initial commit of ebook 9774HEADmain

3 files changed, 33910 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/old/9774.txt.20041128 b/old/9774.txt.20041128
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..65458e7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/9774.txt.20041128
@@ -0,0 +1,16962 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete
+by Edward Bulwer Lytton
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
+
+
+Title: Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete
+
+Author: Edward Bulwer Lytton
+
+Release Date: November 28, 2004 [EBook #9774]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ALICE, OR THE MYSTERIES, COMPLETE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Dagny, and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+                               ALICE;
+
+                                 OR,
+
+                            THE MYSTERIES
+
+
+                                 BY
+
+                        EDWARD BULWER LYTTON
+                            (LORD LYTTON)
+
+
+                              COMPLETE
+
+
+
+
+BOOK I.
+
+  "Thee, hid the bowering vales amidst, I call."
+  --EURIPIDES: _Hel._ I. 1116.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+  Who art thou, fair one, who usurp'st the place
+  Of Blanch, the lady of the matchless grace?--LAMB.
+
+IT was towards the evening of a day in early April that two ladies were
+seated by the open windows of a cottage in Devonshire.  The lawn before
+them was gay with evergreens, relieved by the first few flowers and fresh
+turf of the reviving spring; and at a distance, through an opening
+amongst the trees, the sea, blue and tranquil, bounded the view, and
+contrasted the more confined and home-like features of the scene.  It was
+a spot remote, sequestered, shut out from the business and pleasures of
+the world; as such it suited the tastes and character of the owner.
+
+That owner was the younger of the ladies seated by the window.  You would
+scarcely have guessed, from her appearance, that she was more than seven
+or eight and twenty, though she exceeded by four or five years that
+critical boundary in the life of beauty.  Her form was slight and
+delicate in its proportions, nor was her countenance the less lovely
+because, from its gentleness and repose (not unmixed with a certain
+sadness) the coarse and the gay might have thought it wanting in
+expression.  For there is a stillness in the aspect of those who have
+felt deeply, which deceives the common eye,--as rivers are often alike
+tranquil and profound, in proportion as they are remote from the springs
+which agitated and swelled the commencement of their course, and by which
+their waters are still, though invisibly, supplied.
+
+The elder lady, the guest of her companion, was past seventy; her gray
+hair was drawn back from the forehead, and gathered under a stiff cap of
+quaker-like simplicity; while her dress, rich but plain, and of no very
+modern fashion, served to increase the venerable appearance of one who
+seemed not ashamed of years.
+
+"My dear Mrs. Leslie," said the lady of the house, after a thoughtful
+pause in the conversation that had been carried on for the last hour, "it
+is very true; perhaps I was to blame in coming to this place; I ought not
+to have been so selfish."
+
+"No, my dear friend," returned Mrs. Leslie, gently; "selfish is a word
+that can never be applied to you; you acted as became you,--agreeably to
+your own instinctive sense of what is best when at your age,--independent
+in fortune and rank, and still so lovely,--you resigned all that would
+have attracted others, and devoted yourself, in retirement, to a life of
+quiet and unknown benevolence.  You are in your sphere in this
+village,--humble though it be,--consoling, relieving, healing the
+wretched, the destitute, the infirm; and teaching your Evelyn insensibly
+to imitate your modest and Christian virtues."  The good old lady spoke
+warmly, and with tears in her eyes; her companion placed her hand in Mrs.
+Leslie's.
+
+"You cannot make me vain," said she, with a sweet and melancholy smile.
+"I remember what I was when you first gave shelter to the poor, desolate
+wanderer and her fatherless child; and I, who was then so poor and
+destitute, what should I be, if I was deaf to the poverty and sorrows of
+others,--others, too, who are better than I am.  But now Evelyn, as you
+say, is growing up; the time approaches when she must decide on accepting
+or rejecting Lord Vargrave.  And yet in this village how can she compare
+him with others; how can she form a choice?  What you say is very true;
+and yet I did not think of it sufficiently.  What shall I do?  I am only
+anxious, dear girl, to act so as may be best for her own happiness."
+
+"Of that I am sure," returned Mrs. Leslie; "and yet I know not how to
+advise.  On one hand, so much is due to the wishes of your late husband,
+in every point of view, that if Lord Vargrave be worthy of Evelyn's
+esteem and affection, it would be most desirable that she should prefer
+him to all others.  But if he be what I hear he is considered in the
+world,--an artful, scheming, almost heartless man, of ambitious and hard
+pursuits,--I tremble to think how completely the happiness of Evelyn's
+whole life may be thrown away.  She certainly is not in love with him,
+and yet I fear she is one whose nature is but too susceptible of
+affection.  She ought now to see others,--to know her own mind, and not
+to be hurried, blindfold and inexperienced, into a step that decides
+existence.  This is a duty we owe to her,--nay, even to the late Lord
+Vargrave, anxious as he was for the marriage.  His aim was surely her
+happiness, and he would not have insisted upon means that time and
+circumstances might show to be contrary to the end he had in view."
+
+"You are right," replied Lady Vargrave.  "When my poor husband lay on his
+bed of death, just before he summoned his nephew to receive his last
+blessing, he said to me, 'Providence can counteract all our schemes.  If
+ever it should be for Evelyn's real happiness that my wish for her
+marriage with Lumley Ferrers should not be fulfilled, to you I must leave
+the right to decide on what I cannot foresee.  All I ask is that no
+obstacle shall be thrown in the way of my wish; and that the child shall
+be trained up to consider Lumley as her future husband.'  Among his
+papers was a letter addressed to me to the same effect; and, indeed, in
+other respects that letter left more to my judgment than I had any right
+to expect.  Oh, I am often unhappy to think that he did not marry one who
+would have deserved his affection!  and--but regret is useless now."
+
+"I wish you could really feel so," said Mrs. Leslie; "for regret of
+another kind still seems to haunt you; and I do not think you have yet
+forgotten your early sorrows."
+
+"Ah, how can I?" said Lady Vargrave, with a quivering lip.
+
+At that instant, a light shadow darkened the sunny lawn in front of the
+casements, and a sweet, gay young voice was heard singing at a little
+distance; a moment more, and a beautiful girl, in the first bloom of
+youth, bounded lightly along the grass, and halted opposite the friends.
+
+It was a remarkable contrast,--the repose and quiet of the two persons we
+have described, the age and gray hairs of one, the resigned and
+melancholy gentleness written on the features of the other--with the
+springing step and laughing eyes and radiant bloom of the new comer!  As
+she stood with the setting sun glowing full upon her rich fair hair, her
+happy countenance and elastic form, it was a vision almost too bright for
+this weary earth,--a thing of light and bliss, that the joyous Greek
+might have placed among the forms of Heaven, and worshipped as an Aurora
+or a Hebe.
+
+"Oh, how can you stay indoors this beautiful evening?  Come, dearest Mrs.
+Leslie; come, Mother, dear Mother, you know you promised you would,--you
+said I was to call you; see, it will rain no more, and the shower has
+left the myrtles and the violet-bank so fresh."
+
+"My dear Evelyn," said Mrs. Leslie, with a smile, "I am not so young as
+you."
+
+"No; but you are just as gay when you are in good spirits--and who can be
+out of spirits in such weather?  Let me call for your chair; let me wheel
+you--I am sure I can.  Down, Sultan; so you have found me out, have you,
+sir?  Be quiet, sir, down!"
+
+This last exhortation was addressed to a splendid dog of the Newfoundland
+breed, who now contrived wholly to occupy Evelyn's attention.
+
+The two friends looked at this beautiful girl, as with all the grace of
+youth she shared while she rebuked the exuberant hilarity of her huge
+playmate; and the elder of the two seemed the most to sympathize with her
+mirth.  Both gazed with fond affection upon an object dear to both.  But
+some memory or association touched Lady Vargrave, and she sighed as she
+gazed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+  Is stormy life preferred to this serene?---YOUNG: _Satires_.
+
+AND the windows were closed in, and night had succeeded to evening, and
+the little party at the cottage were grouped together.  Mrs. Leslie was
+quietly seated at her tambour-frame; Lady Vargrave, leaning her cheek on
+her hand, seemed absorbed in a volume before her, but her eyes were not
+on the page; Evelyn was busily employed in turning over the contents of a
+parcel of books and music which had just been brought from the lodge
+where the London coach had deposited it.
+
+"Oh, dear Mamma!" cried Evelyn, "I am so glad; there is something you
+will like,--some of the poetry that touched you so much set to music."
+
+Evelyn brought the songs to her mother, who roused herself from her
+revery, and looked at them with interest.
+
+"It is very strange," said she, "that I should be so affected by all that
+is written by this person: I, too" (she added, tenderly stroking down
+Evelyn's luxuriant tresses), "who am not so fond of reading as you are!"
+
+"You are reading one of his books now," said Evelyn, glancing over the
+open page on the table.  "Ah, that beautiful passage upon 'Our First
+Impressions.'  Yet I do not like you, dear Mother, to read his books;
+they always seem to make you sad."
+
+"There is a charm to me in their thoughts, their manner of expression,"
+said Lady Vargrave, "which sets me thinking, which reminds me of--of an
+early friend, whom I could fancy I hear talking while I read.  It was so
+from the first time I opened by accident a book of his years ago."
+
+"Who is this author that pleases you so much?" asked Mrs. Leslie, with
+some surprise; for Lady Vargrave had usually little pleasure in reading
+even the greatest and most popular masterpieces of modern genius.
+
+"Maltravers," answered Evelyn; "and I think I almost share my mother's
+enthusiasm."
+
+"Maltravers!" repeated Mrs. Leslie.  "He is, perhaps, a dangerous writer
+for one so young.  At your age, dear girl, you have naturally romance and
+feeling enough of your own without seeking them in books."
+
+"But, dear madam," said Evelyn, standing up for her favourite, "his
+writings do not consist of romance and feeling only; they are not
+exaggerated, they are so simple, so truthful."
+
+"Did you ever meet him?" asked Lady Vargrave.
+
+"Yes," returned Mrs. Leslie, "once, when he was a gay, fair-haired boy.
+His father resided in the next county, and we met at a country-house.
+Mr. Maltravers himself has an estate near my daughter in B-----shire, but
+he does not live on it; he has been some years abroad,--a strange
+character!"
+
+"Why does he write no more?" said Evelyn; "I have read his works so
+often, and know his poetry so well by heart, that I should look forward
+to something new from him as an event."
+
+"I have heard, my dear, that he has withdrawn much from the world and its
+objects,--that he has lived greatly in the East.  The death of a lady to
+whom he was to have been married is said to have unsettled and changed
+his character.  Since that event he has not returned to England.  Lord
+Vargrave can tell you more of him than I."
+
+"Lord Vargrave thinks of nothing that is not always before the world,"
+said Evelyn.
+
+"I am sure you wrong him," said Mrs. Leslie, looking up and fixing her
+eyes on Evelyn's countenance; "for _you_ are not before the world."
+
+Evelyn slightly--very slightly--pouted her pretty lip, but made no
+answer.  She took up the music, and seating herself at the piano,
+practised the airs.  Lady Vargrave listened with emotion; and as Evelyn
+in a voice exquisitely sweet, though not powerful, sang the words, her
+mother turned away her face, and half unconsciously, a few tears stole
+silently down her cheek.
+
+When Evelyn ceased, herself affected,--for the lines were impressed with
+a wild and melancholy depth of feeling,--she came again to her mother's
+side, and seeing her emotion, kissed away the tears from the pensive
+eyes.  Her own gayety left her; she drew a stool to her mother's feet,
+and nestling to her, and clasping her hand, did not leave that place till
+they retired to rest.
+
+And the lady blessed Evelyn, and felt that, if bereaved, she was not
+alone.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+  BUT come, thou Goddess, fair and free,
+  In heaven yclept Euphrosyne!
+
+    .  .  .  .  .  .
+
+  To hear the lark begin his flight,
+  And, singing, startle the dull night.--_L'Allegro_.
+
+  But come, thou Goddess, sage and holy,
+  Come, divinest Melancholy!
+
+    .  .  .  .  .  .
+
+  There held in holy passion still,
+  Forget thyself to marble.--_Il Penseroso_.
+
+THE early morn of early spring--what associations of freshness and hope
+in that single sentence!  And there a little after sunrise--there was
+Evelyn, fresh and hopeful as the morning itself, bounding with the light
+step of a light heart over the lawn.  Alone, alone!  no governess, with a
+pinched nose and a sharp voice, to curb her graceful movements, and tell
+her how young ladies ought to walk.  How silently morning stole over the
+earth!  It was as if youth had the day and the world to itself.  The
+shutters of the cottage were still closed, and Evelyn cast a glance
+upward, to assure herself that her mother, who also rose betimes, was not
+yet stirring.  So she tripped along, singing from very glee, to secure a
+companion, and let out Sultan; and a few moments afterwards, they were
+scouring over the grass, and descending the rude steps that wound down
+the cliff to the smooth sea sands.  Evelyn was still a child at heart,
+yet somewhat more than a child in mind.  In the majesty of--
+
+  "That hollow, sounding, and mysterious main,"--
+
+in the silence broken but by the murmur of the billows, in the solitude
+relieved but by the boats of the early fishermen, she felt those deep and
+tranquillizing influences which belong to the Religion of Nature.
+Unconsciously to herself, her sweet face grew more thoughtful, and her
+step more slow.  What a complex thing is education!  How many
+circumstances, that have no connection with books and tutors, contribute
+to the rearing of the human mind!  The earth and the sky and the ocean
+were among the teachers of Evelyn Cameron; and beneath her simplicity of
+thought was daily filled, from the turns of invisible spirits, the
+fountain of the poetry of feeling.
+
+This was the hour when Evelyn most sensibly felt how little our real life
+is chronicled by external events,--how much we live a second and a higher
+life in our meditations and dreams.  Brought up, not more by precept than
+example, in the faith which unites creature and Creator, this was the
+hour in which thought itself had something of the holiness of prayer; and
+if (turning from dreams divine to earlier visions) this also was the hour
+in which the heart painted and peopled its own fairyland below, of the
+two ideal worlds that stretch beyond the inch of time on which we stand,
+Imagination is perhaps holier than Memory.
+
+So now, as the day crept on, Evelyn returned in a more sober mood, and
+then she joined her mother and Mrs. Leslie at breakfast; and then the
+household cares--such as they were--devolved upon her, heiress though she
+was; and, that duty done, once more the straw hat and Sultan were in
+requisition; and opening a little gate at the back of the cottage, she
+took the path along the village churchyard that led to the house of the
+old curate.  The burial-ground itself was surrounded and shut in with a
+belt of trees.  Save the small time-discoloured church and the roofs of
+the cottage and the minister's house, no building--not even a cotter's
+hut--was visible there.  Beneath a dark and single yew-tree in the centre
+of the ground was placed a rude seat; opposite to this seat was a grave,
+distinguished from the rest by a slight palisade.  As the young Evelyn
+passed slowly by this spot, a glove on the long damp grass beside the
+yew-tree caught her eye.  She took it up and sighed,--it was her
+mother's.  She sighed, for she thought of the soft melancholy on that
+mother's face which her caresses and her mirth never could wholly chase
+away.  She wondered why that melancholy was so fixed a habit, for the
+young ever wonder why the experienced should be sad.
+
+And now Evelyn had passed the churchyard, and was on the green turf
+before the minister's quaint, old-fashioned house.  The old man himself
+was at work in his garden; but he threw down his hoe as he saw Evelyn,
+and came cheerfully up to greet her.
+
+It was easy to see how dear she was to him.
+
+"So you are come for your daily lesson, my young pupil?"
+
+"Yes; but Tasso can wait if the--"
+
+"If the tutor wants to play truant; no, my child; and, indeed, the lesson
+must be longer than usual to-day, for I fear I shall have to leave you
+to-morrow for some days."
+
+"Leave us! why?--leave Brook-Green--impossible!"
+
+"Not at all impossible; for we have now a new vicar, and I must turn
+courtier in my old age, and ask him to leave me with my flock.  He is at
+Weymouth, and has written to me to visit him there.  So, Miss Evelyn, I
+must give you a holiday task to learn while I am away."
+
+Evelyn brushed the tears from her eyes--for when the heart is full of
+affection the eyes easily run over--and clung mournfully to the old man,
+as she gave utterance to all her half-childish, half-womanly grief at the
+thought of parting so soon with him.  And what, too, could her mother do
+without him; and why could he not write to the vicar instead of going to
+him?
+
+The curate, who was childless and a bachelor, was not insensible to the
+fondness of his beautiful pupil, and perhaps he himself was a little more
+_distrait_ than usual that morning, or else Evelyn was peculiarly
+inattentive; for certain it is that she reaped very little benefit from
+the lesson.
+
+Yet he was an admirable teacher, that old man!  Aware of Evelyn's quick,
+susceptible, and rather fanciful character of mind, he had sought less to
+curb than to refine and elevate her imagination.  Himself of no ordinary
+abilities, which leisure had allowed him to cultivate, his piety was too
+large and cheerful to exclude literature--Heaven's best gift--from the
+pale of religion.  And under his care Evelyn's mind had been duly stored
+with the treasures of modern genius, and her judgment strengthened by the
+criticisms of a graceful and generous taste.
+
+In that sequestered hamlet, the young heiress had been trained to adorn
+her future station; to appreciate the arts and elegances that distinguish
+(no matter what the rank) the refined from the low, better than if she
+had been brought up under the hundred-handed Briareus of fashionable
+education.  Lady Vargrave, indeed, like most persons of modest
+pretensions and imperfect cultivation, was rather inclined to overrate
+the advantages to be derived from book-knowledge; and she was never
+better pleased than when she saw Evelyn opening the monthly parcel from
+London, and delightedly poring over volumes which Lady Vargrave
+innocently believed to be reservoirs of inexhaustible wisdom.
+
+But this day Evelyn would not read, and the golden verses of Tasso lost
+their music to her ear.  So the curate gave up the lecture, and placed a
+little programme of studies to be conned during his absence in her
+reluctant hand; and Sultan, who had been wistfully licking his paws for
+the last half-hour, sprang up and caracoled once more into the garden;
+and the old priest and the young woman left the works of man for those of
+Nature.
+
+"Do not fear, I will take such care of your garden while you are away,"
+said Evelyn; "and you must write and let us know what day you are to come
+back."
+
+"My dear Evelyn, you are born to spoil every one--from Sultan to Aubrey."
+
+"And to be spoilt too, don't forget that," cried Evelyn, laughingly
+shaking back her ringlets.  "And now, before you go, will you tell me, as
+you are so wise, what I can do to make--to make--my mother love me?"
+
+Evelyn's voice faltered as she spoke the last words, and Aubrey looked
+surprised and moved.
+
+"Your mother love you, my dear Evelyn!  What do you mean,--does she not
+love you?"
+
+"Ah, not as I love her.  She is kind and gentle, I know, for she is so to
+all; but she does not confide in me, she does not trust me; she has some
+sorrow at heart which I am never allowed to learn and soothe.  Why does
+she avoid all mention of her early days?  She never talks to me as if
+she, too, had once a mother!  Why am I never to speak of her first
+marriage, of my father?  Why does she look reproachfully at me, and shun
+me--yes, shun me, for days together--if--if I attempt to draw her to the
+past?  Is there a secret?  If so, am I not old enough to know it?"
+
+Evelyn spoke quickly and nervously, and with quivering lips.  Aubrey took
+her hand, and pressing it, said, after a little pause,--
+
+"Evelyn, this is the first time you have ever thus spoken to me.  Has
+anything chanced to arouse your--shall I call it curiosity, or shall I
+call it the mortified pride of affection?"
+
+"And you, too, aye harsh; you blame me!  No, it is true that I have not
+thus spoken to you before; but I have long, long thought with grief that
+I was insufficient to my mother's happiness,--I who love her so dearly.
+And now, since Mrs. Leslie has been here, I find her conversing with this
+comparative stranger so much more confidentially than with me.  When I
+come in unexpectedly, they cease their conference, as if I were not
+worthy to share it; and--and oh, if I could but make you understand that
+all I desire is that my mother should love me and know me and trust me--"
+
+"Evelyn," said the curate, coldly, "you love your mother, and justly; a
+kinder and a gentler heart than hers does not beat in a human breast.
+Her first wish in life is for your happiness and welfare.  You ask for
+confidence, but why not confide in her; why not believe her actuated by
+the best and the tenderest motives; why not leave it to her discretion to
+reveal to you any secret grief, if such there be, that preys upon her;
+why add to that grief by any selfish indulgence of over-susceptibility in
+yourself?  My dear pupil, you are yet almost a child; and they who have
+sorrowed may well be reluctant to sadden with a melancholy confidence
+those to whom sorrow is yet unknown.  This much, at least, I may tell
+you,--for this much she does not seek to conceal,--that Lady Vargrave was
+early inured to trials from which you, more happy, have been saved.  She
+speaks not to you of her relations, for she has none left on earth.  And
+after her marriage with your benefactor, Evelyn, perhaps it seemed to her
+a matter of principle to banish all vain regret, all remembrance if
+possible, of an earlier tie."
+
+"My poor, poor mother!  Oh, yes, you are right; forgive me.  She yet
+mourns, perhaps, my father, whom I never saw, whom I feel, as it were,
+tacitly forbid to name,--you did not know him?"
+
+"Him!--whom?"
+
+"My father, my mother's first husband."
+
+"No."
+
+"But I am sure I could not have loved him so well as my benefactor, my
+real and second father, who is now dead and gone.  Oh, how well I
+remember him,--how fondly!"  Here Evelyn stopped and burst into tears.
+
+"You do right to remember him thus; to love and revere his memory,--a
+father indeed he was to you.  But now, Evelyn, my own dear child, hear
+me.  Respect the silent heart of your mother; let her not think that her
+misfortunes, whatever they may be, can cast a shadow over you,--you, her
+last hope and blessing.  Rather than seek to open the old wounds, suffer
+them to heal, as they must, beneath the influences of religion and time;
+and wait the hour when without, perhaps, too keen a grief, your mother
+can go back with you into the past."
+
+"I will, I will!  Oh, how wicked, how ungracious I have been!  It was but
+an excess of love, believe it, dear Mr. Aubrey, believe it."
+
+"I do believe it, my poor Evelyn; and now I know that I may trust in you.
+Come, dry those bright eyes, or they will think I have been a hard
+taskmaster, and let us go to the cottage."
+
+They walked slowly and silently across the humble garden into the
+churchyard, and there, by the old yew-tree, they saw Lady Vargrave.
+Evelyn, fearful that the traces of her tears were yet visible, drew back;
+and Aubrey, aware of what passed within her, said,--
+
+"Shall I join your mother, and tell her of my approaching departure?  And
+perhaps in the meanwhile you will call at our poor pensioner's in the
+village,--Dame Newman is so anxious to see you; we will join you there
+soon."
+
+Evelyn smiled her thanks, and kissing her hand to her mother with seeming
+gayety, turned back and passed through the glebe into the little village.
+Aubrey joined Lady Vargrave, and drew her arm in his.
+
+Meanwhile Evelyn thoughtfully pursued her way.  Her heart was full, and
+of self-reproach.  Her mother had, then, known cause for sorrow; and
+perhaps her reserve was but occasioned by her reluctance to pain her
+child.  Oh, how doubly anxious would Evelyn be hereafter to soothe, to
+comfort, to wean that dear mother from the past!  Though in this girl's
+character there was something of the impetuosity and thoughtlessness of
+her years, it was noble as well as soft; and now the woman's trustfulness
+conquered all the woman's curiosity.
+
+She entered the cottage of the old bedridden crone whom Aubrey had
+referred to.  It was as a gleam of sunshine,--that sweet comforting face;
+and here, seated by the old woman's side, with the Book of the Poor upon
+her lap, Evelyn was found by Lady Vargrave.  It was curious to observe
+the different impressions upon the cottagers made by the mother and
+daughter.  Both were beloved with almost equal enthusiasm; but with the
+first the poor felt more at home.  They could talk to her more at ease:
+she understood them so much more quickly; they had no need to beat about
+the bush to tell the little peevish complaints that they were
+half-ashamed to utter to Evelyn.  What seemed so light to the young,
+cheerful beauty, the mother listened to with so grave and sweet a
+patience.  When all went right, they rejoiced to see Evelyn; but in their
+little difficulties and sorrows nobody was like "my good Lady!"
+
+So Dame Newman, the moment she saw the pale countenance and graceful
+shape of Lady Vargrave at the threshold, uttered an exclamation of
+delight.  Now she could let out all that she did not like to trouble the
+young lady with; now she could complain of east winds, and rheumatiz, and
+the parish officers, and the bad tea they sold poor people at Mr. Hart's
+shop, and the ungrateful grandson who was so well to do and who forgot he
+had a grandmother alive!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+  TOWARDS the end of the week we received a card from the town
+  ladies.  _Vicar of Wakefield_.
+
+THE curate was gone, and the lessons suspended; otherwise--as like each
+to each as sunshine or cloud permitted--day followed day in the calm
+retreat of Brook-Green,--when, one morning, Mrs. Leslie, with a letter in
+her hand, sought Lady Vargrave, who was busied in tending the flowers of
+a small conservatory which she had added to the cottage, when, from
+various motives, and one in especial powerful and mysterious, she
+exchanged for so sequestered a home the luxurious villa bequeathed to her
+by her husband.
+
+To flowers--those charming children of Nature, in which our age can take
+the same tranquil pleasure as our youth--Lady Vargrave devoted much of
+her monotonous and unchequered time.  She seemed to love them almost as
+living things; and her memory associated them with hours as bright and as
+fleeting as themselves.
+
+"My dear friend," said Mrs. Leslie, "I have news for you.  My daughter,
+Mrs. Merton, who has been in Cornwall on a visit to her husband's mother,
+writes me word that she will visit us on her road home to the Rectory in
+B-----shire.  She will not put you much out of the way," added Mrs.
+Leslie, smiling, "for Mr. Merton will not accompany her; she only brings
+her daughter Caroline, a lively, handsome, intelligent girl, who will be
+enchanted with Evelyn.  All you will regret is, that she comes to
+terminate my visit, and take me away with her.  If you can forgive that
+offence, you will have nothing else to pardon."
+
+Lady Vargrave replied with her usual simple kindness; but she was
+evidently nervous at the visit of a stranger (for she had never yet seen
+Mrs. Merton), and still more distressed at the thought of losing Mrs.
+Leslie a week or two sooner than had been anticipated.  However, Mrs.
+Leslie hastened to reassure her.  Mrs. Merton was so quiet and
+good-natured, the wife of a country clergyman with simple tastes; and
+after all, Mrs. Leslie's visit might last as long, if Lady Vargrave would
+be contented to extend her hospitality to Mrs. Merton and Caroline.
+
+When the visit was announced to Evelyn, her young heart was susceptible
+only of pleasure and curiosity.  She had no friend of her own age; she
+was sure she should like the grandchild of her dear Mrs. Leslie.
+
+Evelyn, who had learned betimes, from the affectionate solicitude of her
+nature, to relieve her mother of such few domestic cares as a home so
+quiet, with an establishment so regular, could afford, gayly busied
+herself in a thousand little preparations.  She filled the rooms of the
+visitors with flowers (not dreaming that any one could fancy them
+unwholesome), and spread the tables with her own favourite books, and had
+the little cottage piano in her own dressing-room removed into
+Caroline's--Caroline must be fond of music.  She had some doubts of
+transferring a cage with two canaries into Caroline's room also; but when
+she approached the cage with that intention, the birds chirped so
+merrily, and seemed so glad to see her, and so expectant of sugar, that
+her heart smote her for her meditated desertion and ingratitude.  No, she
+could not give up the canaries; but the glass bowl with the goldfish--oh,
+that would look so pretty on its stand just by the casement; and the
+fish--dull things!--would not miss her.
+
+The morning, the noon, the probable hour of the important arrival came at
+last; and after having three times within the last half-hour visited the
+rooms, and settled and unsettled and settled again everything before
+arranged, Evelyn retired to her own room to consult her wardrobe, and
+Margaret,--once her nurse, now her abigail.  Alas! the wardrobe of the
+destined Lady Vargrave--the betrothed of a rising statesman, a new and
+now an ostentatious peer; the heiress of the wealthy Templeton--was one
+that many a tradesman's daughter would have disdained.  Evelyn visited so
+little; the clergyman of the place, and two old maids who lived most
+respectably on a hundred and eighty pounds a year, in a cottage, with one
+maidservant, two cats, and a footboy, bounded the circle of her
+acquaintance.  Her mother was so indifferent to dress; she herself had
+found so many other ways of spending money!--but Evelyn was not now more
+philosophical than others of her age.  She turned from muslin to
+muslin--from the coloured to the white, from the white to the
+coloured--with pretty anxiety and sorrowful suspense.  At last she
+decided on the newest, and when it was on, and the single rose set in the
+lustrous and beautiful hair, Carson herself could not have added a charm.
+Happy age!  Who wants the arts of the milliner at seventeen?
+
+"And here, miss; here's the fine necklace Lord Vargrave brought down when
+my lord came last; it will look so grand!"
+
+The emeralds glittered in their case; Evelyn looked at them irresolutely;
+then, as she looked, a shade came over her forehead, and she sighed, and
+closed the lid.
+
+"No, Margaret, I do not want it; take it away."
+
+"Oh, dear, miss! what would my lord say if he were down!  And they are so
+beautiful! they will look so fine!  Deary me, how they sparkle!  But you
+will wear much finer when you are my lady."
+
+"I hear Mamma's bell; go, Margaret, she wants you."
+
+Left alone, the young beauty sank down abstractedly, and though the
+looking-glass was opposite, it did not arrest her eye; she forgot her
+wardrobe, her muslin dress, her fears, and her guests.
+
+"Ah," she thought, "what a weight of dread I feel here when I think of
+Lord Vargrave and this fatal engagement; and every day I feel it more and
+more.  To leave my dear, dear mother, the dear cottage--oh!  I never can.
+I used to like him when I was a child; now I shudder at his name.  Why is
+this?  He is kind; he condescends to seek to please.  It was the wish of
+my poor father,--for father he really was to me; and yet--oh that he had
+left me poor and free!"
+
+At this part of Evelyn's meditation the unusual sound of wheels was heard
+on the gravel; she started up, wiped the tears from her eyes, and hurried
+down to welcome the expected guests.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+  TELL me, Sophy, my dear, what do you think of our new visitors?
+  _Vicar of Wakefield_.
+
+MRS. MERTON and her daughter were already in the middle drawing-room,
+seated on either side of Mrs. Leslie,--the former a woman of quiet and
+pleasing exterior, her face still handsome, and if not intelligent, at
+least expressive of sober good-nature and habitual content; the latter a
+fine dark-eyed girl, of decided countenance, and what is termed a showy
+style of beauty,--tall, self-possessed, and dressed plainly indeed, but
+after the approved fashion.  The rich bonnet of the large shape then
+worn; the Chantilly veil; the gay French _Cachemire_; the full sleeves,
+at that time the unnatural rage; the expensive yet unassuming _robe de
+soie_; the perfect _chaussure_; the air of society, the easy manner, the
+tranquil but scrutinizing gaze,--all startled, discomposed, and
+half-frightened Evelyn.
+
+Miss Merton herself, if more at her ease, was equally surprised by the
+beauty and unconscious grace of the young fairy before her, and rose to
+greet her with a well-bred cordiality, which at once made a conquest of
+Evelyn's heart.
+
+Mrs. Merton kissed her cheek, and smiled kindly on her, but said little.
+It was easy to see that she was a less conversable and more homely person
+than Caroline.
+
+When Evelyn conducted them to their rooms, the mother and daughter
+detected at a glance the care that had provided for their comforts; and
+something eager and expectant in Evelyn's eyes taught the good-nature of
+the one and the good breeding of the other to reward their young hostess
+by various little exclamations of pleasure and satisfaction.
+
+"Dear, how nice!  What a pretty writing-desk!" said one--"And the pretty
+goldfish!" said the other--"And the piano, too, so well placed;" and
+Caroline's fair fingers ran rapidly over the keys.  Evelyn retired,
+covered with smiles and blushes.  And then Mrs. Merton permitted herself
+to say to the well-dressed abigail,--
+
+"Do take away those flowers, they make me quite faint."
+
+"And how low the room is,--so confined!" said Caroline, when the lady's
+lady withdrew with the condemned flowers.  "And I see no Pysche.
+However, the poor people have done their best."
+
+"Sweet person, Lady Vargrave!" said Mrs. Merton,--"so interesting, so
+beautiful; and how youthful in appearance!"
+
+"No _tournure_--not much the manner of the world," said Caroline.
+
+"No; but something better."
+
+"Hem!" said Caroline.  "The girl is very pretty, though too small."
+
+"Such a smile, such eyes,--she is irresistible! and what a fortune!  She
+will be a charming friend for you, Caroline."
+
+"Yes, she maybe useful, if she marry Lord Vargrave; or, indeed, if she
+make any brilliant match.  What sort of a man is Lord Vargrave?"
+
+"I never saw him; they say, most fascinating."
+
+"Well, she is very happy," said Caroline, with a sigh.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+  TWO lovely damsels cheer my lonely walk.--LAMB: _Album Verses_.
+
+AFTER dinner there was still light enough for the young people to stroll
+through the garden.  Mrs. Merton, who was afraid of the damp, preferred
+staying within; and she was so quiet, and made herself so much at home,
+that Lady Vargrave, to use Mrs. Leslie's phrase, was not the least "put
+out" by her.  Besides, she talked of Evelyn, and that was a theme very
+dear to Lady Vargrave, who was both fond and proud of Evelyn.
+
+"This is very pretty indeed,--the view of the sea quite lovely!" said
+Caroline.  "You draw?"
+
+"Yes, a little."
+
+"From Nature?"
+
+"Oh, yes."
+
+"What, in Indian ink?"
+
+"Yes; and water-colours."
+
+"Oh!  Why, who could have taught you in this little village; or, indeed,
+in this most primitive county?"
+
+"We did not come to Brook-Green till I was nearly fifteen.  My dear
+mother, though very anxious to leave our villa at Fulham, would not do so
+on my account, while masters could be of service to me; and as I knew she
+had set her heart on this place, I worked doubly hard."
+
+"Then she knew this place before?"
+
+"Yes; she had been here many years ago, and took the place after my poor
+father's death,--I always call the late Lord Vargrave my father.  She
+used to come here regularly once a year without me; and when she
+returned, I thought her even more melancholy than before."
+
+"What makes the charm of the place to Lady Vargrave?" asked Caroline,
+with some interest.
+
+"I don't know; unless it be its extreme quiet, or some early
+association."
+
+"And who is your nearest neighbour?"
+
+"Mr. Aubrey, the curate.  It is so unlucky, he is gone from home for a
+short time.  You can't think how kind and pleasant he is,--the most
+amiable old man in the world; just such a man as Bernardin St. Pierre
+would have loved to describe."
+
+"Agreeable, no doubt, but dull--good curates generally are."
+
+"Dull? not the least; cheerful even to playfulness, and full of
+information.  He has been so good to me about books; indeed, I have
+learned a great deal from him."
+
+"I dare say he is an admirable judge of sermons."
+
+"But Mr. Aubrey is not severe," persisted Evelyn, earnestly; "he is very
+fond of Italian literature, for instance; we are reading Tasso together."
+
+"Oh! pity he is old--I think you said he was old.  Perhaps there is a
+son, the image of the sire?"
+
+"Oh, no," said Evelyn, laughing innocently; "Mr. Aubrey never married."
+
+"And where does the old gentleman live?"
+
+"Come a little this way; there, you can just see the roof of his house,
+close by the church."
+
+"I see; it is _tant soit peu triste_ to have the church so near you."
+
+"_Do_ you think so?  Ah, but you have not seen it; it is the prettiest
+church in the county; and the little burial-ground--so quiet, so shut in;
+I feel better every time I pass it.  Some places breathe of religion."
+
+"You are poetical, my dear little friend."
+
+Evelyn, who _had_ poetry in her nature, and therefore sometimes it broke
+out in her simple language, coloured and felt half-ashamed.
+
+"It is a favourite walk with my mother," said she, apologetically; "she
+often spends hours there alone: and so, perhaps, I think it a prettier
+spot than others may.  It does not seem to me to have anything of gloom
+in it; when I die, I should like to be buried there."
+
+Caroline laughed slightly.  "That is a strange wish; but perhaps you have
+been crossed in love?"
+
+"I!--oh, you are laughing at me!"
+
+"You do not remember Mr. Cameron, your real father, I suppose?"
+
+"No; I believe he died before I was born."
+
+"Cameron is a Scotch name: to what tribe of Camerons do you belong?"
+
+"I don't know," said Evelyn, rather embarrassed; "indeed I know nothing
+of my father's or mother's family.  It is very odd, but I don't think we
+have any relations.  You know when I am of age that I am to take the name
+of Templeton."
+
+"Ah, the name goes with the fortune; I understand.  Dear Evelyn, how rich
+you will be!  I do so wish I were rich!"
+
+"And I that I were poor," said Evelyn, with an altered tone and
+expression of countenance.
+
+"Strange girl! what can you mean?"
+
+Evelyn said nothing, and Caroline examined her curiously.
+
+"These notions come from living so much out of the world, my dear Evelyn.
+How you must long to see more of life!"
+
+"I! not in the least.  I should never like to leave this place,--I could
+live and die here."
+
+"You will think otherwise when you are Lady Vargrave.  Why do you look so
+grave?  Do you not love Lord Vargrave?"
+
+"What a question!" said Evelyn, turning away her head, and forcing a
+laugh.
+
+"It is no matter whether you do or not: it is a brilliant position.  He
+has rank, reputation, high office; all he wants is money, and that you
+will give him.  Alas! I have no prospect so bright.  I have no fortune,
+and I fear my face will never buy a title, an opera-box, and a house in
+Grosvenor Square.  I wish I were the future Lady Vargrave."
+
+"I am sure I wish you were," said Evelyn, with great _naivete_; "you
+would suit Lord Vargrave better than I should."
+
+Caroline laughed.
+
+"Why do you think so?"
+
+"Oh, his way of thinking is like yours; he never says anything I can
+sympathize with."
+
+"A pretty compliment to me!  Depend upon it, my dear, you will sympathize
+with me when you have seen as much of the world.  But Lord Vargrave--is
+he too old?"
+
+"No, I don't think of his age; and indeed he looks younger than he is."
+
+"Is he handsome?"
+
+"He is what may be called handsome,--you would think so."
+
+"Well, if he comes here, I will do my best to win him from you; so look
+to yourself."
+
+"Oh, I should be so grateful; I should like him so much, if he would fall
+in love with you!"
+
+"I fear there is no chance of that."
+
+"But how," said Evelyn, hesitatingly, after a pause,--"how is it that you
+have seen so much more of the world than I have?  I thought Mr. Merton
+lived a great deal in the country."
+
+"Yes, but my uncle, Sir John Merton, is member for the county; my
+grandmother on my father's side--Lady Elizabeth, who has Tregony Castle
+(which we have just left) for her jointure-house--goes to town almost
+every season, and I have spent three seasons with her.  She is a charming
+old woman,--quite the _grand dame_.  I am sorry to say she remains in
+Cornwall this year.  She has not been very well; the physicians forbid
+late hours and London; but even in the country we are very gay.  My uncle
+lives near us, and though a widower, has his house full when down at
+Merton Park; and Papa, too, is rich, very hospitable and popular, and
+will, I hope, be a bishop one of these days--not at all like a mere
+country parson; and so, somehow or other, I have learned to be
+ambitious,--we are an ambitious family on Papa's side.  But, alas! I have
+not your cards to play.  Young, beautiful, and an heiress!  Ah, what
+prospects!  You should make your mamma take you to town."
+
+"To town! she would be wretched at the very idea.  Oh, you don't know
+us."
+
+"I can't help fancying, Miss Evelyn," said Caroline, archly, "that you
+are not so blind to Lord Vargrave's perfections and so indifferent to
+London, only from the pretty innocent way of thinking, that so prettily
+and innocently you express.  I dare say, if the truth were known, there
+is some handsome young rector, besides the old curate, who plays the
+flute, and preaches sentimental sermons in white kid gloves."
+
+Evelyn laughed merrily,--so merrily that Caroline's suspicions vanished.
+They continued to walk and talk thus till the night came on, and then
+they went in; and Evelyn showed Caroline her drawings, which astonished
+that young lady, who was a good judge of accomplishments.  Evelyn's
+performance on the piano astonished her yet more; but Caroline consoled
+herself on this point, for her voice was more powerful, and she sang
+French songs with much more spirit.  Caroline showed talent in all she
+undertook; but Evelyn, despite her simplicity, had genius, though as yet
+scarcely developed, for she had quickness, emotion, susceptibility,
+imagination.  And the difference between talent and genius lies rather in
+the heart than the head.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+       DOST thou feel
+  The solemn whispering influence of the scene
+  Oppressing thy young heart, that thou dost draw
+  More closely to my side?--F. HEMANS: _Wood Walk and Hymn_.
+
+CAROLINE and Evelyn, as was natural, became great friends.  They were not
+kindred to each other in disposition; but they were thrown together, and
+friendship thus forced upon both.  Unsuspecting and sanguine, it was
+natural to Evelyn to admire; and Caroline was, to her inexperience, a
+brilliant and imposing novelty.  Sometimes Miss Merton's worldliness of
+thought shocked Evelyn; but then Caroline had a way with her as if she
+were not in earnest,--as if she were merely indulging an inclination
+towards irony; nor was she without a certain vein of sentiment that
+persons a little hackneyed in the world and young ladies a little
+disappointed that they are not wives instead of maids, easily acquire.
+Trite as this vein of sentiment was, poor Evelyn thought it beautiful and
+most feeling.  Then, Caroline was clever, entertaining, cordial, with all
+that superficial superiority that a girl of twenty-three who knows London
+readily exercises over a country girl of seventeen.  On the other hand,
+Caroline was kind and affectionate towards her.  The clergyman's daughter
+felt that she could not be always superior, even in fashion, to the
+wealthy heiress.
+
+One evening, as Mrs. Leslie and Mrs. Merton sat under the veranda of the
+cottage, without their hostess, who had gone alone into the village, and
+the young ladies were confidentially conversing on the lawn, Mrs. Leslie
+said rather abruptly, "Is not Evelyn a delightful creature?  How
+unconscious of her beauty; how simple, and yet so naturally gifted!"
+
+"I have never seen one who interested me more," said Mrs. Merton,
+settling her _pelerine_; "she is extremely pretty."
+
+"I am so anxious about her," resumed Mrs. Leslie, thoughtfully.  "You
+know the wish of the late Lord Vargrave that she should marry his nephew,
+the present lord, when she reaches the age of eighteen.  She only wants
+nine or ten months of that time; she has seen nothing of the world: she
+is not fit to decide for herself; and Lady Vargrave, the best of human
+creatures, is still herself almost too inexperienced in the world to be a
+guide for one so young placed in such peculiar circumstances, and of
+prospects so brilliant.  Lady Vargrave at heart is a child still, and
+will be so even when as old as I am."
+
+"It is very true," said Mrs. Merton.  "Don't you fear that the girls will
+catch cold?  The dew is falling, and the grass must be wet."
+
+"I have thought," continued Mrs. Leslie, without heeding the latter part
+of Mrs. Merton's speech, "that it would be a kind thing to invite Evelyn
+to stay with you a few months at the Rectory.  To be sure, it is not like
+London; but you see a great deal of the world.  The society at your house
+is well selected, and at times even brilliant; she will meet young people
+of her own age, and young people fashion and form each other."
+
+"I was thinking myself that I should like to invite her," said Mrs.
+Merton; "I will consult Caroline."
+
+"Caroline, I am sure, would be delighted; the difficulty lies rather in
+Evelyn herself."
+
+"You surprise me! she must be moped to death here."
+
+"But will she leave her mother?"
+
+"Why, Caroline often leaves me," said Mrs. Merton.
+
+Mrs. Leslie was silent, and Evelyn and her new friend now joined the
+mother and daughter.
+
+"I have been trying to persuade Evelyn to pay us a little visit," said
+Caroline; "she could accompany us so nicely; and if she is still strange
+with us, dear grandmamma goes too,--I am sure we can make her at home."
+
+"How odd!" said Mrs. Merton; "we were just saying the same thing.  My
+dear Miss Cameron, we should be so happy to have you."
+
+"And I should be so happy to go, if Mamma would but go too."
+
+As she spoke, the moon, just risen, showed the form of Lady Vargrave
+slowly approaching the house.  By the light, her features seemed more
+pale than usual; and her slight and delicate form, with its gliding
+motion and noiseless step, had in it something almost ethereal and
+unearthly.
+
+Evelyn turned and saw her, and her heart smote her.  Her mother, so
+wedded to the dear cottage--and had this gay stranger rendered that dear
+cottage less attractive,--she who had said she could live and die in its
+humble precincts?  Abruptly she left her new friend, hastened to her
+mother, and threw her arms fondly round her.
+
+"You are pale; you have over-fatigued yourself.  Where have you been?
+Why did you not take me with you?"
+
+Lady Vargrave pressed Evelyn's hand affectionately.
+
+"You care for me too much," said she.  "I am but a dull companion for
+you; I was so glad to see you happy with one better suited to your gay
+spirits.  What can we do when she leaves us?"
+
+"Ah, I want no companion but my own, own mother.  And have I not Sultan,
+too?" added Evelyn, smiling away the tear that had started to her eyes.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+  FRIEND after friend departs;
+    Who hath not lost a friend?
+  There is no union here of hearts
+    That finds not here an end.--J. MONTGOMERY.
+
+THAT night Mrs. Leslie sought Lady Vargrave in her own room.  As she
+entered gently she observed that, late as the hour was, Lady Vargrave was
+stationed by the open window, and seemed intently gazing on the scene
+below.  Mrs. Leslie reached her side unperceived.  The moonlight was
+exceedingly bright; and just beyond the garden, from which it was
+separated but by a slight fence, lay the solitary churchyard of the
+hamlet, with the slender spire of the holy edifice rising high and
+tapering into the shining air.  It was a calm and tranquillizing scene;
+and so intent was Lady Vargrave's abstracted gaze, that Mrs. Leslie was
+unwilling to disturb her revery.
+
+At length Lady Vargrave turned; and there was that patient and pathetic
+resignation written in her countenance which belongs to those whom the
+world can deceive no more, and who have fixed their hearts in the life
+beyond.
+
+Mrs. Leslie, whatever she thought or felt, said nothing, except in kindly
+remonstrance on the indiscretion of braving the night air.  The window
+was closed; they sat down to confer.
+
+Mrs. Leslie repeated the invitation given to Evelyn, and urged the
+advisability of accepting it.  "It is cruel to separate you," said she;
+"I feel it acutely.  Why not, then, come with Evelyn?  You shake your
+head: why always avoid society?  So young, yet you give yourself too much
+to the past!"
+
+Lady Vargrave rose, and walked to a cabinet at the end of the room; she
+unlocked it, and beckoned to Mrs. Leslie to approach.  In a drawer lay
+carefully folded articles of female dress,--rude, homely, ragged,--the
+dress of a peasant girl.
+
+"Do these remind you of your first charity to me?" she said touchingly:
+"they tell me that I have nothing to do with the world in which you and
+yours, and Evelyn herself, should move."
+
+"Too tender conscience!--your errors were but those of circumstances, of
+youth;--how have they been redeemed! none even suspect them.  Your past
+history is known but to the good old Aubrey and myself.  No breath, even
+of rumour, tarnishes the name of Lady Vargrave."
+
+"Mrs. Leslie," said Lady Vargrave, reclosing the cabinet, and again
+seating herself, "my world lies around me; I cannot quit it.  If I were
+of use to Evelyn, then indeed I would sacrifice, brave all; but I only
+cloud her spirits.  I have no advice to give her, no instruction to
+bestow.  When she was a child I could watch over her; when she was sick,
+I could nurse her; but now she requires an adviser, a guide; and I feel
+too sensibly that this task is beyond my powers.  I, a guide to youth and
+innocence,--_I_!  No, I have nothing to offer her, dear child! but my
+love and my prayers.  Let your daughter take her, then,--watch over her,
+guide, advise her.  For me--unkind, ungrateful as it may seem--were she
+but happy, I could well bear to be alone!"
+
+"But she--how will she, who loves you so, submit to this separation?"
+
+"It will not be long; and," added Lady Vargrave, with a serious, yet
+sweet smile, "she had better be prepared for that separation which must
+come at last.  As year by year I outlive my last hope,--that of once more
+beholding _him_,--I feel that life becomes feebler and feebler, and I
+look more on that quiet churchyard as a home to which I am soon
+returning.  At all events, Evelyn will be called upon to form new ties
+that must estrange her from me; let her wean herself from one so useless
+to her, to all the world,--now, and by degrees."
+
+"Speak not thus," said Mrs. Leslie, strongly affected; "you have many
+years of happiness yet in store for you.  The more you recede from youth,
+the fairer life will become to you."
+
+"God is good to me," said the lady, raising her meek eyes; "and I have
+already found it so.  I am contented."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+  THE greater part of them seemed to be charmed with his presence.
+  MACKENZIE: _The Man of the World_.
+
+IT was with the greatest difficulty that Evelyn could at last be
+persuaded to consent to the separation from her mother; she wept bitterly
+at the thought.  But Lady Vargrave, though touched, was firm, and her
+firmness was of that soft, imploring character which Evelyn never could
+resist.  The visit was to last some months, it is true, but she would
+return to the cottage; she would escape, too--and this, perhaps,
+unconsciously reconciled her more than aught else--the periodical visit
+of Lord Vargrave.  At the end of July, when the parliamentary session at
+that unreformed era usually expired, he always came to Brook-Green for a
+month.  His last visits had been most unwelcome to Evelyn, and this next
+visit she dreaded more than she had any of the former ones.  It is
+strange,--the repugnance with which she regarded the suit of her
+affianced!--she, whose heart was yet virgin; who had never seen any one
+who, in form, manner, and powers to please, could be compared to the gay
+Lord Vargrave.  And yet a sense of honour, of what was due to her dead
+benefactor, her more than father,--all combated that repugnance, and left
+her uncertain what course to pursue, uncalculating as to the future.  In
+the happy elasticity of her spirits, and with a carelessness almost
+approaching to levity, which, to say truth, was natural to her, she did
+not often recall the solemn engagement that must soon be ratified or
+annulled; but when that thought did occur, it saddened her for hours, and
+left her listless and despondent.  The visit to Mrs. Merton was, then,
+finally arranged, the day of departure fixed, when, one morning, came the
+following letter from Lord Vargrave himself:--
+
+
+To the LADY VARGRAVE, etc.
+
+MY DEAR FRIEND,--I find that we have a week's holiday in our do-nothing
+Chamber, and the weather is so delightful, that I long to share its
+enjoyment with those I love best.  You will, therefore, see me almost as
+soon as you receive this; that is, I shall be with you at dinner on the
+same day.  What can I say to Evelyn?  Will you, dearest Lady Vargrave,
+make her accept all the homage which, when uttered by me, she seems half
+inclined to reject?
+
+          In haste, most affectionately yours,
+
+                                   VARGRAVE.
+
+     HAMILTON PLACE, April 30, 18--.
+
+
+This letter was by no means welcome, either to Mrs. Leslie or to Evelyn.
+The former feared that Lord Vargrave would disapprove of a visit, the
+real objects of which could scarcely be owned to him; the latter was
+reminded of all she desired to forget.  But Lady Vargrave herself rather
+rejoiced at the thought of Lumley's arrival.  Hitherto, in the spirit of
+her passive and gentle character, she had taken the engagement between
+Evelyn and Lord Vargrave almost as a matter of course.  The will and wish
+of her late husband operated most powerfully on her mind; and while
+Evelyn was yet in childhood, Lumley's visits had ever been acceptable,
+and the playful girl liked the gay and good-humoured lord, who brought
+her all sorts of presents, and appeared as fond of dogs as herself.  But
+Evelyn's recent change of manner, her frequent fits of dejection and
+thought, once pointed out to Lady Vargrave by Mrs. Leslie, aroused all
+the affectionate and maternal anxiety of the former.  She was resolved to
+watch, to examine, to scrutinize, not only Evelyn's reception of
+Vargrave, but, as far as she could, the manner and disposition of
+Vargrave himself.  She felt how solemn a trust was the happiness of a
+whole life; and she had that romance of heart, learned from Nature, not
+in books, which made her believe that there could be no happiness in a
+marriage without love.
+
+The whole family party were on the lawn, when, an hour earlier than he
+was expected, the travelling carriage of Lord Vargrave was whirled along
+the narrow sweep that conducted from the lodge to the house.  Vargrave,
+as he saw the party, kissed his hand from the window; and leaping from
+the carriage, when it stopped at the porch, hastened to meet his hostess.
+
+"My dear Lady Vargrave, I am so glad to see you!  You are looking
+charmingly; and Evelyn?--oh, there she is; the dear coquette, how lovely
+she is! how she has improved!  But who [sinking his voice], who are those
+ladies?"
+
+"Guests of ours,--Mrs. Leslie, whom you have often heard us speak of, but
+never met--"
+
+"Yes; and the others?"
+
+"Her daughter and grandchild."
+
+"I shall be delighted to know them."
+
+A more popular manner than Lord Vargrave's it is impossible to conceive.
+Frank and prepossessing, even when the poor and reckless Mr. Ferrers,
+without rank or reputation, his smile, the tone of his voice, his
+familiar courtesy,--apparently so inartificial and approaching almost to
+a boyish bluntness of good-humour,--were irresistible in the rising
+statesman and favoured courtier.
+
+Mrs. Merton was enchanted with him; Caroline thought him, at the first
+glance, the most fascinating person she had ever seen; even Mrs. Leslie,
+more grave, cautious, and penetrating, was almost equally pleased with
+the first impression; and it was not till, in his occasional silence, his
+features settled into their natural expression that she fancied she
+detected in the quick suspicious eye and the close compression of the
+lips the tokens of that wily, astute, and worldly character, which, in
+proportion as he had risen in his career, even his own party reluctantly
+and mysteriously assigned to one of their most prominent leaders.
+
+When Vargrave took Evelyn's hand, and raised it with meaning gallantry to
+his lips, the girl first blushed deeply, and then turned pale as death;
+nor did the colour thus chased away soon return to the transparent cheek.
+Not noticing signs which might bear a twofold interpretation, Lumley, who
+seemed in high spirits, rattled away on a thousand matters,--praising the
+view, the weather, the journey, throwing out a joke here and a compliment
+there, and completing his conquest over Mrs. Merton and Caroline.
+
+"You have left London in the very height of its gayety, Lord Vargrave,"
+said Caroline, as they sat conversing after dinner.
+
+"True, Miss Merton; but the country is in the height of its gayety too."
+
+"Are you so fond of the country, then?"
+
+"By fits and starts; my passion for it comes in with the early
+strawberries, and goes out with the hautboys.  I lead so artificial a
+life; but then I hope it is a useful one.  I want nothing but a home to
+make it a happy one."
+
+"What is the latest news?--dear London!  I am so sorry Grandmamma, Lady
+Elizabeth, is not going there this year, so I am compelled to rusticate.
+Is Lady Jane D----- to be married at last?"
+
+"Commend me to a young lady's idea of news,--always marriage!  Lady Jane
+D-----! yes, she is to be married, as you say--_at last_!  While she was
+a beauty, our cold sex was shy of her; but she has now faded into
+plainness,--the proper colour for a wife."
+
+"Complimentary!"
+
+"Indeed it is--for you beautiful women we love too much for our own
+happiness--heigho!--and a prudent marriage means friendly indifference,
+not rapture and despair.  But give me beauty and love; I never was
+prudent: it is not my weakness."
+
+Though Caroline was his sole supporter in this dialogue, Lord Vargrave's
+eyes attempted to converse with Evelyn, who was unusually silent and
+abstracted.  Suddenly Lord Vargrave seemed aware that he was scarcely
+general enough in his talk for his hearers.  He addressed himself to Mrs.
+Leslie, and glided back, as it were, into a former generation.  He spoke
+of persons gone and things forgotten; he made the subject interesting
+even to the young, by a succession of various and sparkling anecdotes.
+No one could be more agreeable; even Evelyn now listened to him with
+pleasure, for to all women wit and intellect have their charm.  But still
+there was a cold and sharp levity in the tone of the man of the world
+that prevented the charm sinking below the surface.  To Mrs. Leslie he
+seemed unconsciously to betray a laxity of principle; to Evelyn, a want
+of sentiment and heart.  Lady Vargrave, who did not understand a
+character of this description, listened attentively, and said to herself,
+"Evelyn may admire, but I fear she cannot love him."  Still, time passed
+quickly in Lumley's presence, and Caroline thought she had never spent so
+pleasant an evening.
+
+When Lord Vargrave retired to his room, he threw himself in his chair,
+and yawned with exceeding fervour.  His servant arranged his
+dressing-robe, and placed his portfolios and letter-boxes on the table.
+
+"What o'clock is it?" said Lumley.
+
+"Very early, my lord; only eleven."
+
+"The devil!  The country air is wonderfully exhausting.  I am very
+sleepy; you may go."
+
+"This little girl," said Lumley, stretching himself, "is preternaturally
+shy.  I must neglect her no longer--yet it is surely all safe?  She has
+grown monstrous pretty; but the other girl is more amusing, more to my
+taste, and a much easier conquest, I fancy.  Her great dark eyes seem
+full of admiration for my lordship.  Sensible young woman! she may be
+useful in piquing Evelyn."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+  _Julio_.  Wilt thou have him?--_The Maid in the Mill_.
+
+LORD VARGRAVE heard the next morning, with secret distaste and
+displeasure, of Evelyn's intended visit to the Mertons.  He could
+scarcely make any open objection to it; but he did not refrain from many
+insinuations as to its impropriety.
+
+"My dear friend," said he to Lady Vargrave, "it is scarcely right in you
+(pardon me for saying it) to commit Evelyn to the care of comparative
+strangers.  Mrs. Leslie, indeed, you know; but Mrs. Merton, you allow,
+you have now seen for the first time.  A most respectable person
+doubtless; but still, recollect how young Evelyn is, how rich; what a
+prize to any younger sons in the Merton family (if such there be).  Miss
+Merton herself is a shrewd, worldly girl; and if she were of our sex
+would make a capital fortune-hunter.  Don't think my fear is selfish; I
+do not speak for myself.  If I were Evelyn's brother, I should be yet
+more earnest in my remonstrance."
+
+"But, Lord Vargrave, poor Evelyn is dull here; my spirits infect hers.
+She ought to mix more with those of her own age, to see more of the world
+before--before--"
+
+"Before her marriage with me?  Forgive me, but is not that my affair?  If
+I am contented, nay, charmed with her innocence, if I prefer it to all
+the arts which society could teach her, surely you would be acquitted for
+leaving her in the beautiful simplicity that makes her chief fascination?
+She will see enough of the world as Lady Vargrave."
+
+"But if she should resolve never to be Lady Vargrave--?"
+
+Lumley started, bit his lip, and frowned.  Lady Vargrave had never before
+seen on his countenance the dark expression it now wore.  He recollected
+and recovered himself, as he observed her eye fixed upon him, and said,
+with a constrained smile,--
+
+"Can you anticipate an event so fatal to my happiness, so unforeseen, so
+opposed to all my poor uncle's wishes, as Evelyn's rejection of a suit
+pursued for years, and so solemnly sanctioned in her very childhood?"
+
+"She must decide for herself," said Lady Vargrave.  "Your uncle carefully
+distinguished between a wish and a command.  Her heart is as yet
+untouched.  If she can love you, may you deserve her affection."
+
+"It shall be my study to do so.  But why this departure from your roof
+just when we ought to see most of each other?  It cannot be that you
+would separate us?"
+
+"I fear, Lord Vargrave, that if Evelyn were to remain here, she would
+decide against you.  I fear if you press her now, such now may be her
+premature decision.  Perhaps this arises from too fond an attachment for
+her home; perhaps even a short absence from her home--from me--may more
+reconcile her to a permanent separation."
+
+Vargrave could say no more, for here they were joined by Caroline and
+Mrs. Merton; but his manner was changed, nor could he recover the gayety
+of the previous night.
+
+When, however, he found time for meditation, he contrived to reconcile
+himself to the intended visit.  He felt that it was easy to secure the
+friendship of the whole of the Merton family; and that friendship might
+be more useful to him than the neutral part adopted by Lady Vargrave.  He
+should, of course, be invited to the rectory; it was much nearer London
+than Lady Vargrave's cottage, he could more often escape from public
+cares to superintend his private interest.  A country neighbourhood,
+particularly at that season of the year, was not likely to abound in very
+dangerous rivals.  Evelyn would, he saw, be surrounded by a _worldly_
+family, and he thought that an advantage; it might serve to dissipate
+Evelyn's romantic tendencies, and make her sensible of the pleasures of
+the London life, the official rank, the gay society that her union with
+him would offer as an equivalent for her fortune.  In short, as was his
+wont, he strove to make the best of the new turn affairs had taken.
+Though guardian to Miss Cameron, and one of the trustees for the fortune
+she was to receive on attaining her majority, he had not the right to
+dictate as to her residence.  The late lord's will had expressly and
+pointedly corroborated the natural and lawful authority of Lady Vargrave
+in all matters connected with Evelyn's education and home.  It may be as
+well, in this place, to add, that to Vargrave and the co-trustee, Mr.
+Gustavus Douce, a banker of repute and eminence, the testator left large
+discretionary powers as to the investment of the fortune.  He had stated
+it as his wish that from one hundred and twenty to one hundred and thirty
+thousand pounds should be invested in the purchase of a landed estate;
+but he had left it to the discretion of the trustees to increase that
+sum, even to the amount of the whole capital, should an estate of
+adequate importance be in the market, while the selection of time and
+purchase was unreservedly confided to the trustees.  Vargrave had
+hitherto objected to every purchase in the market,--not that he was
+insensible to the importance and consideration of landed property, but
+because, till he himself became the legal receiver of the income, he
+thought it less trouble to suffer the money to lie in the Funds, than to
+be pestered with all the onerous details in the management of an estate
+that might never be his.  He, however, with no less ardour than his
+deceased relative, looked forward to the time when the title of Vargrave
+should be based upon the venerable foundation of feudal manors and
+seignorial acres.
+
+"Why did you not tell me Lord Vargrave was so charming?" said Caroline to
+Evelyn, as the two girls were sauntering, in familiar _tete-a-tete_,
+along the gardens.  "You will be very happy with such a companion."
+
+Evelyn made no answer for a few moments, and then, turning abruptly round
+to Caroline, and stopping short, she said, with a kind of tearful
+eagerness, "Dear Caroline, you are so wise, so kind too; advise me, tell
+me what is best.  I am very unhappy."
+
+Miss Merton was moved and surprised by Evelyn's earnestness.
+
+"But what is it, my poor Evelyn," said she; "why are you unhappy?--you
+whose fate seems to me so enviable."
+
+"I cannot love Lord Vargrave; I recoil from the idea of marrying him.
+Ought I not fairly to tell him so?  Ought I not to say that I cannot
+fulfil the wish that--oh, there's the thought which leaves me so
+irresolute!--His uncle bequeathed to me--me who have no claim of
+relationship--the fortune that should have been Lord Vargrave's, in the
+belief that my hand would restore it to him.  It is almost a fraud to
+refuse him.  Am I not to be pitied?"
+
+"But why can you not love Lord Vargrave?  If past the _premiere
+jeunesse_, he is still handsome.  He is more than handsome,--he has the
+air of rank, an eye that fascinates, a smile that wins, the manners that
+please, the abilities that command, the world!  Handsome, clever,
+admired, distinguished--what can woman desire more in her lover, her
+husband?  Have you ever formed some fancy, some ideal of the one you
+could love, and how does Lord Vargrave fall short of the vision?"
+
+"Have I ever formed an ideal?--oh, yes!" said Evelyn, with a beautiful
+enthusiasm that lighted up her eyes, blushed in her cheek, and heaved her
+bosom beneath its robe; "something that in loving I could also revere,--a
+mind that would elevate my own; a heart that could sympathize with my
+weakness, my follies, my romance, if you will; and in which I could
+treasure my whole soul."
+
+"You paint a schoolmaster, not a lover!" said Caroline.  "You do not
+care, then, whether this hero be handsome or young?"
