Basil

explanation of your conduct, which you have been so uniformly unwilling to volunteer. I rested on that implicit faith in the honour and integrity of my son, which I will not yet believe to have been ill-placed, but which, I fear, has led me to neglect too long the duty of inquiry which I owed to your own well-being, and to my position towards you. I am now here to atone for this omission; circumstances have left me no choice. It deeply concerns my interest as a father, and my honour as the head of our family, to know what heavy misfortune it was (I can imagine it to be nothing else) that stretched my son senseless in the open street, and afflicted him afterwards with an illness which threatened his reason and his life. You are now sufficiently recovered to reveal this; and I only use my legitimate authority over my own children, when I tell you that I must now know all. If you persist in remaining silent, the relations between us must henceforth change for life.'

'I am ready to make my confession, Sir. I only ask you to believe beforehand, that if I have sinned grievously against you, I have been already heavily punished for the sin. I am afraid it is impossible that your worst forebodings can have prepared you—'

'The words you spoke in your delirium—words which I heard, but will not judge you by—justified the worst forebodings.'

'My illness has spared me the hardest part of a hard trial, Sir, if it has prepared you for what I have to confess; if you suspect—'

'I do not suspect—I feel but too sure, that you, my second son, from whom I had expected far better things, have imitated in secret—I am afraid, outstripped—the worst vices of your elder brother.'

'My brother!—my brother's faults mine! Ralph!'

'Yes, Ralph. It is my last hope that you will now imitate Ralph's candour. Take example from that best part of him, as you have already taken example from the worst.'

My heart grew faint and cold as he spoke. Ralph's example! Ralph's vices!—vices of the reckless hour, or the idle day!—vices whose stain, in the world's eye, was not a stain for life!—convenient, reclaimable vices, that men were mercifully unwilling to associate with grinning infamy and irreparable disgrace! How far—how fearfully far, my father was from the remotest suspicion of what had really happened! I tried to answer his last words, but the apprehension of the life-long humiliation and grief which my confession might inflict on him—absolutely incapable, as he appeared to be, of foreboding even the least degrading part of it—kept me speechless. When he resumed, after a momentary silence, his tones were stern, his looks searching—pitilessly searching, and bent full upon my face.

'A person has been calling, named Sherwin,' he said, 'and inquiring about you every day. What intimate connection between you authorises this perfect stranger to me to come to the house as frequently as he does, and to make his inquiries with a familiarity of tone and manner which has struck every one of the servants who have, on different occasions, opened the door to him? Who is this Mr. Sherwin?'

'It is not with him, Sir, that I can well begin. I must go back—'

'You must go back farther, I am afraid, than you will be able to return. You must go back to the time when you had nothing to conceal from me, and when you could speak to me with the frankness and directness of a gentleman.'

'Pray be patient with me, Sir; give me a few minutes to collect myself. I have much need for a little self- possession before I tell you all.'

'All? your tones mean more than your words—they are candid, at least! Have I feared the worst, and yet not feared as I ought? Basil!—do you hear me, Basil? You are trembling very strangely; you are growing pale!'

'I shall be better directly, Sir. I am afraid I am not quite so strong yet as I thought myself. Father! I am heart- broken and spirit-broken: be patient and kind to me, or I cannot speak to you.'

I thought I saw his eyes moisten. He shaded them a moment with his hand, and sighed again—the same long, trembling sigh that I had heard before. I tried to rise from my chair, and throw myself on my knees at his feet. He mistook the action, and caught me by the arm, believing that I was fainting.

'No more to-night, Basil,' he said, hurriedly, but very gently; 'no more on this subject till to-morrow.'

'I can speak now, Sir; it is better to speak at once.'

'No: you are too much agitated; you are weaker than I thought. To-morrow, in the morning, when you are stronger after a night's rest. No! I will hear nothing more. Go to bed now; I will tell your sister not to disturb you to-night. To-morrow, you shall speak to me; and speak in your own way, without interruption. Good-night, Basil, good-night.'

Without waiting to shake hands with me, he hastened to the door, as if anxious to hide from my observation the grief and apprehension which had evidently overcome him. But, just at the moment when he was leaving the room, he hesitated, turned round, looked sorrowfully at me for an instant, and then, retracing his steps, gave me his hand, pressed mine for a moment in silence, and left me.

After the morrow was over, would he ever give me that hand again?

III.

The morning which was to decide all between my father and me, the morning on whose event hung the future of my home life, was the brightest and loveliest that my eyes ever looked on. A cloudless sky, a soft air, sunshine so joyous and dazzling that the commonest objects looked beautiful in its light, seemed to be mocking at me for my heavy heart, as I stood at my window, and thought of the hard duty to be fulfilled, on the harder judgment that might be pronounced, before the dawning of another day.

During the night, I had arranged no plan on which to conduct the terrible disclosure which I was now bound to make—the greatness of the emergency deprived me of all power of preparing myself for it. I thought on my father's character, on the inbred principles of honour which ruled him with the stern influence of a fanaticism: I thought on his pride of caste, so unobtrusive, so rarely hinted at in words, and yet so firmly rooted in his nature, so intricately entwined with every one of his emotions, his aspirations, his simplest feelings and ideas: I thought on his almost feminine delicacy in shrinking from the barest mention of impurities which other men could carelessly discuss, or could laugh over as good material for an after-dinner jest. I thought over all this, and when I remembered that it was to such a man that I must confess the infamous marriage which I had contracted in secret, all hope from his fatherly affection deserted me; all idea of appealing to his chivalrous generosity became a delusion in which it was madness to put a moment's trust.

The faculties of observation are generally sharpened, in proportion as the faculties of reflection are dulled,