Grant me but these, and I promise to consult your fortune as my own, to
gratify your tastes as far as my means will allow, to grudge not your
pleasures, and when the age for ambition comes, to aid your rise if I
rise myself,--nay, if well contented with you, to remove the blot from
your birth, by acknowledging and adopting you formally as my son."

"Agreed! and I thank you," said Gabriel. "And Lucretia is going? Oh, I
so long to see her!"

"See her--not yet; but next week."

"Do not fear that I should let out about the letter. I should betray
myself if I did," said the boy, bluntly betraying his guess at his
father's delay.

The evil scholar smiled.

"You will do well to keep it secret for your own sake; for mine, I should
not fear. Gabriel, go back now to your master,--you do right, like the
rats, to run from the falling house. Next week I will send for you,
Gabriel!"

Not, however, back to the studio went the boy. He sauntered leisurely
through the gayest streets, eyed the shops and the equipages, the fair
women and the well-dressed men,--eyed with envy and longings and visions
of pomps and vanities to come; then, when the day began to close, he
sought out a young painter, the wildest and maddest of the crew to whom
his uncle had presented their future comrade and rival, and went with
this youth, at half-price, to the theatre, not to gaze on the actors or
study the play, but to stroll in the saloon. A supper in the Finish