+
+"Oh, yes, he should be both," said Evelyn, innocently; "and yet," she
+added, after a pause, and with an infantine playfulness of manner and
+countenance, "I know you will laugh at me, but I think I could be in love
+with more than one at the same time!"
+
+"A common case, but a rare confession!"
+
+"Yes; for if I might ask for the youth and outward advantages that please
+the eye, I could also love with a yet deeper love that which would speak
+to my imagination,--Intellect, Genius, Fame!  Ah, these have an immortal
+youth and imperishable beauty of their own!"
+
+"You are a very strange girl."
+
+"But we are on a very strange  subject--it is all an enigma!" said
+Evelyn, shaking her wise little head with a pretty gravity, half mock,
+half real.  "Ah, if Lord Vargrave should love you--and you--oh, you
+_would_ love him, and then I should be free, and so happy!"
+
+They were then on the lawn in sight of the cottage windows, and Lumley,
+lifting his eyes from the newspaper, which had just arrived and been
+seized with all a politician's avidity, saw them in the distance.  He
+threw down the paper, mused a moment or two, then took up his hat and
+joined them; but before he did so, he surveyed himself in the glass.  "I
+think I look young enough still," thought he.
+
+"Two cherries on one stalk," said Lumley, gayly: "by the by, it is not a
+complimentary simile.  What young lady would be like a cherry?--such an
+uninteresting, common, charity-boy sort of fruit.  For my part, I always
+associate cherries with the image of a young gentleman in corduroys and a
+skeleton jacket, with one pocket full of marbles, and the other full of
+worms for fishing, with three-halfpence in the left paw, and two cherries
+on one stalk (Helena and Hermia) in the right."
+
+"How droll you are!" said Caroline, laughing.
+
+"Much obliged to you, and don't envy your discrimination, 'Melancholy
+marks me for its own.' You ladies,--ah, yours is the life for gay spirits
+and light hearts; to us are left business and politics, law, physic, and
+murder, by way of professions; abuse, nicknamed fame; and the privilege
+of seeing how universal a thing, among the great and the wealthy, is that
+pleasant vice, beggary,--which privilege is proudly entitled 'patronage
+and power.' Are we the things to be gay,--'droll,' as you say?  Oh, no,
+all our spirits are forced, believe me.  Miss Cameron, did you ever know
+that wretched species of hysterical affection called 'forced spirits'?
+Never, I am sure; your ingenuous smile, your laughing eyes, are the index
+to a happy and a sanguine heart."
+
+"And what of me?" asked Caroline, quickly, and with a slight blush.
+
+"You, Miss Merton?  Ah, I have not yet read your character,--a fair page,
+but an unknown letter.  You, however, have seen the world, and know that
+we must occasionally wear a mask."  Lord Vargrave sighed as he spoke, and
+relapsed into sudden silence; then looking up, his eyes encountered
+Caroline's, which were fixed upon him.  Their gaze flattered him;
+Caroline turned away, and busied herself with a rose-bush.  Lumley
+gathered one of the flowers, and presented it to her.  Evelyn was a few
+steps in advance.
+
+"There is no thorn in this rose," said he; "may the offering be an omen.
+You are now Evelyn's friend, oh, be mine; she is to be your guest.  Do
+not scorn to plead for me."
+
+"Can _you_ want a pleader?" said Caroline, with a slight tremor in her
+voice.
+
+"Charming Miss Merton, love is diffident and fearful; but it must now
+find a voice, to which may Evelyn benignly listen.  What I leave
+unsaid--would that my new friend's eloquence could supply."
+
+He bowed slightly, and joined Evelyn.  Caroline understood the hint, and
+returned alone and thoughtfully to the house.
+
+"Miss Cameron--Evelyn--ah, still let me call you so, as in the happy and
+more familiar days of your childhood, I wish you could read my heart at
+this moment.  You are about to leave your home; new scenes will surround,
+new faces smile on you; dare I hope that I may still be remembered?"
+
+He attempted to take her hand as he spoke; Evelyn withdrew it gently.
+
+"Ah, my lord," said she, in a very low voice, "if remembrance were all
+that you asked of me--"
+
+"It is all,--favourable remembrance, remembrance of the love of the past,
+remembrance of the bond to come."
+
+Evelyn shivered.  "It is better to speak openly," said she.
+
+"Let me throw myself on your generosity.  I am not insensible to your
+brilliant qualities, to the honour of your attachment; but--but--as the
+time approaches in which you will call for my decision, let me now say,
+that I cannot feel for you--those--those sentiments, without which you
+could not desire our union,--without which it were but a wrong to both of
+us to form it.  Nay, listen to me.  I grieve bitterly at the tenor of
+your too generous uncle's will; can I not atone to you?  Willingly would
+I sacrifice the fortune that, indeed, ought to be yours; accept it, and
+remain my friend."
+
+"Cruel Evelyn! and can you suppose that it is your fortune I seek?  It is
+yourself.  Heaven is my witness, that, had you no dowry but your hand and
+heart, it were treasure enough to me.  You think you cannot love me.
+Evelyn, you do not yet know yourself.  Alas! your retirement in this
+distant village, my own unceasing avocations, which chain me, like a
+slave, to the galley-oar of politics and power, have kept us separate.
+You do not know me.  I am willing to hazard the experiment of that
+knowledge.  To devote my life to you, to make you partaker of my
+ambition, my career, to raise you to the highest eminence in the
+matronage of England, to transfer pride from myself to you, to love and
+to honour and to prize you,--all this will be my boast; and all this will
+win love for me at last.  Fear not, Evelyn,--fear not for your happiness;
+with me you shall know no sorrow.  Affection at home, splendour abroad,
+await you.  I have passed the rough and arduous part of my career;
+sunshine lies on the summit to which I climb.  No station in England is
+too high for me to aspire to,--prospects, how bright with you, how dark
+without you!  Ah, Evelyn! be this hand mine--the heart shall follow!"
+
+Vargrave's words were artful and eloquent; the words were calculated to
+win their way, but the manner, the tone of voice, wanted earnestness and
+truth.  This was his defect; this characterized all his attempts to
+seduce or to lead others, in public or in private life.  He had no heart,
+no deep passion, in what he undertook.  He could impress you with the
+conviction of his ability, and leave the conviction imperfect, because he
+could not convince you that he was sincere.  That best gift of mental
+power--_earnestness_--was wanting to him; and Lord Vargrave's deficiency
+of heart was the true cause why he was not a great man.  Still, Evelyn
+was affected by his words; she suffered the hand he now once more took to
+remain passively in his, and said timidly, "Why, with sentiments so
+generous and confiding, why do you love me, who cannot return your
+affection worthily?  No, Lord Vargrave; there are many who must see you
+with juster eyes than mine,--many fairer, and even wealthier.  Indeed,
+indeed, it cannot be.  Do not be offended, but think that the fortune
+left to me was on one condition I cannot, ought not to fulfil.  Failing
+that condition, in equity and honour it reverts to you."
+
+"Talk not thus, I implore you, Evelyn; do not imagine me the worldly
+calculator that my enemies deem me.  But, to remove at once from your
+mind the possibility of such a compromise between your honour and
+repugnance--repugnance! have I lived to say that word?--know that your
+fortune is not at your own disposal.  Save the small forfeit that awaits
+your non-compliance with my uncle's dying prayer, the whole is settled
+peremptorily on yourself and your children; it is entailed,--you cannot
+alienate it.  Thus, then, your generosity can never be evinced but to him
+on whom you bestow your hand.  Ah, let me recall that melancholy scene.
+Your benefactor on his death-bed, your mother kneeling by his side, your
+hand clasped in mine, and those lips, with their latest breath, uttering
+at once a blessing and a command."
+
+"Ah, cease, cease, my lord!" said Evelyn, sobbing.
+
+"No; bid me not cease before you tell me you will be mine.  Beloved
+Evelyn, I may hope,--you will not resolve against me?"
+
+"No," said Evelyn, raising her eyes and struggling for composure; "I feel
+too well what should be my duty; I will endeavor to perform it.  Ask me
+no more now.  I will struggle to answer you as you wish hereafter."
+
+Lord Vargrave, resolved to push to the utmost the advantage he had
+gained, was about to reply when he heard a step behind him; and turning
+round, quickly and discomposed, beheld a venerable form approaching them.
+The occasion was lost: Evelyn also turned; and seeing who was the
+intruder, sprang towards him almost with a cry of joy.
+
+The new comer was a man who had passed his seventieth year; but his old
+age was green, his step light, and on his healthful and benignant
+countenance time had left but few furrows.  He was clothed in black; and
+his locks, which were white as snow, escaped from the broad hat, and
+almost touched his shoulders.
+
+The old man smiled upon Evelyn, and kissed her forehead fondly.  He then
+turned to Lord Vargrave, who, recovering his customary self-possession,
+advanced to meet him with extended hand.
+
+"My dear Mr. Aubrey, this is a welcome surprise.  I heard you were not at
+the vicarage, or I would have called on you."
+
+"Your lordship honours me," replied the curate.  "For the first time for
+thirty years I have been thus long absent from my cure; but I am now
+returned, I hope, to end my days among my flock."
+
+"And what," asked Vargrave,--"what--if the question be not
+presumptuous--occasioned your unwilling absence?"
+
+"My lord," replied the old man, with a gentle smile, "a new vicar has
+been appointed.  I went to him, to proffer an humble prayer that I might
+remain amongst those whom I regarded as my children.  I have buried one
+generation, I have married another, I have baptized a third."
+
+"You should have had the vicarage itself; you should be better provided
+for, my dear Mr. Aubrey; I will speak to the Lord Chancellor."
+
+Five times before had Lord Vargrave uttered the same promise, and the
+curate smiled to hear the familiar words.
+
+"The vicarage, my lord, is a family living, and is now vested in a young
+man who requires wealth more than I do.  He has been kind to me, and
+re-established me among my flock; I would not leave them for a bishopric.
+My child," continued the curate, addressing Evelyn with great affection,
+"you are surely unwell,--you are paler than when I left you."
+
+Evelyn clung fondly to his arm, and smiled--her old gay smile--as she
+replied to him.  They took the way towards the house.
+
+The curate remained with them for an hour.  There was a mingled sweetness
+and dignity in his manner which had in it something of the primitive
+character we poetically ascribe to the pastors of the Church.  Lady
+Vargrave seemed to vie with Evelyn which should love him the most.  When
+he retired to his home, which was not many yards distant from the
+cottage, Evelyn, pleading a headache, sought her chamber, and Lumley, to
+soothe his mortification, turned to Caroline, who had seated herself by
+his side.  Her conversation amused him, and her evident admiration
+flattered.  While Lady Vargrave absented herself, in motherly anxiety, to
+attend on Evelyn, while Mrs. Leslie was occupied at her frame, and Mrs.
+Merton looked on, and talked indolently to the old lady of rheumatism and
+sermons, of children's complaints and servants' misdemeanours,--the
+conversation between Lord Vargrave and Caroline, at first gay and
+animated, grew gradually more sentimental and subdued; their voices took
+a lower tone, and Caroline sometimes turned away her head and blushed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+  THERE stands the Messenger of Truth--there stands
+  The Legate of the skies.--COWPER.
+
+FROM that night Lumley found no opportunity for private conversation with
+Evelyn; she evidently shunned to meet with him alone.  She was ever with
+her mother or Mrs. Leslie or the good curate, who spent much of his time
+at the cottage; for the old man had neither wife nor children, he was
+alone at home, he had learned to make his home with the widow and her
+daughter.  With them he was an object of the tenderest affection, of the
+deepest veneration.  Their love delighted him, and he returned it with
+the fondness of a parent and the benevolence of a pastor.  He was a rare
+character, that village priest!
+
+Born of humble parentage, Edward Aubrey had early displayed abilities
+which attracted the notice of a wealthy proprietor, who was not
+displeased to affect the patron.  Young Aubrey was sent to school, and
+thence to college as a sizar: he obtained several prizes, and took a high
+degree.  Aubrey was not without the ambition and the passions of youth:
+he went into the world, ardent, inexperienced, and without a guide.  He
+drew back before errors grew into crimes, or folly became a habit.  It
+was nature and affection that reclaimed and saved him from either
+alternative,--fame or ruin.  His widowed mother was suddenly stricken
+with disease.  Blind and bedridden, her whole dependence was on her only
+son.  This affliction called forth a new character in Edward Aubrey.
+This mother had stripped herself of so many comforts to provide for
+him,--he devoted his youth to her in return.  She was now old and
+imbecile.  With the mingled selfishness and sentiment of age, she would
+not come to London,--she would not move from the village where her
+husband lay buried, where her youth had been spent.  In this village the
+able and ambitious young man buried his hopes and his talents; by degrees
+the quiet and tranquillity of the country life became dear to him.  As
+steps in a ladder, so piety leads to piety, and religion grew to him a
+habit.  He took orders and entered the Church.  A disappointment in love
+ensued; it left on his mind and heart a sober and resigned melancholy,
+which at length mellowed into content.  His profession and its sweet
+duties became more and more dear to him; in the hopes of the next world
+he forgot the ambition of the present.  He did not seek to shine,--
+
+  "More skilled to raise the wretched than to rise."
+
+His own birth made the poor his brothers, and their dispositions and
+wants familiar to him.  His own early errors made him tolerant to the
+faults of others,--few men are charitable who remember not that they have
+sinned.  In our faults lie the germs of virtues.  Thus gradually and
+serenely had worn away his life--obscure but useful, calm but active,--a
+man whom "the great prizes" of the Church might have rendered an
+ambitious schemer, to whom a modest confidence gave the true pastoral
+power,--to conquer the world within himself, and to sympathize with the
+wants of others.  Yes, he was a rare character, that village priest!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+  TOUT notre raisonnement se reduit a ceder au sentiment.*--PASCAL.
+
+  *  "All our reasoning reduces itself to yielding to sentiment."
+
+LORD VARGRAVE, who had no desire to remain alone with the widow when the
+guests were gone, arranged his departure for the same day as that fixed
+for Mrs. Merton's; and as their road lay together for several miles, it
+was settled that they should all dine at-----, whence Lord Vargrave would
+proceed to London.  Failing to procure a second chance-interview with
+Evelyn, and afraid to demand a formal one--for he felt the insecurity of
+the ground he stood on--Lord Vargrave, irritated and somewhat mortified,
+sought, as was his habit, whatever amusement was in his reach.  In the
+conversation of Caroline Merton--shrewd, worldly, and ambitious--he found
+the sort of plaything that he desired.  They were thrown much together;
+but to Vargrave, at least, there appeared no danger in the intercourse;
+and perhaps his chief object was to pique Evelyn, as well as to gratify
+his own spleen.
+
+It was the evening before Evelyn's departure; the little party had been
+for the last hour dispersed; Mrs. Merton was in her own room, making to
+herself gratuitous and unnecessary occupation in seeing her woman _pack
+up_.  It was just the kind of task that delighted her.  To sit in a large
+chair and see somebody else at work--to say languidly, "Don't crumple
+that scarf, Jane; and where shall we put Miss Caroline's blue
+bonnet?"--gave her a very comfortable notion of her own importance and
+habits of business,--a sort of title to be the superintendent of a family
+and the wife of a rector.  Caroline had disappeared, so had Lord
+Vargrave; but the first was supposed to be with Evelyn, the second,
+employed in writing letters,--at least, it was so when they had been last
+observed.  Mrs. Leslie was alone in the drawing-room, and absorbed in
+anxious and benevolent thoughts on the critical situation of her young
+favourite, about to enter an age and a world the perils of which Mrs.
+Leslie had not forgotten.
+
+It was at this time that Evelyn, forgetful of Lord Vargrave and his suit,
+of every one, of everything but the grief of the approaching departure,
+found herself alone in a little arbour that had been built upon the cliff
+to command the view of the sea below.  That day she had been restless,
+perturbed; she had visited every spot consecrated by youthful
+recollections; she had clung with fond regret to every place in which she
+had held sweet converse with her mother.  Of a disposition singularly
+warm and affectionate, she had often, in her secret heart, pined for a
+more yearning and enthusiastic love than it seemed in the subdued nature
+of Lady Vargrave to bestow. In the affection of the latter, gentle and
+never fluctuating as it was, there seemed to her a something wanting,
+which she could not define.  She had watched that beloved face all the
+morning.  She had hoped to see the tender eyes fixed upon her, and hear
+the meek voice exclaim, "I cannot part with my child!"  All the gay
+pictures which the light-hearted Caroline drew of the scenes she was to
+enter had vanished away--now that the hour approached when her mother was
+to be left alone.  Why was she to go?  It seemed to her an unnecessary
+cruelty.
+
+As she thus sat, she did not observe that Mr. Aubrey, who had seen her at
+a distance, was now bending his way to her; and not till he had entered
+the arbour, and taken her hand, did she waken from those reveries in
+which youth, the Dreamer and the Desirer, so morbidly indulges.
+
+"Tears, my child?" said the curate.  "Nay, be not ashamed of them; they
+become you in this hour.  How we shall miss you! and you, too, will not
+forget us?"
+
+"Forget you!  Ah, no, indeed!  But why should I leave you?  Why will you
+not speak to my mother, implore her to let me remain?  We were so happy
+till these strangers came.  We did not think there was any other
+world,--_here_ there is world enough for me!"
+
+"My poor Evelyn," said Mr. Aubrey, gently, "I have spoken to your mother
+and to Mrs. Leslie; they have confided to me all the reasons for your
+departure, and I cannot but subscribe to their justice.  You do not want
+many months of the age when you will be called upon to decide whether
+Lord Vargrave shall be your husband.  Your mother shrinks from the
+responsibility of influencing your decision; and here, my child,
+inexperienced, and having seen so little of others, how can you know your
+own heart?"
+
+"But, oh, Mr. Aubrey," said Evelyn, with an earnestness that overcame
+embarrassment, "have I a choice left to me?  Can I be ungrateful,
+disobedient to him who was a father to me?  Ought I not to sacrifice my
+own happiness?  And how willingly would I do so, if my mother would smile
+on me approvingly!"
+
+"My child," said the curate, gravely, "an old man is a bad judge of the
+affairs of youth; yet in this matter, I think your duty plain.  Do not
+resolutely set yourself against Lord Vargrave's claim; do not persuade
+yourself that you must be unhappy in a union with him.  Compose your
+mind, think seriously upon the choice before you, refuse all decision at
+the present moment; wait until the appointed time arrives, or, at least,
+more nearly approaches.  Meanwhile, I understand that Lord Vargrave is to
+be a frequent visitor at Mrs. Merton's; there you will see him with
+others, his character will show itself.  Study his principles, his
+disposition; examine whether he is one whom you can esteem and render
+happy: there may be a love without enthusiasm, and yet sufficient for
+domestic felicity, and for the employment of the affections.  You will
+insensibly, too, learn from other parts of his character which he does
+not exhibit to us.  If the result of time and examination be that you can
+cheerfully obey the late lord's dying wish, unquestionably it will be the
+happier decision.  If not, if you still shrink from vows at which your
+heart now rebels, as unquestionably you may, with an acquitted
+conscience, become free.  The best of us are imperfect judges of the
+happiness of others.  In the woe or weal of a whole life, we must decide
+for ourselves.  Your benefactor could not mean you to be wretched; and if
+he now, with eyes purified from all worldly mists, look down upon you,
+his spirit will approve your choice; for when we quit the world, all
+worldly ambition dies with us.  What now to the immortal soul can be the
+title and the rank which on earth, with the desires of earth, your
+benefactor hoped to secure to his adopted child? This is my advice.  Look
+on the bright side of things, and wait calmly for the hour when Lord
+Vargrave can demand your decision."
+
+The words of the priest, which well defined her duty, inexpressibly
+soothed and comforted Evelyn; and the advice upon other and higher
+matters, which the good man pressed upon a mind so softened at that hour
+to receive religious impressions, was received with gratitude and
+respect.  Subsequently their conversation fell upon Lady Vargrave,--a
+theme dear to both of them.  The old man was greatly touched by the poor
+girl's unselfish anxiety for her mother's comfort, by her fears that she
+might be missed, in those little attentions which filial love alone can
+render; he was almost yet more touched when, with a less disinterested
+feeling, Evelyn added mournfully,--
+
+"Yet why, after all, should I fancy she will so miss me?  Ah, though I
+will not _dare_ complain of it, I feel still that she does not love me as
+I love her."
+
+"Evelyn," said the curate, with mild reproach, "have I not said that your
+mother has known sorrow?  And though sorrow does not annihilate
+affection, it subdues its expression, and moderates its outward signs."
+
+Evelyn sighed, and said no more.
+
+As the good old man and his young friend returned to the cottage, Lord
+Vargrave and Caroline approached them, emerging from an opposite part of
+the grounds.  The former hastened to Evelyn with his usual gayety and
+frank address; and there was so much charm in the manner of a man, whom
+_apparently_ the world and its cares had never rendered artificial or
+reserved, that the curate himself was impressed by it.  He thought that
+Evelyn might be happy with one amiable enough for a companion and wise
+enough for a guide.  But old as he was, he had loved, and he knew that
+there are instincts in the heart which defy all our calculations.
+
+While Lumley was conversing, the little gate that made the communication
+between the gardens and the neighbouring churchyard, through which was
+the nearest access to the village, creaked on its hinges, and the quiet
+and solitary figure of Lady Vargrave threw its shadow over the grass.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+  AND I can listen to thee yet,
+    Can lie upon the plain;
+  And listen till I do beget
+    That golden time again.--WORDSWORTH.
+
+IT was past midnight--hostess and guests had retired to repose--when Lady
+Vargrave's door opened gently.  The lady herself was kneeling at the foot
+of the bed; the moonlight came through the half-drawn curtains of the
+casement, and by its ray her pale, calm features looked paler, and yet
+more hushed.
+
+Evelyn, for she was the intruder, paused at the threshold till her mother
+rose from her devotions, and then she threw herself on Lady Vargrave's
+breast, sobbing as if her heart would break.  Hers were the wild,
+generous, irresistible emotions of youth.  Lady Vargrave, perhaps, had
+known them once; at least, she could sympathize with them now.
+
+She strained her child to her bosom; she stroked back her hair, and
+kissed her fondly, and spoke to her soothingly.
+
+"Mother," sobbed Evelyn, "I could not sleep, I could not rest.  Bless me
+again, kiss me again; tell me that you love me--you cannot love me as I
+do you; but tell me that I am dear to you; tell me you will regret me,
+but not too much; tell me--"  Here Evelyn paused, and could say no more.
+
+"My best, my kindest Evelyn," said Lady Vargrave, "there is nothing on
+earth I love like you.  Do not fancy I am ungrateful."
+
+"Why do you say ungrateful?--your own child,--your only child!"  And
+Evelyn covered her mother's face and hands with passionate tears and
+kisses.
+
+At that moment, certain it is that Lady Vargrave's heart reproached her
+with not having, indeed, loved this sweet girl as she deserved.  True, no
+mother was more mild, more attentive, more fostering, more anxious for a
+daughter's welfare; but Evelyn was right.  The gushing fondness, the
+mysterious entering into every subtle thought and feeling, which should
+have characterized the love of such a mother to such a child, had been to
+outward appearance wanting.  Even in this present parting there had been
+a prudence, an exercise of reasoning, that savoured more of duty than
+love.  Lady Vargrave felt all this with remorse; she gave way to emotions
+new to her,--at least to exhibit; she wept with Evelyn, and returned her
+caresses with almost equal fervour.  Perhaps, too, she thought at that
+moment of what love that warm nature was susceptible; and she trembled
+for her future fate.  It was as a full reconciliation--that mournful
+hour--between feelings on either side, which something mysterious seemed
+to have checked before; and that last night the mother and the child did
+not separate,--the same couch contained them: and when, worn out with
+some emotions which she could not reveal, Lady Vargrave fell into the
+sleep of exhaustion, Evelyn's arm was round her, and Evelyn's eyes
+watched her with pious and anxious love as the gray morning dawned.
+
+She left her mother still sleeping, when the sun rose, and went silently
+down into the dear room below, and again busied herself in a thousand
+little provident cares, which she wondered she had forgot before.
+
+The carriages were at the door before the party had assembled at the
+melancholy breakfast-table.  Lord Vargrave was the last to appear.
+
+"I have been like all cowards," said he, seating himself,--"anxious to
+defer an evil as long as possible; a bad policy, for it increases the
+worst of all pains,--that of suspense."
+
+Mrs. Merton had undertaken the duties that appertain to the "hissing
+urn."  "You prefer coffee, Lord Vargrave?  Caroline, my dear--"
+
+Caroline passed the cup to Lord Vargrave, who looked at her hand as he
+took it--there was a ring on one of those slender fingers never observed
+there before.  Their eyes met, and Caroline coloured.  Lord Vargrave
+turned to Evelyn, who, pale as death, but tearless and speechless, sat
+beside her mother; he attempted in vain to draw her into conversation.
+Evelyn, who desired to restrain her feelings, would not trust herself to
+speak.
+
+Mrs. Merton, ever undisturbed and placid, continued to talk on: to offer
+congratulations on the weather,--it was such a lovely day; and they
+should be off so early; it would be so well arranged,--they should be in
+such good time to dine at-----, and then go three stages after dinner;
+the moon would be up.
+
+"But," said Lord Vargrave, "as I am to go with you as far as-----, where
+our roads separate, I hope I am not condemned to go alone, with my red
+box, two old newspapers, and the blue devils.  Have pity on me."
+
+"Perhaps you will take Grandmamma, then?" whispered Caroline, archly.
+
+Lumley shrugged his shoulders, and replied in the same tone,--
+
+"Yes,--provided you keep to the proverb, 'Les extremes se touchent,' and
+the lovely grandchild accompany the venerable grandmamma."
+
+"What would Evelyn say?" retorted Caroline.
+
+Lumley sighed, and made no answer.
+
+Mrs. Merton, who had hung fire while her daughter was carrying on this
+"aside," now put in,--
+
+"Suppose I and Caroline take your _britzka_, and you go in our old coach
+with Evelyn and Mrs. Leslie?"
+
+Lumley looked delightedly at the speaker, and then glanced at Evelyn; but
+Mrs. Leslie said very gravely, "No, _we_ shall feel too much in leaving
+this dear place to be gay companions for Lord Vargrave.  We shall all
+meet at dinner; or," she added, after a pause, "if this be uncourteous to
+Lord Vargrave, suppose Evelyn and myself take his carriage and, he
+accompanies you?"
+
+"Agreed," said Mrs. Merton, quietly; "and now I will just go and see
+about the strawberry-plants and slips--it was so kind in you, dear Lady
+Vargrave, to think of them."
+
+An hour had elapsed, and Evelyn was gone!  She had left her maiden home,
+she had wept her last farewell on her mother's bosom, the sound of the
+carriage-wheels had died away; but still Lady Vargrave lingered on the
+threshold, still she gazed on the spot where the last glimpse of Evelyn
+had been caught.  A sense of dreariness and solitude passed into her
+soul: the very sunlight, the spring, the songs of the birds, made
+loneliness more desolate.
+
+Mechanically, at last, she moved away, and with slow steps and downcast
+eyes passed through the favourite walk that led into the quiet
+burial-ground.  The gate closed upon her, and now the lawn, the gardens,
+the haunts of Evelyn, were solitary as the desert itself; but the daisy
+opened to the sun, and the bee murmured along the blossoms, not the less
+blithely for the absence of all human life.  In the bosom of Nature there
+beats no heart for man!
+
+
+
+BOOK II.
+
+  "The hour arrived--years having rolled away
+  When his return the Gods no more delay.
+  Lo! Ithaca the Fates award; and there
+  New trials meet the Wanderer."
+  HOMER: _Od._ lib. i, 16.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+  THERE is continual spring and harvest here--
+    Continual, both meeting at one time;
+  For both the boughs do laughing blossoms bear,
+    And with fresh colours deck the wanton prime;
+  And eke at once the heavy trees they climb,
+    Which seem to labour under their fruit's load.
+
+  SPENSER: _The Garden of Adonis_.
+
+                    Vis boni
+  In ipsa inesset forma.*--TERENCE.
+
+  * "Even in beauty there exists the power of virtue."
+
+BEAUTY, thou art twice blessed; thou blessest the gazer and the
+possessor; often at once the effect and the cause of goodness!  A sweet
+disposition, a lovely soul, an affectionate nature, will speak in the
+eyes, the lips, the brow, and become the cause of beauty.  On the other
+hand, they who have a gift that commands love, a key that opens all
+hearts, are ordinarily inclined to look with happy eyes upon the
+world,--to be cheerful and serene, to hope and to confide.  There is more
+wisdom than the vulgar dream of in our admiration of a fair face.
+
+Evelyn Cameron was beautiful,--a beauty that came from the heart, and
+went to the heart; a beauty, the very spirit of which was love!  Love
+smiled on her dimpled lips, it reposed on her open brow, it played in the
+profuse and careless ringlets of darkest yet sunniest auburn, which a
+breeze could lift from her delicate and virgin cheek; Love, in all its
+tenderness, in all its kindness, its unsuspecting truth,--Love coloured
+every thought, murmured in her low melodious voice, in all its symmetry
+and glorious womanhood.  Love swelled the swan-like neck, and moulded the
+rounded limb.
+
+She was just the kind of person that takes the judgment by storm: whether
+gay or grave, there was so charming and irresistible a grace about her.
+She seemed born, not only to captivate the giddy, but to turn the heads
+of the sage.  Roxalana was nothing to her.  How, in the obscure hamlet of
+Brook-Green, she had learned all the arts of pleasing it is impossible to
+say.  In her arch smile, the pretty toss of her head, the half shyness,
+half freedom, of her winning ways, it was as if Nature had made her to
+delight one heart, and torment all others.
+
+Without being learned, the mind of Evelyn was cultivated and well
+informed.  Her heart, perhaps, helped to instruct her understanding; for
+by a kind of intuition she could appreciate all that was beautiful and
+elevated.  Her unvitiated and guileless taste had a logic of its own: no
+schoolman had ever a quicker penetration into truth, no critic ever more
+readily detected the meretricious and the false.  The book that Evelyn
+could admire was sure to be stamped with the impress of the noble, the
+lovely, or the true!
+
+But Evelyn had faults,--the faults of her age; or, rather, she had
+tendencies that might conduce to error.  She was of so generous a nature
+that the very thought of sacrificing her self for another had a charm.
+She ever acted from impulse,--impulses pure and good, but often rash and
+imprudent.  She was yielding to weakness, persuaded into anything, so
+sensitive, that even a cold look from one moderately liked cut her to the
+heart; and by the sympathy that accompanies sensitiveness, no pain to her
+was so great as the thought of giving pain to another.  Hence it was that
+Vargrave might form reasonable hopes of his ultimate success.  It was a
+dangerous constitution for happiness!  How many chances must combine to
+preserve to the mid-day of characters like this the sunshine of their
+dawn!  The butterfly that seems the child of the summer and the
+flowers--what wind will not chill its mirth, what touch will not brush
+away its hues?
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+  THESE, on a general survey, are the modes
+  Of pulpit oratory which agree
+  With no unlettered audience.--POLWHELE.
+
+MRS. LESLIE had returned from her visit to the rectory to her own home,
+and Evelyn had now been some weeks at Mrs. Merton's.  As was natural, she
+had grown in some measure reconciled and resigned to her change of abode.
+In fact, no sooner did she pass Mrs. Merton's threshold, than, for the
+first time, she was made aware of her consequence in life.
+
+The Rev. Mr. Merton was a man of the nicest perception in all things
+appertaining to worldly consideration.  The second son of a very wealthy
+baronet (who was the first commoner of his county) and of the daughter of
+a rich and highly-descended peer, Mr. Merton had been brought near enough
+to rank and power to appreciate all their advantages.  In early life he
+had been something of a "tuft-hunter;" but as his understanding was good
+and his passions not very strong, he had soon perceived that that vessel
+of clay, a young man with a moderate fortune, cannot long sail down the
+same stream with the metal vessels of rich earls and extravagant dandies.
+Besides, he was destined for the Church--because there was one of the
+finest livings in England in the family.  He therefore took orders at six
+and twenty; married Mrs. Leslie's daughter, who had thirty thousand
+pounds: and settled at the rectory of Merton, within a mile of the family
+seat.  He became a very respectable and extremely popular man.  He was
+singularly hospitable, and built a new wing--containing a large
+dining-room and six capital bed-rooms--to the rectory, which had now much
+more the appearance of a country villa than a country parsonage.  His
+brother, succeeding to the estates, and residing chiefly in the
+neighbourhood, became, like his father before him, member for the county,
+and was one of the country gentlemen most looked up to in the House of
+Commons.  A sensible and frequent, though uncommonly prosy speaker,
+singularly independent (for he had a clear fourteen thousand pounds a
+year, and did not desire office), and valuing himself on not being a
+party man, so that his vote on critical questions was often a matter of
+great doubt, and, therefore, of great moment, Sir John Merton gave
+considerable importance to the Rev. Charles Merton.  The latter kept up
+all the more select of his old London acquaintances; and few country
+houses, at certain seasons of the year, were filled more aristocratically
+than the pleasant rectory-house.  Mr. Merton, indeed, contrived to make
+the Hall a reservoir for the parsonage, and periodically drafted off the
+_elite_ of the visitors at the former to spend a few days at the latter.
+This was the more easily done, as his brother was a widower, and his
+conversation was all of one sort,--the state of the nation and the
+agricultural interest.  Mr. Merton was upon very friendly terms with his
+brother, looked after the property in the absence of Sir John, kept up
+the family interest, was an excellent electioneerer, a good speaker at a
+pinch, an able magistrate,--a man, in short, most useful in the county;
+on the whole, he was more popular than his brother, and almost as much
+looked up to--perhaps, because he was much less ostentatious.  He had
+very good taste, had the Rev. Charles Merton!--his table plentiful, but
+plain--his manners affable to the low, though agreeably sycophantic to
+the high; and there was nothing about him that ever wounded self-love.
+To add to the attractions of his house, his wife, simple and
+good-tempered, could talk with anybody, take off the bores, and leave
+people to be comfortable in their own way: while he had a large family of
+fine children of all ages, that had long given easy and constant excuse
+under the name of "little children's parties," for getting up an
+impromptu dance or a gypsy dinner,--enlivening the neighbourhood, in
+short.  Caroline was the eldest; then came a son, attached to a foreign
+ministry, and another, who, though only nineteen, was a private secretary
+to one of our Indian satraps.  The acquaintance of these young gentlemen,
+thus engaged, it was therefore Evelyn's misfortune to lose the advantage
+of cultivating,--a loss which both Mr. and Mrs. Merton assured her was
+very much to be regretted.  But to make up to her for such a privation
+there were two lovely little girls, one ten, and the other seven years
+old, who fell in love with Evelyn at first sight.  Caroline was one of
+the beauties of the county, clever and conversable, "drew young men," and
+set the fashion to young ladies, especially when she returned from
+spending the season with Lady Elizabeth.
+
+It was a delightful family!
+
+In person, Mr. Merton was of the middle height; fair, and inclined to
+stoutness, with small features, beautiful teeth, and great suavity of
+address.  Mindful still of the time when he had been "about town," he was
+very particular in his dress: his black coat, neatly relieved in the
+evening by a white underwaistcoat, and a shirt-front admirably plaited,
+with plain studs of dark enamel, his well-cut trousers, and elaborately
+polished shoes--he was good-humouredly vain of his feet and hands--won
+for him the common praise of the dandies (who occasionally honoured him
+with a visit to shoot his game, and flirt with his daughter), "That old
+Merton was a most gentlemanlike fellow--so d-----d neat for a parson!"
+
+Such, mentally, morally, and physically, was the Rev. Charles Merton,
+rector of Merton, brother of Sir John, and possessor of an income that,
+what with his rich living, his wife's fortune, and his own, which was not
+inconsiderable, amounted to between four and five thousand pounds a year,
+which income, managed with judgment as well as liberality, could not fail
+to secure to him all the good things of this world,--the respect of his
+friends amongst the rest.  Caroline was right when she told Evelyn that
+her papa was very different from a mere country parson.
+
+Now this gentleman could not fail to see all the claims that Evelyn might
+fairly advance upon the esteem, nay, the veneration of himself and
+family: a young beauty, with a fortune of about a quarter of a million,
+was a phenomenon that might fairly be called celestial.  Her pretensions
+were enhanced by her engagement to Lord Vargrave,--an engagement which
+might be broken; so that, as he interpreted it, the _worst_ that could
+happen to the young lady was to marry an able and rising Minister of
+State,--a peer of the realm; but she was perfectly free to marry a still
+greater man, if she could find him; and who knows but what perhaps the
+_attache_, if he could get leave of absence?  Mr. Merton was too sensible
+to pursue that thought further for the present.
+
+The good man was greatly shocked at the too familiar manner in which Mrs.
+Merton spoke to this high-fated heiress, at Evelyn's travelling so far
+without her own maid, at her very primitive wardrobe--poor, ill-used
+child!  Mr. Merton was a connoisseur in ladies' dress.  It was quite
+painful to see that the unfortunate girl had been so neglected.  Lady
+Vargrave must be a very strange person.  He inquired compassionately
+whether she was allowed any pocket money; and finding, to his relief,
+that in that respect Miss Cameron was munificently supplied, he suggested
+that a proper abigail should be immediately engaged; that proper orders
+to Madame Devy should be immediately transmitted to London, with one of
+Evelyn's dresses, as a pattern for nothing but length and breadth.  He
+almost stamped with vexation when he heard that Evelyn had been placed in
+one of the neat little rooms generally appropriated to young lady
+visitors.
+
+"She is quite contented, my dear Mr. Merton; she is so simple; she has
+not been brought up in the style you think for."
+
+"Mrs. Merton," said the rector, with great solemnity, "Miss Cameron may
+know no better now; but what will she think of us hereafter?  It is my
+maxim to recollect what people will be, and show them that respect which
+may leave pleasing impressions when they have it in their power to show
+us civility in return."
+
+With many apologies, which quite overwhelmed poor Evelyn, she was
+transferred from the little chamber, with its French bed and
+bamboo-coloured washhand-stand, to an apartment with a buhl wardrobe and
+a four-post bed with green silk curtains, usually appropriated to the
+regular Christmas visitant, the Dowager Countess of Chipperton.  A pretty
+morning room communicated with the sleeping apartment, and thence a
+private staircase conducted into the gardens.  The whole family were duly
+impressed and re-impressed with her importance.  No queen could be made
+more of.  Evelyn mistook it all for pure kindness, and returned the
+hospitality with an affection that extended to the whole family, but
+particularly to the two little girls, and a beautiful black spaniel.  Her
+dresses came down from London; her abigail arrived; the buhl wardrobe was
+duly filled,--and Evelyn at last learned that it is a fine thing to be
+rich.  An account of all these proceedings was forwarded to Lady
+Vargrave, in a long and most complacent letter, by the rector himself.
+The answer was short, but it contented the excellent clergyman; for it
+approved of all he had done, and begged that Miss Cameron might have
+everything that seemed proper to her station.
+
+By the same post came two letters to Evelyn herself,--one from Lady
+Vargrave, one from the curate.  They transported her from the fine room
+and the buhl wardrobe to the cottage and the lawn; and the fine abigail,
+when she came to dress her young lady's hair, found her weeping.
+
+It was a matter of great regret to the rector that it was that time of
+year when--precisely because the country is most beautiful--every one
+worth knowing is in town.  Still, however, some stray guests found their
+way to the rectory for a day or two, and still there were some
+aristocratic old families in the neighbourhood, who never went up to
+London: so that two days in the week the rector's wine flowed, the
+whist-tables were set out, and the piano called into requisition.
+
+Evelyn--the object of universal attention and admiration--was put at her
+ease by her station itself; for good manners come like an instinct to
+those on whom the world smiles.  Insensibly she acquired self-possession
+and the smoothness of society; and if her child-like playfulness broke
+out from all conventional restraint, it only made more charming and
+brilliant the great heiress, whose delicate and fairy cast of beauty so
+well became her graceful _abandon_ of manner, and who looked so
+unequivocally ladylike to the eyes that rested on Madame Devy's blondes
+and satins.
+
+Caroline was not so gay as she had been at the cottage.  Something seemed
+to weigh upon her spirits: she was often moody and thoughtful.  She was
+the only one in the family not good-tempered; and her peevish replies to
+her parents, when no visitor imposed a check on the family circle,
+inconceivably pained Evelyn, and greatly contrasted the flow of spirits
+which distinguished her when she found somebody worth listening to.
+Still Evelyn--who, where she once liked, found it difficult to withdraw
+regard--sought to overlook Caroline's blemishes, and to persuade herself
+of a thousand good qualities below the surface; and her generous nature
+found constant opportunity of venting itself in costly gifts, selected
+from the London parcels, with which the officious Mr. Merton relieved the
+monotony of the rectory.  These gifts Caroline could not refuse without
+paining her young friend.  She took them reluctantly, for, to do her
+justice, Caroline, though ambitious, was not mean.
+
+Thus time passed in the rectory, in gay variety and constant
+entertainment; and all things combined to spoil the heiress, if, indeed,
+goodness ever is spoiled by kindness and prosperity.  Is it to the frost
+or to the sunshine that the flower opens its petals, or the fruit ripens
+from the blossom?
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+  _Rod_.    How sweet these solitary places are!
+
+    .  .  .  .  .  .
+
+  _Ped_.    What strange musick
+            Was that we heard afar off?
+
+  _Curio_.  We've told you what he is, what time we've sought him,
+            His nature and his name.
+
+  BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.  _The Pilgrim_.
+
+ONE day, as the ladies were seated in Mrs. Merton's morning-room, Evelyn,
+who had been stationed by the window hearing the little Cecilia go
+through the French verbs, and had just finished that agreeable task,
+exclaimed,--
+
+"Do tell me to whom that old house belongs, with the picturesque
+gable-end and Gothic turrets, there, just peeping through the trees,--I
+have always forgot to ask you."
+
+"Oh, my dear Miss Cameron," said Mrs. Merton, "that is Burleigh; have you
+not been there?  How stupid in Caroline not to show it to you!  It is one
+of the lions of the place.  It belongs to a man you have often heard
+of,--Mr. Maltravers."
+
+"Indeed!" cried Evelyn; and she gazed with new interest on the gray
+melancholy pile, as the sunshine brought it into strong contrast with the
+dark pines around it.  "And Mr. Maltravers himself--?"
+
+"Is still abroad, I believe; though I did hear the other day that he was
+shortly expected at Burleigh.  It is a curious old place, though much
+neglected.  I believe, indeed, it has not been furnished since the time
+of Charles the First.  (Cissy, my love, don't stoop so.)  Very gloomy, in
+my opinion; and not any fine room in the house, except the library, which
+was once a chapel.  However, people come miles to see it."
+
+"Will you go there to-day?" said Caroline, languidly; "it is a very
+pleasant walk through the glebe-land and the wood,--not above half a mile
+by the foot-path."
+
+"I should like it so much."
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Merton, "and you had better go before he returns,--he is
+so strange.  He does not allow it to be seen when he is down.  But,
+indeed, he has only been once at the old place since he was of age.
+(Sophy, you will tear Miss Cameron's scarf to pieces; do be quiet,
+child.) That was before he was a great man; he was then very odd, saw no
+society, only dined once with us, though Mr. Merton paid him every
+attention.  They show the room in which he wrote his books."
+
+"I remember him very well, though I was then but a child," said
+Caroline,--"a handsome, thoughtful face."
+
+"Did you think so, my dear?  Fine eyes and teeth, certainly, and a
+commanding figure, but nothing more."
+
+"Well," said Caroline, "if you like to go, Evelyn, I am at your service."
+
+"And--I--Evy, dear--I--may go," said Cecilia, clinging to Evelyn.
+
+"And me, too," lisped Sophia, the youngest hope,--"there's such a pretty
+peacock."
+
+"Oh, yes, they may go, Mrs. Merton, we'll take such care of them."
+
+"Very well, my dear; Miss Cameron quite spoils you."
+
+Evelyn tripped away to put on her bonnet, and the children ran after her,
+clapping their hands,--they could not bear to lose sight of her for a
+moment.
+
+"Caroline," said Mrs. Merton, affectionately, "are you not well?  You
+have seemed pale lately, and not in your usual spirits."
+
+"Oh, yes, I'm well enough," answered Caroline, rather peevishly; "but
+this place is so dull now; very provoking that Lady Elizabeth does not go
+to London this year."
+
+"My dear, it will be gayer, I hope, in July, when the races at Knaresdean
+begin; and Lord Vargrave has promised to come."
+
+"Has Lord Vargrave written to you lately?"
+
+"No, my dear."
+
+"Very odd."
+
+"Does Evelyn ever talk of him?"
+
+"Not much," said Caroline, rising and quitting the room.
+
+It was a most cheerful exhilarating day,--the close of sweet May; the
+hedges were white with blossoms; a light breeze rustled the young leaves;
+the butterflies had ventured forth, and the children chased them over the
+grass, as Evelyn and Caroline, who walked much too slow for her companion
+(Evelyn longed to run), followed them soberly towards Burleigh.
+
+They passed the glebe-fields; and a little bridge, thrown over a brawling
+rivulet, conducted them into a wood.
+
+"This stream," said Caroline, "forms the boundary between my uncle's
+estates and those of Mr. Maltravers.  It must be very unpleasant to so
+proud a man as Mr. Maltravers is said to be, to have the land of another
+proprietor so near his house.  He could hear my uncle's gun from his very
+drawing-room.  However, Sir John takes care not to molest him.  On the
+other side, the Burleigh estates extend for some miles; indeed, Mr.
+Maltravers is the next great proprietor to my uncle in this part of the
+county.  Very strange that he does not marry!  There, now you can see the
+house."
+
+The mansion lay somewhat low, with hanging woods in the rear: and the
+old-fashioned fish-ponds gleaming in the sunshine and overshadowed by
+gigantic trees increased the venerable stillness of its aspect.  Ivy and
+innumerable creepers covered one side of the house; and long weeds
+cumbered the deserted road.
+
+"It is sadly neglected," said Caroline; "and was so, even in the last
+owner's life.  Mr. Maltravers inherits the place from his mother's uncle.
+We may as well enter the house by the private way.  The front entrance is
+kept locked up."
+
+Winding by a path that conducted into a flower-garden, divided from the
+park by a ha-ha, over which a plank and a small gate, rusting off its
+hinges, were placed, Caroline led the way towards the building.  At this
+point of view it presented a large bay window that by a flight of four
+steps led into the garden.  On one side rose a square, narrow turret,
+surmounted by a gilt dome and quaint weathercock, below the architrave of
+which was a sun-dial, set in the stonework; and another dial stood in the
+garden, with the common and beautiful motto,--
+
+  "Non numero horas, nisi serenas!"*
+
+  * "I number not the hours, unless sunny."
+
+On the other side of the bay window a huge buttress cast its mass of
+shadow.  There was something in the appearance of the whole place that
+invited to contemplation and repose,--something almost monastic.  The
+gayety of the teeming spring-time could not divest the spot of a certain
+sadness, not displeasing, however, whether to the young, to whom there is
+a luxury in the vague sentiment of melancholy, or to those who, having
+known real griefs, seek for an anodyne in meditation and memory.  The low
+lead-coloured door, set deep in the turret, was locked, and the bell
+beside it broken.  Caroline turned impatiently away.  "We must go round
+to the other side," said she, "and try to make the deaf old man hear us."
+
+"Oh, Carry!" cried Cecilia, "the great window is open;" and she ran up
+the steps.
+
+"That is lucky," said Caroline; and the rest followed Cecilia.
+
+Evelyn now stood within the library of which Mrs. Merton had spoken.  It
+was a large room, about fifty feet in length, and proportionably wide;
+somewhat dark, for the light came only from the one large window through
+which they entered; and though the window rose to the cornice of the
+ceiling, and took up one side of the apartment, the daylight was subdued
+by the heaviness of the stonework in which the narrow panes were set, and
+by the glass stained with armorial bearings in the upper part of the
+casement.  The bookcases, too, were of the dark oak which so much absorbs
+the light; and the gilding, formerly meant to relieve them, was
+discoloured by time.
+
+The room was almost disproportionably lofty; the ceiling, elaborately
+coved, and richly carved with grotesque masks, preserved the Gothic
+character of the age in which it had been devoted to a religious purpose.
+Two fireplaces, with high chimney-pieces of oak, in which were inserted
+two portraits, broke the symmetry of the tall bookcases.  In one of these
+fireplaces were half-burnt logs; and a huge armchair, with a small
+reading-desk beside it, seemed to bespeak the recent occupation of the
+room.  On the fourth side, opposite the window, the wall was covered with
+faded tapestry, representing the meeting of Solomon and the Queen of
+Sheba; the arras was nailed over doors on either hand,--the chinks
+between the door and the wall serving, in one instance, to cut off in the
+middle his wise majesty, who was making a low bow; while in the other it
+took the ground from under the wanton queen, just as she was descending
+from her chariot.
+
+Near the window stood a grand piano, the only modern article in the room,
+save one of the portraits, presently to be described.  On all this Evelyn
+gazed silently and devoutly: she had naturally that reverence for genius
+which is common to the enthusiastic and young; and there is, even to the
+dullest, a certain interest in the homes of those who have implanted
+within us a new thought.  But here there was, she imagined, a rare and
+singular harmony between the place and the mental characteristics of the
+owner.  She fancied she now better understood the shadowy and
+metaphysical repose of thought that had distinguished the earlier
+writings of Maltravers,--the writings composed or planned in this still
+retreat.
+
+But what particularly caught her attention was one of the two portraits
+that adorned the mantelpieces.  The further one was attired in the rich
+and fanciful armour of the time of Elizabeth; the head bare, the helmet
+on a table on which the hand rested.  It was a handsome and striking
+countenance; and an inscription announced it to be a Digby, an ancestor
+of Maltravers.
+
+But the other was a beautiful girl of about eighteen, in the now almost
+antiquated dress of forty years ago.  The features were delicate, but the
+colours somewhat faded, and there was something mournful in the
+expression.  A silk curtain, drawn on one side, seemed to denote how
+carefully it was prized by the possessor.
+
+Evelyn turned for explanation to her cicerone.
+
+"This is the second time I have seen that picture," said Caroline; "for
+it is only by great entreaty and as a mysterious favour that the old
+housekeeper draws aside the veil.  Some touch of sentiment in Maltravers
+makes him regard it as sacred.  It is the picture of his mother before
+she married; she died in giving him birth."
+
+Evelyn sighed; how well she understood the sentiment which seemed to
+Caroline so eccentric!  The countenance fascinated her; the eye seemed to
+follow her as she turned.
+
+"As a proper pendant to this picture," said Caroline, "he ought to have
+dismissed the effigies of yon warlike gentleman, and replaced it by one
+of poor Lady Florence Lascelles, for whose loss he is said to have
+quitted his country: but, perhaps, it was the loss of her fortune."
+
+"How can you say so?--fie!" cried Evelyn, with a burst of generous
+indignation.
+
+"Ah, my dear, you heiresses have a fellow-feeling with each other!
+Nevertheless, clever men are less sentimental than we deem them.  Heigho!
+this quiet room gives me the spleen, I fancy."
+
+"Dearest Evy," whispered Cecilia, "I think you have a look of that pretty
+picture, only you are much prettier.  Do take off your bonnet; your hair
+just falls down like hers."
+
+Evelyn shook her head gravely; but the spoiled child hastily untied the
+ribbons and snatched away the hat, and Evelyn's sunny ringlets fell down
+in beautiful disorder.  There was no resemblance between Evelyn and the
+portrait, except in the colour of the hair, and the careless fashion it
+now by chance assumed.  Yet Evelyn was pleased to think that a likeness
+did exist, though Caroline declared it was a most unflattering
+compliment.
+
+"I don't wonder," said the latter, changing the theme,--"I don't wonder
+Mr. Maltravers lives so little in this 'Castle Dull;' yet it might be
+much improved.  French windows and plate-glass, for instance; and if
+those lumbering bookshelves and horrid old chimney-pieces were removed
+and the ceiling painted white and gold like that in my uncle's saloon,
+and a rich, lively paper, instead of the tapestry, it would really make a
+very fine ballroom."
+
+"Let us have a dance here now," cried Cecilia.  "Come, stand up, Sophy;"
+and the children began to practise a waltz step, tumbling over each
+other, and laughing in full glee.
+
+"Hush, hush!" said Evelyn, softly.  She had never before checked the
+children's mirth, and she could not tell why she did so now.
+
+"I suppose the old butler has been entertaining the bailiff here," said
+Caroline, pointing to the remains of the fire.
+
+"And is this the room he chiefly inhabited,--the room that you say they
+show as his?"
+
+"No; that tapestry door to the right leads into a little study where he
+wrote."  So saying, Caroline tried to open the door, but it was locked
+from within.  She then opened the other door, which showed a long
+wainscoted passage, hung with rusty pikes, and a few breastplates of the
+time of the Parliamentary Wars.  "This leads to the main body of the
+House," said Caroline, "from which the room we are now in and the little
+study are completely detached, having, as you know, been the chapel in
+popish times.  I have heard that Sir Kenelm Digby, an ancestral
+connection of the present owner, first converted them into their present
+use, and, in return, built the village church on the other side of the
+park."
+
+Sir Kenelm Digby, the old cavalier philosopher!---a new name of interest
+to consecrate the place!  Evelyn could have lingered all day in the room;
+and perhaps as an excuse for a longer sojourn, hastened to the piano--it
+was open--she ran her fairy fingers over the keys, and the sound from the
+untuned and neglected instrument thrilled wild and spiritlike through the
+melancholy chamber.
+
+"Oh, do sing us something, Evy," cried Cecilia, running up to, and
+drawing a chair to, the instrument.
+
+"Do, Evelyn," said Caroline, languidly; "it will serve to bring one of
+the servants to us, and save us a journey to the offices."
+
+It was just what Evelyn wished.  Some verses, which her mother especially
+loved, verses written by Maltravers upon returning after absence to his
+own home, had rushed into her mind as she had touched the keys.  They
+were appropriate to the place, and had been beautifully set to music.  So
+the children hushed themselves, and nestled at her feet; and after a
+little prelude, keeping the accompaniment under, that the spoiled
+instrument might not mar the sweet words and sweeter voice, she began the
+song.
+
+Meanwhile in the adjoining room, the little study which Caroline had
+spoken of, sat the owner of the house!  He had returned suddenly and
+unexpectedly the previous night.  The old steward was in attendance at
+the moment, full of apologies, congratulations, and gossip; and
+Maltravers, grown a stern and haughty man, was already impatiently
+turning away, when he heard the sudden sound of the children's laughter
+and loud voices in the room beyond.  Maltravers frowned.
+
+"What impertinence is this?" said he in a tone that, though very calm,
+made the steward quake in his shoes.
+
+"I don't know, really, your honour; there be so many grand folks come to
+see the house in the fine weather, that--"
+
+"And you permit your master's house to be a raree-show?  You do well,
+sir."
+
+"If your honour were more amongst us, there might be more discipline
+like," said the steward, stoutly; "but no one in my time has cared so
+little for the old place as those it belongs to."
+
+"Fewer words with me, sir," said Maltravers, haughtily; "and now go and
+inform those people that I am returned, and wish for no guests but those
+I invite myself."
+
+"Sir!"
+
+"Do you not hear me?  Say that if it so please them, these old ruins are
+my property, and are not to be jobbed out to the insolence of public
+curiosity.  Go, sir."
+
+"But--I beg pardon, your honour--if they be great folks?"
+
+"Great folks!--great!  Ay, there it is.  Why, if they be great folks,
+they have great houses of their own, Mr. Justis."
+
+The steward stared.  "Perhaps, your honour," he put in, deprecatingly,
+"they be Mr. Merton's family: they come very often when the London
+gentlemen are with them."
+
+"Merton!--oh, the cringing parson.  Harkye! one word more with me, sir,
+and you quit my service to-morrow."
+
+Mr. Justis lifted his eyes and hands to heaven; but there was something
+in his master's voice and look which checked reply, and he turned slowly
+to the door--when a voice of such heavenly sweetness was heard without
+that it arrested his own step and made the stern Maltravers start in his
+seat.  He held up his hand to the steward to delay his errand, and
+listened, charmed and spell-bound.  His own words came on his ear,--words
+long unfamiliar to him, and at first but imperfectly remembered; words
+connected with the early and virgin years of poetry and aspiration; words
+that were as the ghosts of thoughts now far too gentle for his altered
+soul.  He bowed down his head, and the dark shade left his brow.
+
+The song ceased.  Maltravers moved with a sigh, and his eyes rested on
+the form of the steward with his hand on the door.
+
+"Shall I give your honour's message?" said Mr. Justis, gravely.
+
+"No; take care for the future; leave me now."
+
+Mr. Justis made one leg, and then, well pleased, took to both.
+
+"Well," thought he, as he departed, "how foreign parts do spoil a
+gentleman! so mild as he was once!  I must botch up the accounts, I
+see,--the squire has grown sharp."
+
+As Evelyn concluded her song, she--whose charm in singing was that she
+sang from the heart--was so touched by the melancholy music of the air
+and words, that her voice faltered, and the last line died inaudibly on
+her lips.
+
+The children sprang up and kissed her.
+
+"Oh," cried Cecilia, "there is the beautiful peacock!"  And there,
+indeed, on the steps without--perhaps attracted by the music--stood the
+picturesque bird.  The children ran out to greet their old favourite, who
+was extremely tame; and presently Cecilia returned.
+
+"Oh, Carry! do see what beautiful horses are coming up the park!"
+
+Caroline, who was a good rider, and fond of horses, and whose curiosity
+was always aroused by things connected with show and station, suffered
+the little girl to draw her into the garden.  Two grooms, each mounted on
+a horse of the pure Arabian breed, and each leading another, swathed and
+bandaged, were riding slowly up the road; and Caroline was so attracted
+by the novel appearance of the animals in a place so deserted that she
+followed the children towards them, to learn who could possibly be their
+enviable owner.  Evelyn, forgotten for the moment, remained alone.  She
+was pleased at being so, and once more turned to the picture which had so
+attracted her before.  The mild eyes fixed on her, with an expression
+that recalled to her mind her own mother.
+
+"And," thought she, as she gazed, "this fair creature did not live to
+know the fame of her son, to rejoice in his success, or to soothe his
+grief.  And he, that son, a disappointed and solitary exile in distant
+lands, while strangers stand within his deserted hall!"
+
+The images she had conjured up moved and absorbed her; and she continued
+to stand before the picture, gazing upward with moistened eyes.  It was a
+beautiful vision as she thus stood, with her delicate bloom, her
+luxuriant hair (for the hat was not yet replaced), her elastic form, so
+full of youth and health and hope,--the living form beside the faded
+canvas of the dead, once youthful, tender, lovely as herself!  Evelyn
+turned away with a sigh; the sigh was re-echoed yet more deeply.  She
+started: the door that led to the study was opened, and in the aperture
+was the figure of a man in the prime of life.  His hair, still luxuriant
+as in his earliest youth, though darkened by the suns of the East, curled
+over a forehead of majestic expanse.  The high and proud features, that
+well became a stature above the ordinary standard; the pale but bronzed
+complexion; the large eyes of deepest blue, shaded by dark brows and
+lashes; and more than all, that expression at once of passion and repose
+which characterizes the old Italian portraits, and seems to denote the
+inscrutable power that experience imparts to intellect, constituted an
+_ensemble_ which, if not faultlessly handsome, was eminently striking,
+and formed at once to interest and command.  It was a face, once seen,
+never to be forgotten; it was a face that had long, half unconsciously,
+haunted Evelyn's young dreams; it was a face she had seen before, though,
+then younger and milder and fairer, it wore a different aspect.
+
+Evelyn stood rooted to the spot, feeling herself blush to her very
+temples,--an enchanting picture of bashful confusion and innocent alarm.
+
+"Do not let me regret my return," said the stranger, approaching after a
+short pause, and with much gentleness in his voice and smile; "and think
+that the owner is doomed to scare away the fair spirits that haunted the
+spot in his absence."
+
+"The owner!" repeated Evelyn, almost inaudibly, and in increased
+embarrassment; "are you then the--the--"
+
+"Yes," courteously interrupted the stranger, seeing her confusion, "my
+name is Maltravers; and I am to blame for not having informed you of my
+sudden return, or for now trespassing on your presence.  But you see my
+excuse;" and he pointed to the instrument.  "You have the magic that
+draws even the serpent from his hole.  But you are not alone?"
+
+"Oh, no! no, indeed!  Miss Merton is with me.  I know not where she is
+gone.  I will seek her."
+
+"Miss Merton!  You are not then one of that family?"
+
+"No, only a guest.  I will find her; she must apologize for us.  We were
+not aware that you were here,--indeed we were not."
+
+"That is a cruel excuse," said Maltravers, smiling at her eagerness: and
+the smile and the look reminded her yet more forcibly of the time when he
+had carried her in his arms and soothed her suffering and praised her
+courage and pressed the kiss almost of a lover on her hand.  At that
+thought she blushed yet more deeply, and yet more eagerly turned to
+escape.
+
+Maltravers did not seek to detain her, but silently followed her steps.
+She had scarcely gained the window, before little Cecilia scampered in,
+crying,--
+
+"Only think!  Mr. Maltravers has come back, and brought such beautiful
+horses!"
+
+Cecilia stopped abruptly, as she caught sight of the stranger; and the
+next moment Caroline herself appeared.  Her worldly experience and quick
+sense saw immediately what had chanced; and she hastened to apologize to
+Maltravers, and congratulate him on his return, with an ease that
+astonished poor Evelyn, and by no means seemed appreciated by Maltravers
+himself.  He replied with brief and haughty courtesy.
+
+"My father," continued Caroline, "will be so glad to hear you are come
+back.  He will hasten to pay you his respects, and apologize for his
+truants.  But I have not formally introduced you to my fellow-offender.
+My dear, let me present to you one whom Fame has already made known to
+you; Mr. Maltravers, Miss Cameron, step-daughter," she added in a lower
+voice, "to the late Lord Vargrave."
+
+At the first part of this introduction Maltravers frowned; at the last he
+forgot all displeasure.
+
+"Is it possible?  I _thought_ I had seen you before, but in a dream.  Ah,
+then we are not quite strangers!"
+
+Evelyn's eye met his, and though she coloured and strove to look grave, a
+half smile brought out the dimples that played round her arch lips.
+
+"But you do not remember me?" added Maltravers.
+
+"Oh, yes!" exclaimed Evelyn, with a sudden impulse; and then checked
+herself.
+
+Caroline came to her friend's relief.
+
+"What is this?  You surprise me; where did you ever see Mr. Maltravers
+before?"
+
+"I can answer that question, Miss Merton.  When Miss Cameron was but a
+child, as high as my little friend here, an accident on the road procured
+me her acquaintance; and the sweetness and fortitude she then displayed
+left an impression on me not worn out even to this day.  And thus we meet
+again," added Maltravers, in a muttered voice, as to himself.  "How
+strange a thing life is!"
+
+"Well," said Miss Merton, "we must intrude on you no more,--you have so
+much to do.  I am so sorry Sir John is not down to welcome you; but I
+hope we shall be good neighbours.  _Au revoir_!"
+
+And, fancying herself most charming, Caroline bowed, smiled, and walked
+off with her train.  Maltravers paused irresolute.  If Evelyn had looked
+back, he would have accompanied them home; but Evelyn did not look
+back,--and he stayed.
+
+Miss Merton rallied her young friend unmercifully, as they walked
+homeward, and she extracted a very brief and imperfect history of the
+adventure that had formed the first acquaintance, and of the interview by
+which it had been renewed.  But Evelyn did not heed her; and the moment
+they arrived at the rectory, she hastened to shut herself in her room,
+and write the account of her adventure to her mother.  How often, in her
+girlish reveries, had she thought of that incident, that stranger!  And
+now, by such a chance, and after so many years, to meet the Unknown by
+his own hearth! and that Unknown to be Maltravers!  It was as if a dream
+had come true.  While she was yet musing--and the letter not yet
+begun--she heard the sound of joy-bells in the distance.  At once she
+divined the cause; it was the welcome of the wanderer to his solitary
+home!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+  MAIS en connaissant votre condition naturelle, usez des moyens
+  qui lui sont propres, et ne pretendez pas regner par une autre
+  voie que par celle qui vous fait roi.*--PASCAL.
+
+  * "But in understanding your natural condition, use the means
+    which are proper to it; and pretend not to govern by any other
+    way than by that which constitutes you governor."
