"The first allusion to his mother made by Mr. Carter caused the blood to rush from the boy's heart, and to die crimson his cheeks, his temples, his throat; then he grew deadly pale, and, without uttering a word, listened to his preceptor, till suddenly taking in the nature of the task assigned to him, every limb shook, and he answered by a simple request to be left alone, and he would consider. No more was thought by the unapprehensive people about, than that he was shy of being spoken to on the subject--that he would make up his mind in his own way--and Mr. Carter at once yielded to his request; the reserve which had shrouded him since he lost his mother had accustomed those about him to habitual silence. None--no one watchful, attached, intelligent eye marked the struggles which shook his delicate frame, blanched his cheek, took the flesh from his bones, and quickened his pulse into fever. None marked him as he lay in bed the livelong night, with open eyes and beating heart a prey to contending emotion. He was passed carelessly by as he lay on the dewy grass from morn to evening, his soul torn by grief--uttering his mother's name in accents of despair, and shedding floods of tears.
"I said that these signs of intense feeling were not remarked--and yet they were, in a vulgar way, by the menials, who said it would be well when the affair was over, Master Neville took it so to heart, and was sadly frightened. Frightened! such a coarse undistinguishing name was given to the sacred terror of doing his still loved mother an injury, which heaved his breast with convulsive sobs and filled his veins with fire.
"The thought of what he was called upon to do haunted him day and night with agony. He, her nursling, her idol, her child--he who could not think of her name without tears, and dreamed often that she kissed him in his sleep, and woke to weep over the delusion--he was to accuse her before an assembled multitude--to give support to the most infamous falsehoods--to lend his voice to stigmatize her name: and wherever she was, kept from him by some irresistible power, but innocent as an angel, and still loving him, she was to hear of him as her enemy, and receive a last wound from his hand. Such appeared the task assigned to him in his eyes, for his blunt--witted tutor had spoken of the justice to be rendered his father, by freeing him from his fugitive wife, without regarding the inner heart of his pupil, or being aware that his mother sat throned there, an angel of light and goodness, the victim of ill, but doing none.