"I know not how it was," continued my father, "but Lord Rainsforth
turned the conversation on Ellinor. After speaking of his expectations
in his son, who was returning home, he said, 'But he will of course
enter public life,--will, I trust, soon marry, have a separate
establishment, and I shall see but little of him. My Ellinor! I cannot
bear the thought of parting wholly with her. And that, to say the
selfish truth, is one reason why I have never wished her to marry a rich
man, and so leave me forever. I could hope that she will give herself
to one who may be contented to reside at least great part of the year
with me, who may bless me with another son, not steal from me a
daughter. I do not mean that he should waste his life in the country;
his occupations would probably lead him to London. I care not where my
house is,--all I want is to keep my home. You know,' he added, with a
smile that I thought meaning, 'how often I have implied to you that I
have no vulgar ambition for Ellinor. Her portion must be very small,
for my estate is strictly entailed, and I have lived too much up to my
income all my life to hope to save much now. But her tastes do not
require expense, and while I live, at least, there need be no change.
She can only prefer a man whose talents, congenial to hers, will win
their own career, and ere I die that career may be made.' Lord
Rainsforth paused; and then--how, in what words I know not, but out all
burst!--my long-suppressed, timid, anxious, doubtful, fearful love. The
strange energy it had given to a nature till then so retiring and calm!
My recent devotion to the law; my confidence that, with such a prize, I
could succeed,--it was but a transfer of labor from one study to
another. Labor could conquer all things, and custom sweeten them in the
conquest. The Bar was a less brilliant career than the senate. But the
first aim of the poor man should be independence. In short,
Pisistratus, wretched egotist that I was, I forgot Roland in that