+
+IN the heart as in the ocean, the great tides ebb and flow.  The waves
+which had once urged on the spirit of Ernest Maltravers to the rocks and
+shoals of active life had long since receded back upon the calm depths,
+and left the strand bare.  With a melancholy and disappointed mind, he
+had quitted the land of his birth; and new scenes, strange and wild, had
+risen before his wandering gaze.  Wearied with civilization, and sated
+with many of the triumphs for which civilized men drudge and toil, and
+disquiet themselves in vain, he had plunged amongst hordes, scarce
+redeemed from primeval barbarism.  The adventures through which he had
+passed, and in which life itself could only be preserved by wary
+vigilance and ready energies, had forced him, for a while, from the
+indulgence of morbid contemplations.  His heart, indeed, had been left
+inactive; but his intellect and his physical powers had been kept in
+hourly exercise.  He returned to the world of his equals with a mind
+laden with the treasures of a various and vast experience, and with much
+of the same gloomy moral as that which, on emerging from the Catacombs,
+assured the restless speculations of Rasselas of the vanity of human life
+and the folly of moral aspirations.
+
+Ernest Maltravers, never a faultless or completed character, falling
+short in practice of his own capacities, moral and intellectual, from his
+very desire to overpass the limits of the Great and Good, was seemingly
+as far as heretofore from the grand secret of life.  It was not so in
+reality; his mind had acquired what before it wanted,--_hardness_; and we
+are nearer to true virtue and true happiness when we demand too little
+from men than when we exact too much.
+
+Nevertheless, partly from the strange life that had thrown him amongst
+men whom safety itself made it necessary to command despotically, partly
+from the habit of power and disdain of the world, his nature was
+incrusted with a stern imperiousness of manner, often approaching to the
+harsh and morose, though beneath it lurked generosity and benevolence.
+
+Many of his younger feelings, more amiable and complex, had settled into
+one predominant quality, which more or less had always characterized
+him,--Pride!  Self-esteem made inactive, and Ambition made discontented,
+usually engender haughtiness.  In Maltravers this quality, which,
+properly controlled and duly softened, is the essence and life of honour,
+was carried to a vice.  He was perfectly conscious of its excess, but he
+cherished it as a virtue.  Pride had served to console him in sorrow, and
+therefore it was a friend; it had supported him when disgusted with
+fraud, or in resistance to violence, and therefore it was a champion and
+a fortress.  It was a pride of a peculiar sort: it attached itself to no
+one point in especial,--not to talent, knowledge, mental gifts, still
+less to the vulgar commonplaces of birth and fortune; it rather resulted
+from a supreme and wholesale contempt of all other men, and all their
+objects,--of ambition, of glory, of the hard business of life.  His
+favourite virtue was fortitude; it was on this that he now mainly valued
+himself.  He was proud of his struggles against others, prouder still of
+conquests over his own passions.  He looked upon FATE as the arch enemy
+against whose attacks we should ever prepare.  He fancied that against
+fate he had thoroughly schooled himself.  In the arrogance of his heart
+he said, "I can defy the future."  He believed in the boast of the vain
+old sage,--"I am a world to myself!"  In the wild career through which
+his later manhood had passed, it is true that he had not carried his
+philosophy into a rejection of the ordinary world.  The shock occasioned
+by the death of Florence yielded gradually to time and change; and he had
+passed from the deserts of Africa and the East to the brilliant cities of
+Europe.  But neither his heart nor his reason had ever again been
+enslaved by his passions.  Never again had he known the softness of
+affection.  Had he done so, the ice had been thawed, and the fountain had
+flowed once more into the great deeps.  He had returned to England,--he
+scarce knew wherefore, or with what intent, certainly not with any idea
+of entering again upon the occupations of active life; it was, perhaps,
+only the weariness of foreign scenes and unfamiliar tongues, and the
+vague, unsettled desire of change, that brought him back to the
+fatherland.  But he did not allow so unphilosophical a cause to himself:
+and, what was strange, he would not allow one much more amiable, and
+which was, perhaps, the truer cause,--the increasing age and infirmities
+of his old guardian, Cleveland, who prayed him affectionately to return.
+Maltravers did not like to believe that his heart was still so kind.
+Singular form of pride!  No, he rather sought to persuade himself that he
+intended to sell Burleigh, to arrange his affairs finally, and then quit
+forever his native land.  To prove to himself that this was the case, he
+had intended at Dover to hurry at once to Burleigh, and merely write to
+Cleveland that he was returned to England.  But his heart would not
+suffer him to enjoy this cruel luxury of self-mortification, and his
+horses' heads were turned to Richmond when within a stage of London.  He
+had spent two days with the good old man, and those two days had so
+warmed and softened his feelings that he was quite appalled at his own
+dereliction from fixed principles!  However, he went before Cleveland had
+time to discover that he was changed; and the old man had promised to
+visit him shortly.
+
+This, then, was the state of Ernest Maltravers at the age of
+thirty-six,--an age in which frame and mind are in their fullest
+perfection; an age in which men begin most keenly to feel that they are
+citizens.  With all his energies braced and strengthened; with his mind
+stored with profusest gifts; in the vigour of a constitution to which a
+hardy life had imparted a second and fresher youth; so trained by stern
+experience as to redeem with an easy effort all the deficiencies and
+faults which had once resulted from too sensitive an imagination and too
+high a standard for human actions; formed to render to his race the most
+brilliant and durable service, and to secure to himself the happiness
+which results from sobered fancy, a generous heart, and an approving
+conscience,--here was Ernest Maltravers, backed, too, by the appliances
+and gifts of birth and fortune, perversely shutting up genius, life, and
+soul in their own thorny leaves, and refusing to serve the fools and
+rascals who were formed from the same clay, and gifted by the same God.
+Morbid and morose philosophy, begot by a proud spirit on a lonely heart!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+  LET such amongst us as are willing to be children again, if it be
+  only for an hour, resign ourselves to the sweet enchantment that
+  steals upon the spirit when it indulges in the memory of early
+  and innocent enjoyment.
+  D. L. RICHARDSON.
+
+AT dinner, Caroline's lively recital of their adventures was received
+with much interest, not only by the Merton family, but by some of the
+neighbouring gentry who shared the rector's hospitality.  The sudden
+return of any proprietor to his old hereditary seat after a prolonged
+absence makes some sensation in a provincial neighbourhood.  In this
+case, where the proprietor was still young, unmarried, celebrated, and
+handsome, the sensation was of course proportionably increased.  Caroline
+and Evelyn were beset by questions, to which the former alone gave any
+distinct reply.  Caroline's account was, on the whole, gracious and
+favourable, and seemed complimentary to all but Evelyn, who thought that
+Caroline was a very indifferent portrait-painter.
+
+It seldom happens that a man is a prophet in his own neighbourhood; but
+Maltravers had been so little in the county, and in his former visit his
+life had been so secluded, that he was regarded as a stranger.  He had
+neither outshone the establishments nor interfered with the sporting of
+his fellow-squires; and on the whole, they made just allowance for his
+habits of distant reserve.  Time, and his retirement from the busy scene,
+long enough to cause him to be missed, not long enough for new favourites
+to supply his place, had greatly served to mellow and consolidate his
+reputation, and his country was proud to claim him.  Thus (though
+Maltravers would not have believed it had an angel told him) he was not
+spoken ill of behind his back: a thousand little anecdotes of his
+personal habits, of his generosity, independence of spirit, and
+eccentricity were told.  Evelyn listened in rapt delight to all; she had
+never passed so pleasant an evening; and she smiled almost gratefully on
+the rector, who was a man that always followed the stream, when he said
+with benign affability, "We must really show our distinguished neighbour
+every attention,--we must be indulgent to his little oddities.  His
+politics are not mine, to be sure; but a man who has a stake in the
+country has a right to his own opinion, that was always my maxim,--thank
+Heaven, I am a very moderate man.  We must draw him amongst us; it will
+be our own fault, I am sure, if he is not quite domesticated at the
+rectory."
+
+"With such attraction,--yes," said the thin curate, timidly bowing to the
+ladies.
+
+"It would be a nice match for Miss Caroline," whispered an old lady;
+Caroline overheard, and pouted her pretty lip.  The whist-tables were now
+set out, the music began, and Maltravers was left in peace.
+
+The next day Mr. Merton rode his pony over to Burleigh.  Maltravers was
+not at home.  He left his card, and a note of friendly respect, begging
+Mr. Maltravers to waive ceremony, and dine with them the next day.
+Somewhat to the surprise of the rector, he found that the active spirit
+of Maltravers was already at work.  The long-deserted grounds were filled
+with labourers; the carpenters were busy at the fences; the house looked
+alive and stirring; the grooms were exercising the horses in the
+park,--all betokened the return of the absentee.  This seemed to denote
+that Maltravers had come to reside; and the rector thought of Caroline,
+and was pleased at the notion.
+
+The next day was Cecilia's birthday,--and birthdays were kept at Merton
+Rectory; the neighbouring children were invited.  They were to dine on
+the lawn, in a large marquee, and to dance in the evening.  The hothouses
+yielded their early strawberries, and the cows, decorated with blue
+ribbons, were to give syllabubs.  The polite Caroline was not greatly
+fascinated by pleasure of this kind; she graciously appeared at dinner,
+kissed the prettiest of the children, helped them to soup, and then,
+having done her duty, retired to her room to write letters.  The children
+were not sorry, for they were a little afraid of the grand Caroline; and
+they laughed much more loudly, and made much more noise, when she was
+gone--and the cake and strawberries appeared.
+
+Evelyn was in her element; she had, as a child, mixed so little with
+children, she had so often yearned for playmates, she was still so
+childlike.  Besides, she was so fond of Cecilia, she had looked forward
+with innocent delight to the day; and a week before had taken the
+carriage to the neighbouring town to return with a carefully concealed
+basket of toys,--dolls, sashes, and picture-books.  But somehow or other,
+she did not feel so childlike as usual that morning; her heart was away
+from the pleasure before her, and her smile was at first languid.  But in
+children's mirth there is something so contagious to those who love
+children; and now, as the party scattered themselves on the grass, and
+Evelyn opened the basket, and bade them with much gravity keep quiet, and
+be good children, she was the happiest of the whole group.  But she knew
+how to give pleasure: and the basket was presented to Cecilia, that the
+little queen of the day might enjoy the luxury of being generous; and to
+prevent jealousy, the notable expedient of a lottery was suggested.
+
+"Then Evy shall be Fortune!" cried Cecilia; "nobody will be sorry to get
+anything from Evy,--and if any one is discontented Evy sha'n't kiss her."
+
+Mrs. Merton, whose motherly heart was completely won by Evelyn's kindness
+to the children, forgot all her husband's lectures, and willingly
+ticketed the prizes, and wrote the numbers of the lots on slips of paper
+carefully folded.  A large old Indian jar was dragged from the
+drawing-room and constituted the fated urn; the tickets were deposited
+therein, and Cecilia was tying the handkerchief round Evelyn's
+eyes,--while Fortune struggled archly not to be as blind as she ought to
+be,--and the children, seated in a circle, were in full joy and
+expectation when there was a sudden pause.  The laughter stopped; so did
+Cissy's little hands.  What could it be?  Evelyn slipped the bandage, and
+her eyes rested on Maltravers!
+
+"Well, really, my dear Miss Cameron," said the rector, who was by the
+side of the intruder, and who, indeed, had just brought him to the spot,
+"I don't know what these little folks will do to you next."
+
+"I ought rather to be their victim," said Maltravers, good-humouredly;
+"the fairies always punish us grown-up mortals for trespassing on their
+revels."
+
+While he spoke, his eyes--those eyes, the most eloquent in the
+world--dwelt on Evelyn (as, to cover her blushes, she took Cecilia in her
+arms, and appeared to attend to nothing else) with a look of such
+admiration and delight as a mortal might well be supposed to cast on some
+beautiful fairy.
+
+Sophy, a very bold child, ran up to him.  "How do, sir?" she lisped,
+putting up her face to be kissed; "how's the pretty peacock?"
+
+This opportune audacity served at once to renew the charm that had been
+broken,--to unite the stranger with the children.  Here was acquaintance
+claimed and allowed in an instant.  The next moment Maltravers was one of
+the circle, on the turf with the rest, as gay, and almost as noisy,--that
+hard, proud man, so disdainful of the trifles of the world!
+
+"But the gentleman must have a prize, too," said Sophy, proud of her tall
+new friend.  "What's your other name; why do you have such a long, hard
+name?"
+
+"Call me Ernest," said Maltravers.
+
+"Why don't we begin?" cried the children.
+
+"Evy, come, be a good child, miss," said Sophy, as Evelyn, vexed and
+ashamed, and half ready to cry, resisted the bandage.
+
+Mr. Merton interposed his authority; but the children clamoured, and
+Evelyn hastily yielded.  It was Fortune's duty to draw the tickets from
+the urn, and give them to each claimant whose name was called; when it
+came to the turn of Maltravers, the bandage did not conceal the blush and
+smile of the enchanting goddess, and the hand of the aspirant thrilled as
+it touched hers.
+
+The children burst into screams of laughter when Cecilia gravely awarded
+to Maltravers the worst prize in the lot,--a blue ribbon,--which Sophy,
+however, greedily insisted on having; but Maltravers would not yield it.
+
+Maltravers remained all day at the rectory, and shared in the ball,--yes,
+he danced with Evelyn--he, Maltravers, who had never been known to dance
+since he was twenty-two!  The ice was fairly broken,--Maltravers was at
+home with the Mertons.  And when he took his solitary walk to his
+solitary house--over the little bridge, and through the shadowy
+wood--astonished, perhaps, with himself, every one of the guests, from
+the oldest to the youngest, pronounced him delightful.  Caroline,
+perhaps, might have been piqued some months ago that he did not dance
+with _her_; but now, her heart--such as it was--felt preoccupied.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+  L'ESPRIT de l'homme est plus penetrant que consequent, et embrasse
+  plus qu'il ne peat lier.*--VAUVENARGUES.
+
+  * "The spirit of man is more penetrating than logical, and
+    gathers more than it can garner."
+
+AND now Maltravers was constantly with the Merton family; there was no
+need of excuse for familiarity on his part.  Mr. Merton, charmed to find
+his advances not rejected, thrust intimacy upon him.
+
+One day they spent the afternoon at Burleigh, and Evelyn and Caroline
+finished their survey of the house,--tapestry, and armour, pictures and
+all.  This led to a visit to the Arabian horses.  Caroline observed that
+she was very fond of riding, and went into ecstasies with one of the
+animals,--the one, of course, with the longest tail.  The next day the
+horse was in the stables at the rectory, and a gallant epistle apologized
+for the costly gift.
+
+Mr. Merton demurred, but Caroline always had her own way; and so the
+horse remained (no doubt, in much amazement and disdain) with the
+parson's pony, and the brown carriage horses.  The gift naturally
+conduced to parties on horseback--it was cruel entirely to separate the
+Arab from his friends--and how was Evelyn to be left behind?--Evelyn, who
+had never yet ridden anything more spirited than an old pony!  A
+beautiful little horse belonging to an elderly lady, now growing too
+stout to ride, was to be sold hard by.  Maltravers discovered the
+treasure, and apprised Mr. Merton of it--he was too delicate to affect
+liberality to the rich heiress.  The horse was bought; nothing could go
+quieter; Evelyn was not at all afraid.  They made two or three little
+excursions.  Sometimes only Mr. Merton and Maltravers accompanied the
+young ladies, sometimes the party was more numerous.  Maltravers appeared
+to pay equal attention to Caroline and her friend; still Evelyn's
+inexperience in equestrian matters was an excuse for his being ever by
+her side.  They had a thousand opportunities to converse; and Evelyn now
+felt more at home with him; her gentle gayety, her fanciful yet chastened
+intellect, found a voice.  Maltravers was not slow to discover that
+beneath her simplicity there lurked sense, judgment, and imagination.
+Insensibly his own conversation took a higher flight.  With the freedom
+which his mature years and reputation gave him, he mingled eloquent
+instruction with lighter and more trifling subjects; he directed her
+earnest and docile mind, not only to new fields of written knowledge, but
+to many of the secrets of Nature, subtle or sublime.  He had a wide range
+of scientific as well as literary lore; the stars, the flowers, the
+phenomena of the physical world, afforded themes on which he descanted
+with the fervent love of a poet and the easy knowledge of a sage.
+
+Mr. Merton, observing that little or nothing of sentiment mingled with
+their familiar intercourse, felt perfectly at ease; and knowing that
+Maltravers had been intimate with Lumley, he naturally concluded that he
+was aware of the engagement between Evelyn and his friend.  Meanwhile
+Maltravers appeared unconscious that such a being as Lord Vargrave
+existed.
+
+It is not to be wondered at that the daily presence, the delicate
+flattery of attention from a man like Maltravers, should strongly impress
+the imagination, if not the heart, of a susceptible girl.  Already
+prepossessed in his favour, and wholly unaccustomed to a society which
+combined so many attractions, Evelyn regarded him with unspeakable
+veneration; to the darker shades in his character she was blind,--to her,
+indeed, they did not appear.  True that once or twice in mixed society
+his disdainful and imperious temper broke hastily and harshly forth.  To
+folly, to pretension, to presumption, he showed but slight forbearance.
+The impatient smile, the biting sarcasm, the cold repulse, that might
+gall, yet could scarce be openly resented, betrayed that he was one who
+affected to free himself from the polished restraints of social
+intercourse.  He had once been too scrupulous in not wounding vanity; he
+was now too indifferent to it.  But if sometimes this unamiable trait of
+character, as displayed to others, chilled or startled Evelyn, the
+contrast of his manner towards herself was a flattery too delicious not
+to efface all other recollections.  To her ear his voice always softened
+its tone; to her capacity of mind ever bent as by sympathy, not
+condescension; to her--the young, the timid, the half-informed--to her
+alone he did not disdain to exhibit all the stores of his knowledge, all
+the best and brightest colours of his mind.  She modestly wondered at so
+strange a preference.  Perhaps a sudden and blunt compliment which
+Maltravers once addressed to her may explain it.  One day, when she had
+conversed more freely and more fully than usual, he broke in upon her
+with this abrupt exclamation,--
+
+"Miss Cameron, you must have associated from your childhood with
+beautiful minds.  I see already that from the world, vile as it is, you
+have nothing of contagion to fear.  I have heard you talk on the most
+various matters, on many of which your knowledge is imperfect; but you
+have never uttered one mean idea, or one false sentiment.  Truth seems
+intuitive to you."
+
+It was indeed this singular purity of heart which made to the
+world-wearied man the chief charm in Evelyn Cameron. From this purity
+came, as from the heart of a poet, a thousand new and heaven-taught
+thoughts which had in them a wisdom of their own,--thoughts that often
+brought the stern listener back to youth, and reconciled him with life.
+The wise Maltravers learned more from Evelyn than Evelyn did from
+Maltravers.
+
+There was, however, another trait--deeper than that of temper--in
+Maltravers, and which was, unlike the latter, more manifest to her than
+to others,--his contempt for all the things her young and fresh
+enthusiasm had been taught to prize, the fame that endeared and hallowed
+him to her eyes, the excitement of ambition, and its rewards.  He spoke
+with such bitter disdain of great names and great deeds.  "Children of a
+larger growth they were," said he, one day, in answer to her defence of
+the luminaries of their kind, "allured by baubles as poor as the rattle
+and the doll's house.  How many have been made great, as the word is, by
+their vices!  Paltry craft won command to Themistocles; to escape his
+duns, the profligate Caesar heads an army, and achieves his laurels;
+Brutus, the aristocrat, stabs his patron, that patricians might again
+trample on plebeians, and that posterity might talk of _him_.  The love
+of posthumous fame--what is it but as puerile a passion for notoriety as
+that which made a Frenchman I once knew lay out two thousand pounds in
+sugar-plums?  To be talked of--how poor a desire!  Does it matter whether
+it be by the gossips of this age or the next?  Some men are urged on to
+fame by poverty--that is an excuse for their trouble; but there is no
+more nobleness in the motive than in that which makes yon poor ploughman
+sweat in the eye of Phoebus.  In fact, the larger part of eminent men,
+instead of being inspired by any lofty desire to benefit their species or
+enrich the human mind, have acted or composed, without any definite
+object beyond the satisfying a restless appetite for excitement, or
+indulging the dreams of a selfish glory.  And when nobler aspirations
+have fired them, it has too often been but to wild fanaticism and
+sanguinary crime.  What dupes of glory ever were animated by a deeper
+faith, a higher ambition, than the frantic followers of Mahomet,--taught
+to believe that it was virtue to ravage the earth, and that they sprang
+from the battle-field into paradise?  Religion and liberty, love of
+country, what splendid motives to action!  Lo, the results, when the
+motives are keen, the action once commenced!  Behold the Inquisition, the
+Days of Terror, the Council of Ten, and the Dungeons of Venice!"
+
+Evelyn was scarcely fit to wrestle with these melancholy fallacies; but
+her instinct of truth suggested an answer.
+
+"What would society be if all men thought as you do, and acted up to the
+theory?  No literature, no art, no glory, no patriotism, no virtue, no
+civilization!  You analyze men's motives--how can you be sure you judge
+rightly?  Look to the results,--our benefit, our enlightenment!  If the
+results be great, Ambition is a virtue, no matter what motive awakened
+it.  Is it not so?"
+
+Evelyn spoke blushingly and timidly.  Maltravers, despite his own tenets,
+was delighted with her reply.
+
+"You reason well," said he, with a smile.  "But how are we sure that the
+results are such as you depict them?  Civilization, enlightenment,--they
+are vague terms, hollow sounds. Never fear that the world will reason as
+I do.  Action will never be stagnant while there are such things as gold
+and power.  The vessel will move on--let the galley-slaves have it to
+themselves.  What I have seen of life convinces me that progress is not
+always improvement.  Civilization has evils unknown to the savage state;
+and _vice versa_.  Men in all states seem to have much the same
+proportion of happiness.  We judge others with eyes accustomed to dwell
+on our own circumstances.  I have seen the slave, whom we commiserate,
+enjoy his holiday with a rapture unknown to the grave freeman.  I have
+seen that slave made free, and enriched by the benevolence of his master;
+and he has been gay no more. The masses of men in all countries are much
+the same.  If there are greater comforts in the hardy North, Providence
+bestows a fertile earth and a glorious heaven, and a mind susceptible to
+enjoyment as flowers to light, on the voluptuous indulgence of the
+Italian, or the contented apathy of the Hindoo.  In the mighty
+organization of good and evil, what can we vain individuals effect?  They
+who labour most, how doubtful is their reputation!  Who shall say whether
+Voltaire or Napoleon, Cromwell or Caesar, Walpole or Pitt, has done most
+good or most evil?  It is a question casuists may dispute on.  Some of us
+think that poets have been the delight and the lights of men; another
+school of philosophy has treated them as the corrupters of the
+species,--panderers to the false glory of war, to the effeminacies of
+taste, to the pampering of the passions above the reason.  Nay, even
+those who have effected inventions that change the face of the earth--the
+printing-press, gunpowder, the steam-engine,--men hailed as benefactors
+by the unthinking herd, or the would-be sages,--have introduced ills
+unknown before, adulterating and often counterbalancing the good.  Each
+new improvement in machinery deprives hundreds of food.  Civilization is
+the eternal sacrifice of one generation to the next.  An awful sense of
+the impotence of human agencies has crushed down the sublime aspirations
+for mankind which I once indulged.  For myself, I float on the great
+waters, without pilot or rudder, and trust passively to the winds, that
+are the breath of God."
+
+This conversation left a deep impression upon Evelyn; it inspired her
+with a new interest in one in whom so many noble qualities lay dulled and
+torpid, by the indulgence of a self-sophistry, which, girl as she was,
+she felt wholly unworthy of his powers.  And it was this error in
+Maltravers that, levelling his superiority, brought him nearer to her
+heart.  Ah, if she could restore him to his race!  It was a dangerous
+desire, but it intoxicated and absorbed her.
+
+Oh, how sweetly were those fair evenings spent,--the evenings of happy
+June!  And then, as Maltravers suffered the children to tease him into
+talk about the wonders he had seen in the regions far away, how did the
+soft and social hues of his character unfold themselves!  There is in all
+real genius so much latent playfulness of nature it almost seems as if
+genius never could grow old.  The inscriptions that youth writes upon the
+tablets of an imaginative mind are, indeed, never wholly
+obliterated,--they are as an invisible writing, which gradually becomes
+clear in the light and warmth.  Bring genius familiarly with the young,
+and it is as young as they are.  Evelyn did not yet, therefore, observe
+the disparity of _years_ between herself and Maltravers.  But the
+disparity of knowledge and power served for the present to interdict to
+her that sweet feeling of equality in commune, without which love is
+rarely a very intense affection in women.  It is not so with men.  But by
+degrees she grew more and more familiar with her stern friend; and in
+that familiarity there was perilous fascination to Maltravers.  She could
+laugh him at any moment out of his most moody reveries; contradict with a
+pretty wilfulness his most favourite dogmas; nay, even scold him, with
+bewitching gravity, if he was not always at the command of her wishes--or
+caprice.  At this time it seemed certain that Maltravers would fall in
+love with Evelyn; but it rested on more doubtful probabilities whether
+Evelyn would fall in love with him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+                    CONTRAHE vela,
+  Et te littoribus cymba propinqua vehat.*--SENECA.
+
+  * "Furl your sails, and let the next boat carry you to the shore."
+
+"HAS not Miss Cameron a beautiful countenance?" said Mr. Merton to
+Maltravers, as Evelyn, unconscious of the compliment, sat at a little
+distance, bending down her eyes to Sophy, who was weaving daisy-chains on
+a stool at her knee, and whom she was telling not to talk loud,--for
+Merton had been giving Maltravers some useful information respecting the
+management of his estate; and Evelyn was already interested in all that
+could interest her friend.  She had one excellent thing in woman, had
+Evelyn Cameron: despite her sunny cheerfulness of temper she was _quiet_;
+and she had insensibly acquired, under the roof of her musing and silent
+mother, the habit of never disturbing others.  What a blessed secret is
+that in the intercourse of domestic life!
+
+"Has not Miss Cameron a beautiful countenance?"
+
+Maltravers started at the question,--it was a literal translation of his
+own thought at that moment.  He checked the enthusiasm that rose to his
+lip, and calmly re-echoed the word,--
+
+"Beautiful indeed!"
+
+"And so sweet-tempered and unaffected; she has been admirably brought up.
+I believe Lady Vargrave is a most exemplary woman.  Miss Cameron will,
+indeed, be a treasure to her betrothed husband.  He is to be envied."
+
+"Her betrothed husband!" said Maltravers, turning very pale.
+
+"Yes; Lord Vargrave.  Did you not know that she was engaged to him from
+her childhood?  It was the wish, nay, command, of the late lord, who
+bequeathed her his vast fortune, if not on that condition, at least on
+that understanding.  Did you never hear of this before?"
+
+While Mr. Merton spoke, a sudden recollection returned to Maltravers.  He
+_had_ heard Lumley himself refer to the engagement, but it had been in
+the sick chamber of Florence,--little heeded at the time, and swept from
+his mind by a thousand after-thoughts and scenes.  Mr. Merton
+continued,--
+
+"We expect Lord Vargrave down soon.  He is an ardent lover, I conclude;
+but public life chains him so much to London.  He made an admirable
+speech in the Lords last night; at least, our party appear to think so.
+They are to be married when Miss Cameron attains the age of eighteen."
+
+Accustomed to endurance, and skilled in the proud art of concealing
+emotion, Maltravers betrayed to the eye of Mr. Merton no symptom of
+surprise or dismay at this intelligence.  If the rector had conceived any
+previous suspicion that Maltravers was touched beyond mere admiration for
+beauty, the suspicion would have vanished as he heard his guest coldly
+reply,--
+
+"I trust Lord Vargrave may deserve his happiness.  But, to return to Mr.
+Justis; you corroborate my own opinion of that smooth-spoken gentleman."
+
+The conversation flowed back to business.  At last, Maltravers rose to
+depart.
+
+"Will you not dine with us to-day?" said the hospitable rector.
+
+"Many thanks,--no; I have much business to attend to at home for some
+days to come."
+
+"Kiss Sophy, Mr. Ernest,--Sophy very good girl to-day.  Let the pretty
+butterfly go, because Evy said it was cruel to put it in a card-box; kiss
+Sophy."
+
+Maltravers took the child (whose heart he had completely won) in his
+arms, and kissed her tenderly; then advancing to Evelyn, he held out his
+hand, while his eyes were fixed upon her with an expression of deep and
+mournful interest, which she could not understand.
+
+"God bless you, Miss Cameron," he said, and his lip quivered.
+
+Days passed, and they saw no more of Maltravers.  He excused himself on
+pretence, now of business, now of other engagements, from all the
+invitations of the rector.  Mr. Merton unsuspectingly accepted the
+excuse; for he knew that Maltravers was necessarily much occupied.
+
+His arrival had now spread throughout the country; and such of his equals
+as were still in B-----shire hastened to offer congratulations, and press
+hospitality.  Perhaps it was the desire to make his excuses to Merton
+valid which prompted the master of Burleigh to yield to the other
+invitations that crowded on him.  But this was not all,--Maltravers
+acquired in the neighbourhood the reputation of a man of business.  Mr.
+Justis was abruptly dismissed; with the help of the bailiff Maltravers
+became his own steward.  His parting address to this personage was
+characteristic of the mingled harshness and justice of Maltravers.
+
+"Sir," said he, as they closed their accounts, "I discharge you because
+you are a rascal,--there can be no dispute about that; you have plundered
+your owner, yet you have ground his tenants, and neglected the poor.  My
+villages are filled with paupers, my rent-roll is reduced a fourth; and
+yet, while some of my tenants appear to pay nominal rents (why, you best
+know),--others are screwed up higher than any man's in the country.  You
+are a rogue, Mr. Justis,--your own account-books show it; and if I send
+them to a lawyer, you would have to refund a sum that I could apply very
+advantageously to the rectification of your blunders."
+
+"I hope, sir," said the steward, conscience-stricken and appalled,--"I
+hope you will not ruin me; indeed, indeed, if I was called upon to
+refund, I should go to jail."
+
+"Make yourself easy, sir.  It is just that I should suffer as well as
+you.  My neglect of my own duties tempted you to roguery.  You were
+honest under the vigilant eye of Mr. Cleveland.  Retire with your gains:
+if you are quite hardened, no punishment can touch you; if you are not,
+it is punishment enough to stand there gray-headed, with one foot in the
+grave, and hear yourself called a rogue, and know that you cannot defend
+yourself,--go!"
+
+Maltravers next occupied himself in all the affairs that a mismanaged
+estate brought upon him.  He got rid of some tenants, he made new
+arrangements with others; he called labour into requisition by a variety
+of improvements; he paid minute attention to the poor, not in the
+weakness of careless and indiscriminate charity, by which popularity is
+so cheaply purchased, and independence so easily degraded,--no, his main
+care was to stimulate industry and raise hope.  The ambition and
+emulation that he so vainly denied in himself, he found his most useful
+levers in the humble labourers whose characters he had studied, whose
+condition he sought to make themselves desire to elevate.  Unconsciously
+his whole practice began to refute his theories.  The abuses of the old
+Poor Laws were rife in his neighbourhood; his quick penetration, and
+perhaps his imperious habits of decision, suggested to him many of the
+best provisions of the law now called into operation; but he was too wise
+to be the Philosopher Square of a system.  He did not attempt too much;
+and he recognized one principle, which, as yet, the administrators of the
+new Poor-Laws have not sufficiently discovered.  One main object of the
+new code was, by curbing public charity, to task the activity of
+individual benevolence.  If the proprietor or the clergyman find under
+his own eye isolated instances of severity, oppression, or hardship in a
+general and salutary law, instead of railing against the law, he ought to
+attend to the individual instances; and private benevolence ought to keep
+the balance of the scales even, and be the makeweight wherever there is a
+just deficiency of national charity.* It was this which, in the modified
+and discreet regulations that he sought to establish on his estates,
+Maltravers especially and pointedly attended to.  Age, infirmity,
+temporary distress, unmerited destitution, found him a steady, watchful,
+indefatigable friend.  In these labours, commenced with extraordinary
+promptitude, and the energy of a single purpose and stern mind,
+Maltravers was necessarily brought into contact with the neighbouring
+magistrates and gentry.  He was combating evils and advancing objects in
+which all were interested; and his vigorous sense, and his past
+parliamentary reputation, joined with the respect which in provinces
+always attaches to ancient birth, won unexpected and general favour to
+his views.  At the rectory they heard of him constantly, not only through
+occasional visitors, but through Mr. Merton, who was ever thrown in his
+way; but he continued to keep himself aloof from the house.  Every one
+(Mr. Merton excepted) missed him,--even Caroline, whose able though
+worldly mind could appreciate his conversation; the children mourned for
+their playmate, who was so much more affable than their own
+stiff-neckclothed brothers; and Evelyn was at least more serious and
+thoughtful than she had ever been before, and the talk of others seemed
+to her wearisome, trite, and dull.
+
+  * The object of parochial reform is not that of economy alone;
+  not merely to reduce poor-rates.  The ratepayer ought to remember
+  that the more he wrests from the grip of the sturdy mendicant,
+  the more he ought to bestow on undeserved distress.  Without the
+  mitigations of private virtue, every law that benevolists could
+  make would be harsh.
+
+Was Maltravers happy in his new pursuits?  His state of mind at that time
+it is not easy to read.  His masculine spirit and haughty temper were
+wrestling hard against a feeling that had been fast ripening into
+passion; but at night, in his solitary and cheerless home, a vision, too
+exquisite to indulge, would force itself upon him, till he started from
+the revery, and said to his rebellious heart: "A few more years, and thou
+wilt be still.  What in this brief life is a pang more or less?  Better
+to have nothing to care for, so wilt thou defraud Fate, thy deceitful
+foe!  Be contented that thou art alone!"  Fortunate was it, then, for
+Maltravers, that he was in his native land, not in climes where
+excitement is in the pursuit of pleasure rather than in the exercise of
+duties.  In the hardy air of the liberal England, he was already, though
+unknown to himself, bracing and ennobling his dispositions and desires.
+It is the boast of this island that the slave whose foot touches the soil
+is free.  The boast may be enlarged.  Where so much is left to the
+people, where the life of civilization, not locked up in the tyranny of
+Central Despotism, spreads, vivifying, restless, ardent, through every
+vein of the healthful body, the most distant province, the obscurest
+village, has claims on our exertions, our duties, and forces us into
+energy and citizenship.  The spirit of liberty, that strikes the chain
+from the slave, binds the freeman to his brother.  This is the Religion
+of Freedom.  And hence it is that the stormy struggles of free States
+have been blessed with results of Virtue, of Wisdom, and of Genius by Him
+who bade us love one another,--not only that love in itself is excellent,
+but that from love, which in its widest sense is but the spiritual term
+for liberty, whatever is worthiest of our solemn nature has its birth.
+
+
+
+BOOK III.
+
+  Harsh things he mitigates, and pride subdues.
+  _Ex._ SOLON: _Eleg._
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+  YOU still are what you were, sir!
+    .  .  .  .  .  .
+  .  .  .  With most quick agility could turn
+  And return; make knots and undo them,
+  Give forked counsel.--_Volpone, or the Fox_.
+
+BEFORE a large table, covered with parliamentary papers, sat Lumley Lord
+Vargrave.  His complexion, though still healthy, had faded from the
+freshness of hue which distinguished him in youth.  His features, always
+sharp, had grown yet more angular: his brows seemed to project more
+broodingly over his eyes, which, though of undiminished brightness, were
+sunk deep in their sockets, and had lost much of their quick
+restlessness.  The character of his mind had begun to stamp itself on the
+physiognomy, especially on the mouth when in repose.  It was, a face
+striking for acute intelligence, for concentrated energy; but there was a
+something written in it which said, "BEWARE!"  It would have inspired any
+one who had mixed much amongst men with a vague suspicion and distrust.
+
+Lumley had been always careful, though plain, in dress; but there was now
+a more evident attention bestowed on his person than he had ever
+manifested in youth,--while there was something of the Roman's celebrated
+foppery in the skill with which his hair was arranged on his high
+forehead, so as either to conceal or relieve a partial baldness at the
+temples.  Perhaps, too, from the possession of high station, or the habit
+of living only amongst the great, there was a certain dignity insensibly
+diffused over his whole person that was not noticeable in his earlier
+years, when a certain _ton de garnison_ was blended with his ease of
+manners.  Yet, even now, dignity was not his prevalent characteristic;
+and in ordinary occasions, or mixed society, he still found a familiar
+frankness a more useful species of simulation.  At the time we now treat
+of, Lord Vargrave was leaning his cheek on one hand, while the other
+rested idly on the papers methodically arranged before him.  He appeared
+to have suspended his labours, and to be occupied in thought.  It was, in
+truth, a critical period in the career of Lord Vargrave.
+
+From the date of his accession to the peerage, the rise of Lumley Ferrers
+had been less rapid and progressive than he himself could have foreseen.
+At first, all was sunshine before him; he had contrived to make himself
+useful to his party; he had also made himself personally popular.  To the
+ease and cordiality of his happy address, he added the seemingly careless
+candour so often mistaken for honesty; while, as there was nothing showy
+or brilliant in his abilities or oratory--nothing that aspired far above
+the pretensions of others, and aroused envy by mortifying self-love--he
+created but little jealousy even amongst the rivals before whom he
+obtained precedence.  For some time, therefore, he went smoothly on,
+continuing to rise in the estimation of his party, and commanding a
+certain respect from the neutral public, by acknowledged and eminent
+talents in the details of business; for his quickness of penetration, and
+a logical habit of mind, enabled him to grapple with and generalize the
+minutiae of official labour or of legislative enactments with a masterly
+success.  But as the road became clearer to his steps, his ambition
+became more evident and daring.  Naturally dictatorial and presumptuous,
+his early suppleness to superiors was now exchanged for a self-willed
+pertinacity, which often displeased the more haughty leaders of his
+party, and often wounded the more vain.  His pretensions were scanned
+with eyes more jealous and less tolerant than at first.  Proud
+aristocrats began to recollect that a mushroom peerage was supported but
+by a scanty fortune; the men of more dazzling genius began to sneer at
+the red-tape minister as a mere official manager of details; he lost much
+of the personal popularity which had been one secret of his power.  But
+what principally injured him in the eyes of his party and the public were
+certain ambiguous and obscure circumstances connected with a short period
+when himself and his associates were thrown out of office.  At this time,
+it was noticeable that the journals of the Government that succeeded were
+peculiarly polite to Lord Vargrave, while they covered all his coadjutors
+with obloquy: and it was more than suspected that secret negotiations
+between himself and the new ministry were going on, when suddenly the
+latter broke up, and Lord Vargrave's proper party were reinstated.  The
+vague suspicions that attached to Vargrave were somewhat strengthened in
+the opinion of the public by the fact that he was at first left out of
+the restored administration; and when subsequently, after a speech which
+showed that he could be mischievous if not propitiated, he was
+readmitted, it was precisely to the same office he had held before,--an
+office which did not admit him into the Cabinet.  Lumley, burning with
+resentment, longed to decline the offer; but, alas! he was poor, and,
+what was worse, in debt; "his poverty, but not his will, consented."  He
+was reinstated; but though prodigiously improved as a debater, he felt
+that he had not advanced as a public man.  His ambition inflamed by his
+discontent, he had, since his return to office, strained every nerve to
+strengthen his position.  He met the sarcasms on his poverty by greatly
+increasing his expenditure, and by advertising everywhere his engagement
+to an heiress whose fortune, great as it was, he easily contrived to
+magnify.  As his old house in Great George Street--well fitted for the
+bustling commoner--was no longer suited to the official and fashionable
+peer, he had, on his accession to the title, exchanged that respectable
+residence for a large mansion in Hamilton Place; and his sober dinners
+were succeeded by splendid banquets.  Naturally, he had no taste for such
+things; his mind was too nervous, and his temper too hard, to take
+pleasure in luxury or ostentation.  But now, as ever he _acted upon a
+system_.  Living in a country governed by the mightiest and wealthiest
+aristocracy in the world, which, from the first class almost to the
+lowest, ostentation pervades,--the very backbone and marrow of
+society,--he felt that to fall far short of his rivals in display was to
+give them an advantage which he could not compensate either by the power
+of his connections or the surpassing loftiness of his character and
+genius.  Playing for a great game, and with his eyes open to all the
+consequences, he cared not for involving his private fortunes in a
+lottery in which a great prize might be drawn.  To do Vargrave justice,
+money with him had never been an object, but a means; he was grasping,
+but not avaricious.  If men much richer than Lord Vargrave find State
+distinctions very expensive, and often ruinous, it is not to be supposed
+that his salary, joined to so moderate a private fortune, could support
+the style in which he lived.  His income was already deeply mortgaged,
+and debt accumulated upon debt.  Nor had this man, so eminent for the
+management of public business, any of that talent which springs from
+_justice_, and makes its possessor a skilful manager of his own affairs.
+Perpetually absorbed in intrigues and schemes, he was too much engaged in
+cheating others on a large scale to have time to prevent being himself
+cheated on a small one.  He never looked into bills till he was compelled
+to pay them; and he never calculated the amount of an expense that seemed
+the least necessary to his purposes.  But still Lord Vargrave relied upon
+his marriage with the wealthy Evelyn to relieve him from all his
+embarrassments; and if a doubt of the realization of that vision ever
+occurred to him, still public life had splendid prizes.  Nay, should he
+fail with Miss Cameron, he even thought that, by good management, he
+might ultimately make it worth while to his colleagues to purchase his
+absence with the gorgeous bribe of the Governor-Generalship of India.
+
+As oratory is an art in which practice and the dignity of station produce
+marvellous improvement, so Lumley had of late made effects in the House
+of Lords of which he had once been judged incapable.  It is true that no
+practice and no station can give men qualities in which they are wholly
+deficient; but these advantages can bring out in the best light all the
+qualities they _do_ possess.  The glow of a generous imagination, the
+grasp of a profound statesmanship, the enthusiasm of a noble
+nature,--these no practice could educe from the eloquence of Lumley Lord
+Vargrave, for he had them not; but bold wit, fluent and vigorous
+sentences, effective arrangement of parliamentary logic, readiness of
+retort, plausibility of manner, aided by a delivery peculiar for
+self-possession and ease, a clear and ringing voice (to the only fault of
+which, shrillness without passion, the ear of the audience had grown
+accustomed), and a countenance impressive from its courageous
+intelligence,--all these had raised the promising speaker into the
+matured excellence of a nervous and formidable debater.  But precisely as
+he rose in the display of his talents, did he awaken envies and enmities
+hitherto dormant.  And it must be added that, with all his craft and
+coldness, Lord Vargrave was often a very dangerous and mischievous
+speaker for the interests of his party.  His colleagues had often cause
+to tremble when he rose: nay, even when the cheers of his own faction
+shook the old tapestried walls.  A man who has no sympathy with the
+public must commit many and fatal indiscretions when the public, as well
+as his audience, is to be his judge.  Lord Vargrave's utter incapacity to
+comprehend political morality, his contempt for all the objects of social
+benevolence, frequently led him into the avowal of doctrines, which, if
+they did not startle the men of the world whom he addressed (smoothed
+away, as such doctrines were, by speciousness of manner and delivery),
+created deep disgust in those even of his own politics who read their
+naked exposition in the daily papers.  Never did Lord Vargrave utter one
+of those generous sentiments which, no matter whether propounded by
+Radical or Tory, sink deep into the heart of the people, and do lasting
+service to the cause they adorn.  But no man defended an abuse, however
+glaring, with a more vigorous championship, or hurled defiance upon a
+popular demand with a more courageous scorn.  In some times, when the
+anti-popular principle is strong; such a leader may be useful; but at the
+moment of which we treat he was a most equivocal auxiliary.  A
+considerable proportion of the ministers, headed by the premier himself,
+a man of wise views and unimpeachable honour, had learned to view Lord
+Vargrave with dislike and distrust.  They might have sought to get rid of
+him; but he was not one whom slight mortifications could induce to retire
+of his own accord, nor was the sarcastic and bold debater a person whose
+resentment and opposition could be despised.  Lord Vargrave, moreover,
+had secured a party of his own,--a party more formidable than himself.
+He went largely into society; he was the special favourite of the female
+diplomats, whose voices at that time were powerful suffrages, and with
+whom, by a thousand links of gallantry and intrigue, the agreeable and
+courteous minister formed a close alliance. All that _salons_ could do
+for him was done.  Added to this, he was personally liked by his royal
+master; and the Court gave him their golden opinions; while the poorer,
+the corrupter, and the more bigoted portion of the ministry regarded him
+with avowed admiration.
+
+In the House of Commons, too, and in the bureaucracy, he had no
+inconsiderable strength; for Lumley never contracted the habits of
+personal abruptness and discourtesy common to men in power who wish to
+keep applicants aloof.  He was bland and conciliating to all men of
+ranks; his intellect and self-complacency raised him far above the petty
+jealousies that great men feel for rising men.  Did any tyro earn the
+smallest distinction in parliament, no man sought his acquaintance so
+eagerly as Lord Vargrave; no man complimented, encouraged, "brought on"
+the new aspirants of his party with so hearty a good will.
+
+Such a minister could not fail of having devoted followers among the
+able, the ambitious, and the vain.  It must also be confessed that Lord
+Vargrave neglected no baser and less justifiable means to cement his
+power by placing it on the sure rock of self-interest.  No jobbing was
+too gross for him.  He was shamefully corrupt in the disposition of his
+patronage; and no rebuffs, no taunts from his official brethren, could
+restrain him from urging the claims of any of his creatures upon the
+public purse.  His followers regarded this charitable selfishness as the
+stanchness and zeal of friendship; and the ambition of hundreds was wound
+up in the ambition of the unprincipled minister.
+
+But besides the notoriety of his public corruption, Lord Vargrave was
+secretly suspected by some of personal dishonesty,--suspected of selling
+his State information to stock-jobbers, of having pecuniary interests in
+some of the claims he urged with so obstinate a pertinacity.  And though
+there was not the smallest evidence of such utter abandonment of honour,
+though it was probably but a calumnious whisper, yet the mere suspicion
+of such practices served to sharpen the aversion of his enemies, and
+justify the disgust of his rivals.
+
+In this position now stood Lord Vargrave: supported by interested, but
+able and powerful partisans; hated in the country, feared by some of
+those with whom he served, despised by others, looked up to by the rest.
+It was a situation that less daunted than delighted him; for it seemed to
+render necessary and excuse the habits of scheming and manoeuvre which
+were so genial to his crafty and plotting temper.  Like an ancient Greek,
+his spirit loved intrigue for intrigue's sake.  Had it led to no end, it
+would still have been sweet to him as a means.  He rejoiced to surround
+himself with the most complicated webs and meshes; to sit in the centre
+of a million plots.  He cared not how rash and wild some of them were.
+He relied on his own ingenuity, promptitude, and habitual good fortune to
+make every spring he handled conducive to the purpose of the
+machine--SELF.
+
+His last visit to Lady Vargrave, and his conversation with Evelyn, had
+left on his mind much dissatisfaction and fear.  In the earlier years of
+his intercourse with Evelyn, his good humour, gallantry, and presents had
+not failed to attach the child to the agreeable and liberal visitor she
+had been taught to regard as a relation.  It was only as she grew up to
+womanhood, and learned to comprehend the nature of the tie between them,
+that she shrank from his familiarity; and then only had he learned to
+doubt of the fulfilment of his uncle's wish.  The last visit had
+increased this doubt to a painful apprehension.  He saw that he was not
+loved; he saw that it required great address, and the absence of happier
+rivals, to secure to him the hand of Evelyn; and he cursed the duties and
+the schemes which necessarily kept him from her side.  He had thought of
+persuading Lady Vargrave to let her come to London, where he could be
+ever at hand; and as the season was now set in, his representations on
+this head would appear sensible and just.  But then again this was to
+incur greater dangers than those he would avoid.  London!--a beauty and
+an heiress, in her first _debut_ in London!  What formidable admirers
+would flock around her!  Vargrave shuddered to think of the gay,
+handsome, well-dressed, seductive young _elegans_, who might seem, to a
+girl of seventeen, suitors far more fascinating than the middle-aged
+politician.  This was perilous; nor was this all: Lord Vargrave knew that
+in London--gaudy, babbling, and remorseless London--all that he could
+most wish to conceal from the young lady would be dragged to day.  He had
+been the lover, not of one, but of a dozen women, for whom he did not
+care three straws, but whose favour had served to strengthen him in
+society, or whose influence made up for his own want of hereditary
+political connections.  The manner in which he contrived to shake off
+these various Ariadnes, whenever it was advisable, was not the least
+striking proof of his diplomatic abilities.  He never left them enemies.
+According to his own solution of the mystery, he took care never to play
+the gallant with Dulcineas under a certain age.  "Middle-aged women," he
+was wont to say, "are very little different from middle-aged men; they
+see things sensibly, and take things coolly."  Now Evelyn could not be
+three weeks, perhaps three days, in London, without learning of one or
+the other of these _liaisons_.  What an excuse, if she sought one, to
+break with him!  Altogether, Lord Vargrave was sorely perplexed, but not
+despondent.  Evelyn's fortune was more than ever necessary to him, and
+Evelyn he was resolved to obtain since to that fortune she was an
+indispensable appendage.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+  YOU shall be Horace, and Tibullus I.--POPE.
+
+LORD VARGRAVE was disturbed from his revery by the entrance of the Earl
+of Saxingham.
+
+"You are welcome!" said Lumley, "welcome!--the very man I wished to see."
+
+Lord Saxingham, who was scarcely altered since we met with him in the
+last series of this work, except that he had grown somewhat paler and
+thinner, and that his hair had changed from iron-gray to snow-white,
+threw himself in the armchair beside Lumley, and replied,--
+
+"Vargrave, it is really unpleasant, our finding ourselves always thus
+controlled by our own partisans.  I do not understand this new-fangled
+policy, this squaring of measures to please the Opposition, and throwing
+sops to that many-headed monster called Public Opinion.  I am sure it
+will end most mischievously."
+
+"I am satisfied of it," returned Lord Vargrave.  "All vigour and union
+seem to have left us; and if they carry the ----- question against us, I
+know not what is to be done."
+
+"For my part, I shall resign," said Lord Saxingham, doggedly; "it is the
+only alternative left to men of honour."
+
+"You are wrong; I know another alternative."
+
+"What is that?"
+
+"Make a Cabinet of our own.  Look ye, my dear lord; you been ill-used;
+your high character, your long experience, are treated with contempt.  It
+is an affront to you--the situation you hold.  You, Privy Seal!--you
+ought to be Premier; ay, and, if you are ruled by me, Premier you shall
+be yet."
+
+Lord Saxingham coloured, and breathed hard.
+
+"You have often hinted at this before, Lumley; but you are so partial, so
+friendly."
+
+"Not at all.  You saw the leading article in the ----- to-day?  That will
+be followed up by two evening papers within five hours of this time.  We
+have strength with the Press, with the Commons, with the Court,--only let
+us hold fast together.  This ----- question, by which they hope to get
+rid of us, shall destroy them.  You shall be Prime Minister before the
+year is over--by Heaven, you shall!--and then, I suppose, I too may be
+admitted to the Cabinet!"
+
+"But how?--how, Lumley?  You are too rash, too daring."
+
+It has not been my fault hitherto,--but boldness is caution in our
+circumstances.  If they throw us out now, I see the inevitable march of
+events,--we shall be out for years, perhaps for life.  The Cabinet will
+recede more and more from our principles, our party.  Now is the time for
+a determined stand; now can we make or mar ourselves.  I will not resign;
+the king is with us; our strength shall be known.  These haughty
+imbeciles shall fall into the trap they have dug for us."
+
+Lumley spoke warmly, and with the confidence of a mind firmly assured of
+success.  Lord Saxingham was moved; bright visions flashed across
+him,--the premiership, a dukedom.  Yet he was old and childless, and his
+honours would die with the last lord of Saxingham!
+
+"See," continued Lumley, "I have calculated our resources as accurately
+as an electioneering agent would cast up the list of voters.  In the
+Press, I have secured ----- and -----, and in the Commons we have the
+subtle -----, and the vigour of -----, and the popular name of -----, and
+all the boroughs of -----; in the Cabinet we have -----, and at Court you
+know our strength.  Let us choose our moment; a sudden _coup_, an
+interview with the king, statement of our conscientious scruples to this
+atrocious measure.  I know the vain, stiff mind of the premier; _he_ will
+lose temper, he will tender his resignation; to his astonishment, it will
+be accepted.  You will be sent for; we will dissolve parliament; we will
+strain every nerve in the elections; we shall succeed, I know we shall.
+But be silent in the meanwhile, be cautious: let not a word escape you,
+let them think us beaten; lull suspicion asleep; let us lament our
+weakness, and hint, only hint at our resignation, but with assurances of
+continued support.  I know how to blind them, if you leave it to me."
+
+The weak mind of the old earl was as a puppet in the hands of his bold
+kinsman.  He feared one moment, hoped another; now his ambition was
+flattered, now his sense of honour was alarmed.  There was something in
+Lumley's intrigue to oust the government with which he served that had an
+appearance of cunning and baseness, of which Lord Saxingham, whose
+personal character was high, by no means approved.  But Vargrave talked
+him over with consummate address, and when they parted, the earl carried
+his head two inches higher,--he was preparing himself for his rise in
+life.
+
+"That is well! that is well!" said Lumley, rubbing his hands when he was
+left alone: "the old driveller will be my _locum tenens_, till years and
+renown enable me to become his successor.  Meanwhile, I shall be really
+what he will be in name."
+
+Here Lord Vargrave's well-fed servant, now advanced to the dignity of own
+gentleman and house-steward, entered the room with a letter; it had a
+portentous look; it was wafered, the paper was blue, the hand clerklike,
+there was no envelope; it bore its infernal origin on the face of it,--IT
+WAS A DUN'S.
+
+Lumley opened the epistle with an impatient pshaw!  The man, a
+silversmith (Lumley's plate was much admired!) had applied for years in
+vain; the amount was large, and execution was threatened!  An
+execution!--it is a trifle to a rich man; but no trifle to one suspected
+of being poor, one straining at that very moment at so high an object,
+one to whom public opinion was so necessary, one who knew that nothing
+but his title, and scarcely that, saved him from the reputation of an
+adventurer!  He must again have recourse to the money-lenders,--his small
+estate was long since too deeply mortgaged to afford new security.
+Usury, usury, again!--he knew its price, and he sighed--but what was to
+be done?
+
+"It is but for a few months, a few months, and Evelyn must be mine.
+Saxingham has already lent me what he can; but he is embarrassed.  This
+d-----d office, what a tax it is! and the rascals say we are too well
+paid!  I, too, who could live happy in a garret, if this purse-proud
+England would but allow one to exist within one's income.  My
+fellow-trustee, the banker, my uncle's old correspondent--all, well
+thought of!  He knows the conditions of the will; he knows that, at the
+worst, I must have thirty thousand pounds, if I live a few months longer.
+I will go to him."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+  ANIMUM nunc hoc celerem, nunc dividit illuc.*--VIRGIL.
+
+  * "Now this, now that, distracts the active mind."
+
+THE late Mr. Templeton had been a banker in a provincial town, which was
+the centre of great commercial and agricultural activity and enterprise.
+He had made the bulk of his fortune in the happy days of paper currency
+and war.  Besides his country bank he had a considerable share in a
+metropolitan one of some eminence.  At the time of his marriage with the
+present Lady Vargrave he retired altogether from business, and never
+returned to the place in which his wealth had been amassed.  He had still
+kept up a familiar acquaintance with the principal and senior partner of
+the metropolitan bank I have referred to; for he was a man who always
+loved to talk about money matters with those who understood them.  This
+gentleman, Mr. Gustavus Douce, had been named, with Lumley, joint trustee
+to Evelyn's fortune.  They had full powers to invest it in whatever stock
+seemed most safe or advantageous.  The trustees appeared well chosen, as
+one, being destined to share the fortune, would have the deepest interest
+in its security; and the other, from his habits and profession, would be
+a most excellent adviser.
+
+Of Mr. Douce, Lord Vargrave had seen but little; they were not thrown
+together.  But Lord Vargrave, who thought every rich man might, some time
+or other, become a desirable acquaintance, regularly asked him once every
+year to dinner; and twice in return he had dined with Mr. Douce, in one
+of the most splendid villas, and off some of the most splendid plate it
+had ever been his fortune to witness and to envy!--so that the little
+favour he was about to ask was but a slight return for Lord Vargrave's
+condescension.
+
+He found the banker in his private sanctum, his carriage at the door; for
+it was just four o'clock, an hour in which Mr. Douce regularly departed
+to Caserta, as his aforesaid villa was somewhat affectedly styled.
+
+Mr. Douce was a small man, a nervous man; he did not seem quite master of
+his own limbs: when he bowed he seemed to be making you a present of his
+legs; when he sat down, he twitched first on one side, then on the other,
+thrust his hands into his pockets, then took them out, and looked at
+them, as if in astonishment, then seized upon a pen, by which they were
+luckily provided with incessant occupation.  Meanwhile, there was what
+might fairly be called a constant play of countenance: first he smiled,
+then looked grave; now raised his eyebrows, till they rose like rainbows,
+to the horizon of his pale, straw-coloured hair; and next darted them
+down, like an avalanche, over the twinkling, restless, fluttering, little
+blue eyes, which then became almost invisible.  Mr. Douce had, in fact,
+all the appearance of a painfully shy man, which was the more strange, as
+he had the reputation of enterprise, and even audacity, in the business
+of his profession, and was fond of the society of the great.
+
+"I have called on you, my dear sir," said Lord Vargrave, after the
+preliminary salutations, "to ask a little favour, which, if the least
+inconvenient, have no hesitation in refusing.  You know how I am situated
+with regard to my ward, Miss Cameron; in a few months I hope she will be
+Lady Vargrave."
+
+Mr. Douce showed three small teeth, which were all that, in the front of
+his mouth, fate had left him; and then, as if alarmed at the indelicacy
+of a smile upon such a subject, pushed back his chair, and twitched up
+his blotting-paper-coloured trousers.
+
+"Yes, in a few months I hope she will be Lady Vargrave; and you know
+then, Mr. Douce, that I shall be in no want of money."
+
+"I hope--that is to say, I am sure,--that--I trust that never will be the
+ca-ca-case with your lordship," put in Mr. Douce, with timid hesitation.
+Mr. Douce, in addition to his other good qualities, stammered much in the
+delivery of his sentences.
+
+"You are very kind, but it is the case just at present; I have great need
+of a few thousand pounds upon my personal security.  My estate is already
+a little mortgaged, and I don't wish to encumber it more; besides, the
+loan would be merely temporary.  You know that if at the age of eighteen
+Miss Cameron refuses me (a supposition out of the question, but in
+business we must calculate on improbabilities), I claim the forfeit she
+incurs,--thirty thousand pounds; you remember."
+
+"Oh, yes--that--is--upon my word--I--I don't exactly--but--your
+lord--l-l-l-lord-lordship knows best--I have been so--so busy--I forget
+the exact--hem--hem!"
+
+"If you just turn to the will you will see it is as I say.  Now, could
+you conveniently place a few thousands to my account, just for a short
+time?  But I see you don't like it.  Never mind, I can get it elsewhere;
+only, as you were my poor uncle's friend--"
+
+"Your lord--l-l-l-lordship is quite mistaken," said Mr. Douce, with
+trembling agitation; "upon my word, yes, a few thou-thou-thousands--to be
+sure--to be sure.  Your lordship's banker is--is--"
+
+"Drummond--disagreeable people--by no means obliging.  I shall certainly
+change to your house when my accounts are better worth keeping."
+
+"You do me great--great honour; I will just--step--step--step out for a
+moment--and--and speak to Mr. Dobs;--not but what you may depend
+on.--Excuse me!  'Morning Chron-chron-Chronicle,' my lord!"
+
+Mr. Douce rose, as if by galvanism, and ran out of the room, spinning
+round as he ran, to declare, again and again, that he would not be gone a
+moment.
+
+"Good little fellow, that--very like an electrified frog!" murmured
+Vargrave, as he took up the "Morning Chronicle," so especially pointed
+out to his notice; and turning to the leading article, read a very
+eloquent attack on himself.  Lumley was thick-skinned on such matters; he
+liked to be attacked,--it showed that he was up in the world.
+
+Presently Mr. Douce returned.  To Lord Vargrave's amazement and delight,
+he was informed that 10,000 pounds would be immediately lodged with
+Messrs. Drummond.  His bill of promise to pay in three months--five per
+cent interest--was quite sufficient.  Three months was a short date; but
+the bill could be renewed on the same terms, from quarter to quarter,
+till quite convenient to his lordship to pay.  "Would Lord Vargrave do
+him the honour to dine with him at Caserta next Monday?"
+
+Lord Vargrave tried to affect apathy at his sudden accession of ready
+money, but really it almost turned his head; he griped both Mr. Douce's
+thin, little shivering hands, and was speechless with gratitude and
+ecstasy.  The sum, which doubled the utmost he expected, would relieve
+him from all his immediate embarrassments.  When he recovered his voice,
+he thanked his dear Mr. Douce with a warmth that seemed to make the
+little man shrink into a nutshell; and assured him that he would dine
+with him every Monday in the year--if he was asked!  He then longed to
+depart; but he thought, justly, that to go as soon as he had got what he
+wanted would look selfish.  Accordingly, he reseated himself, and so did
+Mr. Douce, and the conversation turned upon politics and news; but Mr.
+Douce, who seemed to regard all things with a commercial eye, contrived,
+Vargrave hardly knew how, to veer round from the change in the French
+ministry to the state of the English money-market.
+
+"It really is, indeed, my lord--I say it, I am sure, with concern, a very
+bad ti-ti-ti-ti-time for men in business,--indeed, for all men; such poor
+interest in the English fu-fun-funds, and yet speculations are so
+unsound.  I recommended my friend Sir Giles Grimsby to--to invest some
+money in the American canals; a most rare res-res-respons-reponsibility,
+I may say, for me; I am cautious in--in recommending--but Sir Giles was
+an old friend,--con-con-connection, I may say; but most providentially,
+all turned out--that is--fell out--as I was sure it would,--thirty per
+cent,--and the value of the sh-sh-sh-shares doubled.  But such things are
+very rare,--quite godsends, I may say!"
+
+"Well, Mr. Douce, whenever I have money to lay out, I must come and
+consult you."
+
+"I shall be most happy at all times to--to advise your lordship; but it
+is not a thing I'm very fond of.  There's Miss Cameron's fortune quite
+l-l-locked up,--three per cents and exchequer bills; why, it might have
+been a mil-mil-million by this ti-ti-time, if the good old gentleman--I
+beg pardon--old--old nobleman, my poor dear friend, had been now alive!"
+
+"Indeed!" said Lumley, greedily, and pricking up his ears; "he was a good
+manager, my uncle!"
+
+"None better, none better.  I may say a genius for busi--hem-hem!  Miss
+Cameron a young woman of bus-bus-business, my lord?"
+
+"Not much of that, I fear.  A million, did you say?"
+
+"At least!--indeed, at least--money so scarce, speculation so sure in
+America; great people the Americans, rising people, gi-gi-giants
+--giants!"
+
+"I am wasting your whole morning,--too bad in me," said Vargrave, as the
+clock struck five; "the Lords meet this evening,--important business;
+once more a thousand thanks to you; good day."
+
+"A very good day to you, my lord; don't mention it; glad at any time to
+ser-ser-serve you," said Mr. Douce, fidgeting, curveting, and prancing
+round Lord Vargrave, as the latter walked through the outer office to the
+carriage.
+
+"Not a step more; you will catch cold.  Good-by--on Monday, then, seven
+o'clock.  The House of Lords."
+
+And Lumley threw himself back in his carriage in high spirits.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+  OUBLIE de Tullie, et brave du Senat.*
+  VOLTAIRE: _Brutus_, Act ii. sc. 1.
+
+  * "Forgotten by Tully and bullied by the Senate."
