of voice, sweet, till the ear was sated with their sweetness, made
Owen less angry at his father's marriage. Yet he felt, more than
ever, that the cloud was between him and his father; that the hasty
letter he had sent in answer to the announcement of his wedding was
not forgotten, although no allusion was ever made to it. He was no
longer his father's confidant--hardly ever his father's companion,
for the newly-married wife was all in all to the Squire, and his son
felt himself almost a cipher, where he had so long been everything.
The lady herself had ever the softest consideration for her stepson;
almost too obtrusive was the attention paid to his wishes, but still
he fancied that the heart had no part in the winning advances. There
was a watchful glance of the eye that Owen once or twice caught when
she had imagined herself unobserved, and many other nameless little
circumstances, that gave him a strong feeling of want of sincerity in
his stepmother. Mrs. Owen brought with her into the family her
little child by her first husband, a boy nearly three years old. He
was one of those elfish, observant, mocking children, over whose
feelings you seem to have no control: agile and mischievous, his
little practical jokes, at first performed in ignorance of the pain
he gave, but afterward proceeding to a malicious pleasure in
suffering, really seemed to afford some ground to the superstitious
notion of some of the common people that he was a fairy changeling.

Years passed on; and as Owen grew older he became more observant. He
saw, even in his occasional visits at home (for from school he had
passed on to college), that a great change had taken place in the
outward manifestations of his father's character; and, by degrees,
Owen traced this change to the influence of his stepmother; so
slight, so imperceptible to the common observer, yet so resistless in
its effects. Squire Griffiths caught up his wife's humbly advanced