"No, uncle," I said, holding out my hand to him, "stay. You too can
advise me,--strengthen me. I have kept my honor yet; help me to keep it
still."

At the sound of the word "honor," Captain Roland stood mute, and raised
his head quickly.

So I told all,--incoherently enough at first, but clearly and manfully
as I went on. Now I know that it is not the custom of lovers to confide
in fathers and uncles. Judging by those mirrors of life, plays and
novels, they choose better,--valets and chambermaids, and friends whom
they have picked up in the street, as I had picked up poor Francis
Vivian: to these they make clean breasts of their troubles. But fathers
and uncles,--to them they are close, impregnable, "buttoned to the
chin." The Caxtons were an eccentric family, and never did anything
like other people. When I had ended, I lifted up my eyes and said
pleadingly, "Now tell me, is there no hope--none?"

"Why should there be none?" cried Captain Roland, hastily--"the De
Caxtons are as good a family as the Trevanions; and as for yourself, all
I will say is, that the young lady might choose worse for her own
happiness."

I wrung my uncle's hand, and turned to my father in anxious fear, for I
knew that, in spite of his secluded habits, few men ever formed a
sounder judgment on worldly matters, when he was fairly drawn to look at
them. A thing wonderful is that plain wisdom which scholars and poets
often have for others, though they rarely deign to use it for
themselves. And how on earth do they get at it? I looked at my father,