+
+IN the Lords that evening the discussion was animated and prolonged,--it
+was the last party debate of the session.  The astute Opposition did not
+neglect to bring prominently, though incidentally, forward the question
+on which it was whispered that there existed some growing difference in
+the Cabinet.  Lord Vargrave rose late.  His temper was excited by the
+good fortune of his day's negotiation; he felt himself of more importance
+than usual, as a needy man is apt to do when he has got a large sum at
+his banker's; moreover, he was exasperated by some personal allusions to
+himself, which had been delivered by a dignified old lord who dated his
+family from the ark, and was as rich as Croesus.  Accordingly, Vargrave
+spoke with more than his usual vigour.  His first sentences were welcomed
+with loud cheers; he warmed, he grew vehement, he uttered the most
+positive and unalterable sentiments upon the question alluded to, he
+greatly transgressed the discretion which the heads of his party were
+desirous to maintain,--instead of conciliating without compromising, he
+irritated, galled, _and_ compromised.  The angry cheers of the opposite
+party were loudly re-echoed by the cheers of the more hot-headed on his
+own side.  The premier and some of his colleagues observed, however, a
+moody silence.  The premier once took a note, and then reseated himself,
+and drew his hat more closely over his brows.  It was an ominous sign for
+Lumley; but he was looking the Opposition in the face, and did not
+observe it.  He sat down in triumph; he had made a most effective and a
+most mischievous speech,--a combination extremely common.  The leader of
+the Opposition replied to him with bitter calmness; and when citing some
+of his sharp sentences, he turned to the premier, and asked, "Are these
+opinions those also of the noble lord?  I call for a reply,--I have a
+right to demand a reply," Lumley was startled to hear the tone in which
+his chief uttered the comprehensive and significant "_Hear, hear_!"
+
+At midnight the premier wound up the debate; his speech was short, and
+characterized by moderation.  He came to the question put to him.  The
+House was hushed,--you might have heard a pin drop; the Commoners behind
+the throne pressed forward with anxiety and eagerness on their
+countenances.
+
+"I am called upon," said the minister, "to declare if those sentiments,
+uttered by my noble friend, are mine also, as the chief adviser of the
+Crown.  My lords, in the heat of debate every word is not to be
+scrupulously weighed, and rigidly interpreted."  ("Hear, hear,"
+ironically from the Opposition, approvingly from the Treasury benches.)
+"My noble friend will doubtless be anxious to explain what he intended to
+say.  I hope, nay, I doubt not, that his explanation will be satisfactory
+to the noble lord, to the House, and to the country; but since I am
+called upon for a distinct reply to a distinct interrogatory, I will say
+at once, that if those sentiments be rightly interpreted by the noble
+lord who spoke last, those sentiments are not mine, and will never
+animate the conduct of any cabinet of which I am a member."
+(Long-continued cheering from the Opposition.)  "At the same time, I am
+convinced that my noble friend's meaning has not been rightly construed;
+and till I hear from himself to the contrary, I will venture to state
+what I think he designed to convey to your lordships."  Here the premier,
+with a tact that nobody could be duped by, but every one could admire,
+stripped Lord Vargrave's unlucky sentences of every syllable that could
+give offence to any one; and left the pointed epigrams and vehement
+denunciations a most harmless arrangement of commonplace.
+
+The House was much excited; there was a call for Lord Vargrave, and Lord
+Vargrave promptly rose.  It was one of those dilemmas out of which Lumley
+was just the man to extricate himself with address.  There was so much
+manly frankness in his manner, there was so much crafty subtlety in his
+mind!  He complained, with proud and honest bitterness, of the
+construction that had been forced upon his words by the Opposition.
+"If," he added (and no man knew better the rhetorical effect of the _tu
+quoque_ form of argument),--"if every sentence uttered by the noble lord
+opposite in his zeal for liberty had, in days now gone by, been construed
+with equal rigour, or perverted with equal ingenuity, that noble lord had
+long since been prosecuted as an incendiary, perhaps executed as a
+traitor!"  Vehement cheers from the ministerial benches; cries of
+"Order!" from the Opposition.  A military lord rose to order, and
+appealed to the Woolsack.
+
+Lumley sat down as if chafed at the interruption; he had produced the
+effect he had desired,--he had changed the public question at issue into
+a private quarrel; a new excitement was created; dust was thrown into the
+eyes of the House.  Several speakers rose to accommodate matters; and
+after half-an-hour of public time had been properly wasted, the noble
+lord on the one side and the noble lord on the other duly explained, paid
+each other the highest possible compliments, and Lumley was left to
+conclude his vindication, which now seemed a comparatively flat matter
+after the late explosion.  He completed his task so as to satisfy,
+apparently, all parties--for all parties were now tired of the thing, and
+wanted to go to bed.  But the next morning there were whispers about the
+town, articles in the different papers, evidently by authority,
+rejoicings among the Opposition, and a general feeling that though the
+Government might keep together that session, its dissensions would break
+out before the next meeting of parliament.
+
+As Lumley was wrapping himself in his cloak after this stormy debate, the
+Marquess of Raby--a peer of large possessions, and one who entirely
+agreed with Lumley's views--came up to him, and proposed that they should
+go home together in Lord Raby's carriage.  Vargrave willingly consented,
+and dismissed his own servants.
+
+"You did that admirably, my dear Vargrave!" said Lord Raby, when they
+were seated in the carriage.  "I quite coincide in all your sentiments; I
+declare my blood boiled when I heard ----- [the premier] appear half
+inclined to throw you over.  Your hit upon ----- was first-rate,--he will
+not get over it for a month; and you extricated yourself well."
+
+"I am glad you approve my conduct,--it comforts me," said Vargrave,
+feelingly; "at the same time I see all the consequences; but I can brave
+all for the sake of character and conscience."
+
+"I feel just as you do!" replied Lord Raby, with some warmth; "and if I
+thought that ----- meant to yield to this question, I should certainly
+oppose his administration."
+
+Vargrave shook his head, and held his tongue, which gave Lord Raby a high
+idea of his discretion.
+
+After a few more observations on political matters, Lord Raby invited
+Lumley to pay him a visit at his country-seat.
+
+"I am going to Knaresdean next Monday; you know we have races in the
+park, and really they are sometimes good sport; at all events, it is a
+very pretty sight.  There will be nothing in the Lords now,--the recess
+is just at hand; and if you can spare the time, Lady Raby and myself will
+be delighted to see you."
+
+"You may be sure, my dear lord, I cannot refuse your invitation; indeed,
+I intended to visit your county next week.  You know, perhaps, a Mr.
+Merton."
+
+"Charles Merton?--to be sure; most respectable man, capital fellow, the
+best parson in the county,--no cant, but thoroughly orthodox; he
+certainly keeps in his brother, who, though a very active member, is what
+I call a waverer on certain questions.  Have you known Merton long?"
+
+"I don't know him at all as yet; my acquaintance is with his wife and
+daughter,--a very fine girl, by the by.  My ward, Miss Cameron, is
+staying with them."
+
+"Miss Cameron!  Cameron--ah, I understand.  I think I have heard that--
+But gossip does not always tell the truth!"
+
+Lumley smiled significantly, and the carriage now stopped at his door.
+
+"Perhaps you will take a seat in our carriage on Monday?" said Lord Raby.
+
+"Monday?  Unhappily I am engaged; but on Tuesday your lordship may expect
+me."
+
+"Very well; the races begin on Wednesday: we shall have a full house.
+Good-night."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+  HOMUNCULI quanti sunt, cum recogito.*--PLAUTUS.
+
+  * "When I reflect, how great your little men are in their own
+    consideration!"
+
+IT is obvious that for many reasons we must be brief upon the political
+intrigue in which the scheming spirit of Lord Vargrave was employed.  It
+would, indeed, be scarcely possible to preserve the necessary medium
+between too plain a revelation and too complex a disguise.  It suffices,
+therefore, very shortly to repeat what the reader has already gathered
+from what has gone before; namely, that the question at issue was one
+which has happened often enough in all governments,--one on which the
+Cabinet was divided, and in which the weaker party was endeavouring to
+out-trick the stronger.
+
+The malcontents, foreseeing that sooner or later the head of the
+gathering must break, were again divided among themselves whether to
+resign, or to stay in and strive to force a resignation on their
+dissentient colleagues.  The richer and the more honest were for the
+former course; the poorer and the more dependent for the latter.  We have
+seen that the latter policy was that espoused and recommended by
+Vargrave, who, though not in the Cabinet, always contrived somehow or
+other to worm out its secrets.  At the same time he by no means rejected
+the other string to his bow.  If it were possible so to arrange and to
+strengthen his faction, that, by the _coup d'etat_ of a sudden
+resignation in a formidable body, the whole Government might be broken
+up, and a new one formed from among the resignees, it would obviously be
+the best plan.  But then Lord Vargrave was doubtful of his own strength,
+and fearful to play into the hands of his colleagues, who might be able
+to stand even better without himself and his allies, and by conciliating
+the Opposition take a step onward in political movement,--which might
+leave Vargrave placeless and powerless for years to come.
+
+He repented his own rashness in the recent debate, which was, indeed, a
+premature boldness that had sprung out of momentary excitement--for the
+craftiest orator must be indiscreet sometimes.  He spent the next few
+days in alternately seeking to explain away to one party, and to sound,
+unite, and consolidate the other.  His attempts in the one quarter were
+received by the premier with the cold politeness of an offended but
+careful statesman, who believed just as much as he chose, and preferred
+taking his own opportunity for a breach with a subordinate to risking any
+imprudence by the gratification of resentment.  In the last quarter, the
+penetrating adventurer saw that his ground was more insecure than he had
+anticipated.  He perceived in dismay and secret rage that many of those
+most loud in his favour while he was with the Government would desert him
+the soonest if thrown out.  Liked as a subordinate minister, he was
+viewed with very different eyes the moment it was a question whether,
+instead of cheering his sentiments, men should trust themselves to his
+guidance.  Some did not wish to displease the Government; others did not
+seek to weaken but to correct them.  One of his stanchest allies in the
+Commons was a candidate for a peerage; another suddenly remembered that
+he was second cousin to the premier.  Some laughed at the idea of a
+puppet premier in Lord Saxingham; others insinuated to Vargrave that he
+himself was not precisely of that standing in the country which would
+command respect to a new party, of which, if not the head, he would be
+the mouthpiece.  For themselves they knew, admired, and trusted him; but
+those d-----d country gentlemen--and the dull public!
+
+Alarmed, wearied, and disgusted, the schemer saw himself reduced to
+submission, for the present at least; and more than ever he felt the
+necessity of Evelyn's fortune to fall back upon, if the chance of the
+cards should rob him of his salary.  He was glad to escape for a
+breathing-while from the vexations and harassments that beset him, and
+looked forward with the eager interest of a sanguine and elastic
+mind--always escaping from one scheme to another--to his excursion into
+B-----shire.
+
+At the villa of Mr. Douce, Lord Vargrave met a young nobleman who had
+just succeeded to a property not only large and unencumbered, but of a
+nature to give him importance in the eyes of politicians.  Situated in a
+very small county, the estates of Lord Doltimore secured to his
+nomination at least one of the representatives, while a little village at
+the back of his pleasure-grounds constituted a borough, and returned two
+members to parliament.  Lord Doltimore, just returned from the Continent,
+had not even taken his seat in the Lords; and though his family
+connections, such as they were--and they were not very high, and by no
+means in the fashion--were ministerial, his own opinions were as yet
+unrevealed.
+
+To this young nobleman Lord Vargrave was singularly attentive.  He was
+well formed to attract men younger than himself, and he eminently
+succeeded in his designs upon Lord Doltimore's affection.
+
+His lordship was a small, pale man, with a very limited share of
+understanding, supercilious in manner, elaborate in dress, not
+ill-natured _au fond_, and with much of the English gentleman in his
+disposition,--that is, he was honourable in his ideas and actions,
+whenever his natural dulness and neglected education enabled him clearly
+to perceive (through the midst of prejudices, the delusions of others,
+and the false lights of the dissipated society in which he had lived)
+what was right and what wrong.  But his leading characteristics were
+vanity and conceit.  He had lived much with younger sons, cleverer than
+himself, who borrowed his money, sold him their horses, and won from him
+at cards.  In return they gave him all that species of flattery which
+young men _can_ give with so hearty an appearance of cordial admiration.
+"You certainly have the best horses in Paris.  You are really a devilish
+good fellow, Doltimore.  Oh, do you know, Doltimore, what little Desire
+says of you?  You have certainly turned the girl's head."
+
+This sort of adulation from one sex was not corrected by any great
+acerbity from the other.  Lord Doltimore at the age of twenty-two was a
+very good _parti_; and, whatever his other deficiencies, he had sense
+enough to perceive that he received much greater attention--whether from
+opera-dancers in search of a friend, or virtuous young ladies in search
+of a husband--than any of the companions, good-looking though many of
+them were, with whom he had habitually lived.
+
+"You will not long remain in town now the season is over?" said Vargrave,
+as after dinner he found himself, by the departure of the ladies, next to
+Lord Doltimore.
+
+"No, indeed; even in the season I don't much like London.  Paris has
+rather spoiled me for any other place."
+
+"Paris is certainly very charming; the ease of French life has a
+fascination that our formal ostentation wants.  Nevertheless, to a man
+like you, London must have many attractions."
+
+"Why, I have a good many friends here; but still, after Ascot, it rather
+bores me."
+
+"Have you any horses on the turf?"
+
+"Not yet; but Legard (you know Legard, perhaps,--a very good fellow) is
+anxious that I should try my luck.  I was very fortunate in the races at
+Paris--you know we have established racing there.  The French take to it
+quite naturally."
+
+"Ah, indeed! It is so long since I have been in Paris--most exciting
+amusement!  _A propos_ of races, I am going down to Lord Raby's
+to-morrow; I think I saw in one of the morning papers that you had very
+largely backed a horse entered at Knaresdean."
+
+"Yes, Thunderer--I think of buying Thunderer.  Legard--Colonel Legard (he
+was in the Guards, but he sold out)--is a good judge, and recommends the
+purchase.  How very odd that you too should be going to Knaresdean!"
+
+"Odd, indeed, but most lucky!  We can go together, if you are not better
+engaged."
+
+Lord Doltimore coloured and hesitated.  On the one hand he was a little
+afraid of being alone with so clever a man; on the other hand, it was an
+honour,--it was something for him to talk of to Legard.  Nevertheless,
+the shyness got the better of the vanity.  He excused himself; he feared
+he was engaged to take down Legard.
+
+Lumley smiled, and changed the conversation; and so agreeable did he make
+himself, that when the party broke up, and Lumley had just shaken hands
+with his host, Doltimore came to him, and said in a little confusion,--
+
+"I think I can put off Legard--if--if you--"
+
+"That's delightful!  What time shall we start?--need not get down much
+before dinner--one o'clock?"
+
+"Oh, yes! not too long before dinner; one o'clock will be a little too
+early."
+
+"Two then.  Where are you staying?"
+
+"At Fenton's."
+
+"I will call for you.  Good-night!  I long to see Thunderer!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+  LA sante de l'ame n'est pas plus assuree que celle du corps;
+  et quoique l'on paraisse eloigne des passions, on n'est pas
+  moins en danger de s'y laisser emporter que de tomber malade
+  quand on se porte bien.*--LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.
+
+  * "The health of the soul is not more sure than that of the
+    body; and although we may appear free from passions, there
+    is not the less danger of their attack than of falling sick
+    at the moment we are well."
+
+IN spite of the efforts of Maltravers to shun all occasions of meeting
+Evelyn, they were necessarily sometimes thrown together in the round of
+provincial hospitalities; and certainly, if either Mr. Merton or Caroline
+(the shrewder observer of the two) had ever formed any suspicion that
+Evelyn had made a conquest of Maltravers, his manner at such times
+effectually removed it.
+
+Maltravers was a man to feel deeply, but no longer a boy to yield to
+every tempting impulse.  I have said that FORTITUDE was his favourite
+virtue, but fortitude is the virtue of great and rare occasions; there
+was another, equally hard-favoured and unshowy, which he took as the
+staple of active and every-day duties, and that virtue was JUSTICE.  Now,
+in earlier life, he had been enamoured of the conventional Florimel that
+we call HONOUR,--a shifting and shadowy phantom, that is but the reflex
+of the opinion of the time and clime.  But justice has in it something
+permanent and solid; and out of justice arises the real not the false
+honour.
+
+"Honour!" said Maltravers,--"honour is to justice as the flower to the
+plant,--its efflorescence, its bloom, its consummation!  But honour that
+does not spring from justice is but a piece of painted rag, an artificial
+rose, which the men-milliners of society would palm upon us as more
+natural than the true."
+
+This principle of justice Maltravers sought to carry out in all
+things--not, perhaps, with constant success; for what practice can always
+embody theory?--but still, at least his endeavour at success was
+constant.  This, perhaps, it was which had ever kept him from the
+excesses to which exuberant and liberal natures are prone, from the
+extravagances of pseudo-genius.
+
+"No man, for instance," he was wont to say, "can be embarrassed in his
+own circumstances, and not cause embarrassment to others.  Without
+economy, who can be just?  And what are charity, generosity, but the
+poetry and the beauty of justice?"
+
+No man ever asked Maltravers twice for a just debt; and no man ever once
+asked him to fulfil a promise.  You felt that, come what would, you might
+rely upon his word.  To him might have been applied the witty eulogium
+passed by Johnson upon a certain nobleman: "If he had promised you an
+acorn, and the acorn season failed in England, he would have sent to
+Norway for one!"
+
+It was not, therefore, the mere Norman and chivalrous spirit of honour,
+which he had worshipped in youth as a part of the Beautiful and the
+Becoming, but which in youth had yielded to temptation, as a _sentiment_
+ever must yield to a passion, but it was the more hard, stubborn, and
+reflective _principle_, which was the later growth of deeper and nobler
+wisdom, that regulated the conduct of Maltravers in this crisis of his
+life.  Certain it is, that he had never but once loved as he loved
+Evelyn; and yet that he never yielded so little to the passion.
+
+"If engaged to another," thought he, "that engagement it is not for a
+third person to attempt to dissolve.  I am the last to form a right
+judgment of the strength or weakness of the bonds which unite her to
+Vargrave, for my emotions would prejudice me despite myself.  I may fancy
+that her betrothed is not worthy of her,--but that is for her to decide.
+While the bond lasts, who can be justified in tempting her to break it?"
+
+Agreeably to these notions, which the world may, perhaps, consider
+overstrained, whenever Maltravers met Evelyn, he intrenched himself in a
+rigid and almost a chilling formality.  How difficult this was with one
+so simple and ingenuous!  Poor Evelyn! she thought she had offended him;
+she longed to ask him her offence,--perhaps, in her desire to rouse his
+genius into exertion, she had touched some secret sore, some latent wound
+of the memory?  She recalled all their conversations again and again.
+Ah, why could they not be renewed?  Upon her fancy and her thoughts
+Maltravers had made an impression not to be obliterated.  She wrote more
+frequently than ever to Lady Vargrave, and the name of Maltravers was
+found in every page of her correspondence.
+
+One evening, at the house of a neighbour, Miss Cameron (with the Mertons)
+entered the room almost in the same instant as Maltravers.  The party was
+small, and so few had yet arrived that it was impossible for Maltravers,
+without marked rudeness, to avoid his friends from the rectory; and Mrs.
+Merton, placing herself next to Evelyn, graciously motioned to Maltravers
+to occupy the third vacant seat on the sofa, of which she filled the
+centre.
+
+"We grudge all your improvements, Mr. Maltravers, since they cost us your
+society.  But we know that our dull circle must seem tame to one who has
+seen so much.  However, we expect to offer you an inducement soon in Lord
+Vargrave.  What a lively, agreeable person he is!"
+
+Maltravers raised his eyes to Evelyn, calmly and penetratingly, at the
+latter part of this speech.  He observed that she turned pale, and sighed
+involuntarily.
+
+"He had great spirits when I knew him," said he; "and he had then less
+cause to make him happy."
+
+Mrs. Merton smiled, and turned rather pointedly towards Evelyn.
+
+Maltravers continued, "I never met the late lord.  He had none of the
+vivacity of his nephew, I believe."
+
+"I have heard that he was very severe," said Mrs. Merton, lifting her
+glass towards a party that had just entered.
+
+"Severe!" exclaimed Evelyn.  "Ah, if you could have known him! the
+kindest, the most indulgent--no one ever loved me as he did."  She
+paused, for she felt her lip quiver.
+
+"I beg your pardon, my dear," said Mrs. Merton, coolly.  Mrs. Merton had
+no idea of the pain inflicted by _treading upon a feeling_.  Maltravers
+was touched, and Mrs. Merton went on.  "No wonder he was kind to you,
+Evelyn,--a brute would be that; but he was generally considered a stern
+man."
+
+"I never saw a stern look, I never heard a harsh word; nay, I do not
+remember that he ever even used the word 'command,'" said Evelyn, almost
+angrily.
+
+Mrs. Merton was about to reply, when suddenly seeing a lady whose little
+girl had been ill of the measles, her motherly thoughts flowed into a new
+channel, and she fluttered away in that sympathy which unites all the
+heads of a growing family.  Evelyn and Maltravers were left alone.
+
+"You do not remember your father, I believe?" said Maltravers.
+
+"No father but Lord Vargrave; while he lived, I never knew the loss of
+one."
+
+"Does your mother resemble you?"
+
+"Ah, I wish I could think so; it is the sweetest countenance!"
+
+"Have you no picture of her?"
+
+"None; she would never consent to sit."
+
+"Your father was a Cameron; I have known some of that name."
+
+"No relation of ours: my mother says we have none living."
+
+"And have we no chance of seeing Lady Vargrave in B-----shire?"
+
+"She never leaves home; but I hope to return soon to Brook-Green."
+
+Maltravers sighed, and the conversation took a new turn.
+
+"I have to thank you for the books you so kindly sent; I ought to have
+returned them ere this," said Evelyn.
+
+"I have no use for them.  Poetry has lost its charm for me,--especially
+that species of poetry which unites with the method and symmetry
+something of the coldness of Art.  How did you like Alfieri?"
+
+"His language is a kind of Spartan French," answered Evelyn, in one of
+those happy expressions which every now and then showed the quickness of
+her natural talent.
+
+"Yes," said Maltravers, smiling, "the criticism is acute.  Poor Alfieri!
+in his wild life and his stormy passions he threw out all the redundance
+of his genius; and his poetry is but the representative of his thoughts,
+not his emotions.  Happier the man of genius who lives upon his reason,
+and wastes feeling only on his verse!"
+
+"You do not think that we _waste_ feeling upon human beings?" said
+Evelyn, with a pretty laugh.
+
+"Ask me that question when you have reached my years, and can look upon
+fields on which you have lavished your warmest hopes, your noblest
+aspirations, your tenderest affections, and see the soil all profitless
+and barren. 'Set not your heart on the things of earth,' saith the
+Preacher."
+
+Evelyn was affected by the tone, the words, and the melancholy
+countenance of the speaker.  "You, of all men, ought not to think thus,"
+said she, with a sweet eagerness; "you who have done so much to awaken
+and to soften the heart in others; you--who--" she stopped short, and
+added, more gravely.  "Ah, Mr. Maltravers, I cannot reason with you, but
+I can hope you will refute your own philosophy."
+
+"Were your wish fulfilled," answered Maltravers, almost with sternness,
+and with an expression of great pain in his compressed lips, "I should
+have to thank you for much misery."  He rose abruptly, and turned away.
+
+"How have I offended him?" thought Evelyn, sorrowfully; "I never speak
+but to wound him.  What _have_ I done?"
+
+She could have wished, in her simple kindness, to follow him, and make
+peace; but he was now in a coterie of strangers; and shortly afterwards
+he left the room, and she did not see him again for weeks.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+  NIHIL est aliud magnum quam multa minuta.*--VETUS. AUCTOR.
+
+  * "There is nothing so great as the collection of the minute."
+
+AN anxious event disturbed the smooth current of cheerful life at Merton
+Rectory.  One morning when Evelyn came down, she missed little Sophy, who
+had contrived to establish for herself the undisputed privilege of a
+stool beside Miss Cameron at breakfast.  Mrs. Merton appeared with a
+graver face than usual.  Sophy was unwell, was feverish; the scarlet
+fever had been in the neighbourhood.  Mrs. Merton was very uneasy.
+
+"It is the more unlucky, Caroline," added the mother, turning to Miss
+Merton, "because to-morrow, you know, we were to have spent a few days at
+Knaresdean to see the races.  If poor Sophy does not get better, I fear
+you and Miss Cameron must go without me.  I can send to Mrs. Hare to be
+your chaperon; she would be delighted."
+
+"Poor Sophy!" said Caroline; "I am very sorry to hear she is unwell; but
+I think Taylor would take great care of her; you surely need not stay,
+unless she is much worse."
+
+Mrs. Merton, who, tame as she seemed, was a fond and attentive mother,
+shook her head and said nothing; but Sophy was much worse before noon.
+The doctor was sent for, and pronounced it to be the scarlet fever.
+
+It was now necessary to guard against the infection.  Caroline had had
+the complaint, and she willingly shared in her mother's watch of love for
+two or three hours.  Mrs. Merton gave up the party.  Mrs. Hare (the wife
+of a rich squire in the neighbourhood) was written to, and that lady
+willingly agreed to take charge of Caroline and her friend.
+
+Sophy had been left asleep.  When Mrs. Merton returned to her bed, she
+found Evelyn quietly stationed there.  This alarmed her, for Evelyn had
+never had the scarlet fever, and had been forbidden the sick-room.  But
+poor little Sophy had waked and querulously asked for her dear Evy; and
+Evy, who had been hovering round the room, heard the inquiry from the
+garrulous nurse, and come in she would; and the child gazed at her so
+beseechingly, when Mrs. Merton entered, and said so piteously, "Don't
+take Evy away," that Evelyn stoutly declared that she was not the least
+afraid of infection, and stay she must.  Nay, her share in the nursing
+would be the more necessary since Caroline was to go to Knaresdean the
+next day.
+
+"But you go too, my dear Miss Cameron?"
+
+"Indeed I could not.  I don't care for races, I never wished to go, I
+would much sooner have stayed; and I am sure Sophy will not get well
+without me,--will you, dear?"
+
+"Oh, yes, yes; if I'm to keep you from the nice races, I should be worse
+if I thought that."
+
+"But I don't like the nice races, Sophy, as your sister Carry does; she
+must go,--they can't do without her; but nobody knows me, so I shall not
+be missed."
+
+"I can't hear of such a thing," said Mrs. Merton, with tears in her eyes;
+and Evelyn said no more then.  But the next morning Sophy was still
+worse, and the mother was too anxious and too sad to think more of
+ceremony and politeness, so Evelyn stayed.
+
+A momentary pang shot across Evelyn's breast when all was settled; but
+she suppressed the sigh which accompanied the thought that she had lost
+the only opportunity she might have for weeks of seeing Maltravers.  To
+that chance she had indeed looked forward with interest and timid
+pleasure.  The chance was lost; but why should it vex her,--what was he
+to her?
+
+Caroline's heart smote her, as she came into the room in her lilac bonnet
+and new dress; and little Sophy, turning on her eyes which, though
+languid, still expressed a child's pleasure at the sight of finery,
+exclaimed, "How nice and pretty you look, Carry!  Do take Evy with
+you,--Evy looks pretty too!"
+
+Caroline kissed the child in silence, and paused irresolute; glanced at
+her dress, and then at Evelyn, who smiled on her without a thought of
+envy; and she had half a mind to stay too, when her mother entered with a
+letter from Lord Vargrave.  It was short: he should be at the Knaresdean
+races, hoped to meet them there, and accompany them home.  This
+information re-decided Caroline, while it rewarded Evelyn.  In a few
+minutes more, Mrs. Hare arrived; and Caroline, glad to escape, perhaps,
+her own compunction, hurried into the carriage, with a hasty "God bless
+you all!  Don't fret--I'm sure she will be well to-morrow; and mind,
+Evelyn, you don't catch the fever!"  Mr. Merton looked grave and sighed,
+as he handed her into the carriage; but when, seated there, she turned
+round and kissed her hand at him, she looked so handsome and
+distinguished, that a sentiment of paternal pride smoothed down his
+vexation at her want of feeling.  He himself gave up the visit; but a
+little time after, when Sophy fell into a tranquil sleep, he thought he
+might venture to canter across the country to the race-ground, and return
+to dinner.
+
+
+
+Days--nay, a whole week passed, the races were over, but Caroline had not
+returned.  Meanwhile, Sophy's fever left her; she could quit her bed, her
+room; she could come downstairs now, and the family was happy.  It is
+astonishing how the least ailment in those little things stops the wheels
+of domestic life!  Evelyn fortunately had not caught the fever: she was
+pale, and somewhat reduced by fatigue and confinement; but she was amply
+repaid by the mother's swimming look of quiet gratitude, the father's
+pressure of the hand, Sophy's recovery, and her own good heart.  They had
+heard twice from Caroline, putting off her return: Lady Raby was so kind,
+she could not get away till the party broke up; she was so glad to hear
+such an account of Sophy.
+
+Lord Vargrave had not yet arrived at the rectory to stay; but he had
+twice ridden over, and remained there some hours.  He exerted himself to
+the utmost to please Evelyn; and she--who, deceived by his manners, and
+influenced by the recollections of long and familiar acquaintance, was
+blinded to his real character--reproached herself more bitterly than ever
+for her repugnance to his suit and her ungrateful hesitation to obey the
+wishes of her stepfather.
+
+To the Mertons, Lumley spoke with good-natured praise of Caroline; she
+was so much admired; she was the beauty at Knaresdean.  A certain young
+friend of his, Lord Doltimore, was evidently smitten.  The parents
+thought much over the ideas conjured up by that last sentence.
+
+One morning, the garrulous Mrs. Hare, the gossip of the neighbourhood,
+called at the rectory; she had returned, two days before, from
+Knaresdean; and she, too, had her tale to tell of Caroline's conquests.
+
+"I assure you, my dear Mrs. Merton, if we had not all known that his
+heart was pre-occupied, we should have thought that Lord Vargrave was her
+warmest admirer.  Most charming man, Lord Vargrave! but as for Lord
+Doltimore, it was quite a flirtation.  Excuse _me_: no scandal, you know,
+ha, ha! a fine young man, but stiff and reserved,--not the fascination of
+Lord Vargrave."
+
+"Does Lord Raby return to town, or is he now at Knaresdean for the
+autumn?"
+
+"He goes on Friday, I believe: very few of the guests are left now.  Lady
+A. and Lord B., and Lord Vargrave and your daughter, and Mr. Legard and
+Lord Doltimore, and Mrs. and the Misses Cipher; all the rest went the
+same day I did."
+
+"Indeed!" said Mrs. Merton, in some surprise.
+
+"Ah, I read your thoughts: you wonder that Miss Caroline has not come
+back,--is not that it?  But perhaps Lord Doltimore--ha, ha!--no scandal
+now--do excuse _me_!"
+
+"Was Mr. Maltravers at Knaresdean?" asked Mrs. Merton, anxious to change
+the subject, and unprepared with any other question.  Evelyn was cutting
+out a paper horse for Sophy, who--all her high spirits flown--was lying
+on the sofa, and wistfully following her fairy fingers.  "Naughty Evy,
+you have cut off the horse's head!"
+
+"Mr. Maltravers?  No, I think not; no, he was not there.  Lord Raby asked
+him pointedly to come, and was, I know, much disappointed that he did
+not.  But _a propos_ of Mr. Maltravers: I met him not a quarter of an
+hour ago, this morning, as I was coming to you.  You know we have leave
+to come through his park, and as I was in the park at the time, I stopped
+the carriage to speak to him.  I told him that I was coming here, and
+that you had had the scarlet fever in the house, which was the reason you
+had not gone to the races; and he turned quite pale, and seemed so
+alarmed.  I said we were all afraid that Miss Cameron should catch it;
+and, excuse me--ah, ah!--no scandal, I hope--but--"
+
+"Mr. Maltravers," said the butler, throwing open the door.  Maltravers
+entered with a quick and even a hurried step.  He stopped short when he
+saw Evelyn; and his whole countenance was instantly lightened up by a
+joyous expression, which as suddenly died away.
+
+"This is kind, indeed," said Mrs. Merton; "it is so long since we have
+seen you."
+
+"I have been very much occupied," muttered Maltravers, almost inaudibly,
+and seated himself next Evelyn.  "I only just heard--that--that you had
+sickness in the house.  Miss Cameron, you look pale--you--you have not
+suffered, I hope?"
+
+"No, I am quite well," said Evelyn, with a smile; and she felt happy that
+her friend was kind to her once more.
+
+"It's only me, Mr. Ernest," said Sophy; "you have forgot me."
+
+Maltravers hastened to vindicate himself from the charge, and Sophy and
+he were soon made excellent friends again.  Mrs. Hare, whom surprise at
+this sudden meeting had hitherto silenced, and who longed to shape into
+elegant periphrasis the common adage, "Talk of," etc., now once more
+opened her budget.  She tattled on, first to one, then to the other, then
+to all, till she had tattled herself out of breath; and then the orthodox
+half-hour was expired, and the bell was rung, and the carriage ordered,
+and Mrs. Hare rose to depart.
+
+"Do just come to the door, Mrs. Merton," said she, "and look at my
+pony-phaeton, it is so pretty; Lady Raby admires it so much; you ought to
+have just such another."  As she spoke, she favoured Mrs. Merton with a
+significant glance, that said, as plainly as glance could say, "I have
+something to communicate."  Mrs. Merton took the hint, and followed the
+good lady out of the room.
+
+"Do you know, my dear Mrs. Merton," said Mrs. Hare, in a whisper, when
+they were safe in the billiard-room, that interposed between the
+apartment they had left and the hall; "do you know whether Lord Vargrave
+and Mr. Maltravers are very good friends?"
+
+"No, indeed; why do you ask?"
+
+"Oh, because when I was speaking to Lord Vargrave about him, he shook his
+head; and really I don't remember what his lordship said, but he seemed
+to speak as if there was a little soreness.  And then he inquired very
+anxiously if Mr. Maltravers was much at the rectory; and looked
+discomposed when he found you were such near neighbours.  You'll excuse
+me, you know--ha, ha! but we're such old friends!--and if Lord Vargrave
+is coming to stay here, it might be unpleasant to meet--you'll excuse
+_me_.  I took the liberty to tell him he need not be jealous of Mr.
+Maltravers--ha, ha!--not a marrying man at all.  But I did think Miss
+Caroline was the attraction--you'll excuse me--no scandal--ha, ha!  But,
+after all, Lord Doltimore must be the man.  Well, good morning, I thought
+I'd just give you this hint.  Is not the phaeton pretty?  Kind
+compliments to Mr. Merton."
+
+And the lady drove off.
+
+During this confabulation, Maltravers and Evelyn were left alone with
+Sophy.  Maltravers had continued to lean over the child, and appeared
+listening to her prattle; while Evelyn, having risen to shake hands with
+Mrs. Hare, did not reseat herself, but went to the window, and busied
+herself with a flower-stand in the recess.
+
+"Oh, very fine, Mr. Ernest," said Sophy (always pronouncing that proper
+name as if it ended in _th_), "you care very much for us to stay away so
+long,--don't he, Evy?  I've a great mind not to speak to you, sir, that I
+have!"
+
+"That would be too heavy a punishment, Miss Sophy, only, luckily, it
+would punish yourself; you could not live without talking--talk--talk
+--talk!"
+
+"But I might never have talked more, Mr. Ernest, if Mamma and pretty Evy
+had not been so kind to me;" and the child shook her head mournfully, as
+if she had _pitie de soi-meme_.  "But you won't stay away so long again,
+will you?  Sophy play to-morrow; come to-morrow, and swing Sophy; no nice
+swinging since you've been gone."
+
+While Sophy spoke Evelyn turned half round, as if to hear Maltravers
+answer; he hesitated, and Evelyn spoke.
+
+"You must not tease Mr. Maltravers so; Mr. Maltravers has too much to do
+to come to us."
+
+Now this was a very pettish speech in Evelyn, and her cheek glowed while
+she spoke; but an arch, provoking smile was on her lips.
+
+"It can be a privation only to me, Miss Cameron," said Maltravers,
+rising, and attempting in vain to resist the impulse that drew him
+towards the window.  The reproach in her tone and words at once pained
+and delighted him; and then this scene, the suffering child, brought back
+to him his first interview with Evelyn herself.  He forgot, for the
+moment, the lapse of time, the new ties she had formed, his own
+resolutions.
+
+"That is a bad compliment to us," answered Evelyn, ingenuously; "do you
+think we are so little worthy your society as not to value it?  But,
+perhaps" (she added, sinking her voice) "perhaps you have been
+offended--perhaps I--I--said--something that--that hurt you!"
+
+"You!" repeated Maltravers, with emotion.
+
+Sophy, who had been attentively listening, here put in, "Shake hands and
+make it up with Evy--you've been quarrelling, naughty Ernest!"
+
+Evelyn laughed, and tossed back her sunny ringlets.  "I think Sophy is
+right," said she, with enchanting simplicity; "let us make it up," and
+she held out her hand to Maltravers.
+
+Maltravers pressed the fair hand to his lips.  "Alas!" said he, affected
+with various feelings which gave a tremor to his deep voice, "your only
+fault is that your society makes me discontented with my solitary home;
+and as solitude must be my fate in life, I seek to inure myself to it
+betimes."
+
+Here--whether opportunely or not, it is for the reader to decide--Mrs.
+Merton returned to the room.
+
+She apologized for her absence, talked of Mrs. Hare and the little Master
+Hares,--fine boys, but noisy; and then she asked Maltravers if he had
+seen Lord Vargrave since his lordship had been in the county.  Maltravers
+replied, with coldness, that he had not had that honour: that Vargrave
+had called on him in his way from the rectory the other day, but that he
+was from home, and that he had not seen him for some years.
+
+"He is a person of most prepossessing manners," said Mrs. Merton.
+
+"Certainly,--most prepossessing."
+
+"And very clever."
+
+"He has great talents."
+
+"He seems most amiable."
+
+Maltravers bowed, and glanced towards Evelyn, whose face, however, was
+turned from him.
+
+The turn the conversation had taken was painful to the visitor, and he
+rose to depart.
+
+"Perhaps," said Mrs. Merton, "you will meet Lord Vargrave at dinner
+to-morrow; he will stay with us a few days,--as long as he can be
+spared."
+
+Maltravers meet Lord Vargrave! the happy Vargrave, the betrothed to
+Evelyn!  Maltravers witness the familiar rights, the enchanting
+privileges, accorded to another! and that other one whom he could not
+believe worthy of Evelyn!  He writhed at the picture the invitation
+conjured up.
+
+"You are very kind, my dear Mrs. Merton, but I expect a visitor at
+Burleigh,--an old and dear friend, Mr. Cleveland."
+
+"Mr. Cleveland!--we shall be delighted to see him too.  We knew him many
+years ago, during your minority, when he used to visit Burleigh two or
+three times a year."
+
+"He is changed since then; he is often an invalid.  I fear I cannot
+answer for him; but he will call as soon as he arrives, and apologize for
+himself."
+
+Maltravers then hastily took his departure.  He would not trust himself
+to do more than bow distantly to Evelyn; she looked at him reproachfully.
+So, then, it was really premeditated and resolved upon--his absence from
+the rectory; and why?  She was grieved, she was offended--but more
+grieved than offended,--perhaps because esteem, interest, admiration, are
+more tolerant and charitable than love.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+  _Arethusa_.  'Tis well, my lord, your courting of ladies.
+
+    .  .  .  .  .  .
+
+  _Claremont_.  Sure this lady has a good turn done her against
+   her will.
+
+  PHILASTER.
+
+In the breakfast-room at Knaresdean, the same day, and almost at the same
+hour, in which occurred the scene and conversation at the rectory
+recorded in our last chapter, sat Lord Vargrave and Caroline alone.  The
+party had dispersed, as was usual, at noon.  They heard at a distance the
+sounds of the billiard-balls.  Lord Doltimore was playing with Colonel
+Legard, one of the best players in Europe, but who, fortunately for
+Doltimore, had of late made it a rule never to play for money.  Mrs. and
+the Misses Cipher, and most of the guests, were in the billiard-room
+looking on.  Lady Raby was writing letters, and Lord Raby riding over his
+home farm.  Caroline and Lumley had been for some time in close and
+earnest conversation.  Miss Merton was seated in a large armchair, much
+moved, with her handkerchief to her eyes.  Lord Vargrave, with his back
+to the chimney-piece, was bending down and speaking in a very low voice,
+while his quick eye glanced, ever and anon, from the lady's countenance
+to the windows, to the doors, to be prepared against any interruption.
+
+"No, my dear friend," said he, "believe me that I am sincere.  My
+feelings for you are, indeed, such as no words can paint."
+
+"Then why--"
+
+"Why wish you wedded to another; why wed another myself?  Caroline, I
+have often before explained to you that we are in this the victims of an
+inevitable fate.  It is absolutely necessary that I should wed Miss
+Cameron.  I never deceived you from the first.  I should have loved
+her,--my heart would have accompanied my hand, but for your too seductive
+beauty, your superior mind!--yes, Caroline, your mind attracted me more
+than your beauty.  Your mind seemed kindred to my own,--inspired with the
+proper and wise ambition which regards the fools of the world as puppets,
+as counters, as chessmen.  For myself, a very angel from heaven could not
+make me give up the great game of life, yield to my enemies, slip from
+the ladder, unravel the web I have woven!  Share my heart, my friendship,
+my schemes! this is the true and dignified affection that should exist
+between minds like ours; all the rest is the prejudice of children."
+
+"Vargrave, I am ambitious, worldly: I own it; but I could give up all for
+you!"
+
+"You think so, for you do not know the sacrifice.  You see me now
+apparently rich, in power, courted; and this fate you are willing to
+share; and this fate you _should_ share, were it the real one I could
+bestow on you.  But reverse the medal.  Deprived of office, fortune gone,
+debts pressing, destitution notorious, the ridicule of embarrassments,
+the disrepute attached to poverty and defeated ambition, an exile in some
+foreign town on the poor pension to which alone I should be entitled, a
+mendicant on the public purse; and that, too, so eaten into by demands
+and debts, that there is not a grocer in the next market-town who would
+envy the income of the retired minister!  Retire, fallen, despised, in
+the prime of life, in the zenith of my hopes!  Suppose that I could bear
+this for myself, could I bear it for you?  _You_, born to be the ornament
+of courts!  And you could you see me thus--life embittered, career
+lost--and feel, generous as you are, that your love had entailed on me,
+on us both, on our children, this miserable lot! Impossible, Caroline! we
+are too wise for such romance.  It is not because we love too little, but
+because our love is worthy of each other, that we disdain to make love a
+curse!  We cannot wrestle against the world, but we may shake hands with
+it, and worm the miser out of its treasures.  My heart must be ever
+yours; my hand must be Miss Cameron's.  Money I must have,--my whole
+career depends on it.  It is literally with me the highwayman's
+choice,--money or life."  Vargrave paused, and took Caroline's hand.
+
+"I cannot reason with you," said she; "you know the strange empire you
+have obtained over me, and, certainly, in spite of all that has passed
+(and Caroline turned pale) I could bear anything rather than that you
+should hereafter reproach me for selfish disregard of your
+interests,--your just ambition."
+
+"My noble friend!  I do not say that I shall not feel a deep and sharp
+pang at seeing you wed another; but I shall be consoled by the thought
+that I have assisted to procure for you a station worthier of your merits
+than that which I can offer.  Lord Doltimore is rich,--you will teach him
+to employ his riches well; he is weak,--your intellect will govern him;
+he is in love,--your beauty will suffice to preserve his regard.  Ah, we
+shall be dear friends to the last!"
+
+More--but to the same effect--did this able and crafty villain continue
+to address to Caroline, whom he alternately soothed, irritated,
+flattered, and revolted.  Love him she certainly did, as far as love in
+her could extend; but perhaps his rank, his reputation, had served to win
+her affection; and; not knowing his embarrassments, she had encouraged a
+worldly hope that if Evelyn should reject his hand it might be offered to
+her.  Under this impression she had trifled, she had coquetted, she had
+played with the serpent till it had coiled around her; and she could not
+escape its fascination and its folds.  She was sincere,--she could have
+resigned much for Lord Vargrave; but his picture startled and appalled
+her.  For difficulties in a palace she might be prepared; perhaps even
+for some privations in a _cottage ornee_,--but certainly not for penury
+in a lodging-house!  She listened by degrees with more attention to
+Vargrave's description of the power and homage that would be hers if she
+could secure Lord Doltimore; she listened, and was in part consoled.  But
+the thought of Evelyn again crossed her; and perhaps with natural
+jealousy was mingled some compunction at the fate to which Lord Vargrave
+thus coldly appeared to condemn one so lovely and so innocent.
+
+"But do not, Vargrave," she said, "do not be too sanguine; Evelyn may
+reject you.  She does not see you with my eyes; it is only a sense of
+honour that, as yet, forbids her openly to refuse the fulfilment of an
+engagement from which I know that she shrinks; and if she does refuse,
+and you be free,--and I another's--"
+
+"Even in that case," interrupted Vargrave, "I must turn to the Golden
+Idol; my rank and name must buy me an heiress, if not so endowed as
+Evelyn, wealthy enough, at least, to take from my wheels the drag-chain
+of disreputable debt.  But Evelyn--I will not doubt of her! her heart is
+still unoccupied!"
+
+"True; as yet her affections are not engaged."
+
+"And this Maltravers--she is romantic, I fancy--did he seem captivated by
+her beauty or her fortune?"
+
+"No, indeed, I think not; he has been very little with us of late.  He
+talked to her more as to a child,--there is a disparity of years."
+
+"I am many years older than Maltravers," muttered Vargrave, moodily.
+
+"You--but your _manner_ is livelier, and, therefore, younger!"
+
+"Fair flatterer!  Maltravers does not love me: I fear his report of my
+character--"
+
+"I never heard him speak of you, Vargrave; and I will do Evelyn the
+justice to say, that precisely as she does not love she esteems and
+respects you."
+
+"Esteems! respects! these are the feelings for a prudent Hymen," said
+Vargrave, with a smile.  "But, hark! I don't hear the billiard-balls;
+they may find us here,--we had better separate."
+
+
+
+Lord Vargrave lounged into the billiard-room.  The young men had just
+finished playing, and were about to visit Thunderer, who had won the
+race, and was now the property of Lord Doltimore.
+
+Vargrave accompanied them to the stables; and after concealing his
+ignorance of horseflesh as well as he could, beneath a profusion of
+compliments on fore-hand, hind-quarters, breeding, bone, substance, and
+famous points, he contrived to draw Doltimore into the courtyard, while
+Colonel Legard remained in converse high with the head groom.
+
+"Doltimore, I leave Knaresdean to-morrow; you go to London, I suppose?
+Will you take a little packet for me to the Home Office?"
+
+"Certainly, when I go; but I think of staying a few days with Legard's
+uncle--the old admiral; he has a hunting-box in the neighbourhood, and
+has asked us both over."
+
+"Oh, I can detect the attraction; but certainly it is a fair one, the
+handsomest girl in the county; pity she has no money."
+
+"I don't care for money," said Lord Doltimore, colouring, and settling
+his chin in his neckcloth; "but you are mistaken; I have no thoughts that
+way.  Miss Merton is a very fine girl, but I doubt much if she cares for
+me.  I would never marry any woman who was not very much in love with
+me."  And Lord Doltimore laughed rather foolishly.
+
+"You are more modest than clear-sighted," said Vargrave, smiling; "but
+mark my words,--I predict that the beauty of next season will be a
+certain Caroline Lady Doltimore."
+
+The conversation dropped.
+
+
+
+"I think that will be settled well," said Vargrave to himself, as he was
+dressing for dinner.  "Caroline will manage Doltimore, and I shall manage
+one vote in the Lords and three in the Commons.  I have already talked
+him into proper politics; a trifle all this, to be sure: but I had
+nothing else to amuse me, and one must never lose an occasion.  Besides,
+Doltimore is rich, and rich friends are always useful.  I have Caroline,
+too, in my power, and she may be of service with respect to this Evelyn,
+who, instead of loving, I half hate: she has crossed my path, robbed me
+of wealth; and now, if she does refuse me--but no, I will not think of
+_that_!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+  OUT of our reach the gods have laid
+    Of time to come the event;
+  And laugh to see the fools afraid
+    Of what the knaves invent.--SEDLEY, _from Lycophron_.
+
+THE next day Caroline returned to the rectory in Lady Raby's carriage;
+and two hours after her arrival came Lord Vargrave.  Mr. Merton had
+secured the principal persons in the neighbourhood to meet a guest so
+distinguished, and Lord Vargrave, bent on shining in the eyes of Evelyn,
+charmed all with his affability and wit.  Evelyn, he thought, seemed pale
+and dispirited.  He pertinaciously devoted himself to her all the
+evening.  Her ripening understanding was better able than heretofore to
+appreciate his abilities; yet, inwardly, she drew comparisons between his
+conversation and that of Maltravers, not to the advantage of the former.
+There was much that amused but nothing that interested in Lord Vargrave's
+fluent ease.  When he attempted sentiment, the vein was hard and hollow;
+he was only at home on worldly topics.  Caroline's spirits were, as usual
+in society, high, but her laugh seemed forced, and her eye absent.
+
+The next day, after breakfast, Lord Vargrave walked alone to Burleigh.
+As he crossed the copse that bordered the park, a large Persian greyhound
+sprang towards him, barking loudly; and, lifting his eyes, he perceived
+the form of a man walking slowly along one of the paths that intersected
+the wood.  He recognized Maltravers.  They had not till then encountered
+since their meeting a few weeks before Florence's death; and a pang of
+conscience came across the schemer's cold heart.  Years rolled away from
+the past; he recalled the young, generous, ardent man, whom, ere the
+character or career of either had been developed, he had called his
+friend.  He remembered their wild adventures and gay follies, in climes
+where they had been all in all to each other; and the beardless boy,
+whose heart and purse were ever open to him, and to whose very errors of
+youth and inexperienced passion he, the elder and the wiser, had led and
+tempted, rose before him in contrast to the grave and melancholy air of
+the battled and solitary man, who now slowly approached him,--the man
+whose proud career he had served to thwart, whose heart his schemes had
+prematurely soured, whose best years had been consumed in exile,--a
+sacrifice to the grave which a selfish and dishonourable villany had
+prepared!  Cesarini, the inmate of a mad-house, Florence in her
+shroud,--such were the visions the sight of Maltravers conjured up.  And
+to the soul which the unwonted and momentary remorse awakened, a boding
+voice whispered, "And thinkest thou that thy schemes shall prosper, and
+thy aspirations succeed?"  For the first time in his life, perhaps, the
+unimaginative Vargrave felt the mystery of a presentiment of warning and
+of evil.
+
+The two men met, and with an emotion which seemed that of honest and real
+feeling, Lumley silently held out his hand, and half turned away his
+head.
+
+"Lord Vargrave!" said Maltravers, with an equal agitation, "it is long
+since we have encountered."
+
+"Long,--very long," answered Lumley, striving hard to regain his
+self-possession; "years have changed us both; but I trust it has still
+left in you, as it has in me, the remembrance of our old friendship."
+
+Maltravers was silent, and Lord Vargrave continued,--
+
+"You do not answer me, Maltravers.  Can political differences, opposite
+pursuits, or the mere lapse of time, have sufficed to create an
+irrevocable gulf between us?  Why may we not be friends again?"
+
+"Friends!" echoed Maltravers; "at our age that word is not so lightly
+spoken, that tie is not so unthinkingly formed, as when we were younger
+men."
+
+"But may not the old tie be renewed?"
+
+"Our ways in life are different; and were I to scan your motives and
+career with the scrutinizing eyes of friendship, it might only serve to
+separate us yet more.  I am sick of the great juggle of ambition, and I
+have no sympathy left for those who creep into the pint-bottle, or
+swallow the naked sword."
+
+"If you despise the exhibition, why, then, let us laugh at it together,
+for I am as cynical as yourself."
+
+"Ah," said Maltravers with a smile, half mournful, half bitter, "but are
+you not one of the Impostors?"
+
+"Who ought better to judge of the Eleusiniana than one of the Initiated?
+But seriously, why on earth should political differences part private
+friendship?  Thank Heaven! such has never been my maxim."
+
+"If the differences be the result of honest convictions on either
+side,--no; but are you honest, Lumley?"
+
+"Faith, I have got into the habit of thinking so; and habit's a second
+nature.  However, I dare say we shall yet meet in the arena, so I must
+not betray my weak points.  How is it, Maltravers, that they see so
+little of you at the rectory?  You are a great favourite there.  Have you
+any living that Charley Merton could hold with his own?  You shake your
+head.  And what think you of Miss Cameron, my intended?"
+
+"You speak lightly.  Perhaps you--"
+
+"Feel deeply,--you were going to say.  I do.  In the hand of my ward,
+Evelyn Cameron, I trust to obtain at once the domestic happiness to which
+I have as yet been a stranger, and the wealth necessary to my career."
+
+Lord Vargrave continued, after a short pause, "Though my avocations have
+separated us so much, I have no doubt of her steady affection,--and, I
+may add, of her sense of honour.  She alone can repair to me what else
+had been injustice in my uncle."  He then proceeded to repeat the moral
+obligations which the late lord had imposed on Evelyn,--obligations that
+he greatly magnified.  Maltravers listened attentively, and said little.
+
+"And these obligations being fairly considered," added Vargrave, with a
+smile, "I think, even had I rivals, that they could scarcely in honour
+attempt to break an existing engagement."
+
+"Not while the engagement lasted," answered Maltravers; "not till one or
+the other had declined to fulfil it, and therefore left both free: but I
+trust it will be an alliance in which all but affection will be
+forgotten; that of honour alone would be but a harsh tie."
+
+"Assuredly," said Vargrave; and, as if satisfied with what had passed, he
+turned the conversation,--praised Burleigh, spoke of county matters,
+resumed his habitual gayety, though it was somewhat subdued, and
+promising to call again soon, he at last took his leave.
+
+Maltravers pursued his solitary rambles, and his commune with himself was
+stern and searching.
+
+"And so," thought he, "this prize is reserved for Vargrave!  Why should I
+deem him unworthy of the treasure?  May he not be worthier, at all
+events, than this soured temper and erring heart?  And he is assured too
+of her affection!  Why this jealous pang?  Why can the fountain within
+never be exhausted?  Why, through so many scenes and sufferings, have I
+still retained the vain madness of my youth,--the haunting susceptibility
+to love?  This is my latest folly."
+
+
+
+BOOK IV.
+
+"A virtuous woman is man's greatest pride."--SIMONIDES.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+  ABROAD uneasy, nor content at home.
+    .  .  .  .  .  .
+  And Wisdom shows the ill without the cure.
+
+  HAMMOND: _Elegies_.
+
+TWO or three days after the interview between Lord Vargrave and
+Maltravers, the solitude of Burleigh was relieved by the arrival of Mr.
+Cleveland.  The good old gentleman, when free from attacks of the gout,
+which were now somewhat more frequent than formerly, was the same
+cheerful and intelligent person as ever.  Amiable, urbane, accomplished,
+and benevolent, there was just enough worldliness in Cleveland's nature
+to make his views sensible as far as they went, but to bound their scope.
+Everything he said was so rational; and yet, to an imaginative person,
+his conversation was unsatisfactory, and his philosophy somewhat
+chilling.
+
+"I cannot say how pleased and surprised I am at your care of the fine old
+place," said he to Maltravers, as, leaning on his cane and his
+_ci-devant_ pupil's arm, he loitered observantly through the grounds; "I
+see everywhere the presence of the Master."
+
+And certainly the praise was deserved.  The gardens were now in order,
+the dilapidated fences were repaired, the weeds no longer encumbered the
+walks.  Nature was just assisted and relieved by Art, without being
+oppressed by too officious a service from her handmaid.  In the house
+itself some suitable and appropriate repairs and decorations--with such
+articles of furniture as combined modern comfort with the ancient and
+picturesque shapes of a former fashion--had redeemed the mansion from all
+appearance of dreariness and neglect; while still was left to its quaint
+halls and chambers the character which belonged to their architecture and
+associations.  It was surprising how much a little exercise of simple
+taste had effected.
+
+"I am glad you approve what I have done," said Maltravers.  "I know not
+how it was, but the desolation of the place when I returned to it
+reproached me.  We contract friendship with places as with human beings,
+and fancy they have claims upon us; at least, that is my weakness."
+
+"And an amiable one it is, too,--I share it.  As for me, I look upon
+Temple Grove as a fond husband upon a fair wife.  I am always anxious to
+adorn it, and as proud of its beauty as if it could understand and thank
+me for my partial admiration.  When I leave you I intend going to Paris,
+for the purpose of attending a sale of the pictures and effects of M. de
+-----. These auctions are to me what a jeweller's shop is to a lover; but
+then, Ernest, I am an old bachelor."
+
+"And I, too, am an Arcadian," said Maltravers, with a smile.
+
+"Ah, but you are not too old for repentance.  Burleigh now requires
+nothing but a mistress."
+
+"Perhaps it may soon receive that addition.  I am yet undecided whether I
+shall sell it."
+
+"Sell it! sell Burleigh!--the last memorial of your mother's ancestry!
+the classic retreat of the graceful Digbys!  Sell Burleigh!"
+
+"I had almost resolved to do so when I came hither; then I forswore the
+intention: now again I sometimes sorrowfully return to the idea."
+
+"And in Heaven's name, why?"
+
+"My old restlessness returns.  Busy myself as I will here, I find the
+range of action monotonous and confined.  I began too soon to draw around
+me the large circumference of literature and action; and the small
+provincial sphere seems to me a sad going back in life.  Perhaps I should
+not feel this, were my home less lonely; but as it is--no, the wanderer's
+ban is on me, and I again turn towards the lands of excitement and
+adventure."
+
+"I understand this, Ernest; but why is your home so solitary?  You are
+still at the age in which wise and congenial unions are the most
+frequently formed; your temper is domestic; your easy fortune and sobered
+ambition allow you to choose without reference to worldly considerations.
+Look round the world, and mix with the world again, and give Burleigh the
+mistress it requires."
+
+Maltravers shook his head, and sighed.
+
+"I do not say," continued Cleveland, wrapped in the glowing interest of
+the theme, "that you should marry a mere girl, but an amiable woman, who,
+like yourself, has seen something of life, and knows how to reckon on its
+cares, and to be contented with its enjoyments."
+
+"You have said enough," said Maltravers, impatiently; "an experienced
+woman of the world, whose freshness of hope and heart is gone!  What a
+picture!  No, to me there is something inexpressibly beautiful in
+innocence and youth.  But you say justly,--my years are not those that
+would make a union with youth desirable or well suited."
+
+"I do _not_ say that," said Cleveland, taking a pinch of snuff; "but you
+should avoid great disparity of age,--not for the sake of that disparity
+itself, but because with it is involved discord of temper, pursuits.  A
+_very_ young woman, new to the world, will not be contented with home
+alone; you are at once too gentle to curb her wishes, and a little too
+stern and reserved--pardon me for saying so--to be quite congenial to
+very early and sanguine youth."
+
+"It is true," said Maltravers, with a tone of voice that showed he was
+struck with the remark; "but how have we fallen on this subject? let us
+change it.  I have no idea of marriage,--the gloomy reminiscence of
+Florence Lascelles chains me to the past."
+
+"Poor Florence, she might once have suited you; but now you are older,
+and would require a calmer and more malleable temper."
+
+"Peace, I implore you!"
+
+The conversation was changed; and at noon Mr. Merton, who had heard of
+Cleveland's arrival, called at Burleigh to renew an old acquaintance.  He
+invited them to pass the evening at the rectory; and Cleveland, hearing
+that whist was a regular amusement, accepted the invitation for his host
+and himself.  But when the evening came, Maltravers pleaded
+indisposition, and Cleveland was obliged to go alone.
+
+When the old gentleman returned about midnight, he found Maltravers
+awaiting him in the library; and Cleveland, having won fourteen points,
+was in a very gay, conversable humour.
+
+"You perverse hermit!" said he, "talk of solitude, indeed, with so
+pleasant a family a hundred yards distant!  You deserve to be
+solitary,--I have no patience with you.  They complain bitterly of your
+desertion, and say you were, at first, the _enfant de la maison_."
+
+"So you like the Mertons?  The clergyman is sensible, but commonplace."
+
+"A very agreeable man, despite your cynical definition, and plays a very
+fair rubber.  But Vargrave is a first-rate player."
+
+"Vargrave is there still?"
+
+"Yes, he breakfasts with us to-morrow,--he invited himself."
+
+"Humph!"
+
+"He played one rubber; the rest of the evening he devoted himself to the
+prettiest girl I ever saw,--Miss Cameron.  What a sweet face! so modest,
+yet so intelligent!  I talked with her a good deal during the deals in
+which I cut out.  I almost lost my heart to her."
+
+"So Lord Vargrave devoted himself to Miss Cameron?"
+
+"To be sure,--you know they are to be married soon.  Merton told me so.
+She is very rich.  He is the luckiest fellow imaginable, that Vargrave!
+But he is much too old for her: she seems to think so too.  I can't
+explain why I think it; but by her pretty reserved manner I saw that she
+tried to keep the gay minister at a distance: but it would not do.  Now,
+if you were ten years younger, or Miss Cameron ten years older, you might
+have had some chance of cutting out your old friend."
+
+"So you think I also am too old for a lover?"
+
+"For a lover of a girl of seventeen, certainly.  You seem touchy on the
+score of age, Ernest."
+
+"Not I;" and Maltravers laughed.
+
+"No?  There was a young gentleman present, who, I think, Vargrave might
+really find a dangerous rival,--a Colonel Legard,--one of the handsomest
+men I ever saw in my life; just the style to turn a romantic young lady's
+head; a mixture of the wild and the thoroughbred; black curls, superb
+eyes, and the softest manners in the world.  But, to be sure, he has
+lived all his life in the best society.  Not so his friend, Lord
+Doltimore, who has a little too much of the green-room lounge and French
+_cafe_ manner for my taste."
+
+"Doltimore, Legard, names new to me; I never met them at the rectory."
+
+"Possibly they are staying at Admiral Legard's, in the neighbourhood.
+Miss Merton made their acquaintance at Knaresdean.  A good old lady--the
+most perfect Mrs. Grundy one would wish to meet with--who owns the
+monosyllabic appellation of Hare (and who, being my partner, trumped my
+king!) assured me that Lord Doltimore was desperately in love with
+Caroline Merton.  By the way, now, there is a young lady of a proper age
+for you,--handsome and clever, too."
+
+"You talk of antidotes to matrimony; and so Miss Cameron--"
+
+"Oh, no more of Miss Cameron now, or I shall sit up all night; she has
+half turned my head.  I can't help pitying her,--married to one so
+careless and worldly as Lord Vargrave, thrown so young into the whirl of
+London.  Poor thing! she had better have fallen in love with
+Legard,--which I dare say she will do, after all.  Well, good-night!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+  PASSION, as frequently is seen,
+  Subsiding, settles into spleen;
+  Hence, as the plague of happy life,
+  I ran away from party strife.--MATTHEW GREEN.
+
+  Here nymphs from hollow oaks relate
+  The dark decrees and will of fate.--_Ibid._
+
+ACCORDING to his engagement, Vargrave breakfasted the next morning at
+Burleigh.  Maltravers at first struggled to return his familiar
+cordiality with equal graciousness.  Condemning himself for former and
+unfounded suspicions, he wrestled against feelings which he could not or
+would not analyze, but which made Lumley an unwelcome visitor, and
+connected him with painful associations, whether of the present or the
+past.  But there were points on which the penetration of Maltravers
+served to justify his prepossessions.
+
+The conversation, chiefly sustained by Cleveland and Vargrave, fell on
+public questions; and as one was opposed to the other, Vargrave's
+exposition of views and motives had in them so much of the self-seeking
+of the professional placeman, that they might well have offended any man
+tinged by the lofty mania of political Quixotism.  It was with a strange
+mixture of feelings that Maltravers listened: at one moment he proudly
+congratulated himself on having quitted a career where such opinions
+seemed so well to prosper: at another, his better and juster sentiments
+awoke the long-dormant combative faculty, and he almost longed for the
+turbulent but sublime arena, in which truths are vindicated and mankind
+advanced.
+
+The interview did not serve for that renewal of intimacy which Vargrave
+appeared to seek, and Maltravers rejoiced when the placeman took his
+departure.
