I must work at it alone.'

"Vivian was at home, and the door closed on his visitor. My father
stayed some hours.

"On returning home, to my great surprise I found Trevanion with my uncle.
He had found us out,--no easy matter, I should think. But a good
impulse in Trevanion was not of that feeble kind which turns home at the
sight of a difficulty. He had come to London on purpose to see and to
thank us.

"I did not think there had been so much of delicacy--of what I may call
the "beauty of kindness"--in a man whom incessant business had rendered
ordinarily blunt and abrupt. I hardly recognized the impatient
Trevanion in the soothing, tender, subtle respect that rather implied
than spoke gratitude, and sought to insinuate what he owed to the
unhappy father, without touching on his wrongs from the son. But of
this kindness--which showed how Trevanion's high nature of gentleman
raised him aloof from that coarseness of thought which those absorbed
wholly in practical affairs often contract--of this kindness, so noble
and so touching, Roland seemed scarcely aware. He sat by the embers of
the neglected fire, his hands grasping the arms of his elbow-chair, his
bead drooping on his bosom; and only by a deep hectic flush on his dark
cheek could you have seen that he distinguished between an ordinary
visitor and the man whose child he had helped to save. This minister of
state, this high member of the elect, at whose gift are places,
peerages, gold-sticks, and ribbons, has nothing at his command for the
bruised spirit of the half-pay soldier. Before that poverty, that
grief, and that pride, the King's Counsellor was powerless. Only when
Trevanion rose to depart, something like a sense of the soothing