"I am glad you are come," said he, making room for me on the hearth, "for I assure you I have not felt so mournful for many years; we have much to explain to each other. Will you begin? they say the sound of the bell dissipates the thunder-cloud. And there is nothing like the voice of a frank, honest nature to dispel all the clouds that come upon us when we think of our own faults and the villany of others. But, I beg you a thousand pardons—that young man, your relation!—your brave uncle's son! Is it possible!"
My explanations to Lord Castleton were necessarily brief and imperfect. The separation between Roland and his son, my ignorance of its cause, my belief in the death of the latter, my chance acquaintance with the supposed Vivian; the interest I took in him; the relief it was to the fears for his fate with which he inspired me, to think he had returned to the home I ascribed to him; and the circumstances which had induced my suspicions, justified by the result—all this was soon hurried over.
"But, I beg your pardon," said the marquis, interrupting me, "did you, in your friendship for one so unlike you, even by your own partial account, never suspect that you had stumbled upon your lost cousin?"
"Such an idea never could have crossed me."
And here I must observe, that though the reader, at the first introduction of Vivian, would divine the secret,—the penetration of a reader is wholly different from that of the actor in events. That I had chanced on one of those curious coincidences in the romance of real life, which a reader looks out for and expects in following the course of narrative, was a supposition forbidden to me by a variety of causes. There was not the least family resemblance between Vivian and any of his relations; and, somehow or other, in Roland's son I had pictured to myself a form and a character wholly different from Vivian's. To me it would have seemed impossible that my cousin could have been so little curious to hear any of our joint family affairs; been so unheedful, or even weary, if I spoke of Roland—never, by a word or tone, have betrayed a sympathy with his kindred. And my other conjecture was so probable!—son of the Colonel Vivian whose name he bore. And that letter, with the postmark of 'Godalming!' and my belief, too, in my cousin's death; even now I am not surprised that the idea never occurred to me.
I paused from enumerating these excuses for my dulness, angry with myself, for I noticed that Lord Castleton's fair brow darkened;—and he exclaimed, "What deceit he must have gone through before he could become such a master in the art!"
"That is true, and I cannot deny it," said I. "But his punishment now is awful; let us hope that repentance may follow the chastisement. And, though certainly it must have been his own fault that drove him from his father's home and guidance, yet, so driven, let us make some allowance for the influence of evil companionship on one so young—for the suspicions that the knowledge of evil produces, and turns into a kind of false knowledge of the world. And in this last and worst of all his actions"—
"Ah, how justify that!"
"Justify it!—good heavens! justify it!—no. I only say this, strange as it may seem, that I believe his affection for Miss Trevanion was for herself: so he says, from the depth of an anguish in which the most insincere of men would cease to feign. But no more of this,—she is saved, thank Heaven!"
"And you believe," said Lord Castleton musingly, "that he spoke the truth, when he thought that I—." The marquis stopped, coloured slightly, and then went on. "But no; Lady Ellinor and Trevanion, whatever might have been in their thoughts, would never have so forgot their dignity as to take him, a youth—almost a stranger—nay, take any one into their confidence on such a subject."