+
+Lumley, who was about to pay a morning visit to Lord Doltimore, had
+borrowed Mr. Merton's stanhope, as being better adapted than any
+statelier vehicle to get rapidly through the cross-roads which led to
+Admiral Legard's house; and as he settled himself in the seat, with his
+servant by his side, he said laughingly, "I almost fancy myself naughty
+master Lumley again in this young-man-kind of two-wheeled cockle-boat:
+not dignified, but rapid, eh?"
+
+And Lumley's face, as he spoke, had in it so much of frank gayety, and
+his manner was so simple, that Maltravers could with difficulty fancy him
+the same man who, five minutes before, had been uttering sentiments that
+might have become the oldest-hearted intriguer whom the hot-bed of
+ambition ever reared.
+
+As soon as Lumley was gone, Maltravers left Cleveland alone to write
+letters (Cleveland was an exemplary and voluminous correspondent) and
+strolled with his dogs into the village.  The effect which the presence
+of Maltravers produced among his peasantry was one that seldom failed to
+refresh and soothe his more bitter and disturbed thoughts.  They had
+gradually (for the poor are quick-sighted) become sensible of his
+_justice_,--a finer quality than many that seem more amiable.  They felt
+that his real object was to make them better and happier; and they had
+learned to see that the means he adopted generally advanced the end.
+Besides, if sometimes stern, he was never capricious or unreasonable; and
+then, too, he would listen patiently and advise kindly.  They were a
+little in awe of him, but the awe only served to make them more
+industrious and orderly,--to stimulate the idle man, to reclaim the
+drunkard.  He was one of the favourers of the small-allotment
+system,--not, indeed, as panacea, but as one excellent stimulant to
+exertion and independence; and his chosen rewards for good conduct were
+in such comforts as served to awaken amongst those hitherto passive,
+dogged, and hopeless a desire to better and improve their condition.
+Somehow or other, without direct alms, the goodwife found that the little
+savings in the cracked teapot or the old stocking had greatly increased
+since the squire's return, while her husband came home from his moderate
+cups at the alehouse more sober and in better temper.  Having already
+saved something was a great reason why he should save more.  The new
+school, too, was so much better conducted than the old one; the children
+actually liked going there; and now and then there were little village
+feasts connected with the schoolroom; play and work were joint
+associations.
+
+And Maltravers looked into his cottages, and looked at the
+allotment-ground; and it was pleasant to him to say to himself, "I am not
+altogether without use in life."  But as he pursued his lonely walk, and
+the glow of self-approval died away with the scenes that called it forth,
+the cloud again settled on his brow; and again he felt that in solitude
+the passions feed upon the heart.  As he thus walked along the green
+lane, and the insect life of summer rustled audibly among the shadowy
+hedges and along the thick grass that sprang up on either side, he came
+suddenly upon a little group that arrested all his attention.
+
+It was a woman, clad in rags, bleeding, and seemingly insensible,
+supported by the overseer of the parish and a labourer.
+
+"What is the matter?" asked Maltravers.
+
+"A poor woman has been knocked down and run over by a gentleman in a gig,
+your honour," replied the overseer.  "He stopped, half an hour ago, at my
+house to tell me that she was lying on the road; and he has given me two
+sovereigns for her, your honour.  But, poor cretur! she was too heavy for
+me to carry her, and I was forced to leave her and call Tom to help me."
+
+"The gentleman might have stayed to see what were the consequences of his
+own act," muttered Maltravers, as he examined the wound in the temple,
+whence the blood flowed copiously.
+
+"He said he was in a great hurry, your honour," said the village
+official, overhearing Maltravers.  "I think it was one of the grand folks
+up at the parsonage; for I know it was Mr. Merton's bay horse,--he is a
+hot 'un!"
+
+"Does the poor woman live in the neighbourhood?  Do you know her?" asked
+Maltravers, turning from the contemplation of this new instance of
+Vargrave's selfishness of character.
+
+"No; the old body seems quite a stranger here,--a tramper, or beggar, I
+think, sir.  But it won't be a settlement if we take her in; and we can
+carry her to the Chequers, up the village, your honour."
+
+"What is the nearest house,--your own?"
+
+"Yes; but we be so busy now!"
+
+"She shall not go to your house, and be neglected; and as for the
+public-house, it is too noisy: we must move her to the Hall."
+
+"Your honour!" ejaculated the overseer, opening his eyes.
+
+"It is not very far; she is severely hurt.  Get a hurdle, lay a mattress
+on it.  Make haste, both of you; I will wait here till you return."
+
+The poor woman was carefully placed on the grass by the road-side, and
+Maltravers supported her head, while the men hastened to obey his orders.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+  ALSE from that forked hill, the boasted seat
+  Of studious Peace and mild Philosophy,
+  Indignant murmurs mote be heard to threat.--WEST.
+
+MR. CLEVELAND wanted to enrich one of his letters with a quotation from
+Ariosto, which he but imperfectly remembered.  He had seen the book he
+wished to refer to in the little study the day before; and he quitted the
+library to search for it.
+
+As he was tumbling over some volumes that lay piled on the writing-table,
+he felt a student's curiosity to discover what now constituted his host's
+favourite reading.  He was surprised to observe that the greater portion
+of the works that, by the doubled leaf and the pencilled reference,
+seemed most frequently consulted, were not of a literary nature,--they
+were chiefly scientific; and astronomy seemed the chosen science.  He
+then remembered that he had heard Maltravers speaking to a builder,
+employed on the recent repairs, on the subject of an observatory.  "This
+is very strange," thought Cleveland; "he gives up literature, the rewards
+of which are in his reach, and turns to science, at an age too late to
+discipline his mind to its austere training."
+
+Alas! Cleveland did not understand that there are times in life when
+imaginative minds seek to numb and to blunt imagination.  Still less did
+he feel that, when we perversely refuse to apply our active faculties to
+the catholic interests of the world, they turn morbidly into channels of
+research the least akin to their real genius.  By the collision of minds
+alone does each mind discover what is its proper product: left to
+ourselves, our talents become but intellectual eccentricities.
+
+Some scattered papers, in the handwriting of Maltravers, fell from one of
+the volumes.  Of these, a few were but algebraical calculations, or short
+scientific suggestions, the value of which Mr. Cleveland's studies did
+not enable him to ascertain; but in others they were wild snatches of
+mournful and impassioned verse, which showed that the old vein of poetry
+still flowed, though no longer to the daylight.  These verses Cleveland
+thought himself justified in glancing over; they seemed to portray a
+state of mind which deeply interested, and greatly saddened him.  They
+expressed, indeed, a firm determination to bear up against both the
+memory and the fear of ill; but mysterious and hinted allusions here and
+there served to denote some recent and yet existent struggle, revealed by
+the heart only to the genius.  In these partial and imperfect
+self-communings and confessions, there was the evidence of the pining
+affections, the wasted life, the desolate hearth of the lonely man.  Yet
+so calm was Maltravers himself, even to his early friend, that Cleveland
+knew not what to think of the reality of the feelings painted.  Had that
+fervid and romantic spirit been again awakened by a living object?  If
+so, where was the object found?  The dates affixed to the verses were
+most recent.  But whom had Maltravers seen?  Cleveland's thoughts turned
+to Caroline Merton, to Evelyn; but when he had spoken of both, nothing in
+the countenance, the manner, of Maltravers had betrayed emotion.  And
+once the heart of Maltravers had so readily betrayed itself!  Cleveland
+knew not how pride, years, and suffering school the features, and repress
+the outward signs of what pass within.  While thus engaged, the door of
+the study opened abruptly, and the servant announced Mr. Merton.
+
+"A thousand pardons," said the courteous rector.  "I fear we disturb you;
+but Admiral Legard and Lord Doltimore, who called on us this morning,
+were so anxious to see Burleigh, I thought I might take the liberty.  We
+have come over quite in a large party,--taken the place by storm.  Mr.
+Maltravers is out, I hear; but you will let us see the house.  My allies
+are already in the hall, examining the armour."
+
+Cleveland, ever sociable and urbane, answered suitably, and went with Mr.
+Merton into the hall, where Caroline, her little sisters, Evelyn, Lord
+Doltimore, Admiral Legard, and his nephew were assembled.
+
+"Very proud to be my host's representative and your guide," said
+Cleveland.  "Your visit, Lord Doltimore, is indeed an agreeable surprise.
+Lord Vargrave left us an hour or so since to call on you at Admiral
+Legard's: we buy our pleasure with his disappointment."
+
+"It is very unfortunate," said the admiral, a bluff, harsh-looking old
+gentleman; "but we were not aware, till we saw Mr. Merton, of the honour
+Lord Vargrave has done us.  I can't think how we missed him on the road."
+
+"My dear uncle," said Colonel Legard, in a peculiarly sweet and agreeable
+tone of voice, "you forget we came three miles round by the high road;
+and Mr. Merton says that Lord Vargrave took the short cut by Langley End.
+My uncle, Mr. Cleveland, never feels in safety upon land, unless the road
+is as wide as the British Channel, and the horses go before the wind at
+the rapid pace of two knots and a half an hour!"
+
+"I just wish I had you at sea, Mr. Jackanapes," said the admiral, looking
+grimly at his handsome nephew, while he shook his cane at him.
+
+The nephew smiled; and, falling back, conversed with Evelyn.
+
+The party were now shown over the house; and Lord Doltimore was loud in
+its praises.  It was like a chateau he had once hired in Normandy,--it
+had a French character; those old chairs were in excellent taste,--quite
+the style of Francis the First.
+
+"I know no man I respect more than Mr. Maltravers," quoth the admiral.
+"Since he has been amongst us this time, he has been a pattern to us
+country gentlemen.  He would make an excellent colleague for Sir John.
+We really must get him to stand against that young puppy who is member of
+the House of Commons only because his father is a peer, and never votes
+more than twice a session."
+
+Mr. Merton looked grave.
+
+"I wish to Heaven you could persuade him to stay amongst you," said
+Cleveland.  "He has half taken it into his head to part with Burleigh!"
+
+"Part with Burleigh!" exclaimed Evelyn, turning abruptly from the
+handsome colonel, in whose conversation she had hitherto seemed absorbed.
+
+"My very ejaculation when I heard him say so, my dear young lady."
+
+"I wish he would," said Lord Doltimore hastily, and glancing towards
+Caroline.  "I should much like to buy it.  What do you think would be the
+purchase-money?"
+
+"Don't talk so cold-bloodedly," said the admiral, letting the point of
+his cane fall with great emphasis on the floor.  "I can't bear to see old
+families deserting their old places,--quite wicked.  You buy Burleigh!
+have not you got a country seat of your own, my lord?  Go and live there,
+and take Mr. Maltravers for your model,--you could not have a better."
+
+Lord Doltimore sneered, coloured, settled his neckcloth, and turning
+round to Colonel Legard, whispered, "Legard, your good uncle is a bore."
+
+Legard looked a little offended, and made no reply.
+
+"But," said Caroline, coming to the relief of her admirer, "if Mr.
+Maltravers will sell the place, surely he could not have a better
+successor."
+
+"He sha'n't sell the place, ma'am, and that's poz!" cried the admiral.
+"The whole county shall sign a round-robin to tell him it's a shame; and
+if any one dares to buy it we'll send him to Coventry."
+
+Miss Merton laughed, but looked round the old wainscot walls with unusual
+interest; she thought it would be a fine thing to be Lady of Burleigh!
+
+"And what is that picture so carefully covered up?" said the admiral, as
+they now stood in the library.
+
+"The late Mrs. Maltravers, Ernest's mother," replied Cleveland, slowly.
+"He dislikes it to be shown--to strangers: the other is a Digby."
+
+Evelyn looked towards the veiled portrait, and thought of her first
+interview with Maltravers; but the soft voice of Colonel Legard murmured
+in her ear; and her revery was broken.
+
+Cleveland eyed the colonel, and muttered to himself, "Vargrave should
+keep a sharp look-out."
+
+They had now finished their round of the show-apartments--which indeed
+had little but their antiquity and old portraits to recommend them--and
+were in a lobby at the back of the house, communicating with a courtyard,
+two sides of which were occupied with the stables.  The sight of the
+stables reminded Caroline of the Arab horses; and at the word "horses"
+Lord Doltimore seized Legard's arm and carried him off to inspect the
+animals.  Caroline, her father, and the admiral followed.  Mr. Cleveland
+happened not to have on his walking-shoes; and the flagstones in the
+courtyard looked damp; and Mr. Cleveland, like most old bachelors, was
+prudently afraid of cold; so he excused himself, and stayed behind.  He
+was talking to Evelyn about the Digbys, and full of anecdotes about Sir
+Kenelm at the moment the rest departed so abruptly; and Evelyn was
+interested, so she insisted on keeping him company.
+
+The old gentleman was flattered; he thought it excellent breeding in Miss
+Cameron.  The children ran out to renew acquaintance with the peacock,
+who, perched on an old stirrup-stone, was sunning his gay plumage in the
+noon-day.
+
+"It is astonishing," said Cleveland, "how certain family features are
+transmitted from generation to generation!  Maltravers has still the
+forehead and eyebrows of the Digbys,--that peculiar, brooding, thoughtful
+forehead, which you observed in the picture of Sir Kenelm.  Once, too, he
+had much the same dreaming character of mind, but he has lost that, in
+some measure at least.  He has fine qualities, Miss Cameron,--I have
+known him since he was born.  I trust his career is not yet closed; could
+he but form ties that would bind him to England, I should indulge in
+higher expectations than I did even when the wild boy turned half the
+heads in Gottingen.
+
+"But we were talking of family portraits: there is one in the
+entrance-hall, which perhaps you have not observed; it is half
+obliterated by damp and time, yet it is of a remarkable personage,
+connected with Maltravers by ancestral intermarriages,--Lord Falkland,
+the Falkland of Clarendon; a man weak in character, but made most
+interesting by history,--utterly unfitted for the severe ordeal of those
+stormy times; sighing for peace when his whole soul should have been in
+war; and repentant alike whether with the Parliament or the king, but
+still a personage of elegant and endearing associations; a
+student-soldier, with a high heart and a gallant spirit.  Come and look
+at his features,--homely and worn, but with a characteristic air of
+refinement and melancholy thought."
+
+Thus running on, the agreeable old gentleman drew Evelyn into the outer
+hall.  Upon arriving there, through a small passage, which opened upon
+the hall, they were surprised to find the old housekeeper and another
+female servant standing by a rude kind of couch on which lay the form of
+the poor woman described in the last chapter.  Maltravers and two other
+men were also there; and Maltravers himself was giving orders to his
+servants, while he leaned over the sufferer, who was now conscious both
+of pain and the service rendered to her.  As Evelyn stopped abruptly, and
+in surprise, opposite and almost at the foot of the homely litter, the
+woman raised herself up on one arm, and gazed at her with a wild stare;
+then muttering some incoherent words which appeared to betoken delirium,
+she sank back, and was again insensible.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+  HENCE oft to win some stubborn maid,
+    Still does the wanton god assume
+  The martial air, the gay cockade,
+    The sword, the shoulder-knot, and plume.
+
+  MARRIOTT.
+
+THE hall was cleared, the sufferer had been removed, and Maltravers was
+left alone with Cleveland and Evelyn.
+
+He simply and shortly narrated the adventure of the morning; but he did
+not mention that Vargrave had been the cause of the injury his new guest
+had sustained.  Now this event had served to make a mutual and kindred
+impression on Evelyn and Maltravers.  The humanity of the latter, natural
+and commonplace as it was, was an endearing recollection to Evelyn,
+precisely as it showed that his cold theory of disdain towards the mass
+did not affect his actual conduct towards individuals.  On the other
+hand, Maltravers had perhaps been yet more impressed with the prompt and
+ingenuous sympathy which Evelyn had testified towards the sufferer: it
+had so evidently been her first gracious and womanly impulse to hasten to
+the side of this humble stranger.  In that impulse, Maltravers himself
+had been almost forgotten; and as the poor woman lay pale and lifeless,
+and the young Evelyn bent over her in beautiful compassion, Maltravers
+thought she had never seemed so lovely, so irresistible,--in fact, pity
+in woman is a great beautifier.
+
+As Maltravers finished his short tale, Evelyn's eyes were fixed upon him
+with such frank and yet such soft approval, that the look went straight
+to his heart.  He quickly turned away, and abruptly changed the
+conversation.
+
+"But how long have you been here, Miss Cameron,--and your companions?"
+
+"We are again intruders; but this time it was not my fault."
+
+"No," said Cleveland, "for a wonder it was male, and not lady-like
+curiosity that trespassed on Bluebeard's chamber.  But, however, to
+soften your resentment, know that Miss Cameron has brought you a
+purchaser for Burleigh.  Now, then, we can test the sincerity of your
+wish to part with it.  I assure you, meanwhile, that Miss Cameron was as
+much shocked at the idea as I was.  Were you not?"
+
+"But you surely have no intention of selling Burleigh?" said Evelyn,
+anxiously.
+
+"I fear I do not know my own mind."
+
+"Well," said Cleveland, "here comes your tempter.  Lord Doltimore, let me
+introduce Mr. Maltravers."
+
+Lord Doltimore bowed.
+
+"Been admiring your horses, Mr. Maltravers.  I never saw anything so
+perfect as the black one; may I ask where you bought him?"
+
+"It was a present to me," answered Maltravers.
+
+"A present?"
+
+"Yes, from one who would not have sold that horse for a king's
+ransom,--an old Arab chief, with whom I formed a kind of friendship in
+the desert.  A wound disabled him from riding, and he bestowed the horse
+on me, with as much solemn tenderness for the gift as if he had given me
+his daughter in marriage."
+
+"I think of travelling in the East," said Lord Doltimore, with much
+gravity: "I suppose nothing will induce you to sell the black horse?"
+
+"Lord Doltimore!" said Maltravers, in a tone of lofty surprise.
+
+"I do not care for the price," continued the young nobleman, a little
+disconcerted.
+
+"No; I never sell any horse that has once learned to know me.  I would as
+soon think of selling a friend.  In the desert, one's horse is one's
+friend.  I am almost an Arab myself in these matters."
+
+"But talking of sale and barter reminds me of Burleigh," said Cleveland,
+maliciously.  "Lord Doltimore is a universal buyer.  He covets all your
+goods: he will take the house, if he can't have the stables."
+
+"I only mean," said Lord Doltimore, rather peevishly, "that if you wish
+to part with Burleigh, I should like to have the option of purchase."
+
+"I will remember it, if I determine to sell the place," answered
+Maltravers, smiling gravely; "at present I am undecided."
+
+He turned away towards Evelyn as he spoke, and almost started to observe
+that she was joined by a stranger, whose approach he had not before
+noticed,--and that stranger a man of such remarkable personal advantages,
+that, had Maltravers been in Vargrave's position, he might reasonably
+have experienced a pang of jealous apprehension.  Slightly above the
+common height; slender, yet strongly formed; set off by every advantage
+of dress, of air, of the nameless tone and pervading refinement that
+sometimes, though not always, springs from early and habitual intercourse
+with the most polished female society,--Colonel Legard, at the age of
+eight and twenty, had acquired a reputation for beauty almost as popular
+and as well known as that which men usually acquire by mental
+qualifications.  Yet there was nothing effeminate in his countenance, the
+symmetrical features of which were made masculine and expressive by the
+rich olive of the complexion, and the close jetty curls of the
+Antinous-like hair.
+
+They seemed, as they there stood--Evelyn and Legard--so well suited to
+each other in personal advantages, their different styles so happily
+contrasted; and Legard, at the moment, was regarding her with such
+respectful admiration, and whispering compliment to her in so subdued a
+tone, that the dullest observer might have ventured a prophecy by no
+means agreeable to the hopes of Lumley Lord Vargrave.
+
+But a feeling or fear of this nature was not that which occurred to
+Maltravers, or dictated his startled exclamation of surprise.
+
+Legard looked up as he heard the exclamation, and saw Maltravers, whose
+back had hitherto been turned towards him.  He, too, was evidently
+surprised, and seemingly confused; the colour mounted to his cheek, and
+then left it pale.
+
+"Colonel Legard," said Cleveland, "a thousand apologies for my neglect: I
+really did not observe you enter,--you came round by the front door, I
+suppose.  Let me make you acquainted with Mr. Maltravers."
+
+Legard bowed low.
+
+"We have met before," said he, in embarrassed accents: "at Venice, I
+think!"
+
+Maltravers inclined his head rather stiffly at first, but then, as if
+moved by a second impulse, held out his hand cordially.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Ernest, here you are!" cried Sophy, bounding into the hall,
+followed by Mr. Merton, the old admiral, Caroline, and Cecilia.
+
+The interruption seemed welcome and opportune.  The admiral, with blunt
+cordiality, expressed his pleasure at being made known to Mr. Maltravers.
+
+The conversation grew general; refreshments were proffered and declined;
+the visit drew to its close.
+
+It so happened that as the guests departed, Evelyn, from whose side the
+constant colonel had insensibly melted away, lingered last,--save,
+indeed, the admiral, who was discussing with Cleveland a new specific for
+the gout.  And as Maltravers stood on the steps, Evelyn turned to him
+with all her beautiful _naivete_ of mingled timidity and kindness, and
+said,--
+
+"And are we really never to see you again; never to hear again your tales
+of Egypt and Arabia; never to talk over Tasso and Dante?  No books, no
+talk, no disputes, no quarrels?  What have we done?  I thought we had
+made it up,--and yet you are still unforgiving.  Give me a good scold,
+and be friends!"
+
+"Friends! you have no friend more anxious, more devoted than I am.
+Young, rich, fascinating as you are, you will carve no impression on
+human hearts deeper than that you have graven here!"
+
+Carried away by the charm of her childlike familiarity and enchanting
+sweetness, Maltravers had said more than he intended; yet his eyes, his
+emotion, said more than his words.
+
+Evelyn coloured deeply, and her whole manner changed.  However, she
+turned away, and saying, with a forced gayety, "Well, then, you will not
+desert us; we shall see you once more?" hurried down the steps to join
+her companions.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+  SEE how the skilful lover spreads his toils.--STILLINGFLEET.
+
+THE party had not long returned to the rectory, and the admiral's
+carriage was ordered, when Lord Vargrave made his appearance.  He
+descanted with gay good-humour on his long drive, the bad roads, and his
+disappointment at the _contretemps_ that awaited him; then, drawing aside
+Colonel Legard, who seemed unusually silent and abstracted, he said to
+him,--
+
+"My dear colonel, my visit this morning was rather to you than to
+Doltimore.  I confess that I should like to see your abilities enlisted
+on the side of the Government; and knowing that the post of Storekeeper
+to the Ordnance will be vacant in a day or two by the promotion of Mr.
+-----, I wrote to secure the refusal.  To-day's post brings me the
+answer.  I offer the place to you; and I trust, before long, to procure
+you also a seat in parliament.  But you must start for London
+immediately."
+
+A week ago, and Legard's utmost ambition would have been amply gratified
+by this post; he now hesitated.
+
+"My dear lord," said he, "I cannot say how grateful I feel for your
+kindness; but--but--"
+
+"Enough; no thanks, my dear Legard.  Can you go to town to-morrow?"
+
+"Indeed," said Legard, "I fear not; I must consult my uncle."
+
+"I can answer for him; I sounded him before I wrote.  Reflect!  You are
+not rich, my dear Legard; it is an excellent opening: a seat in
+parliament, too!  Why, what can be your reason for hesitation?"
+
+There was something meaning and inquisitive in the tone of voice in which
+this question was put that brought the colour to the colonel's cheek.  He
+knew not well what to reply; and he began, too, to think that he ought
+not to refuse the appointment.  Nay, would his uncle, on whom he was
+dependent, consent to such a refusal?  Lord Vargrave saw the
+irresolution, and proceeded.  He spent ten minutes in combating every
+scruple, every objection: he placed all the advantages of the post, real
+or imaginary, in every conceivable point of view before the colonel's
+eyes; he sought to flatter, to wheedle, to coax, to weary him into
+accepting it; and he at length partially succeeded.  The colonel
+petitioned for three days' consideration, which Vargrave reluctantly
+acceded to; and Legard then stepped into his uncle's carriage, with the
+air rather of a martyr than a maiden placeman.
+
+"Aha!" said Vargrave, chuckling to himself as he took a turn in the
+grounds, "I have got rid of that handsome knave; and now I shall have
+Evelyn all to myself!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+  I AM forfeited to eternal disgrace if you do not commiserate.
+    .  .  .  .  .  .
+  Go to, then, raise, recover.--BEN JONSON: _Poetaster_.
+
+THE next morning Admiral Legard and his nephew were conversing in the
+little cabin consecrated by the name of the admiral's "own room."
+
+"Yes," said the veteran, "it would be moonshine and madness not to accept
+Vargrave's offer; though one can see through such a millstone as that
+with half an eye.  His lordship is jealous of such a fine, handsome young
+fellow as you are,--and very justly.  But as long as he is under the same
+roof with Miss Cameron, you will have no opportunity to pay your court;
+when he goes, you can always manage to be in her neighbourhood; and then,
+you know--puppy that you are--her business will be very soon settled."
+And the admiral eyed the handsome colonel with grim fondness.
+
+Legard sighed.
+
+"Have you any commands at -----?" said he; "I am just going to canter
+over there before Doltimore is up."
+
+"Sad lazy dog, your friend."
+
+"I shall be back by twelve."
+
+"What are you going to ----- for?"
+
+"Brookes, the farrier, has a little spaniel,--King Charles's breed.  Miss
+Cameron is fond of dogs.  I can send it to her, with my compliments,--it
+will be a sort of leave-taking."
+
+"Sly rogue; ha, ha, ha! d-----d sly; ha, ha!" and the admiral punched the
+slender waist of his nephew, and laughed till the tears ran down his
+cheeks.
+
+"Good-by, sir."
+
+"Stop, George; I forgot to ask you a question; you never told me you knew
+Mr. Maltravers.  Why don't you cultivate his acquaintance?"
+
+"We met at Venice accidentally.  I did not know his name then; he left
+just as I arrived.  As you say, I ought to cultivate his acquaintance."
+
+"Fine character!"
+
+"Very!" said Legard, with energy, as he abruptly quitted the room.
+
+George Legard was an orphan.  His father--the admiral's elder
+brother--had been a spendthrift man of fashion, with a tolerably large
+unentailed estate.  He married a duke's daughter without a sixpence.
+Estates are troublesome,--Mr. Legard's was sold.  On the purchase-money
+the happy pair lived for some years in great comfort, when Mr. Legard
+died of a brain fever; and his disconsolate widow found herself alone in
+the world with a beautiful little curly-headed boy, and an annuity of one
+thousand a year, for which her settlement had been exchanged.  All the
+rest of the fortune was gone,--a discovery not made till Mr. Legard's
+death.  Lady Louisa did not long survive the loss of her husband and her
+station in society; her income of course died with herself.  Her only
+child was brought up in the house of his grandfather, the duke, till he
+was of age to hold the office of king's page; thence, as is customary, he
+was promoted to a commission in the Guards.  To the munificent emoluments
+of his pay, the ducal family liberally added an allowance of two hundred
+a year; upon which income Cornet Legard contrived to get very handsomely
+in debt.  The extraordinary beauty of his person, his connections, and
+his manners obtained him all the celebrity that fashion can bestow; but
+poverty is a bad thing.  Luckily, at this time, his uncle the admiral
+returned from sea, to settle for the rest of his life in England.
+
+Hitherto, the admiral had taken no notice of George.  He himself had
+married a merchant's daughter with a fair portion; and had been blessed
+with two children, who monopolized all his affection.  But there seemed
+some mortality in the Legard family; in one year after returning to
+England and settling in B-----shire, the admiral found himself wifeless
+and childless.  He then turned to his orphan nephew; and soon became
+fonder of him than he had ever been of his own children.  The admiral,
+though in easy circumstances, was not wealthy; nevertheless, he advanced
+the money requisite for George's rise in the army, and doubled the
+allowance bestowed by the duke.  His grace heard of this generosity, and
+discovered that he himself had a very large family growing up; that the
+marquess was going to be married, and required an increase of income;
+that he had already behaved most handsomely to his nephew; and the result
+of this discovery was that the duke withdrew the two hundred a year.
+Legard, however, who looked on his uncle as an exhaustless mine, went on
+breaking hearts and making debts--till one morning he woke in the Bench.
+The admiral was hastily summoned to London.  He arrived; paid off the
+duns--a kindness which seriously embarrassed him--swore, scolded, and
+cried; and finally insisted that Legard should give up that d-----d
+coxcomb regiment, in which he was now captain, retire on half-pay, and
+learn economy and a change of habits on the Continent.
+
+The admiral, a rough but good-natured man on the whole, had two or three
+little peculiarities.  In the first place, he piqued himself on a sort of
+John Bull independence; was a bit of a Radical (a strange anomaly in an
+admiral)--which was owing, perhaps, to two or three young lords having
+been put over his head in the earlier part of his career; and he made it
+a point with his nephew (of whose affection he was jealous) to break with
+those fine grand connections, who plunged him into a sea of extravagance,
+and then never threw him a rope to save him from drowning.
+
+In the second place, without being stingy, the admiral had a good deal of
+economy in his disposition.  He was not a man to allow his nephew to ruin
+him.  He had an extraordinarily old-fashioned horror of gambling,--a
+polite habit of George's; and he declared positively that his nephew
+must, while a bachelor, learn to live upon seven hundred a year.
+Thirdly, the admiral could be a very stern, stubborn, passionate old
+brute; and when he coolly told George, "Harkye, you young puppy, if you
+get into debt again--if you exceed the very handsome allowance I make
+you--I shall just cut you off with a shilling," George was fully aware
+that his uncle was one who would rigidly keep his word.
+
+However, it was something to be out of debt, and one of the handsomest
+men of his age; and George Legard, whose rank in the Guards made him a
+colonel in the line, left England tolerably contented with the state of
+affairs.
+
+Despite the foibles of his youth, George Legard had many high and
+generous qualities.  Society had done its best to spoil a fine and candid
+disposition, with abilities far above mediocrity; but society had only
+partially succeeded.  Still, unhappily, dissipation had grown a habit
+with him; all his talents were of a nature that brought a ready return.
+At his age, it was but natural that the praise of _salons_ should retain
+all its sweetness.
+
+In addition to those qualities which please the softer sex, Legard was a
+good whist player, superb at billiards, famous as a shot, unrivalled as a
+horseman,--in fact, an accomplished man, "who did everything so devilish
+well!" These accomplishments did not stand him in much stead in Italy;
+and, though with reluctance and remorse, he took again to gambling,--he
+really _had_ nothing else to do.
+
+In Venice there was, one year, established a society somewhat on the
+principle of the _salon_ at Paris.  Some rich Venetians belonged to it;
+but it was chiefly for the convenience of foreigners,--French, English,
+and Austrians.  Here there was select gaming in one room, while another
+apartment served the purposes of a club.  Many who never played belonged
+to this society; but still they were not the _habitues_.
+
+Legard played: he won at first, then he lost, then he won again; it was a
+pleasant excitement.  One night, after winning largely at _roulette_, he
+sat down to play _ecarte_ with a Frenchman of high rank.  Legard played
+well at this, as at all scientific games; he thought he should make a
+fortune out of the Frenchman.  The game excited much interest; the crowd
+gathered round the table; bets ran high; the vanity of Legard, as well as
+his interest, was implicated in the conflict.  It was soon evident that
+the Frenchman played as well as the Englishman.  The stakes, at first
+tolerably high, were doubled.  Legard betted freely.  Cards went against
+him; he lost much, lost all that he had, lost more than he had, lost
+several hundreds, which he promised to pay the next morning.  The table
+was broken up, the spectators separated.  Amongst the latter had been one
+Englishman, introduced into the club for the first time that night.  He
+had neither played nor betted, but had observed the game with a quiet and
+watchful interest.  This Englishman lodged at the same hotel as Legard.
+He was at Venice only for a day; the promised sight of a file of English
+newspapers had drawn him to the club; the general excitement around had
+attracted him to the table; and once there, the spectacle of human
+emotions exercised its customary charm.
+
+On ascending the stairs that conducted to his apartment, the Englishman
+heard a deep groan in a room the door of which was ajar.  He paused, the
+sound was repeated; he gently pushed open the door and saw Legard seated
+by a table, while a glass on the opposite wall reflected his working and
+convulsed countenance, with his hands trembling visibly, as they took a
+brace of pistols from the case.
+
+The Englishman recognized the loser at the club; and at once divined the
+act that his madness or his despair dictated.  Legard twice took up one
+of the pistols, and twice laid it down irresolute; the third time he rose
+with a start, raised the weapon to his head, and the next moment it was
+wrenched from his grasp.
+
+"Sit down, sir!" said the stranger, in a loud and commanding voice.
+
+Legard, astonished and abashed, sank once more into his seat, and stared
+sullenly and half-unconsciously at his countryman.
+
+"You have lost your money," said the Englishman, after calmly replacing
+the pistols in their case, which he locked, putting the key into his
+pocket; "and that is misfortune enough for one night.  If you had won,
+and ruined your opponent, you would be excessively happy, and go to bed,
+thinking Good Luck (which is the representative of Providence) watched
+over you.  For my part, I think you ought to be very thankful that you
+are not the winner."
+
+"Sir," said Legard, recovering from his surprise, and beginning to feel
+resentment, "I do not understand this intrusion in my apartments.  You
+have saved me, it is true, from death,--but life is a worse curse."
+
+"Young man, no! moments in life are agony, but life itself is a blessing.
+Life is a mystery that defies all calculation.  You can never say,
+'To-day is wretched, therefore to-morrow must be the same!'  And for the
+loss of a little gold you, in the full vigour of youth, with all the
+future before you, will dare to rush into the chances of eternity!  You,
+who have never, perhaps, thought what eternity is!  Yet," added the
+stranger, in a soft and melancholy voice, "you are young and
+beautiful,--perhaps the pride and hope of others!  Have you no tie, no
+affection, no kindred; are you lord of yourself?"
+
+Legard was moved by the tone of the stranger, as well as by the words.
+
+"It is not the loss of money," said he, gloomily,--"it is the loss of
+honour.  To-morrow I must go forth a shunned and despised man,--I, a
+gentleman and a soldier!  They may insult me--and I have no reply!"
+
+The Englishman seemed to muse, for his brow lowered, and he made no
+answer.  Legard threw himself back, overcome with his own excitement, and
+wept like a child.  The stranger, who imagined himself above the
+indulgence of emotion (vain man!), woke from his revery at this burst of
+passion.  He gazed at first (I grieve to write) with a curl of the
+haughty lip that had in it contempt; but it passed quickly away; and the
+hard man remembered that he too had been young and weak, and his own
+errors greater perhaps than those of the one he had ventured to despise.
+He walked to and fro the room, still without speaking.  At last he
+approached the gamester, and took his hand.
+
+"What is your debt?" he asked gently.
+
+"What matters it?--more than I can pay."
+
+"If life is a trust, so is wealth: _you_ have the first in charge for
+others, _I_ may have the last.  What is the debt?"
+
+Legard started; it was a strong struggle between shame and hope.  "If I
+could borrow it, I could repay it hereafter,--I know I could; I would not
+think of it otherwise."
+
+"Very well, so be it,--I will lend you the money on one condition.
+Solemnly promise me, on your faith as a soldier and a gentleman, that you
+will not, for ten years to come--even if you grow rich, and can ruin
+others--touch card or dice-box.  Promise me that you will shun all gaming
+for gain, under whatever disguise, whatever appellation.  I will take
+your word as my bond."
+
+Legard, overjoyed, and scarcely trusting his senses, gave the promise.
+
+"Sleep then, to-night, in hope and assurance of the morrow," said the
+Englishman: "let this event be an omen to you, that while there is a
+future there is no despair.  One word more,--I do not want your thanks!
+it is easy to be generous at the expense of justice.  Perhaps I have been
+so now.  This sum, which is to save your life--a life you so little
+value--might have blessed fifty human beings,--better men than either the
+giver or receiver.  What is given to error may perhaps be a wrong to
+virtue.  When you would ask others to support a career of blind and
+selfish extravagance, pause and think over the breadless lips this wasted
+gold would have fed! the joyless hearts it would have comforted!  You
+talk of repaying me: if the occasion offer, do so; if not--if we never
+meet again, and you have it in your power, pay it for me to the Poor!
+And now, farewell."
+
+"Stay,--give me the name of my preserver!  Mine is--"
+
+"Hush! what matter names?  This is a sacrifice we have both made to
+honour.  You will sooner recover your self-esteem (and without
+self-esteem there is neither faith nor honour), when you think that your
+family, your connections, are spared all association with your own error;
+that I may hear them spoken of, that I may mix with them without fancying
+that they owe me gratitude."
+
+"Your own name then?" said Legard, deeply penetrated with the delicate
+generosity of his benefactor.
+
+"Tush!" muttered the stranger impatiently as he closed the door.
+
+The next morning when he awoke Legard saw upon the table a small packet;
+it contained a sum that exceeded the debt named.
+
+On the envelope was written, "Remember the bond."
+
+The stranger had already quitted Venice.  He had not travelled through
+the Italian cities under his own name, for he had just returned from the
+solitudes of the East, and was not yet hardened to the publicity of the
+gossip which in towns haunted by his countrymen attended a well-known
+name; that given to Legard by the innkeeper, mutilated by Italian
+pronunciation, the young man had never heard before, and soon forgot.  He
+paid his debts, and he scrupulously kept his word.  The adventure of that
+night went far, indeed, to reform and ennoble the mind and habits of
+George Legard.  Time passed, and he never met his benefactor, till in the
+halls of Burleigh he recognized the stranger in Maltravers.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+  WHY value, then, that strength of mind they boast,
+  As often varying, and as often lost?
+
+  HAWKINS BROWNE (translated by SOAME JENYNS).
+
+MALTRAVERS was lying at length, with his dogs around him, under a
+beech-tree that threw its arms over one of the calm still pieces of water
+that relieved the groves of Burleigh, when Colonel Legard spied him from
+the bridle-road which led through the park to the house.  The colonel
+dismounted, threw the rein over his arm; and at the sound of the hoofs
+Maltravers turned, saw the visitor, and rose.  He held out his hand to
+Legard, and immediately began talking of indifferent matters.
+
+Legard was embarrassed; but his nature was not one to profit by the
+silence of a benefactor.  "Mr. Maltravers," said he, with graceful
+emotion, "though you have not yet allowed me an opportunity to allude to
+it, do not think I am ungrateful for the service you rendered me."
+
+Maltravers looked grave, but made no reply.  Legard resumed, with a
+heightened colour,--
+
+"I cannot say how I regret that it is not yet in my power to discharge my
+debt; but--"
+
+"When it is, you will do so.  Pray think no more of it.  Are you going to
+the rectory?"
+
+"No, not this morning; in fact, I leave B-----shire tomorrow.  Pleasant
+family, the Mertons."
+
+"And Miss Cameron--"
+
+"Is certainly beautiful,--and very rich.  How could she ever think of
+marrying Lord Vargrave, so much older,--she who could have so many
+admirers?"
+
+"Not, surely, while betrothed to another?"
+
+This was a refinement which Legard, though an honourable man as men go,
+did not quite understand.  "Oh," said he, "that was by some eccentric old
+relation,--her father-in-law, I think.  Do you think she is bound by such
+an engagement?"
+
+Maltravers made no reply, but amused himself by throwing a stick into the
+water, and sending one of his dogs after it.  Legard looked on, and his
+affectionate disposition yearned to make advances which something distant
+in the manner of Maltravers chilled and repelled.
+
+When Legard was gone, Maltravers followed him with his eyes.  "And this
+is the man whom Cleveland thinks Evelyn could love!  I could forgive her
+marrying Vargrave.  Independently of the conscientious feeling that may
+belong to the engagement, Vargrave has wit, talent, intellect; and this
+man has nothing but the skin of the panther.  Was I wrong to save him?
+No.  Every human life, I suppose, has its uses.  But Evelyn--I could
+despise her if her heart was the fool of the eye!"
+
+These comments were most unjust to Legard; but they were just of that
+kind of injustice which the man of talent often commits against the man
+of external advantages, and which the latter still more often retaliates
+on the man of talent.  As Maltravers thus soliloquized, he was accosted
+by Mr. Cleveland.
+
+"Come, Ernest, you must not cut these unfortunate Mertons any longer.  If
+you continue to do so, do you know what Mrs. Hare and the world will
+say?"
+
+"No--what?"
+
+"That you have been refused by Miss Merton."
+
+"That _would_ be a calumny!" said Ernest, smiling.
+
+"Or that you are hopelessly in love with Miss Cameron."
+
+Maltravers started; his proud heart swelled; he pulled his hat over his
+brows, and said, after a short pause,--
+
+"Well, Mrs. Hare and the world must not have it all their own way; and
+so, whenever you go to the rectory, take me with you."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+                 THE more he strove
+  To advance his suit, the farther from her love.
+
+                      DRYDEN: _Theodore and Honoria_.
+
+THE line of conduct which Vargrave now adopted with regard to Evelyn was
+craftily conceived and carefully pursued.  He did not hazard a single
+syllable which might draw on him a rejection of his claims; but at the
+same time no lover could be more constant, more devoted, in attentions.
+In the presence of others, there was an air of familiar intimacy that
+seemed to arrogate a right, which to her he scrupulously shunned to
+assert.  Nothing could be more respectful, nay, more timid, than his
+language, or more calmly confident than his manner.  Not having much
+vanity, nor any very acute self-conceit, he did not delude himself into
+the idea of winning Evelyn's affections; he rather sought to entangle her
+judgment, to weave around her web upon web,--not the less dangerous for
+being invisible.  He took the compact as a matter of course, as something
+not to be broken by any possible chance; her hand was to be his as a
+right: it was her heart that he so anxiously sought to gain.  But this
+distinction was so delicately drawn, and insisted upon so little in any
+tangible form, that, whatever Evelyn's wishes for an understanding, a
+much more experienced woman would have been at a loss to ripen one.
+
+Evelyn longed to confide in Caroline, to consult her; but Caroline,
+though still kind, had grown distant.  "I wish," said Evelyn, one night
+as she sat in Caroline's dressing-room,--"I wish that I knew what tone to
+take with Lord Vargrave. I feel more and more convinced that a union
+between us is impossible; and yet, precisely because he does not press
+it, am I unable to tell him so.  I wish you could undertake that task;
+you seem such friends with him."
+
+"I!" said Caroline, changing countenance.
+
+"Yes, you!  Nay, do not blush, or I shall think you envy me.  Could you
+not save us both from the pain that otherwise must come sooner or later?"
+
+"Lord Vargrave would not thank me for such an act of friendship.
+Besides, Evelyn, consider,--it is scarcely possible to break off this
+engagement _now_."
+
+"_Now_! and why now?" said Evelyn, astonished.
+
+"The world believes it so implicitly.  Observe, whoever sits next you
+rises if Lord Vargrave approaches; the neighbourhood talk of nothing else
+but your marriage; and your fate, Evelyn, is not pitied."
+
+"I will leave this place!  I will go back to the cottage!  I cannot bear
+this!" said Evelyn, passionately wringing her hands.
+
+"You do not love another, I am sure: not young Mr. Hare, with his green
+coat and straw-coloured whiskers; or Sir Henry Foxglove, with his
+how-d'ye-do like a view-halloo; perhaps, indeed, Colonel Legard,--he is
+handsome.  What! do you blush at his name?  No; you say 'not Legard:' who
+else is there?"
+
+"You are cruel; you trifle with me!" said Evelyn, in tearful reproach;
+and she rose to go to her own room.
+
+"My dear girl!" said Caroline, touched by her evident pain; "learn from
+me--if I may say so--that marriages are _not_ made in heaven!  Yours will
+be as fortunate as earth can bestow.  A love-match is usually the least
+happy of all.  Our foolish sex demand so much in love; and love, after
+all, is but one blessing among many.  Wealth and rank remain when love is
+but a heap of ashes.  For my part, I have chosen my destiny and my
+husband."
+
+"Your husband!"
+
+"Yes, you see him in Lord Doltimore.  I dare say we shall be as happy as
+any amorous Corydon and Phyllis."  But there was irony in Caroline's
+voice as she spoke; and she sighed heavily.  Evelyn did not believe her
+serious; and the friends parted for the night.
+
+"Mine is a strange fate!" said Caroline to herself; "I am asked by the
+man whom I love, and who professes to love me, to bestow myself on
+another, and to plead for him to a younger and fairer bride.  Well, I
+will obey him in the first; the last is a bitterer task, and I cannot
+perform it earnestly.  Yet Vargrave has a strange power over me; and when
+I look round the world, I see that he is right.  In these most
+commonplace artifices, there is yet a wild majesty that charms and
+fascinates me.  It is something to rule the world: and his and mine are
+natures formed to do so."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+  A SMOKE raised with the fume of sighs.
+
+                      _Romeo and Juliet_.
+
+IT is certain that Evelyn experienced for Maltravers sentiments which, if
+not love, might easily be mistaken for it.  But whether it were that
+master-passion, or merely its fanciful resemblance,--love in early youth
+and innocent natures, if of sudden growth, is long before it makes itself
+apparent.  Evelyn had been prepared to feel an interest in her solitary
+neighbour.  His mind, as developed in his works, had half-formed her own.
+Her childish adventure with the stranger had never been forgotten.  Her
+present knowledge of Maltravers was an union of dangerous and often
+opposite associations,--the Ideal and the Real.
+
+Love, in its first dim and imperfect shape, is but imagination
+concentrated on one object.  It is a genius of the heart, resembling that
+of the intellect; it appeals to, it stirs up, it evokes, the sentiments
+and sympathies that lie most latent in our nature.  Its sigh is the
+spirit that moves over the ocean, and arouses the Anadyomene into life.
+Therefore is it that MIND produces affections deeper than those of
+external form; therefore it is that women are worshippers of glory, which
+is the palpable and visible representative of a genius whose operations
+they cannot always comprehend.  Genius has so much in common with love,
+the imagination that animates one is so much the property of the other,
+that there is not a surer sign of the existence of genius than the love
+that it creates and bequeaths.  It penetrates deeper than the reason, it
+binds a nobler captive than the fancy.  As the sun upon the dial, it
+gives to the human heart both its shadow and its light.  Nations are its
+worshippers and wooers; and Posterity learns from its oracles to dream,
+to aspire, to adore!
+
+Had Maltravers declared the passion that consumed him, it is probable
+that it would soon have kindled a return.  But his frequent absence, his
+sustained distance of manner, had served to repress the feelings that in
+a young and virgin heart rarely flow with much force until they are
+invited and aroused.  _Le besoin d'aimer_ in girls, is, perhaps, in
+itself powerful; but is fed by another want, _le besoin d'etre aime_!
+_If_, therefore, Evelyn at present felt love for Maltravers, the love had
+certainly not passed into the core of life: the tree had not so far
+struck its roots but what it might have borne transplanting.  There was
+in her enough of the pride of sex to have recoiled from the thought of
+giving love to one who had not asked the treasure.  Capable of
+attachment, more trustful and therefore, if less vehement, more beautiful
+and durable than that which had animated the brief tragedy of Florence
+Lascelles, she could not have been the unknown correspondent, or revealed
+the soul, because the features wore a mask.
+
+It must also be allowed that, in some respects, Evelyn was too young and
+inexperienced thoroughly to appreciate all that was most truly lovable
+and attractive in Maltravers.  At four and twenty she would, perhaps,
+have felt no fear mingled with her respect for him; but seventeen and six
+and thirty is a wide interval!  She never felt that there was that
+difference in years until she had met Legard, and then at once she
+comprehended it.  With Legard she had moved on equal terms; he was not
+too wise, too high for her every-day thoughts.  He less excited her
+imagination, less attracted her reverence.  But, somehow or other, that
+voice which proclaimed her power, those eyes which never turned from
+hers, went nearer to her heart.  As Evelyn had once said to Caroline, "It
+was a great enigma!"--her own feelings were a mystery to her, and she
+reclined by the "Golden Waterfalls" without tracing her likeness in the
+glass of the pool below.
+
+Maltravers appeared again at the rectory.  He joined their parties by
+day, and his evenings were spent with them as of old.  In this I know not
+precisely what were his motives--perhaps he did not know them himself.
+It might be that his pride was roused; it might be that he could not
+endure the notion that Lord Vargrave should guess his secret by an
+absence almost otherwise unaccountable,--he could not patiently bear to
+give Vargrave that triumph; it might be that, in the sternness of his
+self-esteem, he imagined he had already conquered all save affectionate
+interest in Evelyn's fate, and trusted too vainly to his own strength;
+and it might be, also, that he could not resist the temptation of seeing
+if Evelyn were contented with her lot, and if Vargrave were worthy of the
+blessing that awaited him.  Whether one of these or all united made him
+resolve to brave his danger, or whether, after all, he yielded to a
+weakness, or consented to what--invited by Evelyn herself--was almost a
+social necessity, the reader and not the narrator shall decide.
+
+Legard was gone; but Doltimore remained in the neighbourhood, having
+hired a hunting-box not far from Sir John Merton's manors, over which he
+easily obtained permission to sport.  When he did not dine elsewhere,
+there was always a place for him at the parson's hospitable board,--and
+that place was generally next to Caroline.  Mr. and Mrs. Merton had given
+up all hope of Mr. Maltravers for their eldest daughter; and, very
+strangely, this conviction came upon their minds on the first day they
+made the acquaintance of the young lord.
+
+"My dear," said the rector, as he was winding up his watch, preparatory
+to entering the connubial couch,--"my dear, I don't think Mr. Maltravers
+is a marrying man."
+
+"I was just going to make the same remark," said Mrs. Merton, drawing the
+clothes over her.  "Lord Doltimore is a very fine young man, his estates
+unencumbered.  I like him vastly, my love.  He is evidently smitten with
+Caroline: so Lord Vargrave and Mrs. Hare said."
+
+"Sensible, shrewd woman, Mrs. Hare.  By the by, we'll send her a
+pineapple.  Caroline was made to be a woman of rank!"
+
+"Quite; so much self-possession!"
+
+"And if Mr. Maltravers would sell or let Burleigh--"
+
+"It would be so pleasant!"
+
+"Had you not better give Caroline a hint?"
+
+"My love, she is so sensible, let her go her own way."
+
+"You are right, my dear Betsy; I shall always say that no one has more
+common-sense than you; you have brought up your children admirably!"
+
+"Dear Charles!"
+
+"It is coldish to-night, love," said the rector; and he put out the
+candle.
+
+From that time, it was not the fault of Mr. and Mrs. Merton if Lord
+Doltimore did not find their house the pleasantest in the county.
+
+One evening the rectory party were assembled together in the cheerful
+drawing-room.  Cleveland, Mr. Merton, Sir John, and Lord Vargrave,
+reluctantly compelled to make up the fourth, were at the whist-table;
+Evelyn, Caroline, and Lord Doltimore were seated round the fire, and Mrs.
+Merton was working a footstool.  The fire burned clear, the curtains were
+down, the children in bed: it was a family picture of elegant comfort.
+
+Mr. Maltravers was announced.
+
+"I am glad you are come at last," said Caroline, holding out her fair
+hand.  "Mr. Cleveland could not answer for you.  We are all disputing as
+to which mode of life is the happiest."
+
+"And your opinion?" asked Maltravers, seating himself in the vacant
+chair,--it chanced to be next to Evelyn's.
+
+"My opinion is decidedly in favour of London.  A metropolitan life, with
+its perpetual and graceful excitements,--the best music, the best
+companions, the best things in short.  Provincial life is so dull, its
+pleasures so tiresome; to talk over the last year's news, and wear out
+one's last year's dresses, cultivate a conservatory, and play Pope Joan
+with a young party,--dreadful!"
+
+"I agree with Miss Merton," said Lord Doltimore, solemnly; not but what I
+like the country for three or four months in the year, with good shooting
+and hunting, and a large house properly filled, independent of one's own
+neighbourhood: but if I am condemned to choose one place to live in, give
+me Paris."
+
+"Ah, Paris; I never was in Paris.  I should so like to travel!" said
+Caroline.
+
+"But the inns abroad are so very bad," said Lord Doltimore; "how people
+can rave about Italy, I can't think.  I never suffered so much in my life
+as I did in Calabria; and at Venice I was bit to death by mosquitoes.
+Nothing like Paris, I assure you: don't you think so, Mr. Maltravers?"
+
+"Perhaps I shall be able to answer you better in a short time.  I think
+of accompanying Mr. Cleveland to Paris!"
+
+"Indeed!" said Caroline.  "Well, I envy you; but is it a sudden
+resolution?"
+
+"Not very."
+
+"Do you stay long?" asked Lord Doltimore.
+
+"My stay is uncertain."
+
+"And you won't let Burleigh in the meanwhile?"
+
+"_Let_ Burleigh?  No; if it once pass from my hands it will be forever!"
+
+Maltravers spoke gravely, and the subject was changed.  Lord Doltimore
+challenged Caroline to chess.
+
+They sat down, and Lord Doltimore arranged the pieces.
+
+"Sensible man, Mr. Maltravers," said the young lord; "but I don't hit it
+off with him: Vargrave is more agreeable.  Don't you think so?"
+
+"Y-e-s."
+
+"Lord Vargrave is very kind to me,--I never remember any one being more
+so; got Legard that appointment solely because it would please me,--very
+friendly fellow!  I mean to put myself under his wing next session!"
+
+"You could not do better, I'm sure," said Caroline; "he is so much looked
+up to; I dare say he will be prime minister one of these days."
+
+"I take the bishop:--do you think so really?--you are rather a
+politician?"
+
+"Oh, no; not much of that.  But my father and my uncle are stanch
+politicians; gentlemen know so much more than ladies.  We should always
+go by their opinions.  I think I will take the queen's pawn--your
+politics are the same as Lord Vargrave's?"
+
+"Yes, I fancy so: at least I shall leave my proxy with him.  Glad you
+don't like politics,--great bore."
+
+"Why, so young, so connected as you are--" Caroline stopped short, and
+made a wrong move.
+
+"I wish we were going to Paris together, we should enjoy it so;" and Lord
+Doltimore's knight checked the tower and queen.
+
+Caroline coughed, and stretched her hand quickly to move.
+
+"Pardon me, you will lose the game if you do so!" and Doltimore placed
+his hand on hers, their eyes met, Caroline turned away, and Lord
+Doltimore settled his right collar.
+
+
+
+"And is it true? are you really going to leave us?" said Evelyn, and she
+felt very sad.  But still the sadness might not be that of love,--she had
+felt sad after Legard had gone.
+
+"I do not think I shall long stay away," said Maltravers, trying to speak
+indifferently.  "Burleigh has become more dear to me than it was in
+earlier youth; perhaps because I have made myself duties there: and in
+other places I am but an isolated and useless unit in the great mass."
+
+"You! everywhere, you must have occupations and resources,--everywhere,
+you must find yourself not alone.  But you will not go yet?"
+
+"Not yet--no.  [Evelyn's spirits rose.]  Have you read the book I sent
+you?"  (It was one of De Stael's.)
+
+"Yes; but it disappoints me."
+
+"And why?  It is eloquent."
+
+"But is it true?  Is there so much melancholy in life?  Are the
+affections so full of bitterness?  For me, I am so happy when with those
+I love!  When I am with my mother, the air seems more fragrant, the skies
+more blue: it is surely not affection, but the absence of it, that makes
+us melancholy."
+
+"Perhaps so; but if we had never known affection, we might not miss it:
+and the brilliant Frenchwoman speaks from memory, while you speak from
+hope,--memory, which is the ghost of joy: yet surely, even in the
+indulgence of affection, there is at times a certain melancholy, a
+certain fear.  Have you never felt it, even with--with your mother?"
+
+"Ah, yes! when she suffered, or when I have thought she loved me less
+than I desired."
+
+"That must have been an idle and vain thought.  Your mother! does she
+resemble you?"
+
+"I wish I could think so.  Oh, if you knew her!  I have longed so often
+that you were acquainted with each other!  It was she who taught me to
+sing your songs."
+
+"My dear Mrs. Hare, we may as well throw up our cards," said the keen
+clear voice of Lord Vargrave: "you have played most admirably, and I know
+that your last card will be the ace of trumps; still the luck is against
+us."
+
+"No, no; pray play it out, my lord."
+
+"Quite useless, ma'am," said Sir John, showing two honours.  "We have
+only the trick to make."
+
+"Quite useless," echoed Lumley, tossing down his sovereigns, and rising
+with a careless yawn.
+
+"How d'ye do, Maltravers?"
+
+Maltravers rose; and Vargrave turned to Evelyn, and addressed her in a
+whisper.  The proud Maltravers walked away, and suppressed a sigh; a
+moment more, and he saw Lord Vargrave occupying the chair he had left
+vacant.  He laid his hand on Cleveland's shoulder.
+
+"The carriage is waiting,--are you ready?"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+  OBSCURIS vera involvens.*--VIRGIL.
+
+  * "Wrapping truth in obscurity."
+
+A DAY or two after the date of the last chapter, Evelyn and Caroline were
+riding out with Lord Vargrave and Mr. Merton, and on returning home they
+passed through the village of Burleigh.
+
+"Maltravers, I suppose, has an eye to the county one of these days," said
+Lord Vargrave, who honestly fancied that a man's eyes were always
+directed towards something for his own interest or advancement;
+"otherwise he could not surely take all this trouble about workhouses and
+paupers.  Who could ever have imagined my romantic friend would sink into
+a country squire?"
+
+"It is astonishing what talent and energy he throws into everything he
+attempts," said the parson.  "One could not, indeed, have supposed that a
+man of genius could make a man of business."
+
+"Flattering to your humble servant--whom all the world allow to be the
+last, and deny to be the first.  But your remark shows what a sad
+possession genius is: like the rest of the world, you fancy that it
+cannot be of the least possible use.  If a man is called a genius, it
+means that he is to be thrust out of all the good things in this life.
+He is not fit for anything but a garret!  Put a _genius_ into office!
+make a _genius_ a bishop! or a lord chancellor!--the world would be
+turned topsy-turvy!  You see that you are quite astonished that a genius
+can be even a county magistrate, and know the difference between a spade
+and a poker!  In fact, a genius is supposed to be the most ignorant,
+impracticable, good-for-nothing, do-nothing sort of thing that ever
+walked upon two legs.  Well, when I began life I took excellent care that
+nobody should take _me_ for a genius; and it is only within the last year
+or two that I ventured to emerge a little out of my shell.  I have not
+been the better for it; I was getting on faster while I was merely a
+plodder.  The world is so fond of that droll fable, the hare and the
+tortoise,--it really believes because (I suppose the fable to be true!) a
+tortoise _once_ beat a hare that all tortoises are much better runners
+than hares possibly can be.  Mediocre men have the monopoly of the loaves
+and fishes; and even when talent does rise in life, it is a talent which
+only differs from mediocrity by being more energetic and bustling."
+
+"You are bitter, Lord Vargrave," said Caroline, laughing; "yet surely you
+have had no reason to complain of the non-appreciation of talent?"
+
+"Humph! if I had had a grain more talent I should have been crushed by
+it.  There is a subtle allegory in the story of the lean poet, who put
+_lead_ in his pocket to prevent being blown away!  'Mais a nos
+moutons,'--to return to Maltravers.  Let us suppose that he was merely
+clever, had not had a particle of what is called genius, been merely a
+hardworking able gentleman, of good character and fortune, he might be
+half-way up the hill by this time; whereas now, what is he?  Less before
+the public than he was at twenty-eight,--a discontented anchorite, a
+meditative idler."
+
+"No, not that," said Evelyn, warmly, and then checked herself.
+
+Lord Vargrave looked at her sharply; but his knowledge of life told him
+that Legard was a much more dangerous rival than Maltravers.  Now and
+then, it is true, a suspicion to the contrary crossed him; but it did not
+take root and become a serious apprehension.  Still, he did not quite
+like the tone of voice in which Evelyn had put her abrupt negative, and
+said, with a slight sneer,--
+
+"If not that, what is he?"
+
+"One who purchased by the noblest exertions the right to be idle," said
+Evelyn with spirit; "and whom genius itself will not suffer to be idle
+long."
+
+"Besides," said Mr. Merton, "he has won a high reputation, which he
+cannot lose merely by not seeking to increase it."
+
+"Reputation!  Oh, yes! we give men like that--men of genius--a large
+property in the clouds, in order to justify ourselves in pushing them out
+of our way below.  But if they are contented with fame, why, they deserve
+their fate.  Hang fame,--give me power."
+
+"And is there no power in genius?" said Evelyn, with deepening fervour;
+"no power over the mind, and the heart, and the thought; no power over
+its own time, over posterity, over nations yet uncivilized, races yet
+unborn?"
+
+This burst from one so simple and young as Evelyn seemed to Vargrave so
+surprising that he stared on her without saying a word.
+
+"You will laugh at my championship," she added, with a blush and a smile;
+"but you provoked the encounter."
+
+"And you have won the battle," said Vargrave, with prompt gallantry.  "My
+charming ward, every day develops in you some new gift of nature!"
+
+Caroline, with a movement of impatience, put her horse into a canter.
+
+Just at this time, from a cross-road, emerged a horseman,--it was
+Maltravers.  The party halted, salutations were exchanged.
+
+"I suppose you have been enjoying the sweet business of squiredom," said
+Vargrave, gayly: "Atticus and his farm,--classical associations!
+Charming weather for the agriculturists, eh!  What news about corn and
+barley?  I suppose our English habit of talking on the weather arose when
+we were all a squirearchal farming, George-the-Third kind of people!
+Weather is really a serious matter to gentlemen who are interested in
+beans and vetches, wheat and hay.  You hang your happiness upon the
+changes of the moon!"
+
+"As you upon the smiles of a minister.  The weather of a court is more
+capricious than that of the skies,--at least we are better husbandmen
+than you who sow the wind and reap the whirlwind."
+
+"Well retorted: and really, when I look round, I am half inclined to envy
+you.  Were I not Vargrave, I would be Maltravers."
+
+It was, indeed, a scene that seemed quiet and serene, with the English
+union of the feudal and the pastoral life,--the village-green, with its
+trim scattered cottages; the fields and pastures that spread beyond; the
+turf of the park behind, broken by the shadows of the unequal grounds,
+with its mounds and hollows and venerable groves, from which rose the
+turrets of the old Hall, its mullion windows gleaming in the western sun;
+a scene that preached tranquillity and content, and might have been
+equally grateful to humble philosophy and hereditary pride.
+
+"I never saw any place so peculiar in its character as Burleigh," said
+the rector; "the old seats left to us in England are chiefly those of our
+great nobles.  It is so rare to see one that does not aspire beyond the
+residence of a private gentleman preserve all the relics of the Tudor
+age."
+
+"I think," said Vargrave, turning to Evelyn, "that as by my uncle's will
+your fortune is to be laid out in the purchase of land, we could not find
+a better investment than Burleigh.  So, whenever you are inclined to
+sell, Maltravers, I think we must outbid Doltimore.  What say you, my
+fair ward?"
+
+"Leave Burleigh in peace, I beseech you!" said Maltravers, angrily.
+
+"That is said like a Digby," returned Vargrave.  "_Allons_!--will you not
+come home with us?"
+
+"I thank you,--not to-day."
+
+"We meet at Lord Raby's next Thursday.  It is a ball given almost wholly
+in honour of your return to Burleigh; we are all going,--it is my young
+cousin's _debut_ at Knaresdean.  We have all an interest in her
+conquests."
+
+Now, as Maltravers looked up to answer, he caught Evelyn's glance, and
+his voice faltered.
+
+"Yes," he said, "we shall meet--once again.  Adieu!"  He wheeled round
+his horse, and they separated.
+
+"I can bear this no more," said Maltravers to himself; "I overrated my
+strength.  To see her thus, day after day, and to know her another's, to
+writhe beneath his calm, unconscious assertion of his rights!  Happy
+Vargrave!--and yet, ah! will _she_ be happy?  Oh, could I think so!"
+
+Thus soliloquizing, he suffered the rein to fall on the neck of his
+horse, which paced slowly home through the village, till it stopped--as
+if in the mechanism of custom--at the door of a cottage a stone's throw
+from the lodge.  At this door, indeed, for several successive days, had
+Maltravers stopped regularly; it was now tenanted by the poor woman his
+introduction to whom has been before narrated.  She had recovered from
+the immediate effects of the injury she had sustained; but her
+constitution, greatly broken by previous suffering and exhaustion, had
+received a mortal shock.  She was hurt inwardly; and the surgeon informed
+Maltravers that she had not many months to live.  He had placed her under
+the roof of one of his favourite cottagers, where she received all the
+assistance and alleviation that careful nursing and medical advice could
+give her.
