morals.

There was only one respect in which a likeness between the fortunes of
the two brothers might be found to exist. After a grateful union of a
few years, they had both lost their wives. A single child, in the case
of each, had preserved and hallowed to them the memories of their
mothers. To the younger brother Ralph, a son had been born, soothing the
sorrows of the exile, and somewhat compensating his loss. To William
Colleton, the elder brother, his wife had left a single and very lovely
daughter, the sweet and beautiful Edith, a girl but a few months younger
than her cousin Ralph. It was the redeeming feature, in the case of the
surviving parents, that they each gave to their motherless children, the
whole of that affection--warm in both cases--which had been enjoyed by
the departed mothers.

Separated from each other, for years, by several hundred miles of
uncultivated and untravelled forest, the brothers did not often meet;
and the bonds of brotherhood waxed feebler and feebler, with the swift
progress of successive years. Still, they corresponded, and in a tone
and temper that seemed to answer for the existence of feelings, which
neither, perhaps, would have been so forward as to assert warmly, if
challenged to immediate answer. Suddenly, however, when young Ralph was
somewhere about fifteen, his uncle expressed a wish to see him; and,
whether through a latent and real affection, or a feeling of self-rebuke
for previous neglect, he exacted from his brother a reluctant consent
that the youth should dwell in his family, while receiving his education
in a region then better prepared to bestow it with profit to the
student. The two young cousins met in Georgia for the first time, and,
after a brief summer journey together, in which they frequented the most
favorite watering places, Ralph was separated from Edith, whom he had