At least, the best treasure of Mrs.
Bretton's life was certainly casketed in her son's bosom; her dearest pulse throbbed in his heart.

As to him, of course another love shared his feelings with filial love, and, no doubt, as the new passion was the latest born, so he assigned it in his emotions Benjamin's portion.
Ginevra! Ginevra! Did Mrs.Bretton yet know at whose feet her own young idol had laid his homage?
Would she approve that choice?
I could not tell; but I could well guess that if she knew Miss Fanshawe's conduct towards Graham: her alternations between coldness and coaxing, and repulse and allurement; if she could at all suspect the pain with which she had tried him; if she could have seen, as I had seen, his fine spirits subdued and harassed, his inferior preferred before him, his subordinate made the instrument of his humiliation--_then_ Mrs.Bretton would have pronounced Ginevra imbecile, or perverted, or both.

Well--I thought so too.
That second evening passed as sweetly as the first--_more_ sweetly indeed: we enjoyed a smoother interchange of thought; old troubles were not reverted to, acquaintance was better cemented; I felt happier, easier, more at home.

That night--instead of crying myself asleep--I went down to dreamland by a pathway bordered with pleasant thoughts..