But to Mrs.Ruskin, with her religious feelings, it was intolerable, unbelievable, that the son whom she had brought up in the nurture and admonition of the strictest Protestantism should fix his heart on an alien in race and creed.

The wonder is that their relations were not more strained; there are few young men who would have kept unbroken allegiance to a mother whose sympathy failed them at such a crisis.
As the year went on his passion seemed to grow in the absence of the beloved object.

His only plan of winning her was to win his spurs first; but as what?
Clearly his forte, it seemed, was in writing.

If he could be a successful writer of romances, of songs, of plays, surely she would not refuse him.

And so he began another romantic story, "Velasquez, the Novice," opening with the Monks of St.Bernard, among whom had been, so the tale ran, a mysterious member, whose papers, when discovered, made him out the hero of adventures in Venice.