As will not leave their tinct.—Shakespeare.
One morning when he, Alick, seemed better and stronger that usual, the surgeon seated himself by his bedside and said:
“I should tell you that you were not forgotten or abandoned by your family while you were in danger, sir.”
“By my family——! I have——” Alexander was about to say, “no family,” but he caught himself in time.
Come what might, he would not deny Drusilla and her child.
—“You have an uncle and a cousin, sir,” said the surgeon, finishing Alexander’s sentence, but not in the manner Alexander had first intended—“an uncle and a cousin, sir, who were warmly interested in your welfare. General Lyon and Mr. Hammond, sir! They in some manner received information of the intended duel; they hired a yacht and followed you here; but they arrived too late, they found you badly wounded and lying insensible on this bed. The cousin returned the same day to London; but the uncle remained here until you showed signs of consciousness and gave us hopes of recovery, when—being suddenly called away by important business, of I know not what nature, he too left the island. But before going he made an arrangement with Mr. Tredegar, by which the last-named gentleman was to write every day and keep the General advised of the state of his nephew. Mr. Tredegar kept his part of the compact, I know, until he also had to leave.”
Alexander did not reply for some moments; and when he did it was merely to say:
“I thank you for telling me this.”
Alexander fell into deep thought. Here was another enlightenment. Here was another subject for self-reproach if not for deep remorse.
The high-toned, tender-hearted old gentleman! The frank and kindly young man! How noble, pure and loving all their course had been during these family troubles, in comparison with his own! How they had always stepped in and saved himself and his victims from the worst consequences of his violent passions.