Pisistratus.—“How came you to know we had stayed in the town?”
Vivian.—“Do you think I could remain where you left me? I wandered out, wandered hither. Passing at dawn through yon streets, I saw the hostlers loitering by the gates of the yard, overheard them talk, and so knew you were all at the inn,—all!” He sighed heavily.
Pisistratus.—“Your poor father is very ill. Oh, cousin, how could you fling from you so much love?”
Vivian.—“Love! his! my father’s!”
Pisistratus.—“Do you really not believe, then, that your father loved you?”
Vivian.—“If I had believed it, I had never left him. All the gold of the Indies had never bribed me to leave my mother.”
Pisistratus.—“This is indeed a strange misconception of yours. If we can remove it, all may be well yet. Need there now be any secrets between us? [persuasively]. Sit down, and tell me all, cousin.”
After some hesitation, Vivian complied; and by the clearing of his brow and the very tone of his voice I felt sure that he was no longer seeking to disguise the truth. But as I afterwards learned the father’s tale as well as now the son’s, so, instead of repeating Vivian’s words, which—not by design, but by the twist of a mind habitually wrong—distorted the facts, I will state what appears to me the real case, as between the parties so unhappily opposed. Reader, pardon me if the recital be tedious; and if thou thinkest that I bear not hard enough on the erring hero of the story, remember that he who recites, judges as Austin’s son must judge of Roland’s.
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