death,--that is a wall between us. I cannot come near you. I
should not like to look on your face, and think how my William's
tears fell over it, when I placed you, new born, in his arms, and
bade him welcome his heir. What! you a mere boy still, your father
yet in the prime of life, and the heir cannot wait till nature
leaves him fatherless. Frank; Frank this is so unlike you. Can
London have ruined already a disposition so honest and
affectionate?--No; I cannot believe it. There must be some mistake.
Clear it up, I implore you; or, though as a mother I pity you, as a
wife I cannot forgive."

Even Randal was affected by the letter; for, as we know, even Randal felt
in his own person the strength of family ties. The poor squire's choler
and bluffness had disguised the parental heart from an eye that, however
acute, had not been willing to search for it; and Randal, ever affected
through his intellect, had despised the very weakness on which he had
preyed. But the mother's letter, so just and sensible (allowing that the
squire's opinions had naturally influenced the wife to take what men of
the world would call a very exaggerated view of the every-day occurrence
of loans raised by a son, payable only at a father's death),--this
letter, I say, if exaggerated according to fashionable notions, so
sensible if judged by natural affections, touched the dull heart of the
schemer, because approved by the quick tact of his intelligence.

"Frank," said he, with a sincerity that afterwards amazed himself, "go
down at once to Hazeldean; see your mother, and explain to her how this
transaction really happened. The woman you loved, and wooed as wife, in
danger of an arrest, your distraction of mind, Levy's counsels, your hope
to pay off the debt, so incurred to the usurer, from the fortune you
would shortly receive with the marchesa. Speak to your mother,--she is a