+
+This poor woman, whose name was Sarah Elton, interested Maltravers much.
+She had known better days: there was a certain propriety in her
+expressions which denoted an education superior to her circumstances; and
+what touched Maltravers most, she seemed far more to feel her husband's
+death than her own sufferings,--which, somehow or other, is not common
+with widows the other side of forty!  We say that youth easily consoles
+itself for the robberies of the grave,--middle age is a still better
+self-comforter.  When Mrs. Elton found herself installed in the cottage,
+she looked round, and burst into tears.
+
+"And William is not here!" she said.  "Friends--friends! if we had had
+but one such friend before he died!"
+
+Maltravers was pleased that her first thought was rather that of sorrow
+for the dead than of gratitude for the living.  Yet Mrs. Elton was
+grateful,--simply, honestly, deeply grateful; her manner, her voice,
+betokened it.  And she seemed so glad when her benefactor called to speak
+kindly and inquire cordially, that Maltravers did so constantly; at first
+from a compassionate and at last from a selfish motive--for who is not
+pleased to give pleasure?  And Maltravers had so few in the world to care
+for him, that perhaps he was flattered by the grateful respect of this
+humble stranger.
+
+When his horse stopped, the cottager's daughter opened the door and
+courtesied,--it was an invitation to enter; and he threw his rein over
+the paling and walked into the cottage.
+
+Mrs. Elton, who had been seated by the open casement, rose to receive
+him.  But Maltravers made her sit down, and soon put her at her ease.
+The woman and her daughter who occupied the cottage retired into the
+garden, and Mrs. Elton, watching them withdraw, then exclaimed
+abruptly,--
+
+"Oh, sir, I have so longed to see you this morning!  I so long to make
+bold to ask you whether, indeed, I dreamed it--or did I, when you first
+took me to your house--did I see--" She stopped abruptly; and though she
+strove to suppress her emotion, it was too strong for her efforts,--she
+sank back on her chair, pale as death, and almost gasped for breath.
+
+Maltravers waited in surprise for her recovery.
+
+"I beg pardon, sir,--I was thinking of days long past; and--but I wished
+to ask whether, when I lay in your hall, almost insensible, any one
+besides yourself and your servants were present?---or was it"--added the
+woman, with a shudder--"was it the dead?"
+
+"I remember," said Maltravers, much struck and interested in her question
+and manner, "that a lady was present."
+
+"It is so! it is so!" cried the woman, half rising and clasping her
+hands.  "And she passed by this cottage a little time ago; her veil was
+thrown aside as she turned that fair young face towards the cottage.  Her
+name, sir,--oh, what is her name?  It was the same--the same face that
+shone across me in that hour of pain!  I did not dream!  I was not mad!"
+
+"Compose yourself; you could never, I think, have seen that lady before.
+Her name is Cameron."
+
+"Cameron--Cameron!"  The woman shook her head mournfully.  "No; that name
+is strange to me.  And her mother, sir,--she is dead?"
+
+"No; her mother lives."
+
+A shade came over the face of the sufferer; and she said, after a
+pause,--
+
+"My eyes deceive me then, sir; and, indeed, I feel that my head is
+touched, and I wander sometimes.  But the likeness was so great; yet that
+young lady is even lovelier!"
+
+"Likenesses are very deceitful and very capricious, and depend more on
+fancy than reality.  One person discovers a likeness between faces most
+dissimilar,--a likeness invisible to others.  But who does Miss Cameron
+resemble?"
+
+"One now dead, sir; dead many years ago.  But it is a long story, and one
+that lies heavy on my conscience.  Some day or other, if you will give me
+leave, sir, I will unburden myself to you."
+
+"If I can assist you in anyway, command me.  Meanwhile, have you no
+friends, no relations, no children, whom you would wish to see?"
+
+"Children!--no, sir; I never had but one child of _my own_ (she laid an
+emphasis on the last words), and that died in a foreign land."
+
+"And no other relatives?"
+
+"None, sir.  My history is very short and simple.  I was well brought
+up,--an only child.  My father was a small farmer; he died when I was
+sixteen, and I went into service with a kind old lady and her daughter,
+who treated me more as a companion than a servant.  I was a vain, giddy
+girl, then, sir.  A young man, the son of a neighbouring farmer, courted
+me, and I was much attached to him; but neither of us had money, and his
+parents would not give their consent to our marrying.  I was silly enough
+to think that, if William loved me, he should have braved all; and his
+prudence mortified me, so I married another whom I did not love.  I was
+rightly punished, for he ill-used me and took to drinking; I returned to
+my old service to escape from him--for I was with child, and my life was
+in danger from his violence.  He died suddenly, and in debt.  And then,
+afterwards, a gentleman--a rich gentleman--to whom I rendered a service
+(do not misunderstand me, sir, if I say the service was one of which I
+repent), gave me money, and made me rich enough to marry my first lover;
+and William and I went to America.  We lived many years in New York upon
+our little fortune comfortably; and I was a long while happy, for I had
+always loved William dearly.  My first affliction was the death of my
+child by my first husband; but I was soon roused from my grief.  William
+schemed and speculated, as everybody does in America, and so we lost all;
+and William was weakly and could not work.  At length he got the place of
+steward on board a vessel from New York to Liverpool, and I was taken to
+assist in the cabin.  We wanted to come to London; I thought my old
+benefactor might do something for us, though he had never answered the
+letters I sent to him.  But poor William fell ill on board, and died in
+sight of land."
+
+Mrs. Elton wept bitterly, but with the subdued grief of one to whom tears
+have been familiar; and when she recovered, she soon brought her humble
+tale to an end.  She herself, incapacitated from all work by sorrow and a
+breaking constitution, was left in the streets of Liverpool without other
+means of subsistence than the charitable contributions of the passengers
+and sailors on board the vessel.  With this sum she had gone to London,
+where she found her old patron had been long since dead, and she had no
+claims on his family.  She had, on quitting England, left one relation
+settled in a town in the North; thither she now repaired, to find her
+last hope wrecked; the relation also was dead and gone.  Her money was
+now spent, and she had begged her way along the road, or through the
+lanes, she scarce knew whither, till the accident which, in shortening
+her life, had raised up a friend for its close.
+
+"And such, sir," said she in conclusion, "such has been the story of my
+life, except one part of it, which, if I get stronger, I can tell better;
+but you will excuse that now."
+
+"And are you comfortable and contented, my poor friend?  These people are
+kind to you?"
+
+"Oh, so kind!  And every night we all pray for you, sir; you ought to be
+happy, if the blessings of the poor can avail the rich."
+
+Maltravers remounted his horse, and sought his home; and his heart was
+lighter than before he entered that cottage.  But at evening Cleveland
+talked of Vargrave and Evelyn, and the good fortune of the one, and the
+charms of the other; and the wound, so well concealed, bled afresh.
+
+"I heard from De Montaigne the other day," said Ernest, just as they were
+retiring for the night, "and his letter decides my movements.  If you
+will accept me, then, as a travelling companion, I will go with you to
+Paris.  Have you made up your mind to leave Burleigh on Saturday?"
+
+"Yes; that gives us a day to recover from Lord Raby's ball.  I am so
+delighted at your offer!  We need only stay a day or so in town.  The
+excursion will do you good,---your spirits, my dear Ernest, seem more
+dejected than when you first returned to England: you live too much alone
+here; you will enjoy Burleigh more on your return.  And perhaps then you
+will open the old house a little more to the neighbourhood, and to your
+friends.  They expect it: you are looked to for the county."
+
+"I have done with politics, and sicken but for peace."
+
+"Pick up a wife in Paris, and you will then know that peace is an
+impossible possession," said the old bachelor, laughing.
+
+
+
+BOOK V.
+
+  "FOOLS blind to truth; nor know their erring soul
+   How much the half is better than the whole."
+        --HESIOD: _Op. et Dies_, 40.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+  Do as the Heavens have done; forget your evil;
+  With them, forgive yourself.--_The Winter's Tale_.
+
+  .  .  .  The sweet'st companion that e'er man
+  Bred his hopes out of.--_Ibid._
+
+THE curate of Brook-Green was sitting outside his door.  The vicarage
+which he inhabited was a straggling, irregular, but picturesque
+building,--humble enough to suit the means of the curate, yet large
+enough to accommodate the vicar.  It had been built in an age when the
+_indigentes et pauperes_ for whom universities were founded supplied,
+more than they do now, the fountains of the Christian ministry, when
+pastor and flock were more on an equality.
+
+From under a rude and arched porch, with an oaken settle on either side
+for the poor visitor, the door opened at once upon the old-fashioned
+parlour,--a homely but pleasant room, with one wide but low cottage
+casement, beneath which stood the dark shining table that supported the
+large Bible in its green baize cover; the Concordance, and the last
+Sunday's sermon, in its jetty case.  There by the fireplace stood the
+bachelor's round elbow-chair, with a needlework cushion at the back; a
+walnut-tree bureau, another table or two, half a dozen plain chairs,
+constituted the rest of the furniture, saving some two or three hundred
+volumes, ranged in neat shelves on the clean wainscoted walls.  There was
+another room, to which you ascended by two steps, communicating with this
+parlour, smaller but finer, and inhabited only on festive days, when Lady
+Vargrave, or some other quiet neighbour, came to drink tea with the good
+curate.
+
+An old housekeeper and her grandson--a young fellow of about two and
+twenty, who tended the garden, milked the cow, and did in fact what he
+was wanted to do--composed the establishment of the humble minister.
+
+We have digressed from Mr. Aubrey himself.
+
+The curate was seated, then, one fine summer morning, on a bench at the
+left of his porch, screened from the sun by the cool boughs of a
+chestnut-tree, the shadow of which half covered the little lawn that
+separated the precincts of the house from those of silent Death and
+everlasting Hope; above the irregular and moss-grown paling rose the
+village church; and, through openings in the trees, beyond the
+burial-ground, partially gleamed the white walls of Lady Vargrave's
+cottage, and were seen at a distance the sails on the--
+
+          "Mighty waters, rolling evermore."
+
+The old man was calmly enjoying the beauty of the morning, the freshness
+of the air, the warmth of the dancing beam, and not least, perhaps, his
+own peaceful thoughts,--the spontaneous children of a contemplative
+spirit and a quiet conscience.  His was the age when we most sensitively
+enjoy the mere sense of existence,--when the face of Nature and a passive
+conviction of the benevolence of our Great Father suffice to create a
+serene and ineffable happiness, which rarely visits us till we have done
+with the passions; till memories, if more alive than heretofore, are yet
+mellowed in the hues of time, and Faith softens into harmony all their
+asperities and harshness; till nothing within us remains to cast a shadow
+over the things without; and on the verge of life, the Angels are nearer
+to us than of yore.  There is an old age which has more youth of heart
+than youth itself!
+
+As the old man thus sat, the little gate through which, on Sabbath days,
+he was wont to pass from the humble mansion to the house of God
+noiselessly opened, and Lady Vargrave appeared.
+
+The curate rose when he perceived her; and the lady's fair features were
+lighted up with a gentle pleasure, as she pressed his hand and returned
+his salutation.
+
+There was a peculiarity in Lady Vargrave's countenance which I have
+rarely seen in others.  Her smile, which was singularly expressive, came
+less from the lip than from the eyes; it was almost as if the brow
+smiled; it was as the sudden and momentary vanishing of a light but
+melancholy cloud that usually rested upon the features, placid as they
+were.
+
+They sat down on the rustic bench, and the sea-breeze wantoned amongst
+the quivering leaves of the chestnut-tree that overhung their seat.
+
+"I have come, as usual, to consult my kind friend," said Lady Vargrave;
+"and, as usual also, it is about our absent Evelyn."
+
+"Have you heard again from her, this morning?"
+
+"Yes; and her letter increases the anxiety which your observation, so
+much deeper than mine, first awakened."
+
+"Does she then write much of Lord Vargrave?"
+
+"Not a great deal; but the little she does say, betrays how much she
+shrinks from the union my poor husband desired: more, indeed, than ever!
+But this is not all, nor the worst; for you know that the late lord had
+provided against that probability--he loved her so tenderly, his ambition
+for her only came from his affection; and the letter he left behind him
+pardons and releases her, if she revolts from the choice he himself
+preferred."
+
+"Lord Vargrave is, perhaps, a generous, he certainly seems a candid, man,
+and he must be sensible that his uncle has already done all that justice
+required."
+
+"I think so.  But this, as I said, is not all; I have brought the letter
+to show you.  It seems to me as you apprehended.  This Mr. Maltravers has
+wound himself about her thoughts more than she herself imagines; you see
+how she dwells on all that concerns him, and how, after checking herself,
+she returns again and again to the same subject."
+
+The curate put on his spectacles, and took the letter.  It was a strange
+thing, that old gray-haired minister evincing such grave interest in the
+secrets of that young heart!  But they who would take charge of the soul
+must never be too wise to regard the heart!
+
+Lady Vargrave looked over his shoulder as he bent down to read, and at
+times placed her finger on such passages as she wished him to note.  The
+old curate nodded as she did so; but neither spoke till the letter was
+concluded.
+
+The curate then folded up the epistle, took off his spectacles, hemmed,
+and looked grave.
+
+"Well," said Lady Vargrave, anxiously, "well?"
+
+"My dear friend, the letter requires consideration.  In the first place,
+it is clear to me that, in spite of Lord Vargrave's presence at the
+rectory, his lordship so manages matters that the poor child is unable of
+herself to bring that matter to a conclusion.  And, indeed, to a mind so
+sensitively delicate and honourable, it is no easy task."
+
+"Shall I write to Lord Vargrave?"
+
+"Let us think of it.  In the meanwhile, this Mr. Maltravers--"
+
+"Ah, this Mr. Maltravers!"
+
+"The child shows us more of her heart than she thinks of; and yet I
+myself am puzzled.  If you observe, she has only once or twice spoken of
+the Colonel Legard whom she has made acquaintance with; while she treats
+at length of Mr. Maltravers, and confesses the effect he has produced on
+her mind.  Yet, do you know, I more dread the caution respecting the
+first than all the candour that betrays the influence of the last?  There
+is a great difference between first fancy and first love."
+
+"Is there?" said the lady, abstractedly.
+
+"Again, neither of us is acquainted with this singular man,--I mean
+Maltravers; his character, temper, and principles, of all of which Evelyn
+is too young, too guileless, to judge for herself.  One thing, however,
+in her letter speaks in his favour."
+
+"What is that?"
+
+"He absents himself from her.  This, if he has discovered her secret, or
+if he himself is sensible of too great a charm in her presence, would be
+the natural course that an honourable and a strong mind would pursue."
+
+"What!--if he love her?"
+
+"Yes; while he believes her hand is engaged to another."
+
+"True!  What shall be done--if Evelyn should love, and love in vain?  Ah,
+it is the misery of a whole existence!"
+
+"Perhaps she had better return to us," said Mr. Aubrey; "and yet, if
+already it be too late, and her affections are engaged, we should still
+remain in ignorance respecting the motives and mind of the object of her
+attachment; and he, too, might not know the true nature of the obstacle
+connected with Lord Vargrave's claims."
+
+"Shall I, then, go to her?  You know how I shrink from strangers; how I
+fear curiosity, doubts, and questions; how [and Lady Vargrave's voice
+faltered]--how unfitted I am for--for--" she stopped short, and a faint
+blush overspread her cheeks.
+
+The curate understood her, and was moved.
+
+"Dear friend," said he, "will you intrust this charge to myself?  You
+know how Evelyn is endeared to me by certain recollections!  Perhaps,
+better than you, I may be enabled silently to examine if this man be
+worthy of her, and one who could secure her happiness; perhaps, better
+than you I may ascertain the exact nature of her own feelings towards
+him; perhaps, too, better than you I may effect an understanding with
+Lord Vargrave."
+
+"You are always my kindest friend," said the lady, with emotion; "how
+much I already owe you! what hopes beyond the grave! what--"
+
+"Hush!" interrupted the curate, gently; "your own good heart and pure
+intentions have worked out your own atonement--may I hope also your own
+content?  Let us return to our Evelyn.  Poor child! how unlike this
+despondent letter to her gay light spirits when with us!  We acted for
+the best; yet perhaps we did wrong to yield her up to strangers.  And
+this Maltravers--with her enthusiasm and quick susceptibilities to
+genius, she was half prepared to imagine him all she depicts him to be.
+He must have a spell in his works that I have not discovered, for at
+times it seems to operate even on you."
+
+"Because," said Lady Vargrave, "they remind me of _his_ conversation,
+_his_ habits of thought.  If like _him_ in other things, Evelyn may
+indeed be happy!"
+
+"And if," said the curate, curiously,--"if now that you are free, you
+were ever to meet with him again, and his memory had been as faithful as
+yours; and if he offered the sole atonement in his power, for all that
+his early error cost you; if such a chance should happen in the
+vicissitudes of life, you would--"
+
+The curate stopped short; for he was struck by the exceeding paleness of
+his friend's cheek, and the tremor of her delicate frame.
+
+"If that were to happen," said she, in a very low voice; "if we were to
+meet again, and if he were--as you and Mrs. Leslie seem to think--poor,
+and, like myself, humbly born, if my fortune could assist him, if my love
+could still--changed, altered as I am--ah! do not talk of it--I cannot
+bear the thought of happiness!  And yet, if before I die I _could_ but
+see him again!"  She clasped her hands fervently as she spoke, and the
+blush that overspread her face threw over it so much of bloom and
+freshness, that even Evelyn, at that moment, would scarcely have seemed
+more young.  "Enough!" she added, after a little while, as the glow died
+away.  "It is but a foolish hope; all earthly love is buried; and my
+heart is there!"--she pointed to the heavens, and both were silent.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+  QUIBUS otio vel magnifice, vel molliter, vivere copia era
+  incerta pro certis malebant.*--SALLUST.
+
+  * "They who had the means to live at ease, either in splendour or
+    in luxury, preferred the uncertainty of change to their natural
+    security."
+
+LORD RABY--one of the wealthiest and most splendid noblemen in
+England--was prouder, perhaps, of his provincial distinctions than the
+eminence of his rank or the fashion of his wife.  The magnificent
+chateaux, the immense estates, of our English peers tend to preserve to
+us in spite of the freedom, bustle, and commercial grandeur of our people
+more of the Norman attributes of aristocracy than can be found in other
+countries.  In his county, the great noble is a petty prince; his house
+is a court; his possessions and munificence are a boast to every
+proprietor in his district.  They are as fond of talking of _the_ earl's
+or _the_ duke's movements and entertainments, as Dangeau was of the
+gossip of the Tuileries and Versailles.
+
+Lord Raby, while affecting, as lieutenant of the county, to make no
+political distinctions between squire and squire--hospitable and affable
+to all--still, by that very absence of exclusiveness, gave a tone to the
+politics of the whole county; and converted many who had once thought
+differently on the respective virtues of Whigs and Tories.  A great man
+never loses so much as when he exhibits intolerance, or parades the right
+of persecution.
+
+"My tenants shall vote exactly as they please," said Lord Raby; and he
+was never known to have a tenant vote against his wishes!  Keeping a
+vigilant eye on all the interests, and conciliating all the proprietors,
+in the county, he not only never lost a friend, but he kept together a
+body of partisans that constantly added to its numbers.
+
+Sir John Merton's colleague, a young Lord Nelthorpe, who could not speak
+three sentences if you took away his hat, and who, constant at Almack's,
+was not only inaudible but invisible in parliament, had no chance of
+being re-elected.  Lord Nelthorpe's father, the Earl of Mainwaring, was a
+new peer; and, next to Lord Raby, the richest nobleman in the county.
+Now, though they were much of the same politics, Lord Raby hated Lord
+Mainwaring.  They were too near each other,--they clashed; they had the
+jealousy of rival princes!
+
+Lord Raby was delighted at the notion of getting rid of Lord
+Nelthorpe,--it would be so sensible a blow to the Mainwaring interest.
+The party had been looking out for a new candidate, and Maltravers had
+been much talked of.  It is true that, when in parliament some years
+before, the politics of Maltravers had differed from those of Lord Raby
+and his set.  But Maltravers had of late taken no share in politics, had
+uttered no political opinions, was intimate with the electioneering
+Mertons, was supposed to be a discontented man,--and politicians believe
+in no discontent that is not political.  Whispers were afloat that
+Maltravers had grown wise, and changed his views: some remarks of his,
+more theoretical than practical, were quoted in favour of this notion.
+Parties, too, had much changed since Maltravers had appeared on the busy
+scene,--new questions had arisen, and the old ones had died off.
+
+Lord Raby and his party thought that, if Maltravers could be secured to
+them, no one would better suit their purpose.  Political faction loves
+converts better even than consistent adherents.  A man's rise in life
+generally dates from a well-timed _rat_.  His high reputation, his
+provincial rank as the representative of the oldest commoner's family in
+the county, his age, which combined the energy of one period with the
+experience of another,--all united to accord Maltravers a preference over
+richer men.  Lord Raby had been pointedly courteous and flattering to the
+master of Burleigh; and he now contrived it so, that the brilliant
+entertainment he was about to give might appear in compliment to a
+distinguished neighbour, returned to fix his residence on his patrimonial
+property, while in reality it might serve an electioneering
+purpose,--serve to introduce Maltravers to the county, as if under his
+lordship's own wing, and minister to political uses that went beyond the
+mere representation of the county.
+
+Lord Vargrave had, during his stay at Merton Rectory, paid several visits
+to Knaresdean, and held many private conversations with the marquess: the
+result of these conversations was a close union of schemes and interests
+between the two noblemen.  Dissatisfied with the political conduct of
+government, Lord Raby was also dissatisfied that, from various party
+reasons, a nobleman beneath himself in rank, and as he thought in
+influence, had obtained a preference in a recent vacancy among the
+Knights of the Garter.  And if Vargrave had a talent in the world it was
+in discovering the weak points of men whom he sought to gain, and making
+the vanities of others conduce to his own ambition.
+
+The festivities of Knaresdean gave occasion to Lord Raby to unite at his
+house the more prominent of those who thought and acted in concert with
+Lord Vargrave; and in this secret senate the operations for the following
+session were to be seriously discussed and gravely determined.
+
+On the day which was to be concluded with the ball at Knaresdean, Lord
+Vargrave went before the rest of the Merton party, for he was engaged to
+dine with the marquess.
+
+On arriving at Knaresdean, Lumley found Lord Saxingham and some other
+politicians, who had arrived the preceding day, closeted with Lord Raby;
+and Vargrave, who shone to yet greater advantage in the diplomacy of
+party management than in the arena of parliament, brought penetration,
+energy, and decision to timid and fluctuating counsels.  Lord Vargrave
+lingered in the room after the first bell had summoned the other guests
+to depart.
+
+"My dear lord," said he then, "though no one would be more glad than
+myself to secure Maltravers to our side, I very much doubt whether you
+will succeed in doing so.  On the one hand, he appears altogether
+disgusted with politics and parliament; and on the other hand, I fancy
+that reports of his change of opinions are, if not wholly unfounded, very
+unduly coloured.  Moreover, to do him justice, I think that he is not one
+to be blinded and flattered into the pale of a party; and your bird will
+fly away after you have wasted a bucketful of salt on his tail."
+
+"Very possibly," said Lord Raby, laughing,--"you know him better than I
+do.  But there are many purposes to serve in this matter,--purposes too
+provincial to interest you.  In the first place, we shall humble the
+Nelthorpe interest, merely by showing that we _do_ think of a new member;
+secondly, we shall get up a manifestation of feeling that would be
+impossible, unless we were provided with a centre of attraction; thirdly,
+we shall rouse a certain emulation among other county gentlemen, and if
+Maltravers decline, we shall have many applicants; and fourthly, suppose
+Maltravers has not changed his opinions, we shall make him suspected by
+the party he really does belong to, and which would be somewhat
+formidable if he were to head them.  In fact, these are mere county
+tactics that you can't be expected to understand."
+
+"I see you are quite right: meanwhile you will at least have an
+opportunity (though I say it, who should not say it) to present to the
+county one of the prettiest young ladies that ever graced the halls of
+Knaresdean."
+
+"Ah, Miss Cameron!  I have heard much of her beauty: you are a lucky
+fellow, Vargrave!  By the by, are we to say anything of the engagement?"
+
+"Why, indeed, my dear lord, it is now so publicly known, that it would be
+false delicacy to affect concealment."
+
+"Very well; I understand."
+
+"How long I have detained you--a thousand pardons!--I have but just time
+to dress.  In four or five months I must remember to leave you a longer
+time for your toilet."
+
+"Me--how?"
+
+"Oh, the Duke of ----- can't live long; and I always observe that when a
+handsome man has the Garter, he takes a long time pulling up his
+stockings."
+
+"Ha, ha! you are so droll, Vargrave."
+
+"Ha, ha!  I must be off."
+
+"The more publicity is given to this arrangement, the more difficult for
+Evelyn to shy at the leap," muttered Vargrave to himself as he closed the
+door.  "Thus do I make all things useful to myself!"
+
+The dinner party were assembled in the great drawing-room, when
+Maltravers and Cleveland, also invited guests to the banquet, were
+announced.  Lord Raby received the former with marked _empressement_; and
+the stately marchioness honoured him with her most gracious smile.
+Formal presentations to the rest of the guests were interchanged; and it
+was not till the circle was fully gone through that Maltravers perceived,
+seated by himself in a corner, to which he had shrunk on the entrance of
+Maltravers, a gray-haired solitary man,--it was Lord Saxingham!  The last
+time they had met was in the death-chamber of Florence; and the old man
+forgot for the moment the anticipated dukedom, and the dreamed-of
+premiership, and his heart flew back to the grave of his only child!
+They saluted each other, and shook hands in silence.  And Vargrave--whose
+eye was on them--Vargrave, whose arts had made that old man childless,
+felt not a pang of remorse!  Living ever in the future, Vargrave almost
+seemed to have lost his memory.  He knew not what regret was.  It is a
+condition of life with men thoroughly worldly that they never look
+behind!
+
+The signal was given: in due order the party were marshalled into the
+great hall,--a spacious and lofty chamber, which had received its last
+alteration from the hand of Inigo Jones; though the massive ceiling, with
+its antique and grotesque masques, betrayed a much earlier date, and
+contrasted with the Corinthian pilasters that adorned the walls, and
+supported the music-gallery, from which waved the flags of modern warfare
+and its mimicries,--the eagle of Napoleon, a token of the services of
+Lord Raby's brother (a distinguished cavalry officer in command at
+Waterloo), in juxtaposition with a much gayer and more glittering banner,
+emblematic of the martial fame of Lord Raby himself, as Colonel of the
+B-----shire volunteers!
+
+The music pealed from the gallery, the plate glittered on the board; the
+ladies wore diamonds, and the gentlemen who had them wore stars.  It was
+a very fine sight, that banquet!--such as became the festive day of a
+lord-lieutenant whose ancestors had now defied, and now intermarried,
+with royalty.  But there was very little talk, and no merriment.  People
+at the top of the table drank wine with those at the bottom; and
+gentlemen and ladies seated next to each other whispered languidly in
+monosyllabic commune.  On one side, Maltravers was flanked by a Lady
+Somebody Something, who was rather deaf, and very much frightened for
+fear he should talk Greek; on the other side he was relieved by Sir John
+Merton,--very civil, very pompous, and talking, at strictured intervals,
+about county matters, in a measured intonation, savouring of the
+House-of-Commons jerk at the end of the sentence.
+
+As the dinner advanced to its close, Sir John became a little more
+diffuse, though his voice sank into a whisper.
+
+"I fear there will be a split in the Cabinet before parliament meets."
+
+"Indeed!"
+
+"Yes; Vargrave and the premier cannot pull together very long.  Clever
+man, Vargrave! but he has not enough stake in the country for a leader!"
+
+"All men have public character to stake; and if that be good, I suppose
+no stake can be better?"
+
+"Humph!--yes--very true; but still, when a man has land and money, his
+opinions, in a country like this, very properly carry more weight with
+them.  If Vargrave, for instance, had Lord Raby's property, no man could
+be more fit for a leader,--a prime minister.  We might then be sure that
+he would have no selfish interest to further: he would not play tricks
+with his party--you understand?"
+
+"Perfectly."
+
+"I am not a party man, as you may remember; indeed, you and I have voted
+alike on the same questions.  Measures, not men,--that is my maxim; but
+still I don't like to see men placed above their proper stations."
+
+"Maltravers, a glass of wine," said Lord Vargrave across the table.
+"Will you join us, Sir John?"
+
+Sir John bowed.
+
+"Certainly," he resumed, "Vargrave is a pleasant man and a good speaker;
+but still they say he is far from rich,--embarrassed, indeed.  However,
+when he marries Miss Cameron it may make a great difference,--give him
+more respectability; do you know what her fortune is--something immense?"
+
+"Yes, I believe so; I don't know."
+
+"My brother says that Vargrave is most amiable.  The young lady is very
+handsome, almost too handsome for a wife--don't you think so?  Beauties
+are all very well in a ballroom; but they are not calculated for domestic
+life.  I am sure you agree with me.  I have heard, indeed, that Miss
+Cameron is rather learned; but there is so much scandal in a country
+neighbourhood,--people are so ill-natured.  I dare say she is not more
+learned than other young ladies, poor girl!  What do you think?"
+
+"Miss Cameron is--is very accomplished, I believe.  And so you think the
+Government cannot stand?"
+
+"I don't say that,--very far from it; but I fear there must be a change.
+However, if the country gentlemen hold together, I do not doubt but what
+we shall weather the storm.  The landed interest, Mr. Maltravers, is the
+great stay of this country,--the sheet-anchor, I may say.  I suppose Lord
+Vargrave, who seems, I must say, to have right notions on this head, will
+invest Miss Cameron's fortune in land.  But though one may buy an estate,
+one can't buy an old family, Mr. Maltravers!--you and I may be thankful
+for that.  By the way, who was Miss Cameron's mother, Lady
+Vargrave?--something low, I fear; nobody knows."
+
+"I am not acquainted with Lady Vargrave; your sister-in-law speaks of her
+most highly.  And the daughter in herself is a sufficient guarantee for
+the virtues of the mother."
+
+"Yes; and Vargrave on one side, at least, has himself nothing in the way
+of family to boast of."
+
+The ladies left the hall, the gentlemen re-seated themselves.  Lord Raby
+made some remark on politics to Sir John Merton, and the whole round of
+talkers immediately followed their leader.
+
+"It is a thousand pities, Sir John," said Lord Raby, "that you have not a
+colleague more worthy of you; Nelthorpe never attends a committee, does
+he?"
+
+"I cannot say that he is a very active member; but he is young, and we
+must make allowances for him," said Sir John, discreetly; for he had no
+desire to oust his colleague,--it was agreeable enough to be _the_
+efficient member.
+
+"In these times," said Lord Raby, loftily, "allowances are not to be made
+for systematic neglect of duty; we shall have a stormy session; the
+Opposition is no longer to be despised; perhaps a dissolution may be
+nearer at hand than we think for.  As for Nelthorpe, he cannot come in
+again."
+
+"That I am quite sure of," said a fat country gentleman of great weight
+in the county; "he not only was absent on the great Malt question, but he
+never answered my letter respecting the Canal Company."
+
+"Not answered your letter!" said Lord Raby, lifting up his hands and eyes
+in amaze and horror.  "What conduct!  Ah, Mr. Maltravers, you are the man
+for us!"
+
+"Hear! hear!" cried the fat squire.
+
+"Hear!" echoed Vargrave; and the approving sound went round the table.
+
+Lord Raby rose.  "Gentlemen, fill your glasses; a health to our
+distinguished neighbour!"
+
+The company applauded; each in his turn smiled, nodded, and drank to
+Maltravers, who, though taken by surprise, saw at once the course to
+pursue.  He returned thanks simply and shortly; and without pointedly
+noticing the allusion in which Lord Raby had indulged, remarked,
+incidentally, that he had retired, certainly for some years--perhaps
+forever--from political life.
+
+Vargrave smiled significantly at Lord Raby, and hastened to lead the
+conversation into party discussion.  Wrapped in his proud disdain of what
+he considered the contests of factions for toys and shadows, Maltravers
+remained silent; and the party soon broke up, and adjourned to the
+ballroom.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+  LE plus grand defaut de la penetration n'est pas de n'aller
+  point jusqu'au but,--c'est de la passer.*--LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.
+
+  * "The greatest defect of penetration is not that of not going
+    just up to the point,--'tis the passing it."
+
+EVELYN had looked forward to the ball at Knaresdean with feelings deeper
+than those which usually inflame the fancy of a girl proud of her dress
+and confident of her beauty.  Whether or not she _loved_ Maltravers, in
+the true acceptation of the word "love," it is certain that he had
+acquired a most powerful command over her mind and imagination.  She felt
+the warmest interest in his welfare, the most anxious desire for his
+esteem, the deepest regret at the thought of their estrangement.  At
+Knaresdean she should meet Maltravers,--in crowds, it is true; but still
+she should meet him; she should see him towering superior above the herd;
+she should hear him praised; she should mark him, the observed of all.
+But there was another and a deeper source of joy within her.  A letter
+had been that morning received from Aubrey, in which he had announced his
+arrival for the next day.  The letter, though affectionate, was short.
+Evelyn had been some months absent,--Lady Vargrave was anxious to make
+arrangements for her return; but it was to be at her option whether she
+would accompany the curate home.  Now, besides her delight at seeing once
+more the dear old man, and hearing from his lips that her mother was well
+and happy, Evelyn hailed in his arrival the means of extricating herself
+from her position with Lord Vargrave.  She would confide in him her
+increased repugnance to that union, he would confer with Lord Vargrave;
+and then--and then--did there come once more the thought of Maltravers?
+No!  I fear it was not Maltravers who called forth that smile and that
+sigh!  Strange girl, you know not your own mind!--but few of us, at your
+age, do.
+
+In all the gayety of hope, in the pride of dress and half-conscious
+loveliness, Evelyn went with a light step into Caroline's room.  Miss
+Merton had already dismissed her woman, and was seated by her
+writing-table, leaning her cheek thoughtfully on her hand.
+
+"Is it time to go?" said she, looking up.  "Well, we shall put Papa, and
+the coachman, and the horses, too, in excellent humour.  How well you
+look!  Really, Evelyn, you are indeed beautiful!" and Caroline gazed with
+honest but not unenvious admiration at the fairy form so rounded and yet
+so delicate, and the face that seemed to blush at its own charms.
+
+"I am sure I can return the flattery," said Evelyn, laughing bashfully.
+
+"Oh, as for me, I am well enough in my way: and hereafter, I dare say, we
+may be rival beauties.  I hope we shall remain good friends, and rule the
+world with divided empire.  Do you not long for the stir, and excitement,
+and ambition of London?---for ambition is open to us as to men!"
+
+"No, indeed," replied Evelyn, smiling; "I could be ambitious, indeed; but
+it would not be for myself, but for--"
+
+"A husband, perhaps; well, you will have ample scope for such sympathy.
+Lord Vargrave--"
+
+"Lord Vargrave again?" and Evelyn's smile vanished, and she turned away.
+
+"Ah," said Caroline, "I should have made Vargrave an excellent wife--pity
+he does not think so!  As it is, I must set up for myself and become a
+_maitresse femme_.  So you think I look well to-night?  I am glad of
+it--Lord Doltimore is one who will be guided by what other people say."
+
+"You are not serious about Lord Doltimore?"
+
+"Most sadly serious."
+
+"Impossible! you could not speak so if you loved him."
+
+"Loved him! no! but I intend to marry him."
+
+Evelyn was revolted, but still incredulous.
+
+"And you, too, will marry one whom you do not love--'tis our fate--"
+
+"Never!"
+
+"We shall see."
+
+Evelyn's heart was damped, and her spirits fell.
+
+"Tell me now," said Caroline, pressing on the wrung withers, "do you not
+think this excitement, partial and provincial though it be--the sense of
+beauty, the hope of conquest, the consciousness of power--better than the
+dull monotony of the Devonshire cottage?  Be honest--"
+
+"No, no, indeed!" answered Evelyn, tearfully and passionately; "one hour
+with my mother, one smile from her lips, were worth it all."
+
+"And in your visions of marriage, you think then of nothing but roses and
+doves,--love in a cottage!"
+
+"Love _in a home_, no matter whether a palace or a cottage," returned
+Evelyn.
+
+"Home!" repeated Caroline, bitterly; "home,--home is the English synonym
+for the French _ennui_.  But I hear Papa on the stairs."
+
+A ballroom--what a scene of commonplace! how hackneyed in novels! how
+trite in ordinary life! and yet ballrooms have a character and a
+sentiment of their own, for all tempers and all ages.  Something in the
+lights, the crowd, the music, conduces to stir up many of the thoughts
+that belong to fancy and romance.  It is a melancholy scene to men after
+a certain age.  It revives many of those lighter and more graceful images
+connected with the wandering desires of youth,--shadows that crossed us,
+and seemed love, but were not; having much of the grace and charm, but
+none of the passion and the tragedy, of love.  So many of our earliest
+and gentlest recollections are connected with those chalked floors, and
+that music painfully gay, and those quiet nooks and corners, where the
+talk that hovers about the heart and does not touch it has been held.
+Apart and unsympathizing in that austerer wisdom which comes to us after
+deep passions have been excited, we see form after form chasing the
+butterflies that dazzle us no longer among the flowers that have evermore
+lost their fragrance.
+
+Somehow or other, it is one of the scenes that remind us most forcibly of
+the loss of youth!  We are brought so closely in contact with the young
+and with the short-lived pleasures that once pleased us, and have
+forfeited all bloom.  Happy the man who turns from "the tinkling cymbal"
+and "the gallery of pictures," and can think of some watchful eye and
+some kind heart _at home_; but those who have no home--and they are a
+numerous tribe--never feel lonelier hermits or sadder moralists than in
+such a crowd.
+
+Maltravers leaned abstractedly against the wall, and some such
+reflections, perhaps, passed within, as the plumes waved and the diamonds
+glittered around him.  Ever too proud to be vain, the _monstrari digito_
+had not flattered even in the commencement of his career.  And now he
+heeded not the eyes that sought his look, nor the admiring murmur of lips
+anxious to be overheard.  Affluent, well-born, unmarried, and still in
+the prime of life,--in the small circles of a province, Ernest Maltravers
+would in himself have been an object of interest to the diplomacy of
+mothers and daughters; and the false glare of reputation necessarily
+deepened curiosity, and widened the range of speculators and observers.
+
+Suddenly, however, a new object of attention excited new interest; new
+whispers ran through the crowd, and these awakened Maltravers from his
+revery.  He looked up, and beheld all eyes fixed upon one form!  His own
+eyes encountered those of Evelyn Cameron!
+
+It was the first time he had seen this beautiful young person in all the
+_eclat_, pomp, and circumstance of her station, as the heiress of the
+opulent Templeton,--the first time he had seen her the cynosure of
+crowds, who, had her features been homely, would have admired the charms
+of her fortune in her face.  And now, as radiant with youth, and the
+flush of excitement on her soft cheek, she met his eye, he said to
+himself: "And could I have wished one so new to the world to have united
+her lot with a man for whom all that to her is delight has grown
+wearisome and stale?  Could I have been justified in stealing her from
+the admiration that, at her age and to her sex, has so sweet a flattery?
+Or, on the other hand, could I have gone back to her years, and
+sympathized with feelings that time has taught me to despise?  Better as
+it is."
+
+Influenced by these thoughts, the greeting of Maltravers disappointed and
+saddened Evelyn, she knew not why; it was constrained and grave.
+
+"Does not Miss Cameron look well?" whispered Mrs. Merton, on whose arm
+the heiress leaned.  "You observe what a sensation she creates?"
+
+Evelyn overheard, and blushed as she stole a glance at Maltravers.  There
+was something mournful in the admiration which spoke in his deep earnest
+eyes.
+
+"Everywhere," said he, calmly, and in the same tone, "everywhere Miss
+Cameron appears, she must outshine all others."  He turned to Evelyn, and
+said with a smile, "You must learn to inure yourself to admiration; a
+year or two hence, and you will not blush at your own gifts!"
+
+"And you, too, contribute to spoil me!--fie!"
+
+"Are you so easily spoiled?  If I meet you hereafter, you will think my
+compliments cold to the common language of others."
+
+"You do not know me,--perhaps you never will."
+
+"I am contented with the fair pages I have already read."
+
+"Where is Lady Raby?" asked Mrs. Merton.  "Oh, I see; Evelyn, my love, we
+must present ourselves to our hostess."
+
+The ladies moved on; and when Maltravers next caught a glance of Evelyn,
+she was with Lady Raby, and Lord Vargrave also was by her side.
+
+The whispers round him had grown louder.
+
+"Very lovely indeed! so young, too! and she is really going to be married
+to Lord Vargrave: so much older than she is,--quite a sacrifice!"
+
+"Scarcely so.  He is so agreeable, and still handsome.  But are you sure
+that the thing is settled?"
+
+"Oh, yes.  Lord Raby himself told me so.  It will take place very soon."
+
+"But do you know who her mother was?  I cannot make out."
+
+"Nothing particular.  You know the late Lord Vargrave was a man of low
+birth.  I believe she was a widow of his own rank; she lives quite in
+seclusion."
+
+"How d' ye do, Mr. Maltravers?  So glad to see you," said the quick,
+shrill voice of Mrs. Hare.  "Beautiful ball!  Nobody does things like
+Lord Raby; don't you dance?"
+
+"No, madam."
+
+"Oh, you young gentlemen are so _fine_ nowadays!" (Mrs. Hare, laying
+stress on the word _young_, thought she had paid a very elegant
+compliment, and ran on with increased complacency.)
+
+"You are going to let Burleigh, I hear, to Lord Doltimore,--is it true?
+No! really now, what stories people do tell.  Elegant man, Lord
+Doltimore!  Is it true, that Miss Caroline is going to marry his
+lordship?  Great match!  No scandal, I hope; you'll excuse _me_!  Two
+weddings on the _tapis_,--quite stirring for our stupid county.  Lady
+Vargrave and Lady Doltimore, two new peeresses.  Which do you think is
+the handsomer?  Miss Merton is the taller, but there is something fierce
+in her eyes.  Don't you think so?  By the by, I wish you joy,--you'll
+excuse _me_."
+
+"Wish me joy, madam?"
+
+"Oh, you are so close.  Mr. Hare says he shall support you.  You will
+have all the ladies with you.  Well, I declare, Lord Vargrave is going to
+dance.  How old is he, do you think?"
+
+Maltravers uttered an audible _pshaw_, and moved away; but his penance
+was not over.  Lord Vargrave, much as he disliked dancing, still thought
+it wise to ask the fair hand of Evelyn; and Evelyn, also, could not
+refuse.
+
+And now, as the crowd gathered round the red ropes, Maltravers had to
+undergo new exclamations at Evelyn's beauty and Vargrave's luck.
+Impatiently he turned from the spot, with that gnawing sickness of the
+heart which none but the jealous know.  He longed to depart, yet dreaded
+to do so.  It was the last time he should see Evelyn, perhaps for years;
+the last time he should see her as Miss Cameron!
+
+He passed into another room, deserted by all save four old
+gentlemen--Cleveland one of them--immersed in whist; and threw himself
+upon an ottoman, placed in a recess by the oriel window.  There, half
+concealed by the draperies, he communed and reasoned with himself.  His
+heart was sad within him; he never felt before _how_ deeply and _how_
+passionately he loved Evelyn; how firmly that love had fastened upon the
+very core of his heart!  Strange, indeed, it was in a girl so young, of
+whom he had seen but little,--and that little in positions of such quiet
+and ordinary interest,--to excite a passion so intense in a man who had
+gone through strong emotions and stern trials!  But all love is
+unaccountable.  The solitude in which Maltravers had lived, the absence
+of all other excitement, perhaps had contributed largely to fan the
+flame.  And his affections had so long slept, and after long sleep the
+passions wake with such giant strength!  He felt now too well that the
+last rose of life had bloomed for him; it was blighted in its birth, but
+it could never be replaced.  Henceforth, indeed, he should be alone, the
+hopes of home were gone forever; and the other occupations of mind and
+soul--literature, pleasure, ambition--were already forsworn at the very
+age in which by most men they are most indulged!
+
+O Youth! begin not thy career too soon, and let one passion succeed in
+its due order to another; so that every season of life may have its
+appropriate pursuit and charm!
+
+The hours waned; still Maltravers stirred not; nor were his meditations
+disturbed, except by occasional ejaculations from the four old gentlemen,
+as between each deal they moralized over the caprices of the cards.
+
+At length, close beside him he heard that voice, the lightest sound of
+which could send the blood rushing through his veins; and from his
+retreat he saw Caroline and Evelyn, seated close by.
+
+"I beg pardon," said the former, in a low voice,--"I beg pardon, Evelyn,
+for calling you away; but I longed to tell you.  The die is cast.  Lord
+Doltimore has proposed, and I have accepted him!  Alas, alas!  I half
+wish I could retract!"
+
+"Dearest Caroline!" said the silver voice of Evelyn, "for Heaven's sake,
+do not thus wantonly resolve on your own unhappiness!  You wrong
+yourself, Caroline! you do, indeed! You are not the vain ambitious
+character you affect to be!  Ah, what is it you require?  Wealth?  Are
+you not my friend; am I not rich enough for both?  Rank?  What can it
+give you to compensate for the misery of a union without love?  Pray,
+forgive me for speaking thus.  Do not think me presumptuous, or romantic;
+but, indeed, indeed, I know from my own heart what yours must undergo!"
+
+Caroline pressed her friend's hand with emotion.
+
+"You are a bad comforter, Evelyn.  My mother, my father, will preach a
+very different doctrine.  I am foolish, indeed, to be so sad in obtaining
+the very object I have sought!  Poor Doltimore! he little knows the
+nature, the feelings of her whom he thinks he has made the happiest of
+her sex; he little knows--"  Caroline paused, turned pale as death, and
+then went rapidly on, "but you, Evelyn, _you_ will meet the same fate; we
+shall bear it together."
+
+"No! no! do not think so!  Where I give my hand, there shall I give my
+heart."
+
+At this time Maltravers half rose, and sighed audibly.
+
+"Hush!" said Caroline, in alarm.  At the same moment, the whist-table
+broke up, and Cleveland approached Maltravers.
+
+"I am at your service," said he; "I know you will not stay the supper.
+You will find me in the next room; I am just going to speak to Lord
+Saxingham."  The gallant old gentleman then paid a compliment to the
+young ladies, and walked away.
+
+"So you too are a deserter from the ballroom!" said Miss Merton to
+Maltravers as she rose.
+
+"I am not very well; but do not let me frighten you away."
+
+"Oh, no!  I hear the music; it is the last quadrille before supper: and
+here is my fortunate partner looking for me."
+
+"I have been everywhere in search of you," said Lord Doltimore, in an
+accent of tender reproach: "come, we are almost too late now."
+
+Caroline put her arm into Lord Doltimore's, who hurried her into the
+ballroom.
+
+Miss Cameron looked irresolute whether or not to follow, when Maltravers
+seated himself beside her; and the paleness of his brow, and something
+that bespoke pain in the compressed lip, went at once to her heart.  In
+her childlike tenderness, she would have given worlds for the sister's
+privilege of sympathy and soothing.  The room was now deserted; they were
+alone.
+
+The words that he had overheard from Evelyn's lips, "Where I shall give
+my hand, there shall I give my heart," Maltravers interpreted but in one
+sense,--"she loved her betrothed;" and strange as it may seem, at that
+thought, which put the last seal upon his fate, selfish anguish was less
+felt than deep compassion.  So young, so courted, so tempted as she must
+be--and with such a protector!--the cold, the unsympathizing, the
+heartless Vargrave!  She, too, whose feelings, so warm, ever trembled on
+her lip and eye.  Oh! when she awoke from her dream, and knew whom she
+had loved, what might be her destiny, what her danger!
+
+"Miss Cameron," said Maltravers, "let me for one moment detain you; I
+will not trespass long.  May I once, and for the last time, assume the
+austere rights of friendship?  I have seen much of life, Miss Cameron,
+and my experience has been purchased dearly; and harsh and hermit-like as
+I may have grown, I have not outlived such feelings as you are well
+formed to excite.  Nay,"--and Maltravers smiled sadly--"I am not about to
+compliment or flatter, I speak not to you as the young to the young; the
+difference of our years, that takes away sweetness from flattery, leaves
+still sincerity to friendship.  You have inspired me with a deep
+interest,--deeper than I thought that living beauty could ever rouse in
+me again!  It may be that something in the tone of your voice, your
+manner, a nameless grace that I cannot define, reminds me of one whom I
+knew in youth,--one who had not your advantages of education, wealth,
+birth; but to whom Nature was more kind than Fortune."
+
+He paused a moment; and without looking towards Evelyn, thus renewed,--
+
+"You are entering life under brilliant auspices.  Ah, let me hope that
+the noonday will keep the promise of the dawn!  You are susceptible,
+imaginative; do not demand too much, or dream too fondly.  When you are
+wedded, do not imagine that wedded life is exempt from its trials and its
+cares; if you know yourself beloved--and beloved you must be--do not ask
+from the busy and anxious spirit of man all which Romance promises and
+Life but rarely yields.  And oh!" continued Maltravers, with an absorbing
+and earnest passion, that poured forth its language with almost
+breathless rapidity,--"if ever your heart rebels, if ever it be
+dissatisfied, fly the false sentiment as a sin!  Thrown, as from your
+rank you must be, on a world of a thousand perils, with no guide so
+constant and so safe as your own innocence, make not that world too dear
+a friend.  Were it possible that your own home ever could be lonely or
+unhappy, reflect that to woman the unhappiest home is happier than all
+excitement abroad.  You will have a thousand suitors hereafter: believe
+that the asp lurks under the flatterer's tongue, and resolve, come what
+may, to be contented with your lot.  How many have I known, lovely and
+pure as you, who have suffered the very affections--the very beauty of
+their nature--to destroy them!  Listen to me as a warner, as a brother,
+as a pilot who has passed the seas on which your vessel is about to
+launch.  And ever, ever let me know, in whatever lands your name may
+reach me, that one who has brought back to me all my faith in human
+excellence, while the idol of our sex, is the glory of her own.  Forgive
+me this strange impertinence; my heart is full, and has overflowed.  And
+now, Miss Cameron--Evelyn Cameron--this is my last offence, and my last
+farewell!"
+
+He held out his hand, and involuntarily, unknowingly, she clasped it, as
+if to detain him till she could summon words to reply.  Suddenly he heard
+Lord Vargrave's voice behind.  The spell was broken; the next moment
+Evelyn was alone, and the throng swept into the room towards the banquet,
+and laughter and gay voices were heard, and Lord Vargrave was again by
+Evelyn's side!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+            To you
+  This journey is devoted.
+       _Lover's Progress_, Act iv. sc. 1.
+
+AS Cleveland and Maltravers returned homeward, the latter abruptly
+checked the cheerful garrulity of his friend.  "I have a favour, a great
+favour to ask of you."
+
+"And what is that?"
+
+"Let us leave Burleigh tomorrow; I care not at what hour; we need go but
+two or three stages if you are fatigued."
+
+"Most hospitable host! and why?"
+
+"It is torture, it is agony to me, to breathe the air of Burleigh," cried
+Maltravers, wildly.  "Can you not guess my secret?  Have I then concealed
+it so well?  I love, I adore Evelyn Cameron, and she is betrothed to--she
+loves--another!"
+
+Mr. Cleveland was breathless with amaze; Maltravers had indeed so well
+concealed his secret, and now his emotion was so impetuous, that it
+startled and alarmed the old man, who had never himself experienced a
+passion, though he had indulged a sentiment.  He sought to console and
+soothe; but after the first burst of agony, Maltravers recovered himself,
+and said gently,--
+
+"Let us never return to this subject again: it is right that I should
+conquer this madness, and conquer it I will!  Now you know my weakness,
+you will indulge it.  My cure, cannot commence until I can no longer see
+from my casements the very roof that shelters the affianced bride of
+another."
+
+"Certainly, then, we will set off to-morrow: my friend! is it indeed--"
+
+"Ah, cease," interrupted the proud man; "no compassion, I implore: give
+me but time and silence,--they are the only remedies."
+
+Before noon the next day, Burleigh was once more deserted by its lord.
+As the carriage drove through the village, Mrs. Elton saw it from her
+open window; but her patron, too absorbed at that hour even for
+benevolence, forgot her existence and yet so complicated are the webs of
+fate, that in the breast of that lowly stranger was locked a secret of
+the most vital moment to Maltravers.
+
+"Where is he going; where is the squire going?" asked Mrs. Elton,
+anxiously.
+
+"Dear heart!" said the cottager, "they do say he be going for a short
+time to foren parts.  But he will be back at Christmas."
+
+"And at Christmas I may be gone hence forever," muttered the invalid;
+"but what will that matter to him--to any one?"
+
+At the first stage Maltravers and his friend were detained a short time
+for the want of horses.  Lord Raby's house had been filled with guests on
+the preceding night, and the stables of this little inn, dignified with
+the sign of the Raby Arms, and about two miles distant from the great
+man's place, had been exhausted by numerous claimants returning homeward
+from Knaresdean.  It was a quiet, solitary post-house, and patience, till
+some jaded horses should return, was the only remedy; the host, assuring
+the travellers that he expected four horses every moment, invited them
+within.  The morning was cold, and the fire not unacceptable to Mr.
+Cleveland; so they went into the little parlour.  Here they found an
+elderly gentleman of very prepossessing appearance, who was waiting for
+the same object.  He moved courteously from the fireplace as the
+travellers entered, and pushed the "B-----shire Chronicle" towards
+Cleveland: Cleveland bowed urbanely.  "A cold day, sir; the autumn begins
+to show itself."
+
+"It is true, sir," answered the old gentleman; "and I feel the cold the
+more, having just quitted the genial atmosphere of the South."
+
+"Of Italy?"
+
+"No, of England only.  I see by this paper (I am not much of a
+politician) that there is a chance of a dissolution of parliament, and
+that Mr. Maltravers is likely to come forward for this county; are you
+acquainted with him, sir?"
+
+"A little," said Cleveland, smiling.
+
+"He is a man I am much interested in," said the old gentleman; "and I
+hope soon to be honoured with his acquaintance."
+
+"Indeed! and you are going into his neighbourhood?" asked Cleveland,
+looking more attentively at the stranger, and much pleased with a certain
+simple candour in his countenance and manner.
+
+"Yes, to Merton Rectory."
+
+Maltravers, who had been hitherto stationed by the window, turned round.
+
+"To Merton Rectory?" repeated Cleveland.  "You are acquainted with Mr.
+Merton, then?"
+
+"Not yet; but I know some of his family.  However, my visit is rather to
+a young lady who is staying at the rectory,--Miss Cameron."
+
+Maltravers sighed heavily; and the old gentleman looked at him curiously.
+"Perhaps, sir, if you know that neighbourhood, you may have seen--"
+
+"Miss Cameron!  Certainly; it is an honour not easily forgotten."
+
+The old gentleman looked pleased.
+
+"The dear child!" said he, with a burst of honest affection, and he
+passed his hand over his eyes.  Maltravers drew near to him.
+
+"You know Miss Cameron; you are to be envied, sir," said he.
+
+"I have known her since she was a child; Lady Vargrave is my dearest
+friend."
+
+"Lady Vargrave must be worthy of such a daughter.  Only under the light
+of a sweet disposition and pure heart could that beautiful nature have
+been trained and reared."
+
+Maltravers spoke with enthusiasm; and, as if fearful to trust himself
+more, left the room.
+
+"That gentleman speaks not more warmly than justly," said the old man,
+with some surprise.  "He has a countenance which, if physiognomy be a
+true science, declares his praise to be no common compliment; may I
+inquire his name?"
+
+"Maltravers," replied Cleveland, a little vain of the effect his
+ex-pupil's name was to produce.
+
+The curate--for it was he--started and changed countenance.
+
+"Maltravers! but he is not about to leave the county?"
+
+"Yes, for a few months."
+
+Here the host entered.  Four horses, that had been only fourteen miles,
+had just re-entered the yard.  If Mr. Maltravers could spare two to that
+gentleman, who had, indeed, pre-engaged them?
+
+"Certainly," said Cleveland; "but be quick."
+
+"And is Lord Vargrave still at Mr. Merton's?" asked the curate, musingly.
+
+"Oh, yes, I believe so.  Miss Cameron is to be married to him very
+shortly,--is it not so?"
+
+"I cannot say," returned Aubrey, rather bewildered.  "You know Lord
+Vargrave, sir?"
+
+"Extremely well!"
+
+"And you think him worthy of Miss Cameron?"
+
+"That is a question for her to answer.  But I see the horses are put to.
+Good-day, sir!  Will you tell your fair young friend that you have met an
+old gentleman who wishes her all happiness; and if she ask you his name,
+say Cleveland?"
+
+So saying, Mr. Cleveland bowed, and re-entered the carriage.  But
+Maltravers was yet missing.  In fact, he returned to the house by the
+back way, and went once more into the little parlour.  It was something
+to see again one who would so soon see Evelyn!
+
+"If I mistake not," said Maltravers, "you are that Mr. Aubrey on whose
+virtues I have often heard Miss Cameron delight to linger?  Will you
+believe my regret that our acquaintance is now so brief?"
+
+As Maltravers spoke thus simply, there was in his countenance, his voice,
+a melancholy sweetness, which greatly conciliated the good curate; and as
+Aubrey gazed upon his noble features and lofty mien, he no longer
+wondered at the fascination he had appeared to exercise over the young
+Evelyn.
+
+"And may I not hope, Mr. Maltravers," said he, "that before long our
+acquaintance may be renewed?  Could not Miss Cameron," he added, with a
+smile and a penetrating look, "tempt you into Devonshire?"
+
+Maltravers shook his head, and, muttering something not very audible,
+quitted the room.  The curate heard the whirl of the wheels, and the host
+entered to inform him that his own carriage was now ready.
+
+"There is something in this," thought Aubrey, "which I do not comprehend.
+His manner, his trembling voice, bespoke emotions he struggled to
+conceal.  Can Lord Vargrave have gained his point?  Is Evelyn, indeed, no
+longer free?"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+  CERTES, c'est un grand cas, Icas,
+  Que toujours tracas ou fracas
+  Vous faites d'une ou d'autre sort;
+  C'est le diable qui vous emporte!*--VOITURE.
+
+  * "Certes, it is the fact, Icas, that you are always engaged in
+    tricks or scrapes of some sort or other; it must be the devil
+    that bewitches you."
+
+LORD VARGRAVE had passed the night of the ball and the following morning
+at Knaresdean.  It was necessary to bring the counsels of the scheming
+conclave to a full and definite conclusion; and this was at last
+effected.  Their strength numbered, friends and foes alike canvassed and
+considered, and due account taken of the waverers to be won over, it
+really did seem, even to the least sanguine, that the Saxingham or
+Vargrave party was one that might well aspire either to dictate to, or to
+break up, a government.  Nothing now was left to consider but the
+favourable hour for action.  In high spirits, Lord Vargrave returned
+about the middle of the day to the rectory.
+
+"So," thought he, as he reclined in his carriage,--"so, in politics, the
+prospect clears as the sun breaks out.  The party I have espoused is one
+that must be the most durable, for it possesses the greatest property and
+the most stubborn prejudice--what elements for Party!  All that I now
+require is a sufficient fortune to back my ambition.  Nothing can clog my
+way but these cursed debts, this disreputable want of gold.  And yet
+Evelyn alarms me!  Were I younger, or had I not made my position too
+soon, I would marry her by fraud or by force,--run off with her to
+Gretna, and make Vulcan minister to Plutus.  But this would never do at
+my years, and with my reputation.  A pretty story for the newspapers,
+d-----n them!  Well, nothing venture, nothing have; I will brave the
+hazard!  Meanwhile, Doltimore is mine; Caroline will rule him, and I rule
+her.  His vote and his boroughs are something,--his money will be more
+immediately useful: I must do him the honour to borrow a few
+thousands,--Caroline must manage that for me.  The fool is miserly,
+though a spendthrift; and looked black when I delicately hinted the other
+day that I wanted a friend--_id est_, a loan! money and friendship same
+thing,--distinction without a difference!"  Thus cogitating, Vargrave
+whiled away the minutes till his carriage stopped at Mr. Merton's door.
+
+As he entered the hall he met Caroline, who had just quitted her own
+room.
+
+"How lucky I am that you have on your bonnet!  I long for a walk with you
+round the lawn."
+
+"And I, too, am glad to see you, Lord Vargrave," said Caroline, putting
+her arm in his.
+
+"Accept my best congratulations, my own sweet friend," said Vargrave,
+when they were in the grounds.  "You have no idea how happy Doltimore is.
+He came to Knaresdean yesterday to communicate the news, and his
+neckcloth was primmer than ever.  C'est un bon enfant."
+
+"Ah, how can you talk thus?  Do you feel no pain at the thought
+that--that I am another's?"
+
+"Your heart will be ever mine,--and that is the true fidelity.  What
+else, too, could be done?  As for Lord Doltimore, we will go shares in
+him.  Come, cheer thee, _m'amie_; I rattle on thus to keep up your
+spirits.  Do not fancy I am happy!"
+
+Caroline let fall a few tears; but beneath the influence of Vargrave's
+sophistries and flatteries, she gradually recovered her usual hard and
+worldly tone of mind.
+
+"And where is Evelyn?" asked Vargrave.  "Do you know, the little witch
+seemed to be half mad the night of the ball.  Her head was turned; and
+when she sat next me at supper, she not only answered every question I
+put to her _a tort et a travers_, but I fancied every moment she was
+going to burst out crying.  Can you tell what was the matter with her?"
+
+"She was grieved to hear that I was to be married to the man I do not
+love.  Ah, Vargrave, she has more heart than you have!"
+
+"But she never fancies that you love me?" asked Lumley, in alarm.  "You
+women are so confoundedly confidential!"
+
+"No, she does not suspect our secret."
+
+"Then I scarcely think your approaching marriage was a sufficient cause
+for so much distraction."
+
+"Perhaps she may have overheard some of the impertinent whispers about
+her mother,--'Who was Lady Vargrave?' and 'What Cameron was Lady
+Vargrave's first husband?'  _I_ overheard a hundred such vulgar
+questions; and provincial people whisper so loud."
+
+"Ah, that is a very probable solution of the mystery; and for my part, I
+am almost as much puzzled as any one else can be to know who Lady
+Vargrave was!"
+
+"Did not your uncle tell you?"
+
+"He told me that she was of no very elevated birth and station,--nothing
+more; and she herself, with her quiet, say-nothing manner, slips through
+all my careless questionings like an eel.  She is still a beautiful
+creature, more regularly handsome than even Evelyn; and old Templeton had
+a very sweet tooth at the back of his head, though he never opened his
+mouth wide enough to show it."
+
+"She must ever at least have been blameless, to judge by an air which,
+even now, is more like that of a child than a matron."
+
+"Yes; she has not much of the widow about her, poor soul!  But her
+education, except in music, has not been very carefully attended to; and
+she knows about as much of the world as the Bishop of Autun (better known
+as Prince Talleyrand) knows of the Bible.  If she were not so simple, she
+would be silly; but silliness is never simple,--always cunning; however,
+there is some cunning in her keeping her past Cameronian Chronicles so
+close.  Perhaps I may know more about her in a short time, for I intend
+going to C-----, where my uncle once lived, in order to see if I can
+revive under the rose--since peers are only contraband
+electioneerers--his old parliamentary influence in that city: and they
+may tell me more there than I now know."
+
+"Did the late lord marry at C-----?"
+
+"No; in Devonshire.  I do not even know if Mrs. Cameron ever was at
+C-----."
+
+"You must be curious to know who the father of your intended wife was?"
+
+"Her father!  No; I have no curiosity in that quarter.  And, to tell you
+the truth, I am much too busy about the Present to be raking into that
+heap of rubbish we call the Past.  I fancy that both your good
+grandmother and that comely old curate of Brook-Green know everything
+about Lady Vargrave; and, as they esteem her so much, I take it for
+granted she is _sans tache_."
