Again:  a burly costermonger was belabouring his donkey, and the wretched beast fell beneath his cudgel:  strange to say, Julian and Charles were walking together that time; and the same sight affected each so differently, that the one sided with the cruel man, and the other with his suffering victim:  Charles, in momentary indignation, rushed up to the fellow, wrested the cudgel from his hand, and flung it over the cliff; while Julian was so base, so cowardly, as to reward such generous interference, by holding his weaker brother’s arms, and inviting the wrathful costermonger to expend the remainder of his phrensy on unlucky Charles.  Yes, and when at home Mrs. Tracy heard all this, she was silly enough, wicked enough, to receive her truly noble son with ridicule, and her other one, the child of her disgrace, with approval.

“It will teach you, Master Charles, not to meddle with common people and their donkeys; and you may thank your brother Julian for giving you a lesson how a gentleman should behave.”

Poor Charles! but poorer Julian, and poorest Mrs. Tracy!

It would be easy, if need were, to enumerate multiplied examples tending towards the same end—­a large, masculine-featured mother’s foolish preference of the loud, bold, worldly animal, before the meek, kind, noble, spiritual.  And the results of all these many matters were, that now, at twenty years of age, Charles found himself, as it were, alone in a strange land, with many common friends indeed abroad, but at home no nearer, dearer ties to string his heart’s dank lyre withal; neither mother nor brother, nor any other kind familiar face, to look upon his gentleness in love, or to sympathize with his affections, unapprehended, unappreciated:  so—­while Mrs. Tracy was the showy, gay, and vapid thing she ever had been, and Julian the same impetuous mother’s son which his very nurse could say she knew him—­Charles grew up a shy and silent youth, necessarily reserved, for lack of some one to understand him; necessarily chilled, for want of somebody to love him.

CHAPTER III.

The arrival.

The young men were thus situated as regards both the world and one another, and Mrs. Tracy had almost entirely forgotten the fact, that she possessed a piece of goods so supererogatory as her husband (a property too which her children had never quite realized), when all on a sudden, one ordinary morning, the postman’s-knock brought to her breakfast-table at Burleigh-Singleton the following epistle: 

“British Channel, Thursday, March 11th, 1842. 
“The Sir William Elphinston, E.I.M.

“Dear Jane:  You will be surprised to find that you are to see me so soon, I dare say, especially as it is now some years since you will have heard from me.  The reason is, I have been long in an out-of-the-way part of India, where there is little communication with Europe, and so you will excuse my not writing.  We hope to find ourselves to-night in Plymouth roads, where I shall get into a pilot-boat, and so shall see you to-morrow.  You may, therefore, now expect your affectionate husband,