid for my schooling. I did not know this till very lately. I had a
vague impression, indeed, that I had a powerful and wealthy kinsman who
took an interest in me, but whom I had never seen."

VANCE.--"Never seen?"

LIONEL.--"No. And here comes the sting. On leaving school last
Christmas, my mother, for the first time, told me the extent of my
obligations to this benefactor, and informed me that he wished to know
my own choice as to a profession,--that if I preferred Church or Bar, he
would maintain me at college."

VANCE.--"Body o' me! where's the sting in that? Help yourself to toddy,
my boy, and take more genial views of life."

LIONEL.--"You have not heard me out. I then asked to see my benefactor's
letters; and my mother, unconscious of the pain she was about to
inflict, showed me not only the last one, but all she had received from
him. Oh, Vance, they were terrible, those letters! The first began by
a dry acquiescence in the claims of kindred, a curt proposal to pay my
schooling; but not one word of kindness, and a st