+
+"How could I be so stupid!  _A propos_ of the curate, I forgot to tell
+you that he is here.  He arrived about two hours ago, and has been
+closeted with Evelyn ever since!"
+
+"The deuce!  What brought the old man hither?"
+
+"That I know not.  Papa received a letter from him yesterday morning, to
+say that he would be here to-day.  Perhaps Lady Vargrave thinks it time
+for Evelyn to return home."
+
+"What am I to do?" said Vargrave, anxiously.  "Dare I yet venture to
+propose?"
+
+"I am sure it will be in vain, Vargrave.  You must prepare for
+disappointment."
+
+"And ruin," muttered Vargrave, gloomily.  "Hark you, Caroline, she may
+refuse me if she pleases.  But I am not a man to be baffled.  Have her I
+will, by one means or another; revenge urges me to it almost as much as
+ambition.  That girl's thread of life has been the dark line in my woof;
+she has robbed me of fortune, she now thwarts me in my career, she
+humbles me in my vanity.  But, like a hound that has tasted blood, I will
+run her down, whatever winding she takes."
+
+"Vargrave, you terrify me!  Reflect; we do not live in an age when
+violence--"
+
+"Tush!" interrupted Lumley, with one of those dark looks which at times,
+though very rarely, swept away all its customary character from that
+smooth, shrewd countenance.  "Tush!  We live in an age as favourable to
+intellect and to energy as ever was painted in romance.  I have that
+faith in fortune and myself that I tell you, with a prophet's voice, that
+Evelyn shall fulfil the wish of my dying uncle.  But the bell summons us
+back."
+
+On returning to the house, Lord Vargrave's valet gave him a letter which
+had arrived that morning.  It was from Mr. Gustavus Douce, and ran
+thus:--
+
+
+                         FLEET STREET, ----- 20, 18--.
+
+MY LORD,--It is with the greatest regret that I apprise you, for Self &
+Co., that we shall not be able in the present state of the Money Market
+to renew your Lordship's bill for 10,000 pounds, due the 28th instant.
+Respectfully calling your Lordship's attention to the same, I have the
+honour to be, for Self & Co., my Lord,
+
+     Your Lordship's most obedient and most obliged humble servant,
+                              GUSTAVUS DOUCE.
+
+To the Right Hon. LORD VARGRAVE, etc.
+
+
+This letter sharpened Lord Vargrave's anxiety and resolve; nay, it seemed
+almost to sharpen his sharp features as he muttered sundry denunciations
+on Messrs. Douce and Co., while arranging his neckcloth at the glass.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+  _Sol._ Why, please your honourable lordship, we were talking
+  here and there,--this and that.--_The Stranger_.
+
+AUBREY had been closeted with Evelyn the whole morning; and, simultaneous
+with his arrival, came to her the news of the departure of Maltravers.
+It was an intelligence that greatly agitated and unnerved her; and,
+coupling that event with his solemn words on the previous night, Evelyn
+asked herself, in wonder, what sentiments she could have inspired in
+Maltravers.  Could he love her,--her, so young, so inferior, so
+uninformed?  Impossible!  Alas! alas! for Maltravers!  His genius, his
+gifts, his towering qualities,--all that won the admiration, almost the
+awe, of Evelyn,--placed him at a distance from her heart!  When she asked
+herself if he loved her, she did not ask, even in that hour, if she loved
+him.  But even the question she did ask, her judgment answered erringly
+in the negative.  Why should he love, and yet fly her?  She understood
+not his high-wrought scruples, his self-deluding belief.  Aubrey was more
+puzzled than enlightened by his conversation with his pupil; only one
+thing seemed certain,--her delight to return to the cottage and her
+mother.
+
+Evelyn could not sufficiently recover her composure to mix with the party
+below; and Aubrey, at the sound of the second dinner-bell, left her to
+her solitude, and bore her excuses to Mrs. Merton.
+
+"Dear me!" said that worthy lady; "I am so sorry.  I thought Miss Cameron
+looked fatigued at breakfast, and there was something hysterical in her
+spirits; and I suppose the surprise of your arrival has upset her.
+Caroline, my dear, you had better go and see what she would like to have
+taken up to her room,--a little soup and the wing of a chicken."
+
+"My dear," said Mr. Merton, rather pompously, "I think it would be but a
+proper respect to Miss Cameron, if you yourself accompanied Caroline."
+
+"I assure you," said the curate, alarmed at the avalanche of politeness
+that threatened poor Evelyn,--"I assure you that Miss Cameron would
+prefer being left alone at present; as you say, Mrs. Merton, her spirits
+are rather agitated."
+
+But Mrs. Merton, with a sliding bow, had already quitted the room, and
+Caroline with her.
+
+"Come back, Sophy!  Cecilia, come back!" said Mr. Merton, settling his
+_jabot_.
+
+"Oh, dear Evy! poor dear Evy!--Evy is ill!" said Sophy; "I may go to Evy?
+I must go, Papa!"
+
+"No, my dear, you are too noisy; these children are quite spoiled, Mr.
+Aubrey."
+
+The old man looked at them benevolently, and drew them to his knee; and,
+while Cissy stroked his long white hair, and Sophy ran on about dear
+Evy's prettiness and goodness, Lord Vargrave sauntered into the room.
+
+On seeing the curate, his frank face lighted up with surprise and
+pleasure; he hastened to him, seized him by both hands, expressed the
+most heartfelt delight at seeing him, inquired tenderly after Lady
+Vargrave, and, not till he was out of breath, and Mrs. Merton and
+Caroline returning apprised him of Miss Cameron's indisposition, did his
+rapture vanish; and, as a moment before he was all joy, so now he was all
+sorrow.
+
+The dinner passed off dully enough; the children, re-admitted to dessert,
+made a little relief to all parties; and when they and the two ladies
+went, Aubrey himself quickly rose to join Evelyn.
+
+"Are you going to Miss Cameron?" said Lord Vargrave; "pray say how
+unhappy I feel at her illness.  I think these grapes--they are very
+fine--could not hurt her.  May I ask you to present them with my
+best--best and most anxious regards?  I shall be so uneasy till you
+return.  Now, Merton (as the door closed on the curate), let's have
+another bottle of this famous claret!  Droll old fellow that,--quite a
+character!"
+
+"He is a great favourite with Lady Vargrave and Miss Cameron, I believe,"
+said Mr. Merton.  "A mere village priest, I suppose; no talent, no
+energy--or he could not be a curate at that age."
+
+"Very true,--a shrewd remark.  The Church is as good a profession as any
+other for getting on, if a man has anything in him.  I shall live to see
+_you_ a bishop!"
+
+Mr. Merton shook his head.
+
+"Yes, I shall; though you have hitherto disdained to exhibit any one of
+the three orthodox qualifications for a mitre."
+
+"And what are they, my lord?"
+
+"Editing a Greek play, writing a political pamphlet, and apostatizing at
+the proper moment."
+
+"Ha, ha! your lordship is severe on us."
+
+"Not I; I often wish I had been brought up to the Church,--famous
+profession, properly understood.  By Jupiter, I should have been a
+capital bishop!"
+
+In his capacity of parson, Mr. Merton tried to look grave; in his
+capacity of a gentlemanlike, liberal fellow, he gave up the attempt, and
+laughed pleasantly at the joke of the rising man.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+  WILL nothing please you?
+  What do you think of the Court?--_The Plain Dealer_.
+
+ON one subject Aubrey found no difficulty in ascertaining Evelyn's wishes
+and condition of mind.  The experiment of her visit, so far as Vargrave's
+hopes were concerned, had utterly failed; she could not contemplate the
+prospect of his alliance, and she poured out to the curate, frankly and
+fully, all her desire to effect a release from her engagement.  As it was
+now settled that she should return with Aubrey to Brook-Green, it was
+indeed necessary to come to the long-delayed understanding with her
+betrothed.  Yet this was difficult, for he had so little pressed, so
+distantly alluded to, their engagement, that it was like a forwardness,
+an indelicacy in Evelyn to forestall the longed-for yet dreaded
+explanation.  This, however, Aubrey took upon himself; and at this
+promise Evelyn felt as the slave may feel when the chain is stricken off.
+
+At breakfast, Mr. Aubrey communicated to the Mertons Evelyn's intention
+to return with him to Brook-Green on the following day.  Lord Vargrave
+started, bit his lip, but said nothing.
+
+Not so silent was Mr. Merton.
+
+"Return with you! my dear Mr. Aubrey, just consider; it is impossible!
+You see Miss Cameron's rank of life, her position,--so very strange; no
+servants of her own here but her woman,--no carriage even!  You would not
+have her travel in a post-chaise such a long journey!  Lord Vargrave, you
+can never consent to that, I am sure?"
+
+"Were it only as Miss Cameron's _guardian_," said Lord Vargrave,
+pointedly, "I should certainly object to such a mode of performing such a
+journey.  Perhaps Mr. Aubrey means to perfect the project by taking two
+outside places on the top of the coach?"
+
+"Pardon me," said the curate, mildly, "but I am not so ignorant of what
+is due to Miss Cameron as you suppose.  Lady Vargrave's carriage, which
+brought me hither, will be no unsuitable vehicle for Lady Vargrave's
+daughter; and Miss Cameron is not, I trust, quite so spoiled by all your
+friendly attentions as to be unable to perform a journey of two days with
+no other protector than myself."
+
+"I forgot Lady Vargrave's carriage,--or rather I was not aware that you
+had used it, my dear sir," said Mr. Merton.  "But you must not blame us,
+if we are sorry to lose Miss Cameron so suddenly; I was in hopes that
+_you_ too would stay at least a week with us."
+
+The curate bowed at the rector's condescending politeness; and just as he
+was about to answer, Mrs. Merton put in,--
+
+"And you see I had set my heart on her being Caroline's bridesmaid."
+
+Caroline turned pale, and glanced at Vargrave, who appeared solely
+absorbed in breaking toast into his tea,--a delicacy he had never before
+been known to favour.
+
+There was an awkward pause.  The servant opportunely entered with a small
+parcel of books, a note to Mr. Merton, and that most blessed of all
+blessed things in the country,--the letter-bag.
+
+"What is this?" said the rector, opening his note, while Mrs. Merton
+unlocked the bag and dispensed the contents: "Left Burleigh for some
+months, a day or two sooner than he had expected; excuse French
+leave-taking; return Miss Merton's books, much obliged; gamekeeper has
+orders to place the Burleigh preserves at my disposal.  So we have lost
+our neighbour!"
+
+"Did you not know Mr. Maltravers was gone?" said Caroline.  "I heard so
+from Jenkins last night; he accompanies Mr. Cleveland to Paris."
+
+"Indeed!" said Mrs. Merton, opening her eyes.  "What could take him to
+Paris?"
+
+"Pleasure, I suppose," answered Caroline.  "I'm sure I should rather have
+wondered what could detain him at Burleigh."
+
+Vargrave was all this while breaking open seals and running his eyes over
+sundry scrawls with the practised rapidity of the man of business; he
+came to the last letter.  His countenance brightened.
+
+"Royal invitation, or rather command, to Windsor," he cried.  "I am
+afraid I, too, must leave you, this very day."
+
+"Bless me!" exclaimed Mrs. Merton; "is that from the king?  Do let me
+see!"
+
+"Not exactly from the king; the same thing though:" and Lord Vargrave,
+carelessly pushing the gracious communication towards the impatient hand
+and loyal gaze of Mrs. Merton, carefully put the other letters in his
+pocket, and walked musingly to the window.
+
+Aubrey seized the opportunity to approach him.  "My lord, can I speak
+with you a few moments?"
+
+"Me! certainly; will you come to my dressing-room?"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+    .  .  .  THERE was never
+  Poor gentleman had such a sudden fortune.
+
+       BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER: _The Captain_, Act v. sc. 5.
+
+"MY LORD," said the curate, as Vargrave, leaning back in his chair,
+appeared to examine the shape of his boots, while in reality "his
+sidelong looks;" not "of love," were fixed upon his companion,--"I need
+scarcely refer to the wish of the late lord, your uncle, relative to Miss
+Cameron and yourself; nor need I, to one of a generous spirit, add that
+an engagement could be only so far binding as both the parties whose
+happiness is concerned should be willing in proper time and season to
+fulfil it."
+
+"Sir!" said Vargrave, impatiently waving his hand; and, in his irritable
+surmise of what was to come, losing his habitual self-control, "I know
+not what all this has to do with you; surely you trespass upon ground
+sacred to Miss Cameron and myself?  Whatever you have to say, let me beg
+you to come at once to the point."
+
+"My lord, I will obey you.  Miss Cameron--and, I may add, with Lady
+Vargrave's consent--deputes me to say that, although she feels compelled
+to decline the honour of your lordship's alliance, yet if in any
+arrangement of the fortune bequeathed to her she could testify to you, my
+lord, her respect and friendship, it would afford her the most sincere
+gratification."
+
+Lord Vargrave started.
+
+"Sir," said he, "I know not if I am to thank you for this information,
+the announcement of which so strangely coincides with your arrival.  But
+allow me to say that there needs no ambassador between Miss Cameron and
+myself.  It is due, sir, to my station, to my relationship, to my
+character of guardian, to my long and faithful affection, to all
+considerations which men of the world understand, which men of feeling
+sympathize with, to receive from Miss Cameron alone the rejection of my
+suit."
+
+"Unquestionably Miss Cameron will grant your lordship the interview you
+have a right to seek; but pardon me, I thought it might save you both
+much pain, if the meeting were prepared by a third person; and on any
+matter of business, any atonement to your lordship--"
+
+"Atonement! what can atone to me?" exclaimed Vargrave, as he walked to
+and fro the room in great disorder and excitement.  "Can you give me back
+years of hope and expectancy,--the manhood wasted in a vain dream?  Had I
+not been taught to look to this reward, should I have rejected all
+occasion--while my youth was not yet all gone, while my heart was not yet
+all occupied--to form a suitable alliance?  Nay, should I have indulged
+in a high and stirring career, for which my own fortune is by no means
+qualified?  Atonement! atonement!  Talk of atonement to boys!  Sir, I
+stand before you a man whose private happiness is blighted, whose public
+prospects are darkened, life wasted, fortunes ruined, the schemes of an
+existence built upon one hope, which was lawfully indulged, overthrown;
+and you talk to me of _atonement_!"
+
+Selfish as the nature of this complaint might be, Aubrey was struck with
+its justice.
+
+"My lord," said he, a little embarrassed, "I cannot deny that there is
+truth in much of what you say.  Alas! it proves how vain it is for man to
+calculate on the future; how unhappily your uncle erred in imposing
+conditions, which the chances of life and the caprices of affection could
+at any time dissolve!  But this is blame that attaches only to the dead:
+can you blame the living?"
+
+"Sir, I considered myself bound by my uncle's prayer to keep my hand and
+heart disengaged, that this title--miserable and barren distinction
+though it be!--might, as he so ardently desired, descend to Evelyn.  I
+had a right to expect similar honour upon her side!"
+
+"Surely, my lord, you, to whom the late lord on his death-bed confided
+all the motives of his conduct and the secret of his life, cannot but be
+aware that, while desirous of promoting your worldly welfare, and uniting
+in one line his rank and his fortune, your uncle still had Evelyn's
+happiness at heart as his warmest wish; you must know that, if that
+happiness were forfeited by a marriage with you, the marriage became but
+a secondary consideration.  Lord Vargrave's will in itself was a proof of
+this.  He did not impose as an absolute condition upon Evelyn her union
+with yourself; he did not make the forfeiture of her whole wealth the
+penalty of her rejection of that alliance.  By the definite limit of the
+forfeit, he intimated a distinction between a command and a desire.  And
+surely, when you consider all circumstances, your lordship must think
+that, what with that forfeit and the estate settled upon the title, your
+uncle did all that in a worldly point of view equity and even affection
+could exact from him."
+
+Vargrave smiled bitterly, but said nothing.
+
+"And if this be doubted, I have clearer proof of his intentions.  Such
+was his confidence in Lady Vargrave, that in the letter he addressed to
+her before his death, and which I now submit to your lordship, you will
+observe that he not only expressly leaves it to Lady Vargrave's
+discretion to communicate to Evelyn that history of which she is at
+present ignorant, but that he also clearly defines the line of conduct he
+wished to be adopted with respect to Evelyn and yourself.  Permit me to
+point out the passage."
+
+Impatiently Lord Vargrave ran his eye over the letter placed in his hand,
+till he came to these lines:--
+
+
+"And if, when she has arrived at the proper age to form a judgment,
+Evelyn should decide against Lumley's claims, you know that on no account
+would I sacrifice her happiness; that all I require is, that fair play be
+given to his pretensions, due indulgence to the scheme I have long had at
+heart.  Let her be brought up to consider him her future husband; let her
+not be prejudiced against him; let her fairly judge for herself, when the
+time arrives."
+
+
+"You see, my lord," said Mr. Aubrey, as he took back the letter, "that
+this letter bears the same date as your uncle's will.  What he desired
+has been done.  Be just, my lord, be just, and exonerate us all from
+blame: who can dictate to the affections?"
+
+"And I am to understand that I have no chance, now or hereafter, of
+obtaining the affections of Evelyn?  Surely, at your age, Mr. Aubrey, you
+cannot encourage the heated romance common to all girls of Evelyn's age.
+Persons of our rank do not marry like the Corydon and Phyllis of a
+pastoral.  At my years, I never was fool enough to expect that I should
+inspire a girl of seventeen with what is called a passionate attachment.
+But happy marriages are based upon suitable circumstances, mutual
+knowledge and indulgence, respect, esteem.  Come, sir, let me hope
+yet,--let me hope that, on the same day, I may congratulate you on your
+preferment and you may congratulate me upon my marriage."
+
+Vargrave said this with a cheerful and easy smile; and the tone of his
+voice was that of a man who wished to convey serious meaning in a jesting
+accent.
+
+Mr. Aubrey, meek as he was, felt the insult of the hinted bribe, and
+coloured with a resentment no sooner excited than checked.  "Excuse me,
+my lord, I have now said all; the rest had better be left to your ward
+herself."
+
+"Be it so, sir.  I will ask you, then, to convey my request to Evelyn to
+honour me with a last and parting interview."
+
+Vargrave flung himself on his chair, and Aubrey left him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+  THUS airy Strephon tuned his lyre.--SHENSTONE.
+
+IN his meeting with Evelyn, Vargrave certainly exerted to the utmost all
+his ability and all his art.  He felt that violence, that sarcasm, that
+selfish complaint would not avail in a man who was not loved,--though
+they are often admirable cards in the hands of a man who is.  As his own
+heart was perfectly untouched in the matter, except by rage and
+disappointment,--feelings which with him never lasted very long,--he
+could play coolly his losing game.  His keen and ready intellect taught
+him that all he could now expect was to bequeath sentiments of generous
+compassion and friendly interest; to create a favourable impression,
+which he might hereafter improve; to reserve, in short, some spot of
+vantage-ground in the country from which he was to affect to withdraw all
+his forces.  He had known, in his experience of women, which, whether as
+an actor or a spectator, was large and various--though not among very
+delicate and refined natures--that a lady often takes a fancy to a suitor
+_after_ she has rejected him; that precisely _because_ she has once
+rejected she ultimately accepts him.  And even this chance was, in
+circumstances so desperate, not to be neglected.  He assumed, therefore,
+the countenance, the postures, and the voice of heart-broken but
+submissive despair; he affected a nobleness and magnanimity in his grief,
+which touched Evelyn to the quick, and took her by surprise.
+
+"It is enough," said he, in sad and faltering accents; "quite enough for
+me to know that you cannot love me,--that I should fail in rendering you
+happy.  Say no more, Evelyn, say no more!  Let me spare you, at least,
+the pain your generous nature must feel in my anguish.  I resign all
+pretensions to your hand; you are free!--may you be happy!"
+
+"Oh, Lord Vargrave! oh, Lumley!" said Evelyn, weeping, and moved by a
+thousand recollections of early years.  "If I could but prove in any
+other way my grateful sense of your merits, your too partial appreciation
+of me, my regard for my lost benefactor, then, indeed, nor till then,
+could I be happy.  Oh that this wealth, so little desired by me, had been
+more at my disposal! but as it is, the day that sees me in possession of
+it, shall see it placed under your disposition, your control.  This is
+but justice,--common justice to you; you were the nearest relation of the
+departed.  I had no claim on him,--none but affection.  Affection! and
+yet I disobey him!"
+
+There was much in all this that secretly pleased Vargrave; but it only
+seemed to redouble his grief.
+
+"Talk not thus, my ward, my friend--ah, still my friend," said he,
+putting his handkerchief to his eyes.  "I repine not; I am more than
+satisfied.  Still let me preserve my privilege of guardian, of
+adviser,--a privilege dearer to me than all the wealth of the Indies!"
+
+Lord Vargrave had some faint suspicion that Legard had created an undue
+interest in Evelyn's heart; and on this point he delicately and
+indirectly sought to sound her.  Her replies convinced him that if Evelyn
+had conceived any prepossession for Legard, there had not been time or
+opportunity to ripen it into deep attachment.  Of Maltravers he had no
+fear.  The habitual self-control of that reserved personage deceived him
+partly; and his low opinion of mankind deceived him still more.  For if
+there had been any love between Maltravers and Evelyn, why should the
+former not have stood his ground, and declared his suit?  Lumley would
+have "bah'd" and "pish'd" at the thought of any punctilious regard for
+engagements so easily broken having power either to check passion for
+beauty, or to restrain self-interest in the chase of an heiress.  He had
+known Maltravers ambitious; and with him, ambition and self-interest
+meant the same.  Thus, by the very _finesse_ of his character--while
+Vargrave ever with the worldly was a keen and almost infallible
+observer--with natures of a more refined, or a higher order, he always
+missed the mark by overshooting.  Besides, had a suspicion of Maltravers
+ever crossed him, Caroline's communications would have dispelled it.  It
+was more strange that Caroline should have been blind; nor would she have
+been so had she been less absorbed in her own schemes and destinies.  All
+her usual penetration had of late settled in self; and an uneasy
+feeling--half arising from conscientious reluctance to aid Vargrave's
+objects, half from jealous irritation at the thought of Vargrave's
+marrying another--had prevented her from seeking any very intimate or
+confidential communication with Evelyn herself.
+
+The dreaded conference was over; Evelyn parted from Vargrave with the
+very feelings he had calculated on exciting,--the moment he ceased to be
+her lover, her old childish regard for him recommenced.  She pitied his
+dejection, she respected his generosity, she was deeply grateful for his
+forbearance.  But still--still she was free; and her heart bounded within
+her at the thought.
+
+Meanwhile, Vargrave, after his solemn farewell to Evelyn, retreated again
+to his own room, where he remained till his post-horses arrived.  Then,
+descending into the drawing-room, he was pleased to find neither Aubrey
+nor Evelyn there.  He knew that much affectation would be thrown away
+upon Mr. and Mrs. Merton; he thanked them for their hospitality, with
+grave and brief cordiality, and then turned to Caroline, who stood apart
+by the window.
+
+"All is up with me at present," he whispered.  "I leave you, Caroline, in
+anticipation of fortune, rank, and prosperity; that is some comfort.  For
+myself, I see only difficulties, embarrassment, and poverty in the
+future; but I despond of nothing.  Hereafter you may serve me, as I have
+served you.  Adieu!--I have been advising Caroline not to spoil
+Doltimore, Mrs. Merton; he is conceited enough already.  Good-by!  God
+bless you all! love to your little girls.  Let me know if I can serve you
+in any way, Merton,--good-by again!"  And thus, sentence by sentence,
+Vargrave talked himself into his carriage.  As it drove by the
+drawing-room windows, he saw Caroline standing motionless where he had
+left her; he kissed his hand,--her eyes were fixed mournfully on his.
+Hard, wayward, and worldly as Caroline Merton was, Vargrave was yet not
+worthy of the affection he had inspired; for she could _feel_, and he
+could not,--the distinction, perhaps, between the sexes.  And there still
+stood Caroline Merton, recalling the last tones of that indifferent
+voice, till she felt her hand seized, and turned round to see Lord
+Doltimore, and smile upon the happy lover, persuaded that he was adored!
+
+
+
+BOOK VI.
+
+  "I will bring fire to thee--I reek not of the place."
+       --EURIPIDES: _Andromache_, 214.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+  .  .  .  THIS ancient city,
+  How wanton sits she amidst Nature's smiles!
+
+  .  .  .  Various nations meet,
+  As in the sea, yet not confined in space,
+  But streaming freely through the spacious streets.--YOUNG.
+
+  .  .  .  His teeth he still did grind,
+  And grimly gnash, threatening revenge in vain.--SPENSER.
+
+"PARIS is a delightful place,--that is allowed by all.  It is delightful
+to the young, to the gay, to the idle; to the literary lion, who likes to
+be petted; to the wiser epicure, who indulges a more justifiable
+appetite.  It is delightful to ladies, who wish to live at their ease,
+and buy beautiful caps; delightful to philanthropists, who wish for
+listeners to schemes of colonizing the moon; delightful to the haunters
+of balls and ballets, and little theatres and superb _cafes_, where men
+with beards of all sizes and shapes scowl at the English, and involve
+their intellects in the fascinating game of dominos.  For these, and for
+many others, Paris is delightful.  I say nothing against it.  But, for my
+own part, I would rather live in a garret in London than in a palace in
+the Chaussee d'Antin.--'Chacun a son mauvais gout.'
+
+"I don't like the streets, in which I cannot walk but in the kennel; I
+don't like the shops, that contain nothing except what's at the window; I
+don't like the houses, like prisons which look upon a courtyard; I don't
+like the _beaux jardins_, which grow no plants save a Cupid in plaster; I
+don't like the wood fires, which demand as many _petits soins_ as the
+women, and which warm no part of one but one's eyelids, I don't like the
+language, with its strong phrases about nothing, and vibrating like a
+pendulum between 'rapture' and 'desolation;' I don't like the accent,
+which one cannot get, without speaking through one's nose; I don't like
+the eternal fuss and jabber about books without nature, and revolutions
+without fruit; I have no sympathy with tales that turn on a dead jackass,
+nor with constitutions that give the ballot to the representatives, and
+withhold the suffrage from the people; neither have I much faith in that
+enthusiasm for the _beaux arts_, which shows its produce in execrable
+music, detestable pictures, abominable sculpture, and a droll something
+that I believe the _French_ call POETRY.  Dancing and cookery,--these are
+the arts the French excel in, I grant it; and excellent things they are;
+but oh, England! oh, Germany! you need not be jealous of your rival!"
+
+These are not the author's remarks,--he disowns them; they were Mr.
+Cleveland's.  He was a prejudiced man; Maltravers was more liberal, but
+then Maltravers did not pretend to be a wit.
+
+Maltravers had been several weeks in the city of cities, and now he had
+his apartments in the gloomy but interesting Faubourg St. Germain, all to
+himself.  For Cleveland, having attended eight days at a sale, and having
+moreover ransacked all the curiosity shops, and shipped off bronzes and
+cabinets, and Genoese silks and _objets de vertu_, enough to have half
+furnished Fonthill, had fulfilled his mission, and returned to his villa.
+Before the old gentleman went, he flattered himself that change of air
+and scene had already been serviceable to his friend; and that time would
+work a complete cure upon that commonest of all maladies,--an unrequited
+passion, or an ill-placed caprice.
+
+Maltravers, indeed, in the habit of conquering, as well as of concealing
+emotion, vigorously and earnestly strove to dethrone the image that had
+usurped his heart.  Still vain of his self-command, and still worshipping
+his favourite virtue of Fortitude and his delusive philosophy of the calm
+Golden Mean, he would not weakly indulge the passion, while he so sternly
+fled from its object.
+
+But yet the image of Evelyn pursued,--it haunted him; it came on him
+unawares, in solitude, in crowds.  That smile so cheering, yet so soft,
+that ever had power to chase away the shadow from his soul; that youthful
+and luxurious bloom of pure and eloquent thoughts, which was as the
+blossom of genius before its fruit, bitter as well as sweet, is born;
+that rare union of quick feeling and serene temper, which forms the very
+ideal of what we dream of in the mistress, and exact from the wife,--all,
+even more, far more, than the exquisite form and the delicate graces of
+the less durable beauty, returned to him, after every struggle with
+himself; and time only seemed to grave, in deeper if more latent folds of
+his heart, the ineradicable impression.
+
+Maltravers renewed his acquaintance with some persons not unfamiliar to
+the reader.
+
+Valerie de Ventadour--how many recollections of the fairer days of life
+were connected with that name!  Precisely as she had never reached to his
+love, but only excited his fancy (the fancy of twenty-two), had her image
+always retained a pleasant and grateful hue; it was blended with no deep
+sorrow, no stern regret, no dark remorse, no haunting shame.
+
+They met again.  Madame de Ventadour was still beautiful, and still
+admired,--perhaps more admired than ever; for to the great, fashion and
+celebrity bring a second and yet more popular youth.  But Maltravers, if
+rejoiced to see how gently Time had dealt with the fair Frenchwoman, was
+yet more pleased to read in her fine features a more serene and contented
+expression than they had formerly worn.  Valerie de Ventadour had
+preceded her younger admirer through the "MYSTERIES of LIFE;" she had
+learned the real objects of being; she distinguished between the Actual
+and the Visionary, the Shadow and the Substance; she had acquired content
+for the present, and looked with quiet hope towards the future. Her
+character was still spotless; or rather, every year of temptation and
+trial had given it a fairer lustre.  Love, that might have ruined, being
+once subdued, preserved her from all after danger.  The first meeting
+between Maltravers and Valerie was, it is true, one of some embarrassment
+and reserve: not so the second.  They did but once, and that slightly,
+recur to the past, and from that moment, as by a tacit understanding,
+true friendship between them dated.  Neither felt mortified to see that
+an illusion had passed away,--they were no longer the same in each
+other's eyes.  Both might be improved, and were so; but the Valerie and
+the Ernest of Naples were as things dead and gone!  Perhaps Valerie's
+heart was even more reconciled to the cure of its soft and luxurious
+malady by the renewal of their acquaintance.  The mature and experienced
+reasoner, in whom enthusiasm had undergone its usual change, with the
+calm brow and commanding aspect of sober manhood, was a being so
+different from the romantic boy, new to the actual world of civilized
+toils and pleasures, fresh from the adventures of Eastern wanderings, and
+full of golden dreams of poetry before it settles into authorship or
+action!  She missed the brilliant errors, the daring aspirations,--even
+the animated gestures and eager eloquence,--that had interested and
+enamoured her in the loiterer by the shores of Baiae, or amidst the
+tomb-like chambers of Pompeii.  For the Maltravers now before her--wiser,
+better, nobler, even handsomer than of yore (for he was one whom manhood
+became better than youth)--the Frenchwoman could at any period have felt
+friendship without danger.  It seemed to her, not as it really was, the
+natural _development_, but the very _contrast_, of the ardent, variable,
+imaginative boy, by whose side she had gazed at night on the moonlit
+waters and rosy skies of the soft Parthenope!  How does time, after long
+absence, bring to us such contrasts between the one we remember and the
+one we see!  And what a melancholy mockery does it seem of our own vain
+hearts, dreaming of impressions never to be changed, and affections that
+never can grow cool!
+
+And now, as they conversed with all the ease of cordial and guileless
+friendship, how did Valerie rejoice in secret that upon that friendship
+there rested no blot of shame! and that she had not forfeited those
+consolations for a home without love, which had at last settled into
+cheerful nor unhallowed resignation,--consolations only to be found in
+the conscience and the pride!
+
+M. de Ventadour had not altered, except that his nose was longer, and
+that he now wore a peruque in full curl instead of his own straight hair.
+But somehow or other--perhaps by the mere charm of custom--he had grown
+more pleasing in Valerie's eyes; habit had reconciled her to his foibles,
+deficiencies, and faults; and, by comparison with others, she could
+better appreciate his good qualities, such as they were,--generosity,
+good-temper, good-nature, and unbounded indulgence to herself.  Husband
+and wife have so many interests in common, that when they have jogged on
+through the ups and downs of life a sufficient time, the leash which at
+first galled often grows easy and familiar; and unless the _temper_, or
+rather the disposition and the heart, of either be insufferable, what was
+once a grievous yoke becomes but a companionable tie.  And for the rest,
+Valerie, now that sentiment and fancy were sobered down, could take
+pleasure in a thousand things which her pining affections once, as it
+were, overlooked and overshot.  She could feel grateful for all the
+advantages her station and wealth procured her; she could cull the roses
+in her reach, without sighing for the amaranths of Elysium.
+
+If the great have more temptations than those of middle life, and if
+their senses of enjoyment become more easily pampered into a sickly
+apathy, so at least (if they can once outlive satiety) they have many
+more resources at their command.  There is a great deal of justice in the
+old line, displeasing though it be to those who think of love in a
+cottage, "'Tis best repenting in a coach and six!"  If among the
+Eupatrids, the Well Born, there is less love in wedlock, less quiet
+happiness at home, still they are less chained each to each,--they have
+more independence, both the woman and the man, and occupations and the
+solace without can be so easily obtained!  Madame de Ventadour, in
+retiring from the mere frivolities of society--from crowded rooms, and
+the inane talk and hollow smiles of mere acquaintanceship--became more
+sensible of the pleasures that her refined and elegant intellect could
+derive from art and talent, and the communion of friendship.  She drew
+around her the most cultivated minds of her time and country.  Her
+abilities, her wit, and her conversational graces enabled her not only to
+mix on equal terms with the most eminent, but to amalgamate and blend the
+varieties of talent into harmony.  The same persons, when met elsewhere,
+seemed to have lost their charm; under Valerie's roof every one breathed
+a congenial atmosphere.  And music and letters, and all that can refine
+and embellish civilized life, contributed their resources to this gifted
+and beautiful woman.  And thus she found that the _mind_ has excitement
+and occupation, as well as the heart; and, unlike the latter, the culture
+we bestow upon the first ever yields us its return.  We talk of education
+for the poor, but we forget how much it is needed by the rich.  Valerie
+was a living instance of the advantages to women of knowledge and
+intellectual resources.  By them she had purified her fancy, by them she
+had conquered discontent, by them she had grown reconciled to life and to
+her lot!  When the heavy heart weighed down the one scale, it was the
+mind that restored the balance.
+
+The spells of Madame de Ventadour drew Maltravers into this charmed
+circle of all that was highest, purest, and most gifted in the society of
+Paris.  There he did not meet, as were met in the times of the old
+_regime_, sparkling abbes intent upon intrigues; or amorous old dowagers,
+eloquent on Rousseau; or powdered courtiers, uttering epigrams against
+kings and religions,--straws that foretold the whirlwind.  Paul Courier
+was right!  Frenchmen are Frenchmen still; they are full of fine phrases,
+and their thoughts smell of the theatre; they mistake foil for diamonds,
+the Grotesque for the Natural, the Exaggerated for the Sublime: but still
+I say, Paul Courier was right,--there is more honesty now in a single
+_salon_ in Paris than there was in all France in the days of Voltaire.
+Vast interests and solemn causes are no longer tossed about like
+shuttlecocks on the battledores of empty tongues.  In the
+_bouleversement_ of Revolutions the French have fallen on their feet!
+
+Meeting men of all parties and all classes, Maltravers was struck with
+the heightened tone of public morals, the earnest sincerity of feeling
+which generally pervaded all, as compared with his first recollections of
+the Parisians.  He saw that true elements for national wisdom were at
+work, though he saw also that there was no country in which their
+operations would be more liable to disorder, more slow and irregular in
+their results.  The French are like the Israelites in the Wilderness,
+when, according to a Hebrew tradition, every morning they seemed on the
+verge of Pisgah, and every evening they were as far from it as ever.  But
+still time rolls on, the pilgrimage draws to its close, and the Canaan
+must come at last!
+
+At Valerie's house, Maltravers once more met the De Montaignes.  It was a
+painful meeting, for they thought of Cesarini when they met.
+
+It is now time to return to that unhappy man.  Cesarini had been removed
+from England when Maltravers quitted it after Lady Florence's death; and
+Maltravers had thought it best to acquaint De Montaigne with all the
+circumstances that had led to his affliction.  The pride and the honour
+of the high-spirited Frenchman were deeply shocked by the tale of fraud
+and guilt, softened as it was; but the sight of the criminal, his awful
+punishment, merged every other feeling in compassion.  Placed under the
+care of the most skilful practitioners in Paris, great hopes of
+Cesarini's recovery had been at first entertained.  Nor was it long,
+indeed, before he appeared entirely restored, so far as the external and
+superficial tokens of sanity could indicate a cure.  He testified
+complete consciousness of the kindness of his relations, and clear
+remembrance of the past: but to the incoherent ravings of delirium, an
+intense melancholy, still more deplorable, succeeded.  In this state,
+however, he became once more the inmate of his brother-in-law's house;
+and though avoiding all society, except that of Teresa, whose
+affectionate nature never wearied of its cares, he resumed many of his
+old occupations.  Again he appeared to take delight in desultory and
+unprofitable studies, and in the cultivation of that luxury of solitary
+men, "the thankless muse."  By shunning all topics connected with the
+gloomy cause of his affliction, and talking rather of the sweet
+recollections of Italy and childhood than of more recent events, his
+sister was enabled to soothe the dark hour, and preserve some kind of
+influence over the ill-fated man.  One day, however, there fell into his
+hands an English newspaper, which was full of the praises of Lord
+Vargrave; and the article in lauding the peer referred to his services as
+the commoner Lumley Ferrers.
+
+This incident, slight as it appeared, and perfectly untraceable by his
+relations, produced a visible effect on Cesarini; and three days
+afterwards he attempted his own life.  The failure of the attempt was
+followed by the fiercest paroxysms.  His disease returned in all its
+dread force: and it became necessary to place him under yet stricter
+confinement than he had endured before.  Again, about a year from the
+date now entered upon, he had appeared to recover; and again he was
+removed to De Montaigne's house.  His relations were not aware of the
+influence which Lord Vargrave's name exercised over Cesarini; in the
+melancholy tale communicated to them by Maltravers, that name had not
+been mentioned.  If Maltravers had at one time entertained some vague
+suspicions that Lumley had acted a treacherous part with regard to
+Florence, those suspicions had long since died away for want of
+confirmation; nor did he (nor did therefore the De Montaignes) connect
+Lord Vargrave with the affliction of Cesarini.  De Montaigne himself,
+therefore, one day at dinner, alluding to a question of foreign politics
+which had been debated that morning in the Chamber, and in which he
+himself had taken an active part, happened to refer to a speech of
+Vargrave upon the subject, which had made some sensation abroad, as well
+as at home.  Teresa asked innocently who Lord Vargrave was; and De
+Montaigne, well acquainted with the biography of the principal English
+statesmen, replied that he had commenced his career as Mr. Ferrers, and
+reminded Teresa that they had once been introduced to him in Paris.
+Cesarini suddenly rose and left the room; his absence was not noted, for
+his comings and goings were ever strange and fitful.  Teresa soon
+afterwards quitted the apartment with her children, and De Montaigne, who
+was rather fatigued by the exertions and excitement of the morning,
+stretched himself in his chair to enjoy a short _siesta_.  He was
+suddenly awakened by a feeling of pain and suffocation,--awakened in time
+to struggle against a strong grip that had fastened itself at his throat.
+The room was darkened in the growing shades of the evening; and, but for
+the glittering and savage eyes that were fixed on him, he could scarcely
+discern his assailant.  He at length succeeded, however, in freeing
+himself, and casting the intended assassin on the ground.  He shouted for
+assistance; and the lights borne by the servants who rushed into the room
+revealed to him the face of his brother-in-law.  Cesarini, though in
+strong convulsions, still uttered cries and imprecations of revenge; he
+denounced De Montaigne as a traitor and a murderer!  In the dark
+confusion of his mind, he had mistaken the guardian for the distant foe,
+whose name sufficed to conjure up the phantoms of the dead, and plunge
+reason into fury.
+
+It was now clear that there was danger and death in Cesarini's disease.
+His madness was pronounced to be capable of no certain and permanent
+cure; he was placed at a new asylum (the superintendents of which were
+celebrated for humanity as well as skill), a little distance from
+Versailles, and there he still remained.  Recently his lucid intervals
+had become more frequent and prolonged; but trifles that sprang from his
+own mind, and which no care could prevent or detect, sufficed to renew
+his calamity in all its fierceness.  At such times he required the most
+unrelaxing vigilance, for his madness ever took an alarming and ferocious
+character; and had he been left unshackled, the boldest and stoutest of
+the keepers would have dreaded to enter his cell unarmed, or alone.
+
+What made the disease of the mind appear more melancholy and confirmed
+was, that all this time the frame seemed to increase in health and
+strength.  This is not an uncommon case in instances of mania--and it is
+generally the worst symptom.  In earlier youth, Cesarini had been
+delicate even to effeminacy; but now his proportions were enlarged, his
+form, though still lean and spare, muscular and vigorous,--as if in the
+torpor which usually succeeded to his bursts of frenzy, the animal
+portion gained by the repose or disorganization of the intellectual.
+When in his better and calmer mood--in which indeed none but the
+experienced could have detected his malady--books made his chief delight.
+But then he complained bitterly, if briefly, of the confinement he
+endured, of the injustice be suffered; and as, shunning all companions,
+he walked gloomily amidst the grounds that surrounded that House of Woe,
+his unseen guardians beheld him clenching his hands, as at some visionary
+enemy, or overheard him accuse some phantom of his brain of the torments
+he endured.
+
+Though the reader can detect in Lumley Ferrers the cause of the frenzy,
+and the object of the imprecation, it was not so with the De Montaignes,
+nor with the patient's keepers and physicians; for in his delirium he
+seldom or never gave name to the shadows that he invoked,--not even to
+that of Florence.  It is, indeed, no unusual characteristic of madness to
+shun, as by a kind of cunning, all mention of the names of those by whom
+the madness has been caused.  It is as if the unfortunates imagined that
+the madness might be undiscovered if the images connected with it were
+unbetrayed.
+
+Such, at this time, was the wretched state of the man, whose talents had
+promised a fair and honourable career, had it not been the wretched
+tendency of his mind, from boyhood upward, to pamper every unwholesome
+and unhallowed feeling as a token of the exuberance of genius.  De
+Montaigne, though he touched as lightly as possible upon this dark
+domestic calamity in his first communications with Maltravers, whose
+conduct in that melancholy tale of crime and woe had, he conceived, been
+stamped with generosity and feeling, still betrayed emotions that told
+how much his peace had been embittered.
+
+"I seek to console Teresa," said he, turning away his manly head, "and to
+point out all the blessings yet left to her; but that brother so beloved,
+from whom so much was so vainly expected,--still ever and ever, though
+she strives to conceal it from me, this affliction comes back to her, and
+poisons every thought!  Oh, better a thousand times that he had died!
+When reason, sense, almost the soul, are dead, how dark and fiend-like is
+the life that remains behind!  And if it should be in the blood--if
+Teresa's children--dreadful thought!"
+
+De Montaigne ceased, thoroughly overcome.
+
+"Do not, my dear friend, so fearfully exaggerate your misfortune, great
+as it is; Cesarini's disease evidently arose from no physical
+conformation,--it was but the crisis, the development, of a
+long-contracted malady of mind, passions morbidly indulged, the reasoning
+faculty obstinately neglected; and yet too he may recover.  The further
+memory recedes from the shock he has sustained, the better the chance
+that his mind will regain its tone."
+
+De Montaigne wrung his friend's hand.
+
+"It is strange that from you should come sympathy and comfort!--you whom
+he so injured; you whom his folly or his crime drove from your proud
+career, and your native soil!  But Providence will yet, I trust, redeem
+the evil of its erring creature, and I shall yet live to see you restored
+to hope and home, a happy husband, an honoured citizen.  Till then, I
+feel as if the curse lingered upon my race."
+
+"Speak not thus.  Whatever my destiny, I have recovered from that wound;
+and still, De Montaigne, I find in life that suffering succeeds to
+suffering, and disappointment to disappointment, as wave to wave.  To
+endure is the only philosophy; to believe that we shall live again in a
+brighter planet, is the only hope that our reason should accept from our
+desires."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+  MONSTRA evenerunt mihi:
+  Introit in aedes ater alienus canis,
+  Anguis per impluvium decidit de tegulis,
+  Gallina cecinit!*--TERENCE.
+
+  * "Prodigies have occurred: a strange black dog came into the house;
+    a snake glided from the tiles, through the court; the hen crowed."
+
+WITH his constitutional strength of mind, and conformably with his
+acquired theories, Maltravers continued to struggle against the latest
+and strongest passion of his life.  It might be seen in the paleness of
+his brow, and that nameless expression of suffering which betrays itself
+in the lines about the mouth, that his health was affected by the
+conflict within him; and many a sudden fit of absence and abstraction,
+many an impatient sigh, followed by a forced and unnatural gayety, told
+the observant Valerie that he was the prey of a sorrow he was too proud
+to disclose.  He compelled himself, however, to take, or to affect, an
+interest in the singular phenomena of the social state around
+him,--phenomena that, in a happier or serener mood, would indeed have
+suggested no ordinary food for conjecture and meditation.
+
+The state of _visible transition_ is the state of nearly all the
+enlightened communities in Europe.  But nowhere is it so pronounced as in
+that country which may be called the Heart of European Civilization.
+There, all to which the spirit of society attaches itself appears broken,
+vague, and half developed,--the Antique in ruins, and the New not formed.
+It is, perhaps, the only country in which the Constructive principle has
+not kept pace with the Destructive.  The Has Been is blotted out; the To
+Be is as the shadow of a far land in a mighty and perturbed sea.*
+
+  * The reader will remember that these remarks were written long
+    before the last French Revolution, and when the dynasty of Louis
+    Philippe was generally considered most secure.
+
+Maltravers, who for several years had not examined the progress of modern
+literature, looked with mingled feelings of surprise, distaste, and
+occasional and most reluctant admiration, on the various works which the
+successors of Voltaire and Rousseau have produced, and are pleased to
+call the offspring of Truth united to Romance.
+
+Profoundly versed in the mechanism and elements of those masterpieces of
+Germany and England, from which the French have borrowed so largely while
+pretending to be original, Maltravers was shocked to see the monsters
+which these Frankensteins had created from the relics and the offal of
+the holiest sepulchres.  The head of a giant on the limbs of a dwarf,
+incongruous members jumbled together, parts fair and beautiful,--the
+whole a hideous distortion!
+
+"It may be possible," said he to De Montaigne, "that these works are
+admired and extolled; but how they can be vindicated by the examples of
+Shakspeare and Goethe, or even of Byron, who redeemed poor and
+melodramatic conceptions with a manly vigour of execution, an energy and
+completeness of purpose, that Dryden himself never surpassed, is to me
+utterly inconceivable."
+
+"I allow that there is a strange mixture of fustian and maudlin in all
+these things," answered De Montaigne; "but they are but the windfalls of
+trees that may bear rich fruit in due season; meanwhile, any new school
+is better than eternal imitations of the old.  As for critical
+vindications of the works themselves, the age that produces the phenomena
+is never the age to classify and analyze them.  We have had a deluge, and
+now new creatures spring from the new soil."
+
+"An excellent simile: they come forth from slime and mud,--fetid and
+crawling, unformed and monstrous.  I grant exceptions; and even in the
+New School, as it is called, I can admire the real genius, the vital and
+creative power of Victor Hugo.  But oh, that a nation which has known a
+Corneille should ever spawn forth a -----!  And with these rickety and
+drivelling abortions--all having followers and adulators--your Public can
+still bear to be told that they have improved wonderfully on the day when
+they gave laws and models to the literature of Europe; they can bear to
+hear ----- proclaimed a sublime genius in the same circles which sneer
+down Voltaire!"
+
+Voltaire is out of fashion in France, but Rousseau still maintains his
+influence, and boasts his imitators.  Rousseau was the worse man of the
+two; perhaps he was also the more dangerous writer.  But his reputation
+is more durable, and sinks deeper into the heart of his nation; and the
+danger of his unstable and capricious doctrines has passed away.  In
+Voltaire we behold the fate of all writers purely destructive; their uses
+cease with the evils they denounce.  But Rousseau sought to construct as
+well as to destroy; and though nothing could well be more absurd than his
+constructions, still man loves to look back and see even delusive
+images--castles in the air--reared above the waste where cities have
+been.  Rather than leave even a burial-ground to solitude, we populate it
+with ghosts.
+
+By degrees, however, as he mastered all the features of the French
+literature, Maltravers become more tolerant of the present defects, and
+more hopeful of the future results.  He saw in one respect that that
+literature carried with it its own ultimate redemption.
+
+Its general characteristic--contradistinguished from the literature of
+the old French classic school--is to take the _heart_ for its study; to
+bring the passions and feelings into action, and let the Within have its
+record and history as well as the Without.  In all this our contemplative
+analyst began to allow that the French were not far wrong when they
+contended that Shakspeare made the fountain of their inspiration,--a
+fountain which the majority of our later English Fictionists have
+neglected.  It is not by a story woven of interesting incidents, relieved
+by delineations of the externals and surface of character, humorous
+phraseology, and every-day ethics, that Fiction achieves its grandest
+ends.
+
+In the French literature, thus characterized, there is much false
+morality, much depraved sentiment, and much hollow rant; but still it
+carries within it the germ of an excellence, which, sooner or later, must
+in the progress of national genius arrive at its full development.
+Meanwhile, it is a consolation to know that nothing really immoral is
+ever permanently popular, or ever, therefore, long deleterious; what is
+dangerous in a work of genius cures itself in a few years.  We can now
+read "Werther," and instruct our hearts by its exposition of weakness and
+passion, our taste by its exquisite and unrivalled simplicity of
+construction and detail, without any fear that we shall shoot ourselves
+in top-boots!  We can feel ourselves elevated by the noble sentiments of
+"The Robbers," and our penetration sharpened as to the wholesale
+immorality of conventional cant and hypocrisy, without any danger of
+turning banditti and becoming cutthroats from the love of virtue.
+Providence, that has made the genius of the few in all times and
+countries the guide and prophet of the many, and appointed Literature as
+the sublime agent of Civilization, of Opinion, and of Law, has endowed
+the elements it employs with a divine power of self-purification.  The
+stream settles of itself by rest and time; the impure particles fly off,
+or are neutralized by the healthful.  It is only fools that call the
+works of a master-spirit immoral.  There does not exist in the literature
+of the world one _popular_ book that is immoral two centuries after it is
+produced.  For, in the heart of nations, the False does not live so long;
+and the True is the Ethical to the end of time.
+
+From the literary Maltravers turned to the political state of France his
+curious and thoughtful eye.  He was struck by the resemblance which this
+nation--so civilized, so thoroughly European--bears in one respect to the
+despotisms of the East: the convulsions of the capital decide the fate of
+the country; Paris is the tyrant of France.  He saw in this inflammable
+concentration of power, which must ever be pregnant with great evils, one
+of the causes why the revolutions of that powerful and polished people
+are so incomplete and unsatisfactory, why, like Cardinal Fleury, system
+after system, and Government after Government--
+
+       .  .  .  "floruit sine fructu,
+       Defloruit sine luctu."*
+
+  * "Flourished without fruit, and was destroyed without regret."
+
+Maltravers regarded it as a singular instance of perverse ratiocination,
+that, unwarned by experience, the French should still persist in
+perpetuating this political vice; that all their policy should still be
+the policy of Centralization,--a principle which secures the momentary
+strength, but ever ends in the abrupt destruction of States.  It is, in
+fact, the perilous tonic, which seems to brace the system, but drives the
+blood to the head,--thus come apoplexy and madness.  By centralization
+the provinces are weakened, it is true,--but weak to assist as well as to
+oppose a government, weak to withstand a mob.  Nowhere, nowadays, is a
+mob so powerful as in Paris: the political history of Paris is the
+history of snobs.  Centralization is an excellent quackery for a despot
+who desires power to last only his own life, and who has but a
+life-interest in the State; but to true liberty and permanent order
+centralization is a deadly poison.  The more the provinces govern their
+own affairs, the more we find everything, even to roads and post-horses,
+are left to the people; the more the Municipal Spirit pervades every vein
+of the vast body, the more certain may we be that reform and change must
+come from universal opinion, which is slow, and constructs ere it
+destroys,--not from public clamour, which is sudden, and not only pulls
+down the edifice but sells the bricks!
+
+Another peculiarity in the French Constitution struck and perplexed
+Maltravers.  This people so pervaded by the republican sentiment; this
+people, who had sacrificed so much for Freedom; this people, who, in the
+name of Freedom, had perpetrated so much crime with Robespierre, and
+achieved so much glory with Napoleon,--this people were, as a people,
+contented to be utterly excluded from all power and voice in the State!
+Out of thirty-three millions of subjects, less than two hundred thousand
+electors!  Where was there ever an oligarchy equal to this?  What a
+strange infatuation, to demolish an aristocracy and yet to exclude a
+people!  What an anomaly in political architecture, to build an inverted
+pyramid!  Where was the safety-valve of governments, where the natural
+vents of excitement in a population so inflammable?  The people itself
+were left a mob,--no stake in the State, no action in its affairs, no
+legislative interest in its security.*
+
+  * Has not all this proved prophetic?
+
+On the other hand, it was singular to see how--the aristocracy of birth
+broken down--the aristocracy of letters had arisen.  A Peerage, half
+composed of journalists, philosophers, and authors!  This was the
+beau-ideal of Algernon Sidney's Aristocratic Republic, of the Helvetian
+vision of what ought to be the dispensation of public distinctions; yet
+was it, after all, a desirable aristocracy?  Did society gain; did
+literature lose?  Was the priesthood of Genius made more sacred and more
+pure by these worldly decorations and hollow titles; or was aristocracy
+itself thus rendered a more disinterested, a more powerful, or a more
+sagacious element in the administration of law, or the elevation of
+opinion?  These questions, not lightly to be answered, could not fail to
+arouse the speculation and curiosity of a man who had been familiar with
+the closet and the forum; and in proportion as he found his interest
+excited in these problems to be solved by a foreign nation, did the
+thoughtful Englishman feel the old instinct--which binds the citizen to
+the fatherland--begin to stir once more earnestly and vividly within him.
+
+"You, yourself individually, are passing like us," said De Montaigne one
+day to Maltravers, "through a state of transition.  You have forever left
+the Ideal, and you are carrying your cargo of experience over to the
+Practical.  When you reach that haven, you will have completed the
+development of your forces."
+
+"You mistake me,--I am but a spectator."
+
+"Yes; but you desire to go behind the scenes; and he who once grows
+familiar with the green-room, longs to be an actor."
+
+With Madame de Ventadour and the De Montaignes Maltravers passed the
+chief part of his time.  They knew how to appreciate his nobler and to
+love his gentler attributes and qualities; they united in a warm interest
+for his future fate; they combated his Philosophy of Inaction; and they
+felt that it was because he was not happy that he was not wise.
+Experience was to him what ignorance had been to Alice.  His faculties
+were chilled and dormant.  As affection to those who are unskilled in all
+things, so is affection to those who despair of all things.  The mind of
+Maltravers was a world without a sun!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+  COELEBS, quid agam?*--HORACE.
+
+  * "What shall I do, a bachelor?"
+
+IN a room at Fenton's Hotel sat Lord Vargrave and Caroline Lady
+Doltimore,--two months after the marriage of the latter.
+
+"Doltimore has positively fixed, then, to go abroad on your return from
+Cornwall?"
+
+"Positively,--to Paris.  You can join us at Christmas, I trust?"
+
+"I have no doubt of it; and before then I hope that I shall have arranged
+certain public matters, which at present harass and absorb me even more
+than my private affairs."
+
+"You have managed to obtain terms with Mr. Douce, and to delay the
+repayment of your debt to him?"
+
+"Yes, I hope so, till I touch Miss Cameron's income; which will be mine,
+I trust, by the time she is eighteen."
+
+"You mean the forfeit money of thirty thousand pounds?"
+
+"Not I; I mean what I said!"
+
+"Can you really imagine she will still accept your hand?"
+
+"With your aid, I do imagine it!  Hear me.  You must take Evelyn with you
+to Paris.  I have no doubt but that she will be delighted to accompany
+you; nay, I have paved the way so far.  For, of course, as a friend of
+the family, and guardian to Evelyn, I have maintained a correspondence
+with Lady Vargrave.  She informs me that Evelyn has been unwell and
+low-spirited; that she fears Brook-Green is dull for her, etc.  I wrote,
+in reply, to say that the more my ward saw of the world, prior to her
+accession, when of age, to the position she would occupy in it, the more
+she would fulfil my late uncle's wishes with respect to her education and
+so forth.  I added that as you were going to Paris, and as you loved her
+so much, there could not be a better opportunity for her entrance into
+life under the most favourable auspices.  Lady Vargrave's answer to this
+letter arrived this morning: she will consent to such an arrangement
+should you propose it."
+
+"But what good will result to yourself in this project?  At Paris you
+will be sure of rivals, and--"
+
+"Caroline," interrupted Lord Vargrave, "I know very well what you would
+say: I also know all the danger I must incur.  But it is a choice of
+evils, and I choose the least.  You see that while she is at Brook-Green,
+and under the eye of that sly old curate, I can effect nothing with her.
+There, she is entirely removed from my influence: not so abroad; not so
+under your roof.  Listen to me still further.  In this country, and
+especially in the seclusion and shelter of Brook-Green, I have no scope
+for any of those means which I shall be compelled to resort to, in
+failure of all else."
+
+"What can you intend?" said Caroline, with a slight shudder.
+
+"I don't know what I intend yet.  But this, at least, I can tell
+you,--that Miss Cameron's fortune I must and will have.  I am a desperate
+man; and I can play a desperate game, if need be."
+
+"And do you think that _I_ will aid, will abet?"
+
+"Hush, not so loud!  Yes, Caroline, you will, and you must aid and abet
+me in any project I may form."
+
+"Must!  Lord Vargrave?"
+
+"Ay," said Lumley, with a smile, and sinking his voice into a
+whisper,--"ay! _you are in my power_!"
+
+"Traitor!--you cannot dare! you cannot mean--"
+
+"I mean nothing more than to remind you of the ties that exist between
+us,--ties which ought to render us the firmest and most confidential of
+friends.  Come, Caroline, recollect all the benefit must not lie on one
+side.  I have obtained for you rank and wealth; I have procured you a
+husband,--you must help me to a wife!"
+
+Caroline sank back, and covered her face with her hands.
+
+"I allow," continued Vargrave, coldly,--"I allow that your beauty and
+talent were sufficient of themselves to charm a wiser man than Doltimore;
+but had I not suppressed jealousy, sacrificed love, had I dropped a hint
+to your liege lord,--nay, had I not fed his lap-dog vanity by all the
+cream and sugar of flattering falsehoods,--you would be Caroline Merton
+still!"
+
+"Oh, would that I were!  Oh that I were anything but your tool, your
+victim!  Fool that I was! wretch that I am!  I am rightly punished!"
+
+"Forgive me, forgive me, dearest," said Vargrave, soothingly; "I was to
+blame, forgive me: but you irritated, you maddened me, by your seeming
+indifference to my prosperity, my fate.  I tell you again and again,
+pride of my soul, I tell you, that you are the only being I love! and if
+you will allow me, if you will rise superior, as I once fondly hoped, to
+all the cant and prejudice of convention and education, the only woman I
+could ever respect, as well as love.  Oh, hereafter, when you see me at
+that height to which I feel that I am born to climb, let me think that to
+your generosity, your affection, your zeal, I owed the ascent.  At
+present I am on the precipice; without your hand I fall forever.  My own
+fortune is gone; the miserable forfeit due to me, if Evelyn continues to
+reject my suit, when she has arrived at the age of eighteen, is deeply
+mortgaged.  I am engaged in vast and daring schemes, in which I may
+either rise to the highest station or lose that which I now hold.  In
+either case, how necessary to me is wealth: in the one instance, to
+maintain my advancement; in the other, to redeem my fall."
+
+"But did you not tell me," said Caroline, "that Evelyn proposed and
+promised to place her fortune at your disposal, even while rejecting your
+hand?"
+
+"Absurd mockery!" exclaimed Vargrave; "the foolish boast of a girl,--an
+impulse liable to every caprice.  Can you suppose that when she launches
+into the extravagance natural to her age and necessary to her position,
+she will not find a thousand demands upon her rent-roll not dreamed of
+now; a thousand vanities and baubles that will soon erase my poor and
+hollow claim from her recollection?  Can you suppose that, if she marry
+another, her husband will ever consent to a child's romance?  And even
+were all this possible, were it possible that girls were not extravagant,
+and that husbands had no common-sense, is it for me, Lord Vargrave, to be
+a mendicant upon reluctant bounty,--a poor cousin, a pensioned
+led-captain?  Heaven knows I have as little false pride as any man, but
+still this is a degradation I cannot stoop to.  Besides, Caroline, I am
+no miser, no Harpagon: I do not want wealth for wealth's sake, but for
+the advantages it bestows,--respect, honour, position; and these I get as
+the husband of the great heiress.  Should I get them as her dependant?
+No: for more than six years I have built my schemes and shaped my conduct
+according to one assured and definite object; and that object I shall not
+now, at the eleventh hour, let slip from my hands.  Enough of this: you
+will pass Brook-Green in returning from Cornwall; you will take Evelyn
+with you to Paris,--leave the rest to me.  Fear no folly, no violence,
+from my plans, whatever they may be: I work in the dark.  Nor do I
+despair that Evelyn will love, that Evelyn will voluntarily accept me
+yet: my disposition is sanguine; I look to the bright side of things; do
+the same!"
+
+Here their conference was interrupted by Lord Doltimore, who lounged
+carelessly into the room, with his hat on one side.  "Ah, Vargrave, how
+are you?  You will not forget the letters of introduction?  Where are you
+going, Caroline?"
+
+"Only to my own room, to put on my bonnet; the carriage will be here in a
+few minutes."  And Caroline escaped.
+
+"So you go to Cornwall to-morrow, Doltimore?"
+
+"Yes; cursed bore! but Lady Elizabeth insists on seeing us, and I don't
+object to a week's good shooting.  The old lady, too, has something to
+leave, and Caroline had no dowry,--not that I care for it; but still
+marriage is expensive."
+
+"By the by, you will want the five thousand pounds you lent me?"
+
+"Why, whenever it is convenient."
+
+Say no more,--it shall be seen to.  Doltimore, I am very anxious that
+Lady Doltimore's _debut_ at Paris should be brilliant: everything depends
+on falling into the right set.  For myself, I don't care about fashion,
+and never did; but if I were married, and an idle man like you, it might
+be different."
+
+"Oh, you will be very useful to us when we return to London.  Meanwhile,
+you know, you have my proxy in the Lords.  I dare say there will be some
+sharp work the first week or two after the recess."
+
+"Very likely; and depend on one thing, my dear Doltimore, that when I am
+in the Cabinet, a certain friend of mine shall be an earl.  Adieu."
+
+"Good-by, my dear Vargrave, good-by; and, I say,--I say, don't distress
+yourself about that trifle; a few months hence it will suit me just as
+well."
+
+"Thanks.  I will just look into my accounts, and use you without
+ceremony.  Well, I dare say we shall meet at Paris.  Oh, I forgot,--I
+observe that you have renewed your intimacy with Legard.  Now, he is a
+very good fellow, and I gave him that place to oblige you; still, as you
+are no longer a _garcon_--but perhaps I shall offend you?"
+
+"Not at all.  What is there against Legard?"
+
+"Nothing in the world,--but he is a bit of a boaster.  I dare say his
+ancestor was a Gascon, poor fellow!--and he affects to say that you can't
+choose a coat, or buy a horse, without his approval and advice,--that he
+can turn you round his finger.  Now this hurts your consequence in the
+world,--you don't get credit for your own excellent sense and taste.
+Take my advice, avoid these young hangers-on of fashion, these club-room
+lions.  Having no importance of their own, they steal the importance of
+their friends.  _Verbum sap_."
+
+"You are very right,--Legard _is_ a coxcomb; and now I see why he talked
+of joining us at Paris."
+
+"Don't let him do any such thing!  He will be telling the Frenchmen that
+her ladyship is in love with him, ha, ha!"
+
+"Ha, ha!--a very good joke--poor Caroline!--very good joke!"
+
+"Well, good-by, once more."  And Vargrave closed the door.
+
+"Legard go to Paris--not if Evelyn goes there!" muttered Lumley.
