her to Europe for the benefit of the tour, gave, on her return, so lamentable an account of Mr. Adolphus Young, to whom the headstrong girl had united her destiny, that it operated as a chill upon family feeling—­especially in the case of the half-brothers.  Catherine had done nothing subsequently to propitiate her family; she had not even written to them in a way that indicated a lucid appreciation of their suspended sympathy; so that it had become a tradition in Boston circles that the highest charity, as regards this young lady, was to think it well to forget her, and to abstain from conjecture as to the extent to which her aberrations were reproduced in her descendants.  Over these young people—­a vague report of their existence had come to his ears—­Mr. Wentworth had not, in the course of years, allowed his imagination to hover.  It had plenty of occupation nearer home, and though he had many cares upon his conscience the idea that he had been an unnatural uncle was, very properly, never among the number.  Now that his nephew and niece had come before him, he perceived that they were the fruit of influences and circumstances very different from those under which his own familiar progeny had reached a vaguely-qualified maturity.  He felt no provocation to say that these influences had been exerted for evil; but he was sometimes afraid that he should not be able to like his distinguished, delicate, lady-like niece.  He was paralyzed and bewildered by her foreignness.  She spoke, somehow, a different language.  There was something strange in her words.  He had a feeling that another man, in his place, would accommodate himself to her tone; would ask her questions and joke with her, reply to those pleasantries of her own which sometimes seemed startling as addressed to an uncle.  But Mr. Wentworth could not do these things.  He could not even bring himself to attempt to measure her position in the world.  She was the wife of a foreign nobleman who desired to repudiate her.  This had a singular sound, but the old man felt himself destitute of the materials for a judgment.  It seemed to him that he ought to find them in his own experience, as a man of the world and an almost public character; but they were not there, and he was ashamed to confess to himself—­much more to reveal to Eugenia by interrogations possibly too innocent—­the unfurnished condition of this repository.

It appeared to him that he could get much nearer, as he would have said, to his nephew; though he was not sure that Felix was altogether safe.  He was so bright and handsome and talkative that it was impossible not to think well of him; and yet it seemed as if there were something almost impudent, almost vicious—­or as if there ought to be—­in a young man being at once so joyous and so positive.  It was to be observed that while Felix was not at all a serious young man there was somehow more of him—­he had more weight and volume and resonance—­than a number of young men who were distinctly serious.