His father "received him as a man, as a friend, all constraint was banished at our first interview, and we ever after continued on the same terms of easy and equal politeness." So far the prospect was pleasant.

But the step-mother remained a possible obstacle to all comfort at home.

He seems to have regarded his father's second marriage as an act of displeasure with himself, and he was disposed to hate the rival of his mother.

Gibbon soon found that the injustice was in his own fancy, and the imaginary monster was an amiable and deserving woman.

"I could not be mistaken in the first view of her understanding; her knowledge and the elegant spirit of her conversation, her polite welcome, and her assiduous care to study and gratify my wishes announced at least that the surface would be smooth; and my suspicions of art and falsehood were gradually dispelled by the full discovery of her warm and exquisite sensibility." He became indeed deeply attached to his step-mother.