Resignation by degrees spread over Myrvin’s mind, but the conduct of his son caused him fresh anxiety.  The news of the change in his father’s life awakened Arthur from his lethargy; he saw the folly, the imprudence of which he had been guilty; his father could no longer support him at college.  In three years he had squandered away that which, with economy, would have served as maintenance for ten, and now he must leave the college, or do that from which at first his very soul revolted; but the image of his father, his injured father, rose before him.  He could not inflict upon him a disappointment so severe as his departure from college would be.  He would yet atone for his folly, and fulfil his father’s long-cherished hopes, and without consulting him, in a moment of desperation, he sought the resident head of the University, and imparted his wishes.  The preliminaries were quickly settled, and the next letter from Oxford which Mr. Myrvin received, contained the intelligence that his son had reconciled his mind to the change, and become a servitor.

A glow of thanksgiving suffused the old man’s heart, but he knew all the inward and outward trials with which his son had to contend.  Had he at the first joined the college in the rank which he now held, he might not have felt the change so keenly; but as it was, the pride and haughtiness which had characterised him before, were now, as we have seen, returned tenfold upon himself.  He clothed himself outwardly in an invulnerable armour of self-control and cold reserve, but inwardly his blood was in one continued fever, until the friendship of Percy and Herbert soothed his troubled feelings.  The name of Hamilton, Herbert continued to state, for it was he who wrote particularly of Arthur, the young man had declared he knew well; but where he had heard it, or how, appeared like a dream.  He thought he had even seen Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton once, not very many years ago; but so many changes in his life had occurred since then, that the particulars of that meeting he could not remember.  “Myrvin and Llangwillan appear equally familiar to me,” wrote Herbert; “but even more than to Arthur they seem as the remembrances of an indistinct dream.  It has sometimes occurred to me that they are combined with the recollection of my aunt, Mrs. Fortescue, and Arthur, to whom I mentioned her death, suddenly recalled a dying lady and her two children, in whom his father was very much interested.  Fortescue he does not well remember, but the little girl’s name was Ellen, a pale, dark-eyed and dark-haired, melancholy child, whom he used to call his wife, and my cousin certainly answers this description.  If it be indeed the same, it is strange we should thus come together; and oh! my dearest father, the benefit our family received from this venerable and injured man, bids me long more intently that we could do something for him, and that Arthur should be restored to his former position.  He is of full age, and quite capable