Holden, however, could not refuse to allow his son to accompany him, and to provide such little necessaries, as were esteemed essential to his comfort.  But he permitted the young man to remain only a short time.  “Go,” he said, “the world is bright before thee; enjoy its transient sunshine.  The time may come when even thou, with hope and confidence in thy heart, and heaven in thine eyes, shalt say, ’I have no pleasure therein.’” Pownal therefore returned to Hillsdale, without reluctance it may be supposed, when we add, that the same evening found him at the house of Mr. Bernard.  It will be recollected he had commissions to execute for both the Judge and his wife, but if the reader thinks that not a sufficient reason why he should call upon them so soon, we have no objection to his adopting any other conjecture, even to the extravagant supposition, that there was some magnet to attract the young man’s wandering feet.

It was a happy evening Pownal spent at the Judge’s house.  All seemed glad to see him again, and expressed their delight and wonder at the discovery of his parent.  And yet the young man could not help fancying there was a greater difference between his reception by the members of the family, than he had been accustomed to.  Mr. and Mrs. Bernard, indeed, were equally cordial as of old, but Anne, though she tendered him her hand with her usual frankness, and allowed it to linger in his, appeared graver, and less disposed to indulge an exuberance of spirits, while William Bernard was evidently more distant, and formal.  There was, however, no want of politeness on his part, for he mingled with his usual grace and intelligence in the conversation, and the change was perceptible rather in the omission of old terms of familiarity, than in any manifestation of coldness.  He seemed to pay the same attention, and evince a like interest with the rest, in the particulars of the adventures of Pownal, which, at the request of Mrs. Bernard, he narrated.  Had a stranger, or one who saw the two young men together for the first time, been present, he would have noticed nothing inconsistent with ordinary friendship, but Pownal compared the present with the past, and his jealous sensitiveness detected a something wanting.  But for all that, his enjoyment, though it might be lessened, was not, as we have intimated, destroyed.  He half suspected the cause, and his proud spirit rose with resentment.  But so long as he enjoyed the esteem of the parents, and was a welcome visitor at their house, and Miss Bernard treated him with unabated regard, he could well afford, he thought, to pass by without notice humors, which, in his changed condition, he considered equally unreasonable and absurd.  For, he was no longer a mere clerk, without position in society, but the member of a long-established and wealthy firm, and a favorite of its head, who seemed to have taken the fortunes of his young partner into his own hands, with a determination to secure their success.