most respected. Besides, as I am so often at Paris myself, I shall have
him under my eye, and a few years there, spent in completing him as man,
may bring him nearer to that marshal's baton which every recruit should
have in his eye, than if I started him at once a raw boy, unable to take
care of himself as an ensign, and unfitted, save by mechanical routine,
to take care of others, should he live to buy the grade of a colonel."

The plans thus promptly formed Alban Morley briefly explained to Lionel
when the boy came to breakfast in Curzon Street; requesting him to obtain
Mrs. Haughton's acquiesence in that exercise of the discretionary powers
with which he had been invested by Mr. Darrell. To Lionel the
proposition that commended the very studies to which his tastes directed
his ambition, and placed his initiation into responsible manhood among
scenes bright to his fancy, because new to his experience, seemed of
course the perfection of wisdom. Less readily pleased was poor Mrs.
Haughton, when her son returned to communicate the arrangement, backing a
polite and well-worded letter from the Colonel with his own more artless
eloquence. Instantly she flew off on the wing of her "little tempers."
"What! her only son taken from her; sent to that horrid Continent, just
when she was so respectably settled! What was the good of money if she
was to be parted from her boy! Mr. Darrell might take the money back
if he pleased; she would write and tell him so. Colonel Morley had no
feeling; and she was shocked to think Lionel was in such unnatural hands.
She saw very plainly that he no longer cared for her,--a serpent's
tooth," etc. But as soon as the burst was over, the sky cleared and Mrs.
Haughton became penitent and sensible. Then her grief for Lionel's loss
was diverted by preparations for his departure. There was his wardrobe
to see to; a patent portmanteau to purchase and to fill. And, all done,
the last evening mother and son spent together, though painful at the
moment, it would be happiness for both hereafter to recall! Their hands