ABSTRACT
Time crept on, and all hope of discovering their child faded gradually and sorrowfully from the minds of the parents. Felix had attained his tenth year, and on him alone rested now their fond expectations. But the mind of the mother would often revert with a sigh of bitter regret to the probable fate of her beloved Agnes, who would now have been for her so sweet a companion, and filled up with delight many moments that were necessarily devoted to solitude; for Felix was more the companion of his father than her, and though a lovely and engaging youth, he needed that urbanity, softness, and docility of manner which fondly she imagined in the gentle creature she had lost. The idol of his father, it was not unfrequently that she beheld insufficient her mild and rational controul to restrain the impetuosity of his manners, the wildness, and often serious impropriety of his conduct. But Angelo, who contended that all this was but the ardour and spirit of youth, and that it would yield to the soberer influence of judgment and increase of years, loved not that she should check the boy; for in the fulness of a proud self-love he would remember, that his son resembled what he himself had been at his age.
