“Must my poor babes be parted?—­shall they be brought up to hate each other?  Oh Maria! would that I had died with you, and our children also!”

To take them to India with him, where a war was threatened, was impossible, and his heart revolted from the thought of leaving them in this country with strangers.  At times he was seen, with an infant son on each arm, sitting over the stone upon the grave of their mother which he had reared to her memory, kissing their cheeks and weeping over them, while they smiled in his face unconsciously, and offered to him, in those smiles, affection’s first innocent tribute.  On such occasions their nurse stood gazing on the scene, wondering at her master’s grief.

Morris, of Morris House, reluctantly consented to take one of his grandchildren under his care; but at the same time he refused to see his son previous to his departure.

The widowed father wept over his twin sons, and invoking a blessing on them, saw their little arms sundered, and each conveyed to the houses of those who had undertaken to be their protectors, while he again proceeded towards India.  The names of the twin sons were George and Charles:  the former was committed to the care of Mr. Morris, the other to Mr. Sim.  Yet it seemed as if these innocent pledges of a family union, instead of destroying, strengthened the deep-rooted animosity that existed between them.  Not a month passed that they did not, in some way, manifest their hatred of and their persecution towards each other.

The squire exhibited a proof of his vindictiveness, in not permitting the child of his son to remain beneath his roof.  He had a small property in Devonshire, which was rented by an individual who, with his wife, had been servants under his father.  To them George Morris, one of the infant sons of poor Maria, before he was yet twelve months old, was sent, with an injunction that he should be brought up as their own son, that he should be taught to consider himself as such, and bear their name.

The boy Charles, whose lot it was to be placed under the protection of his mother’s parents, was more fortunate.  The love they had borne towards their Maria they now lavished upon him.  They called him by their own name—­they spoke of him as their heir, as their sole heir, and they inquired not after his brother.  That brother became included in the hatred which Mrs. Sim, at least, bore to his father’s family.  As he grew up, his father’s name was not mentioned in his presence.  He was taught to call his grandfather—­father, and his grandmother—­mother; and withal, his mother so called instilled into his earliest thoughts an abhorrence of the inmates of Morris House.  At times his grandfather whispered to her on such occasions, “Do not do the like of that, dear; we know not how it may end.”  But she regarded not his admonitions, and she strove that her grandchild should hold the very name of Morris in hatred.