A. C.

Two days after the receipt of this letter came the following; and though
I would fain suppress those references to myself which must be ascribed
to a father's partiality, yet it is so needful to retain them in
connection with Vivian that I have no choice but to leave the tender
flatteries to the indulgence of the kind.

My Dear Son,--I was not too sanguine as to the effect that your
simple story would produce upon your cousin. Without implying any
contrast to his own conduct, I described that scene in which you
threw yourself upon our sympathy, in the struggle between love and
duty, and asked for our counsel and support; when Roland gave you
his blunt advice to tell all to Trevanion; and when, amidst such
sorrow as the heart in youth seems scarcely large enough to hold,
you caught at truth impulsively, and the truth bore you safe from
the shipwreck. I recounted your silent and manly struggles, your
resolution not to suffer the egotism of passion to unfit you for
the aims and ends of that spiritual probation which we call Life.
I showed you as you were,--still thoughtful for us, interested in
our interests, smiling on us, that we might not guess that you wept
in secret! Oh, my son, my son, do not think that in those times I
did not feel and pray for you! And while he was melted by my own
emotion, I turned from your love to your ambition. I made him see
that you too had known the restlessness which belongs to young,
ardent natures; that you too had had your dreams of fortune and
aspirations for success. But I painted that ambition in its true
colors: it was not the desire of a selfish intellect. to be in
yourself a somebody, a something, raised a step or two in the
social ladder, for the pleasure of looking down on those at the