"Your father was a gentleman by birth and breeding."
"And he has told me," persisted Lilian, "that he has never known more true refinement and even nobility of mind than in Mr. Grahame."
"I agree with him—of mind, mark—but there is a want of conventional refinement which would make itself felt in society."
"There is no want even of this in his son," said Lilian with a trembling voice, and turning away to hide the blush that burned upon her cheek.
"Probably not, for Michael Grahame has been for years at the best schools, with the sons of our first families—but we cannot separate him from his father, and from the associates which his trade has given him."
Neither Mr. Trevanion nor Lilian ever spoke on this subject again; but the former resolved that no effort should be lost on his part to restore one so beautiful and so accomplished as his young ward to what he considered her true place in society, and the latter was as firmly determined that nothing should make her forgetful of the friends of her childhood. In furtherance of this resolve, Mr. Trevanion, instead of retiring to his country-seat with his family on the approach of summer, sent his younger children thither under the care of their faithful and intelligent nurse; and with Mrs. and Miss Trevanion, and Lilian, set out for Saratoga, at that season the great focus of fashion. Mrs. Trevanion, entering fully into his designs, had attended to Lilian's equipments for this important campaign, with no less care than to Anna's, and the result equalled their fondest expectations. Lilian was the beauty, the heiress, the belle of the season. Report exaggerated her fortune, appended all sorts of romantic incidents to her history and her connection with the Trevanions, and thus increased the interest which her own beauty and modest elegance was calculated to awaken. Admirers crowded around her, and to render her triumph complete, one who had hitherto found no charms in America worthy his homage, bowed at her shrine. This was Mr. Derwent, an Englishman of high birth and large fortune, whose elegant exterior, and the perfect savoir faire which marked his manners, made him at Saratoga,
"The observed of all observers,
The glass of fashion and the mould of form."
Mr. Trevanion looked on with scarcely concealed delight.
"Why, father! do you wish to see Lilian leave us for England?" cried Anna Trevanion, to whom he had expressed his satisfaction.
"Certainly, my daughter, if only in that way I can see her take that position which is hers by inheritance, and from which only her father's misfortunes have estranged her."