accomplice? If not yet, how small the step between companionship and
participation! He took the child left him still from the convent,
returned to England, and arrived there to be seized with fever and
delirium,--apparently on the same day or a day before that on which the
son had dropped, shelter-less and penniless, on the stones of London.




CHAPTER VI.


The Attempt to Build a Temple to Fortune Out of the Ruins of Home.

"But," said Vivian, pursuing his tale, "but when you came to my aid, not
knowing me; when you relieved me; when from your own lips, for the first
time, I heard words that praised me, and for qualities that implied I
might yet be 'worth much,'--ah!" he added mournfully, "I remember the
very words,--a new light broke upon me, struggling and dim, but light
still. The ambition with which I had sought the truckling Frenchman
revived, and took worthier and more definite form. I would lift myself
above the mire, make a name, rise in life!"

Vivian's head drooped; but he raised it quickly, and laughed his low,
mocking laugh. What follows of this tale may be told succinctly.
Retaining his bitter feelings towards his father, he resolved to
continue his incognito: he gave himself a name likely to mislead
conjecture if I conversed of him to my family, since he knew that Roland
was aware that a Colonel Vivian had been afflicted by a runaway son,--
and indeed, the talk upon that subject had first put the notion of