Page:Traits and Trials.pdf/162

156 is my best argument: but let me impress upon you the necessity of prompt measures, though by your side, from this moment, you are really parted from them: Captain Cameron sails next week. Can your children be in better hands?

"Next week!" exclaimed Mr. Selwyn, in a broken voice.

Dr. Irvine shook hands with him in silence, and left him for the present.

To all parents such a parting would have been a trial; but to Mr. Selwyn it came with more than usual bitterness. Immersed in business, whose fatigue unfitted him for the exertion of society, shy, and reserved in habits, to him his own family was every thing. His young wife had died a week after Marion's birth, and he had attached himself entirely to his children. He saw in them the relics of the dearest love on earth, and felt that he had to be both father and mother. It was impossible not to be proud of the fine mind and generous temper of Francis; and it was equally impossible not to be enlivened by the gaiety of Marion. But he had for some time remarked that, unless stimulated by his presence to exertion, Francis grew more and more silent, as if talking were a fatigue; his garden was