Much wondering, he went. Presenting him with the locket, she said
smiling, "There is only one gentleman in the world who calls himself De
Caxton, unless it be his son. Ah! I see now why you wished to conceal
yourself from my friend Pisistratus. But how is this? Can you have any
difference with your father? Confide in me, or it is my duty to write
to him."

Even Vivian's powers of dissimulation abandoned him, thus taken by
surprise. He saw no alternative but to trust Lady Ellinor with his
secret, and implore her to respect it. And then he spoke bitterly
of his father's dislike to him, and his own resolution to prove the
injustice of that dislike by the position he would himself establish
in the world. At present his father believed him dead, and perhaps
was not ill-pleased to think so. He would not dispel that belief
till he could redeem any boyish errors, and force his family to be
proud to acknowledge him.

Though Lady Ellinor was slow to believe that Roland could dislike his
son, she could yet readily believe that he was harsh and choleric, with
a soldier's high notions of discipline; the young man's story moved her,
his determination pleased her own high spirit. Always with a touch of
romance in her, and always sympathizing with each desire of ambition,
she entered into Vivian's aspirations with an alacrity that surprised
himself. She was charmed with the idea of ministering to the son's
fortunes, and ultimately reconciling him to the father,--through her own
agency; it would atone for any fault of which Roland could accuse
herself in the old time.

She undertook to impart the secret to Trevanion, for she would have no
secrets from him, and to secure his acquiescence in its concealment from