+"Besides, I want no partner in the little that one can screw out of this
+blockhead."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+       MR. BUMBLECASE, a word with you--I have a little business.
+       Farewell, the goodly Manor of Blackacre, with all its woods,
+  underwoods, and appurtenances whatever.--WYCHERLEY: _Plain Dealer_.
+
+IN quitting Fenton's Hotel, Lord Vargrave entered into one of the clubs
+in St. James's Street: this was rather unusual with him, for he was not a
+club man.  It was not his system to spend his time for nothing.  But it
+was a wet December day; the House was not yet assembled, and he had done
+his official business.  Here, as he was munching a biscuit and reading an
+article in one of the ministerial papers--the heads of which he himself
+had supplied--Lord Saxingham joined and drew him to the window.
+
+"I have reason to think," said the earl, "that your visit to Windsor did
+good."
+
+"Ah, indeed; so I fancied."
+
+"I do not think that a certain personage will ever consent to the -----
+question; and the premier, whom I saw to-day, seems chafed and
+irritated."
+
+"Nothing can be better; I know that we are in the right boat."
+
+"I hope it is not true, Lumley, that your marriage with Miss Cameron is
+broken off; such was the _on dit_ in the club, just before you entered."
+
+"Contradict it, my dear lord,--contradict it.  I hope by the spring to
+introduce Lady Vargrave to you.  But who broached the absurd report?"
+
+"Why, your _protege_, Legard, says he heard so from his uncle, who heard
+it from Sir John Merton."
+
+"Legard is a puppy, and Sir John Merton a jackass.  Legard had better
+attend to his office, if he wants to get on; and I wish you'd tell him
+so.  I have heard somewhere that he talks of going to Paris,--you can
+just hint to him that he must give up such idle habits.  Public
+functionaries are not now what they were,--people are expected to work
+for the money they pocket; otherwise Legard is a cleverish fellow, and
+deserves promotion.  A word or two of caution from you will do him a vast
+deal of good."
+
+"Be sure I will lecture him.  Will you dine with me to-day, Lumley?"
+
+"No.  I expect my co-trustee, Mr. Douce, on matters of business,--a
+_tete-a-tete_ dinner."
+
+Lord Vargrave had, as he conceived, very cleverly talked over Mr. Douce
+into letting his debt to that gentleman run on for the present; and in
+the meanwhile, he had overwhelmed Mr. Douce with his condescensions.
+That gentleman had twice dined with Lord Vargrave, and Lord Vargrave had
+twice dined with him.  The occasion of the present more familiar
+entertainment was in a letter from Mr. Douce, begging to see Lord
+Vargrave on particular business; and Vargrave, who by no means liked the
+word _business_ from a gentleman to whom he owed money, thought that it
+would go off more smoothly if sprinkled with champagne.
+
+Accordingly, he begged "My dear Mr. Douce" to excuse ceremony, and dine
+with him on Thursday at seven o'clock,--he was really so busy all the
+mornings.
+
+At seven o'clock, Mr. Douce came.  The moment he entered Vargrave called
+out, at the top of his voice, "Dinner immediately!"  And as the little
+man bowed and shuffled, and fidgeted and wriggled (while Vargrave shook
+him by the hand), as if he thought he was going himself to be spitted,
+his host said, "With your leave, we'll postpone the budget till after
+dinner.  It is the fashion nowadays to postpone budgets as long as we
+can,--eh?  Well, and how are all at home?  Devilish cold; is it not?  So
+you go to your villa every day?  That's what keeps you in such capital
+health.  You know I had a villa too,--though I never had time to go
+there."
+
+"Ah, yes; I think, I remember, at Ful-Ful-Fulham!" gasped out Mr. Douce.
+"Your poor uncle's--now Lady Var-Vargrave's jointure-house.  So--so--"
+
+"She don't live there!" burst in Vargrave (far too impatient to be
+polite).  "Too cockneyfied for her,--gave it up to me; very pretty place,
+but d-----d expensive.  I could not afford it, never went there, and so I
+have let it to my wine-merchant; the rent just pays his bill.  You will
+taste some of the sofas and tables to-day in his champagne.  I don't know
+how it is, I always fancy my sherry smells like my poor uncle's old
+leather chair: very odd smell it had,--a kind of respectable smell!  I
+hope you're hungry,--dinner's ready."
+
+Vargrave thus rattled away in order to give the good banker to understand
+that his affairs were in the most flourishing condition: and he continued
+to keep up the ball all dinnertime, stopping Mr. Douce's little,
+miserable, gasping, dacelike mouth, with "a glass of wine, Douce?" or "by
+the by, Douce," whenever he saw that worthy gentleman about to make the
+AEschylean improvement of a second person in the dialogue.
+
+At length, dinner being fairly over, and the servants withdrawn, Lord
+Vargrave, knowing that sooner or later Douce would have his say, drew his
+chair to the fire, put his feet on the fender, and cried, as he tossed
+off his claret, "NOW, DOUCE, WHAT CAN I DO FOR YOU?"
+
+Mr. Douce opened his eyes to their full extent, and then as rapidly
+closed them; and this operation he continued till, having snuffed them so
+much that they could by no possibility burn any brighter, he was
+convinced that he had not misunderstood his lordship.
+
+"Indeed, then," he began, in his most frightened manner,
+"indeed--I--really, your lordship is very good--I--I wanted to speak to
+you on business."
+
+"Well, what can I do for you,--some little favour, eh?  Snug sinecure for
+a favourite clerk, or a place in the Stamp-Office for your fat
+footman--John, I think you call him?  You know, my dear Douce, you may
+command me."
+
+"Oh, indeed, you are all  good-good-goodness--but--but--"
+
+Vargrave threw himself back, and shutting his eyes and pursing up his
+mouth, resolutely suffered Mr. Douce to unbosom himself without
+interruption.  He was considerably relieved to find that the business
+referred to related only to Miss Cameron.
+
+Mr. Douce having reminded Lord Vargrave, as he had often done before, of
+the wishes of his uncle, that the greater portion of the money bequeathed
+to Evelyn should be invested in land, proceeded to say that a most
+excellent opportunity presented itself for just such a purchase as would
+have rejoiced the heart of the late lord,--a superb place, in the style
+of Blickling,--deer-park six miles round, ten thousand acres of land,
+bringing in a clear eight thousand pounds a year, purchase money only two
+hundred and forty thousand pounds.  The whole estate was, indeed, much
+larger,--eighteen thousand acres; but then the more distant farms could
+be sold in different lots, in order to meet the exact sum Miss Cameron's
+trustees were enabled to invest.
+
+"Well," said Vargrave, "and where is it?  My poor uncle was after De
+Clifford's estate, but the title was not good."
+
+"Oh! this--is much--much--much fi-fi-finer; famous investment--but rather
+far off--in--in the north, Li-Li-Lisle Court."
+
+"Lisle Court!  Why, does not that belong to Colonel Maltravers?"
+
+"Yes.  It is, indeed, quite, I may say, a secret-yes--really--a
+se-se-secret--not in the market yet--not at all--soon snapped up."
+
+"Humph!  Has Colonel Maltravers been extravagant?"
+
+"No; but he does not--I hear--or rather Lady--Julia--so I'm told, yes,
+indeed--does not li-like--going so far, and so they spend the winter in
+Italy instead.  Yes--very odd--very fine place."
+
+Lumley was slightly acquainted with the elder brother of his old
+friend,--a man who possessed some of Ernest's faults,--very proud, and
+very exacting, and very fastidious; but all these faults were developed
+in the ordinary commonplace world, and were not the refined abstractions
+of his younger brother.
+
+Colonel Maltravers had continued, since he entered the Guards, to be
+thoroughly the man of fashion, and nothing more.  But rich and well-born,
+and highly connected, and thoroughly _a la mode_ as he was, his pride
+made him uncomfortable in London, while his fastidiousness made him
+uncomfortable in the country.  He was _rather_ a great person, but he
+wanted to be a _very_ great person.  This he was at Lisle Court; but that
+did not satisfy him.  He wanted not only to be a very great person, but a
+very great person among very great persons--and squires and parsons bored
+him.  Lady Julia, his wife, was a fine lady, inane and pretty, who saw
+everything through her husband's eyes.  He was quite master _chez lui_,
+was Colonel Maltravers!  He lived a great deal abroad; for on the
+Continent his large income seemed princely, while his high character,
+thorough breeding, and personal advantages, which were remarkable,
+secured him a greater position in foreign courts than at his own.  Two
+things had greatly disgusted him with Lisle Court,--trifles they might be
+with others, but they were not trifles to Cuthbert Maltravers; in the
+first place, a man who had been his father's attorney, and who was the
+very incarnation of coarse unrepellable familiarity, had bought an estate
+close by the said Lisle Court, and had, _horresco referens_, been made a
+baronet!  Sir Gregory Gubbins took precedence of Colonel Maltravers!  He
+could not ride out but he met Sir Gregory; he could not dine out but he
+had the pleasure of walking behind Sir Gregory's bright blue coat with
+its bright brass buttons.  In his last visit to Lisle Court, which he had
+then crowded with all manner of fine people, he had seen--the very first
+morning after his arrival--seen from the large window of his state
+saloon, a great staring white, red, blue, and gilt thing, at the end of
+the stately avenue planted by Sir Guy Maltravers in honour of the victory
+over the Spanish armada.  He looked in mute surprise, and everybody else
+looked; and a polite German count, gazing through his eye-glass, said,
+"Ah! dat is vat you call a vim in your _pays_,--the vim of Colonel
+Maltravers!"
+
+This "vim" was the pagoda summer-house of Sir Gregory Gubbins, erected in
+imitation of the Pavilion at Brighton.  Colonel Maltravers was miserable:
+the _vim_ haunted him; it seemed ubiquitous; he could not escape it,--it
+was built on the highest spot in the county.  Ride, walk, sit where he
+would, the _vim_ stared at him; and he thought he saw little mandarins
+shake their round little heads at him.  This was one of the great curses
+of Lisle Court; the other was yet more galling.  The owners of Lisle
+Court had for several generations possessed the dominant interest in the
+county town.  The colonel himself meddled little in politics, and was too
+fine a gentleman for the drudgery of parliament.  He had offered the seat
+to Ernest, when the latter had commenced his public career; but the
+result of a communication proved that their political views were
+dissimilar, and the negotiation dropped without ill-feeling on either
+side.  Subsequently a vacancy occurred; and Lady Julia's brother (just
+made a Lord of the Treasury) wished to come into parliament, so the
+county town was offered to him.  Now, the proud commoner had married into
+the family of a peer as proud as himself, and Colonel Maltravers was
+always glad whenever he could impress his consequence on his connections
+by doing them a favour.  He wrote to his steward to see that the thing
+was properly settled, and came down on the nomination-day "to share the
+triumph and partake the gale."  Guess his indignation, when he found the
+nephew of Sir Gregory Gubbins was already in the field!  The result of
+the election was that Mr. Augustus Gubbins came in, and that Colonel
+Maltravers was pelted with cabbage-stalks, and accused of attempting to
+sell the worthy and independent electors to a government nominee!  In
+shame and disgust, Colonel Maltravers broke up his establishment at Lisle
+Court, and once more retired to the Continent.
+
+About a week from the date now touched upon, Lady Julia and himself had
+arrived in London from Vienna; and a new mortification awaited the
+unfortunate owner of Lisle Court.  A railroad company had been
+established, of which Sir Gregory Gubbins was a principal shareholder;
+and the speculator, Mr. Augustus Gubbins, one of the "most useful men in
+the House," had undertaken to carry the bill through parliament.  Colonel
+Maltravers received a letter of portentous size, inclosing the map of the
+places which this blessed railway was to bisect; and lo! just at the
+bottom of his park ran a portentous line, which informed him of the
+sacrifice he was expected to make for the public good,--especially for
+the good of that very county town, the inhabitants of which had pelted
+him with cabbage-stalks!
+
+Colonel Maltravers lost all patience.  Unacquainted with our wise
+legislative proceedings, he was not aware that a railway planned is a
+very different thing from a railway made; and that parliamentary
+committees are not by any means favourable to schemes for carrying the
+public through a gentleman's park.
+
+"This country is not to be lived in," said he to Lady Julia; "it gets
+worse and worse every year.  I am sure I never had any comfort in Lisle
+Court.  I've a great mind to sell it."
+
+"Why, indeed, as we have no sons, only daughters, and Ernest is so well
+provided for," said Lady Julia, "and the place is so far from London, and
+the neighbourhood is so disagreeable, I think we could do very well
+without it."
+
+Colonel Maltravers made no answer, but he revolved the pros and cons; and
+then he began to think how much it cost him in gamekeepers and carpenters
+and bailiffs and gardeners and Heaven knows whom besides; and then the
+pagoda flashed across him; and then the cabbage-stalks, and at last he
+went to his solicitor.
+
+"You may sell Lisle Court," said he, quietly.
+
+The solicitor dipped his pen in the ink.  "The particulars, Colonel?"
+
+"Particulars of Lisle Court! everybody, that is, every gentleman, knows
+Lisle Court!"
+
+"Price, sir?"
+
+"You know the rents; calculate accordingly.  It will be too large a
+purchase for one individual; sell the outlying woods and farms separately
+from the rest."
+
+"We must draw up an advertisement, Colonel."
+
+"Advertise Lisle Court! out of the question, sir.  I can have no
+publicity given to my intention: mention it quietly to any capitalist;
+but keep it out of the papers till it is all settled.  In a week or two
+you will find a purchaser,--the sooner the better."
+
+Besides his horror of newspaper comments and newspaper puffs, Colonel
+Maltravers dreaded that his brother--then in Paris--should learn his
+intention, and attempt to thwart it; and, somehow or other, the colonel
+was a little in awe of Ernest, and a little ashamed of his resolution.
+He did not know that, by a singular coincidence, Ernest himself had
+thought of selling Burleigh.
+
+The solicitor was by no means pleased with this way of settling the
+matter.  However, he whispered it about that Lisle Court was in the
+market; and as it really was one of the most celebrated places of its
+kind in England, the whisper spread among bankers and brewers and
+soap-boilers and other rich people--the Medici of the New Noblesse rising
+up amongst us--till at last it reached the ears of Mr. Douce.
+
+Lord Vargrave, however bad a man he might be, had not many of those vices
+of character which belong to what I may call the _personal class of
+vices_,--that is, he had no ill-will to individuals.  He was not,
+ordinarily, a jealous man, nor a spiteful, nor a malignant, nor a
+vindictive man: his vices arose from utter indifference to all men, and
+all things--except as conducive to his own ends.  He would not have
+injured a worm if it did him no good; but he would have set any house on
+fire if he had no other means of roasting his own eggs.  Yet still, if
+any feeling of personal rancour could harbour in his breast, it was,
+first, towards Evelyn Cameron, and, secondly, towards Ernest Maltravers.
+For the first time in his life, he did long for revenge,--revenge against
+the one for stealing his patrimony, and refusing his hand; and that
+revenge he hoped to gratify.
+
+As to the other, it was not so much dislike he felt, as an uneasy
+sentiment of inferiority.  However well he himself had got on in the
+world, he yet grudged the reputation of a man whom he had remembered a
+wayward, inexperienced boy: he did not love to hear any one praise
+Maltravers.  He fancied, too, that this feeling was reciprocal, and that
+Maltravers was pained at hearing of any new step in his own career.  In
+fact, it was that sort of jealousy which men often feel for the
+companions of their youth, whose characters are higher than their own,
+and whose talents are of an order they do not quite comprehend.  Now, it
+certainly did seem at that moment to Lord Vargrave that it would be a
+most splendid triumph over Mr. Maltravers of Burleigh to be lord of Lisle
+Court, the hereditary seat of the elder branch of the family to be, as it
+were, in the very shoes of Mr. Ernest Maltravers's elder brother.  He
+knew, too, that it was a property of great consequence.  Lord Vargrave of
+Lisle Court would hold a very different post in the peerage from Lord
+Vargrave of -----, Fulham!  Nobody would call the owner of Lisle Court an
+adventurer; nobody would suspect such a man of caring three straws about
+place and salary.  And if he married Evelyn, and if Evelyn bought Lisle
+Court, would not Lisle Court be his?  He vaulted over the _ifs_, stiff
+monosyllables though they were, with a single jump.  Besides, even should
+the thing come to nothing, there was the very excuse he sought for
+joining Evelyn at Paris, for conversing with her, consulting her.  It was
+true that the will of the late lord left it solely at the discretion of
+the trustees to select such landed investment as seemed best to them; but
+still it was, if not legally necessary, at least but a proper courtesy to
+consult Evelyn.  And plans, and drawings, and explanations, and
+rent-rolls, would justify him in spending morning after morning alone
+with her.
+
+Thus cogitating, Lord Vargrave suffered Mr. Douce to stammer out sentence
+upon sentence, till at length, as he rang for coffee, his lordship
+stretched himself with the air of a man stretching himself into
+self-complacency or a good thing, and said,--
+
+"Mr. Douce, I will go down to Lisle Court as soon as I can; I will see
+it; I will ascertain all about it; I will consider favourably of it.  I
+agree with you, I think it will do famously."
+
+"But," said Mr. Douce, who seemed singularly anxious about the matter,
+"we must make haste, my lord; for really--yes, indeed--if--if--if Baron
+Roths--Rothschild should--that is to say--"
+
+"Oh, yes, I understand; keep the thing close, my dear Douce; make friends
+with the colonel's lawyer; play with him a little, till I can run down."
+
+"Besides, you see, you are such a good man of business, my lord--that you
+see, that--yes, really--there must be time to draw out the
+purchase-money--sell out at a prop--prop--"
+
+"To be sure, to be sure!  Bless me, how late it is!  I am afraid my
+carriage is ready.  I must go to Madame de L-----'s."
+
+Mr. Douce, who seemed to have much more to say, was forced to keep it for
+another time, and to take his leave.  Lord Vargrave went to Madame de
+L-----'s.  His position in what is called Exclusive Society was rather
+peculiar.  By those who affected to be the best judges, the frankness of
+his manner and the easy oddity of his conversation were pronounced at
+variance with the tranquil serenity of thorough breeding.  But still he
+was a great favourite both with fine ladies and dandies.  His handsome
+keen countenance, his talents, his politics, his intrigues, and an
+animated boldness in his bearing, compensated for his constant violation
+of all the minutiae of orthodox conventionalism.
+
+At this house he met Colonel Maltravers, and took an opportunity to renew
+his acquaintance with that gentleman.  He then referred, in a
+confidential whisper, to the communication he had received touching Lisle
+Court.
+
+"Yes," said the colonel, "I suppose I must sell the place, if I can do so
+quietly.  To be sure, when I first spoke to my lawyer it was in a moment
+of vexation, on hearing that the ----- railroad was to go through the
+park, but I find that I overrated that danger.  Still, if you will do me
+the honour to go and look over the place, you will find very good
+shooting; and when you come back, you can see if it will suit you.  Don't
+say anything about it when you are there; it is better not to publish my
+intention all over the county.  I shall have Sir Gregory Gubbins offering
+to buy it if you do!"
+
+"You may depend on my discretion.  Have you heard anything of your
+brother lately?"
+
+"Yes; I fancy he is going to Switzerland.  He would soon be in England,
+if he heard I was going to part with Lisle Court!"
+
+"What, it would vex him so?"
+
+"I fear it would; but he has a nice old place of his own, not half so
+large, and therefore not half so troublesome as Lisle Court."
+
+"Ay! and he _did_ talk of selling that nice old place."
+
+"Selling Burleigh! you surprise me.  But really country places in England
+_are_ a bore.  I suppose he has his Gubbins as well as myself!"
+
+Here the chief minister of the government adorned by Lord Vargrave's
+virtues passed by, and Lumley turned to greet him.
+
+The two ministers talked together most affectionately in a close
+whisper,--so affectionately, that one might have seen, with half an eye,
+that they hated each other like poison!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+  INSPICERE tanquam in speculum, in vitas omnium
+  Jubeo.*--TERENCE.
+
+  * "I bid you look into the lives of all men, as
+    it were into a mirror."
+
+ERNEST MALTRAVERS still lingered at Paris: he gave up all notion of
+proceeding farther.  He was, in fact, tired of travel.  But there was
+another reason that chained him to that "Navel of the Earth,"--there is
+not anywhere a better sounding-board to London rumours than the English
+_quartier_ between the Boulevard des Italiennes and the Tuileries; here,
+at all events, he should soonest learn the worst: and every day, as he
+took up the English newspapers, a sick feeling of apprehension and fear
+came over him.  No! till the seal was set upon the bond, till the Rubicon
+was passed, till Miss Cameron was the wife of Lord Vargrave, he could
+neither return to the home that was so eloquent with the recollections of
+Evelyn, nor, by removing farther from England, delay the receipt of an
+intelligence which he vainly told himself he was prepared to meet.
+
+He continued to seek such distractions from thought as were within his
+reach; and as his heart was too occupied for pleasures which had, indeed,
+long since palled, those distractions were of the grave and noble
+character which it is a prerogative of the intellect to afford to the
+passions.
+
+De Montaigne was neither a Doctrinaire nor a Republican,--and yet,
+perhaps, he was a little of both.  He was one who thought that the
+tendency of all European States is towards Democracy; but he by no means
+looked upon Democracy as a panacea for all legislative evils.  He thought
+that, while a writer should be in advance of his time, a statesman should
+content himself with marching by its side; that a nation could not be
+ripened, like an exotic, by artificial means; that it must be developed
+only by natural influences.  He believed that forms of government are
+never universal in their effects.  Thus, De Montaigne conceived that we
+were wrong in attaching more importance to legislative than to social
+reforms.  He considered, for instance, that the surest sign of our
+progressive civilization is in our growing distaste to capital
+punishments.  He believed, not in the ultimate _perfection_ of mankind,
+but in their progressive _perfectibility_.  He thought that improvement
+was indefinite; but he did not place its advance more under Republican
+than under Monarchical forms.  "Provided," he was wont to say, "all our
+checks to power are of the right kind, it matters little to what hands
+the power itself is confided."
+
+"AEgina and Athens," said he, "were republics--commercial and
+maritime--placed under the same sky, surrounded by the same neighbours,
+and rent by the same struggles between Oligarchy and Democracy.  Yet,
+while one left the world an immortal heirloom of genius, where are the
+poets, the philosophers, the statesmen of the other?  Arrian tells us of
+republics in India, still supposed to exist by modern investigators; but
+they are not more productive of liberty of thought, or ferment of
+intellect, than the principalities.  In Italy there were commonwealths as
+liberal as the Republic of Florence; but they did not produce a
+Machiavelli or a Dante.  What daring thought, what gigantic speculation,
+what democracy of wisdom and genius, have sprung up amongst the
+despotisms of Germany!  You cannot educate two individuals so as to
+produce the same results from both; you cannot, by similar constitutions
+(which are the education of nations) produce the same results from
+different communities.  The proper object of statesmen should be to give
+every facility to the people to develop themselves, and every facility to
+philosophy to dispute and discuss as to the ultimate objects to be
+obtained.  But you cannot, as a practical legislator, place your country
+under a melon-frame: it must grow of its own accord."
+
+I do not say whether or not De Montaigne was wrong! but Maltravers saw at
+least that he was faithful to his theories; that all his motives were
+sincere, all his practice pure.  He could not but allow, too, that in his
+occupations and labours, De Montaigne appeared to feel a sublime
+enjoyment; that, in linking all the powers of his mind to active and
+useful objects, De Montaigne was infinitely happier than the Philosophy
+of Indifference, the scorn of ambition, had made Maltravers.  The
+influence exercised by the large-souled and practical Frenchman over the
+fate and the history of Maltravers was very peculiar.
+
+De Montaigne had not, apparently and directly, operated upon his friend's
+outward destinies; but he had done so indirectly, by operating on his
+mind.  Perhaps it was he who had consolidated the first wavering and
+uncertain impulses of Maltravers towards literary exertion; it was he who
+had consoled him for the mortifications at the earlier part of his
+career; and now, perhaps he might serve, in the full vigour of his
+intellect, permanently to reconcile the Englishman to the claims of life.
+
+There were, indeed, certain conversations which Maltravers held with De
+Montaigne, the germ and pith of which it is necessary that I should place
+before the reader,--for I write the inner as well as the outer history of
+a man; and the great incidents of life are not brought about only by the
+dramatic agencies of others, but also by our own reasonings and habits of
+thought.  What I am now about to set down may be wearisome, but it is not
+episodical; and I promise that it shall be the last didactic conversation
+in the work.
+
+One day Maltravers was relating to De Montaigne all that he had been
+planning at Burleigh for the improvement of his peasantry, and all his
+theories respecting Labour-Schools and Poor-rates, when De Montaigne
+abruptly turned round, and said,--
+
+"You have, then, really found that in your own little village your
+exertions--exertions not very arduous, not demanding a tenth part of your
+time--have done practical good?"
+
+"Certainly I think so," replied Maltravers, in some surprise.
+
+"And yet it was but yesterday that you declared that all the labours of
+Philosophy and Legislation were labours vain; their benefits equivocal
+and uncertain; that as the sea, where it loses in one place, gains in
+another, so civilization only partially profits us, stealing away one
+virtue while it yields another, and leaving the large proportions of good
+and evil eternally the same."
+
+"True; but I never said that man might not relieve individuals by
+individual exertion: though he cannot by abstract theories--nay, even by
+practical action in the wide circle--benefit the mass."
+
+"Do you not employ on behalf of individuals the same moral agencies that
+wise legislation or sound philosophy would adopt towards the multitude?
+For example, you find that the children of your village are happier, more
+orderly, more obedient, promise to be wiser and better men in their own
+station of life, from the new, and, I grant, excellent system of school
+discipline and teaching that you have established.  What you have done in
+one village, why should not legislation do throughout a kingdom?  Again,
+you find that, by simply holding out hope and emulation to industry, by
+making stern distinctions between the energetic and the idle, the
+independent exertion and the pauper-mendicancy, you have found a lever by
+which you have literally moved and shifted the little world around you.
+But what is the difference here between the rules of a village lord and
+the laws of a wise legislature?  The moral feelings you have appealed to
+exist universally, the moral remedies you have practised are as open to
+legislation as to the individual proprietor."
+
+"Yes; but when you apply to a nation the same principles which regenerate
+a village, new counterbalancing principles arise.  If I give education to
+my peasants, I send them into the world with advantages _superior_ to
+their fellows,--advantages which, not being common to their class, enable
+them to _outstrip_ their fellows.  But if this education were universal
+to the whole tribe, no man would have an advantage superior to the
+others; the knowledge they would have acquired being shared by all, would
+leave all as they now are, hewers of wood and drawers of water: the
+principle of individual hope, which springs from knowledge, would soon be
+baffled by the vast competition that _universal_ knowledge would produce.
+Thus by the universal improvement would be engendered a universal
+discontent.
+
+"Take a broader view of the subject.  Advantages given to the _few_
+around me--superior wages, lighter toils, a greater sense of the dignity
+of man--are not productive of any change in society.  Give these
+advantages to the _whole mass_ of the labouring classes, and what in the
+small orbit is the desire of the _individual_ to rise becomes in the
+large circumference the desire of the _class_ to rise; hence social
+restlessness, social change, revolution, and its hazards.  For
+revolutions are produced but by the aspirations of one order, and the
+resistance of the other.  Consequently, legislative improvement differs
+widely from individual amelioration; the same principle, the same agency,
+that purifies the small body, becomes destructive when applied to the
+large one.  Apply the flame to the log on the hearth, or apply it to the
+forest, is there no distinction in the result?  The breeze that freshens
+the fountain passes to the ocean, current impels current, wave urges
+wave, and the breeze becomes the storm."
+
+"Were there truth in this train of argument," replied De Montaigne, "had
+we ever abstained from communicating to the Multitude the enjoyments and
+advantages of the Few, had we shrunk from the good, because the good is a
+parent of the change and its partial ills, what now would be society?  Is
+there no difference in collective happiness and virtue between the
+painted Picts and the Druid worship, and the glorious harmony, light, and
+order of the great English nation?"
+
+"The question is popular," said Maltravers, with a smile; "and were you
+my opponent in an election, would be cheered on any hustings in the
+kingdom.  But I have lived among savage tribes,--savage, perhaps, as the
+race that resisted Caesar; and their happiness seems to me, not perhaps
+the same as that of the few whose sources of enjoyment are numerous,
+refined, and, save by their own passions, unalloyed; but equal to that of
+the mass of men in States the most civilized and advanced.  The artisans,
+crowded together in the fetid air of factories, with physical ills
+gnawing at the core of the constitution, from the cradle to the grave;
+drudging on from dawn to sunset and flying for recreation to the dread
+excitement of the dram-shop, or the wild and vain hopes of political
+fanaticism,--are not in my eyes happier than the wild Indians with hardy
+frames and calm tempers, seasoned to the privations for which you pity
+them, and uncursed with desires of that better state never to be theirs.
+The Arab in his desert has seen all the luxuries of the pasha in his
+harem; but he envies them not.  He is contented with his barb, his tent,
+his desolate sands, and his spring of refreshing water.
+
+"Are we not daily told, do not our priests preach it from their pulpits,
+that the cottage shelters happiness equal to that within the palace?  Yet
+what the distinction between the peasant and the prince, differing from
+that between the peasant and the savage?  There are more enjoyments and
+more privations in the one than in the other; but if, in the latter case,
+the enjoyments, though fewer, be more keenly felt,--if the privations,
+though apparently sharper, fall upon duller sensibilities and hardier
+frames,--your gauge of proportion loses all its value.  Nay, in
+civilization there is for the multitude an evil that exists not in the
+savage state.  The poor man sees daily and hourly all the vast
+disparities produced by civilized society; and reversing the divine
+parable, it is Lazarus who from afar, and from the despondent pit, looks
+upon Dives in the lap of Paradise: therefore, his privations, his
+sufferings, are made more keen by comparison with the luxuries of others.
+Not so in the desert and the forest.  There but small distinctions, and
+those softened by immemorial and hereditary usage--that has in it the
+sanctity of religion--separate the savage from his chief.  The fact is,
+that in civilization we behold a splendid aggregate,--literature and
+science, wealth and luxury, commerce and glory; but we see not the
+million victims crushed beneath the wheels of the machine,--the health
+sacrificed, the board breadless, the jails filled, the hospitals reeking,
+the human life poisoned in every spring, and poured forth like water!
+Neither do we remember all the steps, marked by desolation, crime, and
+bloodshed, by which this barren summit has been reached.  Take the
+history of any civilized state,--England, France, Spain before she rotted
+back into second childhood, the Italian Republics, the Greek
+Commonwealths, the Empress of the Seven Hills--what struggles, what
+persecutions, what crimes, what massacres!  Where, in the page of
+history, shall we look back and say, 'Here improvement has diminished the
+sum of evil'?  Extend, too, your scope beyond the State itself: each
+State has won its acquisitions by the woes of others.  Spain springs
+above the Old World on the blood-stained ruins of the New; and the groans
+and the gold of Mexico produce the splendours of the Fifth Charles!
+
+"Behold England, the wise, the liberal, the free England--through what
+struggles she has passed; and is she yet contented?  The sullen oligarchy
+of the Normans; our own criminal invasions of Scotland and France; the
+plundered people, the butchered kings; the persecutions of the Lollards;
+the wars of Lancaster and York; the new dynasty of the Tudors, that at
+once put back Liberty, and put forward Civilization! the Reformation,
+cradled in the lap of a hideous despot, and nursed by violence and
+rapine; the stakes and fires of Mary, and the craftier cruelties of
+Elizabeth,--England, strengthened by the desolation of Ireland, the Civil
+Wars, the reign of hypocrisy, followed by the reign of naked vice; the
+nation that beheaded the graceful Charles gaping idly on the scaffold of
+the lofty Sidney; the vain Revolution of 1688, which, if a jubilee in
+England, was a massacre in Ireland; the bootless glories of Marlborough;
+the organized corruption of Walpole, the frantic war with our own
+American sons, the exhausting struggles with Napoleon!
+
+"Well, we close the page; we say, Lo! a thousand years of incessant
+struggles and afflictions! millions have perished, but Art has survived;
+our boors wear stockings, our women drink tea, our poets read Shakspeare,
+and our astronomers improve on Newton!  Are we now contented?  No! more
+restless than ever.  New classes are called into power; new forms of
+government insisted on.  Still the same catchwords,--Liberty here,
+Religion there; Order with one faction, Amelioration with the other.
+Where is the goal, and what have we gained?  Books are written, silks are
+woven, palaces are built,--mighty acquisitions for the few--but the
+peasant is a peasant still!  The crowd are yet at the bottom of the
+wheel; better off, you say.  No, for they are not more contented!  The
+artisan is as anxious for change as ever the serf was; and the
+steam-engine has its victims as well as the sword.
+
+"Talk of legislation: all isolated laws pave the way to wholesale changes
+in the form of government!  Emancipate Catholics, and you open the door
+to democratic principle, that Opinion should be free.  If free with the
+sectarian, it should be free with the elector.  The Ballot is a corollary
+from the Catholic Relief-bill.  Grant the Ballot, and the new corollary
+of enlarged suffrage.  Suffrage enlarged is divided but by a yielding
+surface (a circle widening in the waters) from universal suffrage.
+Universal suffrage is Democracy.  Is Democracy better than the
+aristocratic commonwealth?  Look at the Greeks, who knew both forms; are
+they agreed which is the best?  Plato, Thucydides, Xenophon,
+Aristophanes--the Dreamer, the Historian, the Philosophic Man of Action,
+the penetrating Wit--have no ideals in Democracy.  Algernon Sidney, the
+martyr of liberty, allows no government to the multitude.  Brutus died
+for a republic, but a republic of Patricians!  What form of government is
+then the best?  All dispute, the wisest cannot agree.  The many still say
+'a Republic;' yet, as you yourself will allow, Prussia, the Despotism,
+does all that Republics do.  Yes, but a good despot is a lucky accident;
+true, but a just and benevolent Republic is as yet a monster equally
+short-lived.  When the People have no other tyrant, their own public
+opinion becomes one.  No secret espionage is more intolerable to a free
+spirit than the broad glare of the American eye.
+
+"A rural republic is but a patriarchal tribe--no emulation, no glory;
+peace and stagnation.  What Englishman, what Frenchman, would wish to be
+a Swiss?  A commercial republic is but an admirable machine for making
+money.  Is man created for nothing nobler than freighting ships and
+speculating on silk and sugar?  In fact, there is no certain goal in
+legislation; we go on colonizing Utopia, and fighting phantoms in the
+clouds.  Let us content ourselves with injuring no man, and doing good
+only in our own little sphere.  Let us leave States and senates to fill
+the sieve of the Danaides, and roll up the stone of Sisyphus."
+
+"My dear friend," said De Montaigne, "you have certainly made the most of
+an argument, which, if granted, would consign government to fools and
+knaves, and plunge the communities of mankind into the Slough of Despond.
+But a very commonplace view of the question might suffice to shake your
+system.  Is life, mere animal life, on the whole, a curse or a blessing?"
+
+"The generality of men in all countries," answered Maltravers, "enjoy
+existence, and apprehend death; were it otherwise, the world had been
+made by a Fiend, and not a God!"
+
+"Well, then, observe how the progress of society cheats the grave!  In
+great cities, where the effect of civilization must be the most visible,
+the diminution of mortality in a corresponding ratio with the increase of
+civilization is most remarkable.  In Berlin, from the year 1747 to 1755,
+the annual mortality was as one to twenty-eight; but from 1816 to 1822,
+it was as one to thirty-four!  You ask what England has gained by her
+progress in the arts?  I will answer you by her bills of mortality.  In
+London, Birmingham, and Liverpool, deaths have decreased in less than a
+century from one to twenty, to one to forty (precisely one-half!).
+Again, whenever a community--nay, a single city, decreases in
+civilization, and in its concomitants, activity and commerce, its
+mortality instantly increases.  But if civilization be favourable to the
+prolongation of life, must it not be favourable to all that blesses
+life,--to bodily health, to mental cheerfulness, to the capacities for
+enjoyment?  And how much more grand, how much more sublime, becomes the
+prospect of gain, if we reflect that, to each life thus called forth,
+there is a soul, a destiny beyond the grave, multiplied immortalities!
+What an apology for the continued progress of States!  But you say that,
+however we advance, we continue impatient and dissatisfied: can you
+really suppose that, because man in every state is discontented with his
+lot, there is no difference in the _degree_ and _quality_ of his
+discontent, no distinction between pining for bread and longing for the
+moon?  Desire is implanted within us, as the very principle of existence;
+the physical desire fills the world, and the moral desire improves it.
+Where there is desire, there must be discontent: if we are satisfied with
+all things, desire is extinct.  But a certain degree of discontent is not
+incompatible with happiness, nay, it has happiness of its own; what
+happiness like hope,--what is hope but desire?  The European serf, whose
+seigneur could command his life, or insist as a right on the chastity of
+his daughter, desires to better his condition.  God has compassion on his
+state; Providence calls into action the ambition of leaders, the contests
+of faction, the movement of men's aims and passions: a change passes
+through society and legislation, and the serf becomes free!  He desires
+still, but what?  No longer personal security, no longer the privileges
+of life and health; but higher wages, greater comforts, easier justice
+for diminished wrongs.  Is there no difference in the quality of that
+desire?  Was one a greater torment than the other is?  Rise a scale
+higher: a new class is created--the Middle Class,--the express creature
+of Civilization.  Behold the burgher and the citizen, and still
+struggling, still contending, still desiring, and therefore still
+discontented.  But the discontent does not prey upon the springs of life:
+it is the discontent of _hope_, not _despair_; it calls forth faculties,
+energies, and passions, in which there is more joy than sorrow.  It is
+this desire which makes the citizen in private life an anxious father, a
+careful master, an _active_, and therefore not an unhappy, man.  You
+allow that individuals can effect individual good: this very
+restlessness, this very discontent with the exact place that he occupies,
+makes the citizen a benefactor in his narrow circle.  Commerce, better
+than Charity, feeds the hungry and clothes the naked.  Ambition, better
+than brute affection, gives education to our children, and teaches them
+the love of industry, the pride of independence, the respect for others
+and themselves!
+
+"In other words, a deference to such qualities as can best fit them to
+get on in the world, and make the most money!"
+
+"Take that view if you will; but the wiser, the more civilized the State,
+the worse chances for the rogue to get on!  There may be some art, some
+hypocrisy, some avarice,--nay, some hardness of heart,--in paternal
+example and professional tuition.  But what are such sober infirmities to
+the vices that arise from defiance and despair?  Your savage has his
+virtues, but they are mostly physical,--fortitude, abstinence, patience:
+mental and moral virtues must be numerous or few, in proportion to the
+range of ideas and the exigencies of social life.  With the savage,
+therefore, they must be fewer than with civilized men; and they are
+consequently limited to those simple and rude elements which the safety
+of his state renders necessary to him.  He is usually hospitable;
+sometimes honest.  But vices are necessary to his existence as well as
+virtues: he is at war with a tribe that may destroy his own; and
+treachery without scruple, cruelty without remorse, are essential to him;
+he feels their necessity, and calls them _virtues_!  Even the
+half-civilized man, the Arab whom you praise, imagines he has a necessity
+for your money; and his robberies become virtues to him.  But in
+civilized States, vices are at least not necessary to the existence of
+the majority; they are not, therefore, worshipped as virtues.  Society
+unites against them; treachery, robbery, massacre, are not essential to
+the strength or safety of the community: they exist, it is true, but they
+are not cultivated, but punished.  The thief in St. Giles's has the
+virtues of your savage: he is true to his companions, he is brave in
+danger, he is patient in privation; he practises the virtues necessary to
+the bonds of his calling and the tacit laws of his vocation.  He might
+have made an admirable savage: but surely the mass of civilized men are
+better than the thief?"
+
+Maltravers was struck, and paused a little before he replied; and then he
+shifted his ground.  "But at least all our laws, all our efforts, must
+leave the multitude in every State condemned to a labour that deadens
+intellect, and a poverty that embitters life."
+
+"Supposing this were true, still there are multitudes besides _the_
+multitude.  In each State Civilization produces a middle class, more
+numerous to-day than the whole peasantry of a thousand years ago.  Would
+Movement and Progress be without their divine uses, even if they limited
+their effect to the production of such a class?  Look also to the effect
+of art, and refinement, and just laws, in the wealthier and higher
+classes.  See how their very habits of life tend to increase the sum of
+enjoyment; see the mighty activity that their very luxury, the very
+frivolity of their pursuits, create!  Without an aristocracy, would there
+have been a middle class?  Without a middle class, would there ever have
+been an interposition between lord and slave?  Before commerce produces a
+middle class, Religion creates one.  The Priesthood, whatever its errors,
+was the curb to Power.  But, to return to the multitude,--you say that in
+all times they are left the same.  Is it so?  I come to statistics again:
+I find that not only civilization, but liberty, has a prodigious effect
+upon human life.  It is, as it were, by the instinct of self-preservation
+that liberty is so passionately desired by the multitude.  A negro slave,
+for instance, dies annually as one to five or six, but a free African in
+the English service only as one to thirty-five!  Freedom is not,
+therefore, a mere abstract dream, a beautiful name, a Platonic
+aspiration: it is interwoven with the most practical of all
+blessings,--life itself!  And can you say fairly that by laws labour
+cannot be lightened and poverty diminished?  We have granted already that
+since there are degrees in discontent, there is a difference between the
+peasant and the serf: how know you what the peasant a thousand years
+hence may be?  Discontented, you will say,--still discontented.  Yes; but
+if he had not been discontented, he would have been a serf still!  Far
+from quelling this desire to better himself, we ought to hail it as the
+source of his perpetual progress.  That desire to him is often like
+imagination to the poet, it transports him into the Future--
+
+  'Crura sonant ferro, sed canit inter opus.'
+
+It is, indeed, the gradual transformation from the desire of Despair to
+the desire of Hope, that makes the difference between man and man,
+between misery and bliss."
+
+"And then comes the crisis.  Hope ripens into deeds; the stormy
+revolution, perhaps the armed despotism; the relapse into the second
+infancy of States!"
+
+"Can we, with new agencies at our command, new morality, new wisdom,
+predicate of the Future by the Past?  In ancient States, the mass were
+slaves; civilization and freedom rested with oligarchies; in Athens
+twenty thousand citizens, four hundred thousand slaves!  How easy
+decline, degeneracy, overthrow in such States,--a handful of soldiers and
+philosophers without a People!  Now we have no longer barriers to the
+circulation of the blood of States.  The absence of slavery, the
+existence of the Press; the healthful proportions of kingdoms, neither
+too confined nor too vast, have created new hopes, which history cannot
+destroy.  As a proof, look to all late revolutions: in England the Civil
+Wars, the Reformation,--in France her awful Saturnalia, her military
+despotism!  Has either nation fallen back?  The deluge passes, and,
+behold, the face of things more glorious than before!  Compare the French
+of to-day with the French of the old _regime_.  You are silent; well, and
+if in all States there is ever some danger of evil in their activity, is
+that a reason why you are to lie down inactive; why you are to leave the
+crew to battle for the helm?  How much may individuals by the diffusion
+of their own thoughts in letters or in action regulate the order of vast
+events,--now prevent, now soften, now animate, now guide!  And is a man
+to whom Providence and Fortune have imparted such prerogatives to stand
+aloof, because he can neither foresee the Future nor create Perfection?
+And you talk of no certain and definite goal!  How know we that there is
+a certain and definite goal, even in heaven?  How know we that excellence
+may not be illimitable?  Enough that we improve, that we proceed.  Seeing
+in the great design of earth that benevolence is an attribute of the
+Designer, let us leave the rest to Posterity and to God."
+
+"You have disturbed many of my theories," said Maltravers, candidly; "and
+I will reflect on our conversation; but, after all, is every man to
+aspire to influence others; to throw his opinion into the great scales in
+which human destinies are weighed? Private life is not criminal.  It is
+no virtue to write a book, or to make a speech.  Perhaps, I should be as
+well engaged in returning to my country village, looking at my schools,
+and wrangling with the parish overseers--"
+
+"Ah," interrupted the Frenchman, laughing; "if I have driven you to this
+point, I will go no further.  Every state of life has its duties; every
+man must be himself the judge of what he is most fit for.  It is quite
+enough that he desires to be active, and labours to be useful; that he
+acknowledges the precept, 'Never to be weary in well-doing.'  The divine
+appetite once fostered, let it select its own food.  But the man who,
+after fair trial of his capacities, and with all opportunity for their
+full development before him, is convinced that he has faculties which
+private life cannot wholly absorb, must not repine that Human Nature is
+not perfect, when he refuses even to exercise the gifts he himself
+possesses."
+
+Now these arguments have been very tedious; in some places they have been
+old and trite; in others they may appear too much to appertain to the
+abstract theory of first principles.  Yet from such arguments, _pro_ and
+_con_, unless I greatly mistake, are to be derived corollaries equally
+practical and sublime,--the virtue of Action, the obligations of Genius,
+and the philosophy that teaches us to confide in the destinies, and
+labour in the service, of mankind.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+  I'LL tell you presently her very picture;
+  Stay--yes, it is so--Lelia.
+            _The Captain_, Act V. sc. I.
+
+MALTRAVERS had not shrunk into a system of false philosophy from wayward
+and sickly dreams, from resolute self-delusion; on the contrary, his
+errors rested on his convictions: the convictions disturbed, the errors
+were rudely shaken.
+
+But when his mind began restlessly to turn once more towards the duties
+of active life; when he recalled all the former drudgeries and toils of
+political conflict, or the wearing fatigues of literature, with its small
+enmities, its false friendships, and its meagre and capricious
+rewards,--ah, then, indeed, he shrank in dismay from the thoughts of the
+solitude at home!  No lips to console in dejection, no heart to
+sympathize in triumph, no love within to counterbalance the hate
+without,--and the best of man, his household affections, left to wither
+away, or to waste themselves on ideal images, or melancholy remembrance.
+
+It may, indeed, be generally remarked (contrary to a common notion), that
+the men who are most happy at home are the most active abroad.  The
+animal spirits are necessary to healthful action; and dejection and the
+sense of solitude will turn the stoutest into dreamers.  The hermit is
+the antipodes of the citizen; and no gods animate and inspire us like the
+Lares.
+
+One evening, after an absence from Paris of nearly a fortnight, at De
+Montaigne's villa, in the neighbourhood of St. Cloud, Maltravers, who,
+though he no longer practised the art, was not less fond than heretofore
+of music, was seated in Madame de Ventadour's box at the Italian Opera;
+and Valerie, who was above all the woman's jealousy of beauty, was
+expatiating with great warmth of eulogium upon the charms of a young
+English lady whom she had met at Lady G-----'s the preceding evening.
+
+"She is just my beau-ideal of the true English beauty," said Valerie: "it
+is not only the exquisite fairness of the complexion, nor the eyes so
+purely blue,--which the dark lashes relieve from the coldness common to
+the light eyes of the Scotch and German,--that are so beautifully
+national, but the simplicity of manner, the unconsciousness of
+admiration, the mingled modesty and sense of the expression.  No, I have
+seen women more beautiful, but I never saw one more lovely: you are
+silent; I expected some burst of patriotism in return for my compliment
+to your countrywoman!"
+
+"But I am so absorbed in that wonderful Pasta--"
+
+"You are no such thing; your thoughts are far away.  But can you tell me
+anything about my fair stranger and her friends?  In the first place,
+there is a Lord Doltimore, whom I knew before--you need say nothing about
+him; in the next there is his new married bride, handsome, dark--but you
+are not well!"
+
+"It was the draught from the door; go on, I beseech you, the young lady,
+the friend, her name?"
+
+"Her name I do not remember; but she was engaged to be married to one of
+your statesmen, Lord Vargrave; the marriage is broken off--I know not if
+that be the cause of a certain melancholy in her countenance,--a
+melancholy I am sure not natural to its Hebe-like expression.  But who
+have just entered the opposite box?  Ah, Mr. Maltravers, do look, there
+is the beautiful English girl!"
+
+And Maltravers raised his eyes, and once more beheld the countenance of
+Evelyn Cameron!
+
+
+
+BOOK VII.
+
+  Words of dark import gave suspicion birth.--POTTER.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+  _Luce_.  Is the wind there?
+           That makes for me.
+  _Isab_.  Come, I forget a business.
+                 _Wit without Money_.
+
+LORD VARGRAVE'S travelling-carriage was at his door, and he himself was
+putting on his greatcoat in his library, when Lord Saxingham entered.
+
+"What! you are going into the country?"
+
+"Yes; I wrote you word,--to see Lisle Court."
+
+"Ay, true; I had forgot.  Somehow or other my memory is not so good as it
+was.  But, let me see, Lisle Court is in -----shire.  Why, you will pass
+within ten miles of C-----."
+
+"C-----!  Shall I?  I am not much versed in the geography of
+England,--never learned it at school.  As for Poland, Kamschatka, Mexico,
+Madagascar, or any other place as to which knowledge would be _useful_, I
+have every inch of the way at my finger's end.  But _a propos_ of C-----,
+it is the town in which my late uncle made his fortune."
+
+"Ah, so it is.  I recollect you were to have stood for C-----, but gave
+it up to Staunch; very handsome in you.  Have you any interest there
+still?"
+
+"I think my ward has some tenants,--a street or two,--one called Richard
+Street, and the other Templeton Place.  I had intended some weeks ago to
+have gone down there, and seen what interest was still left to our
+family; but Staunch himself told me that C----- was a sure card."
+
+"So he thought; but he has been with me this morning in great alarm: he
+now thinks he shall be thrown out.  A Mr. Winsley, who has a great deal
+of interest there, and was a supporter of his, hangs back on account of
+the ----- question.  This is unlucky, as Staunch is quite with _us_; and
+if he were to rat now it would be most unfortunate."
+
+"Winsley!  Winsley!--my poor uncle's right-hand man.  A great
+brewer,--always chairman of the Templeton Committee.  I know the name,
+though I never saw the man."
+
+"If you could take C----- in your way?"
+
+"To be sure.  Staunch must not be lost.  We cannot throw away a single
+vote, much more one of such weight,--eighteen stone at the least!  I'll
+stop at C----- on pretence of seeing after my ward's houses, and have a
+quiet conference with Mr. Winsley.  Hem!  Peers must not interfere in
+elections, eh?  Well, good-by: take care of yourself.  I shall be back in
+a week, I hope,--perhaps less."
+
+In a minute more Lord Vargrave and Mr. George Frederick Augustus Howard,
+a slim young gentleman of high birth and connections, but who, having, as
+a portionless cadet, his own way to make in the world, condescended to be
+his lordship's private secretary, were rattling over the streets the
+first stage to C-----.
+
+It was late at night when Lord Vargrave arrived at the head inn of that
+grave and respectable cathedral city, in which once Richard Templeton,
+Esq.,--saint, banker, and politician,--had exercised his dictatorial
+sway.  "Sic transit gloria mundi!"  As he warmed his hands by the fire in
+the large wainscoted apartment into which he was shown, his eye met a
+full length engraving of his uncle, with a roll of papers in his
+hand,--meant for a parliamentary bill for the turnpike trusts in the
+neighbourhood of C-----.  The sight brought back his recollections of
+that pious and saturnine relation, and insensibly the minister's thoughts
+flew to his death-bed, and to the strange secret which in that last hour
+he had revealed to Lumley,--a secret which had done much in deepening
+Lord Vargrave's contempt for the forms and conventionalities of decorous
+life.  And here it may be mentioned--though in the course of this volume
+a penetrating reader may have guessed as much--that, whatever that
+secret, it did not refer expressly or exclusively to the late lord's
+singular and ill-assorted marriage.  Upon that point much was still left
+obscure to arouse Lumley's curiosity, had he been a man whose curiosity
+was very vivacious.  But on this he felt but little interest.  He knew
+enough to believe that no further information could benefit himself
+personally; why should he trouble his head with what never would fill his
+pockets?
+
+An audible yawn from the slim secretary roused Lord Vargrave from his
+revery.
+
+"I envy you, my young friend," said he, good-humouredly.  "It is a
+pleasure we lose as we grow older,--that of being sleepy.  However, 'to
+bed,' as Lady Macbeth says.  Faith, I don't wonder the poor devil of a
+thane was slow in going to bed with such a tigress.  Good-night to you."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+  MA fortune va prendre une face nouvelle.*
+            RACINE. _Androm_., Act i. sc. 1.
+
+  * "My fortune is about to take a turn."
+
+THE next morning Vargrave inquired the way to Mr. Winsley's, and walked
+alone to the house of the brewer.  The slim secretary went to inspect the
+cathedral.
+
+Mr. Winsley was a little, thickset man, with a civil but blunt
+electioneering manner.  He started when he heard Lord Vargrave's name,
+and bowed with great stiffness.  Vargrave saw at a glance that there was
+some cause of grudge in the mind of the worthy man; nor did Mr. Winsley
+long hesitate before he cleansed his bosom of its perilous stuff.
+
+"This is an unexpected honour, my lord: I don't know how to account for
+it."
+
+"Why, Mr. Winsley, your friendship with my late uncle can, perhaps,
+sufficiently explain and apologize for a visit from a nephew sincerely
+attached to his memory."
+
+"Humph!  I certainly did do all in my power to promote Mr. Templeton's
+interests.  No man, I may say, did more; and yet I don't think it was
+much thought of the moment he turned his back upon the electors of
+C-----.  Not that I bear any malice; I am well to do, and value no man's
+favour,--no man's, my lord!"
+
+"You amaze me!  I always heard my poor uncle speak of you in the highest
+terms."
+
+"Oh, well, it don't signify; pray say no more of it.  Can I offer your
+lordship a glass of wine?"
+
+"No, I am much obliged to you; but we really must set this little matter
+right.  You know that after his marriage my uncle never revisited C-----;
+and that shortly before his death he sold the greater part of his
+interest in this city.  His young wife, I suppose, liked the
+neighbourhood of London; and when elderly gentlemen _do_ marry, you know
+they are no longer their own masters; but if you had ever come to
+Fulham--ah! then, indeed, my uncle would have rejoiced to see his old
+friend."
+
+"Your lordship thinks so," said Mr. Winsley with a sardonic smile.  "You
+are mistaken; I did call at Fulham; and though I sent in my card, Lord
+Vargrave's servant (he was then My Lord) brought back word that his
+lordship was not at home."
+
+"But that must have been true; he was out, you may depend on it."
+
+"I saw him at the window, my lord," said Mr. Winsley, taking a pinch of
+snuff.
+
+"Oh, the deuce!  I'm in for it," thought Lumley.--"Very strange, indeed!
+but how can you account for it?  Ah, perhaps the health of Lady
+Vargrave--she was so very delicate then, and my poor uncle lived for
+her--you know that he left all his fortune to Miss Cameron?"
+
+"Miss Cameron!  Who is she, my lord?"
+
+"Why, his daughter-in-law; Lady Vargrave was a widow,--a Mrs. Cameron."
+
+"Mrs. Cam--I remember now,--they put Cameron in the newspapers; but I
+thought it was a mistake.  But, perhaps" (added Winsley, with a sneer of
+peculiar malignity),--"perhaps, when your worthy uncle thought of being a
+peer, he did not like to have it known that he married so much beneath
+him."
+
+"You quite mistake, my dear sir; my uncle never denied that Mrs. Cameron
+was a lady of no fortune or connections,--widow to some poor Scotch
+gentleman, who died I think in India."
+
+"He left her very ill off, poor thing; but she had a great deal of merit,
+and worked hard; she taught my girls to play--"
+
+"Your girls! did Mrs. Cameron ever reside in C-----?"
+
+"To be sure; but she was then called Mrs. Butler--just as pretty a name
+to my fancy."
+
+"You must make a mistake: my uncle married this lady in Devonshire."
+
+"Very possibly," quoth the brewer, doggedly.  "Mrs. Butler left the town
+with her little girl some time before Mr. Templeton married."
+
+"Well, you are wiser than I am," said Lumley, forcing a smile.  "But how
+can you be sure that Mrs. Butler and Mrs. Cameron are one and the same
+person?  You did not go into the house, you could not have seen Lady
+Vargrave" (and here Lumley shrewdly guessed--if the tale were true--at
+the cause of his uncle's exclusion of his old acquaintance).
+
+"No! but I saw her ladyship on the lawn," said Mr. Winsley, with another
+sardonic smile; "and I asked the porter at the lodge as I went out if
+that was Lady Vargrave, and he said, 'yes.' However, my lord, bygones are
+bygones,--I bear no malice; your uncle was a good man: and if he had but
+said to me, 'Winsley, don't say a word about Mrs. Butler,' he might have
+reckoned on me just as much as when in his elections he used to put five
+thousand pounds in my hands, and say, 'Winsley, no bribery,--it is
+wicked; let this be given in charity.'  Did any one ever know how that
+money went?  Was your uncle ever accused of corruption?  But, my lord,
+surely you will take some refreshment?"
+
+"No, indeed; but if you will let me dine with you tomorrow, you'll oblige
+me much; and, whatever my uncle's faults (and latterly, poor man, he was
+hardly in his senses; what a will he made!) let not the nephew suffer for
+them.  Come, Mr. Winsley," and Lumley held out his hand with enchanting
+frankness, "you know my motives are disinterested; I have no
+parliamentary interest to serve, we have no constituents for our Hospital
+of Incurables; and--oh! that's right,--we're friends, I see!  Now I must
+go and look after my ward's houses.  Let me see, the agent's name
+is--is--"
+
+"Perkins, I think, my lord," said Mr. Winsley, thoroughly softened by the
+charm of Vargrave's words and manner.  "Let me put on my hat, and show
+you his house."
+
+"Will you?  That's very kind; give me all the election news by the
+way--you know I was once within an ace of being your member."
+
+Vargrave learned from his new friend some further particulars relative to
+Mrs. Butler's humble habits and homely mode of life at C-----, which
+served completely to explain to him why his proud and worldly uncle had
+so carefully abstained from all intercourse with that city, and had
+prevented the nephew from standing for its vacant representation.  It
+seemed, however, that Winsley--whose resentment was not of a very active
+or violent kind--had not communicated the discovery he had made to his
+fellow townspeople; but had contented himself with hints and aphorisms,
+whenever he had heard the subject of Mr. Templeton's marriage discussed,
+which had led the gossips of the place to imagine that he had made a much
+worse selection than he really had.  As to the accuracy of Winsley's
+assertion, Vargrave, though surprised at first, had but little doubt on
+consideration, especially when he heard that Mrs. Butler's principal
+patroness had been the Mrs. Leslie, now the intimate friend of Lady
+Vargrave.  But what had been the career, what the earlier condition and
+struggles of this simple and interesting creature?  With her appearance
+at C-----, commenced all that surmise could invent.  Not greater was the
+mystery that wrapped the apparition of Manco Capac by the lake Titiaca,
+than that which shrouded the places and the trials whence the lowly
+teacher of music had emerged amidst the streets of C------.
+
+Weary, and somewhat careless, of conjecture, Lord Vargrave, in dining
+with Mr. Winsley, turned the conversation upon the business on which he
+had principally undertaken his journey,--namely, the meditated purchase
+of Lisle Court.
+
+"I myself am not a very good judge of landed property," said Vargrave; "I
+wish I knew of an experienced surveyor to look over the farms and timber:
+can you help me to such a one?"
+
+Mr. Winsley smiled, and glanced at a rosy-cheeked young lady, who
+simpered and turned away.  "I think my daughter could recommend one to
+your lordship, if she dared."
+
+"Oh, Pa!"
+
+"I see.  Well, Miss Winsley, I will take no recommendation but yours."
+
+Miss Winsley made an effort.
+
+"Indeed, my lord, I have always heard Mr. Robert Hobbs considered very
+clever in his profession."
+
+"Mr. Robert Hobbs is my man!  His good health--and a fair wife to him."
+
+Miss Winsley glanced at Mamma, and then at a younger sister; and then
+there was a titter, and then a fluttering, and then a rising, and Mr.
+Winsley, Lord Vargrave, and the slim secretary were left alone.
+
+"Really, my lord," said the host, resettling himself, and pushing the
+wine, "though you have guessed our little family arrangement, and I have
+some interest in the recommendation, since Margaret will be Mrs. Robert
+Hobbs in a few weeks, yet I do not know a more acute, intelligent young
+man anywhere.  Highly respectable, with an independent fortune; his
+father is lately dead, and made at least thirty thousand pounds in trade.
+His brother Edward is also dead; so he has the bulk of the property, and
+he follows his profession merely for amusement.  He would consider it a
+great honour."
+
+"And where does he live?"
+
+"Oh, not in this county,--a long way off; close to -----; but it is all
+in your lordship's road.  A very nice house he has, too.  I have known
+his family since I was a boy; it is astonishing how his father improved
+the place,--it was a poor little lath-and-plaster cottage when the late
+Mr. Hobbs bought it, and it is now a very excellent family house."
+
+"Well, you shall give me the address and a letter of introduction, and so
+much for that matter.  But to return to politics;" and here Lord Vargrave
+ran eloquently on, till Mr. Winsley thought him the only man in the world
+who could save the country from that utter annihilation, the possibility
+of which he had never even suspected before.
+
+It may be as well to add, that, on wishing Lord Vargrave good-night, Mr.
+Winsley whispered in his ear, "Your lordship's friend, Lord Staunch, need
+be under no apprehension,--we are all right!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+  THIS is the house, sir.--_Love's Pilgrimage_, Act iv, sc. 2.
+
+            Redeunt Saturnia regna.*--VIRGIL.
+
+  * "A former state of things returns."
+
+THE next morning, Lumley and his slender companion were rolling rapidly
+over the same road on which, sixteen years ago, way-worn and weary, Alice
+Darvil had first met with Mrs. Leslie; they were talking about a new
+opera-dancer as they whirled by the very spot.
+
+It was about five o'clock in the afternoon, the next day, when the
+carriage stopped at a cast-iron gate, on which was inscribed this
+epigraph, "Hobbs' lodge--Ring the Bell."
+
+"A snug place enough," said Lord Vargrave, as they were waiting the
+arrival of the footman to unbar the gate.
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Howard.  "If a retired Cit could be transformed into a
+house, such is the house he would be."
+
+Poor Dale Cottage,--the home of Poetry and Passion!  But change visits
+the Commonplace as well as the Romantic.  Since Alice had pressed to that
+cold grating her wistful eyes, time had wrought his allotted revolutions;
+the old had died, the young grown up.  Of the children playing on the
+lawn, death had claimed some, and marriage others,--and the holiday of
+youth was gone for all.
+
+The servant opened the gate.  Mr. Robert Hobbs was at home; he had
+friends with him,--he was engaged; Lord Vargrave sent in his card, and
+the introductory letter from Mr. Winsley.  In two seconds, these missives
+brought to the gate Mr. Robert Hobbs himself, a smart young man, with a
+black stock, red whiskers, and an eye-glass pendant to a hair-chain which
+was possibly _a gage d'amour_ from Miss Margaret Winsley.
+
+A profusion of bows, compliments, apologies, etc., the carriage drove up
+the sweep, and Lord Vargrave descended, and was immediately ushered into
+Mr. Hobbs's private room.  The slim secretary followed, and sat silent,
+melancholy, and upright, while the peer affably explained his wants and
+wishes to the surveyor.
+
+Mr. Hobbs was well acquainted with the locality of Lisle Court, which was
+little more than thirty miles distant, he should be proud to accompany
+Lord Vargrave thither the next morning.  But, might he venture, might he
+dare, might he presume--a gentleman who lived at the town of ----- was to
+dine with him that day; a gentleman of the most profound knowledge of
+agricultural affairs; a gentleman who knew every farm, almost every acre,
+belonging to Colonel Maltravers; if his lordship could be induced to
+waive ceremony, and dine with Mr. Hobbs; it might be really useful to
+meet this gentleman.  The slim secretary, who was very hungry, and who
+thought he sniffed an uncommonly savoury smell, looked up from his boots.
+Lord Vargrave smiled.
+
+"My young friend here is too great an admirer of Mrs. Hobbs--who is to
+be--not to feel anxious to make the acquaintance of any member of the
+family she is to enter."
+
+Mr. George Frederick Augustus Howard blushed indignant refutation of the
+calumnious charge.  Vargrave continued,--"As for me, I shall be delighted
+to meet any friends of yours, and am greatly obliged for your
+consideration.  We may dismiss the postboys, Howard; and what time shall
+we summon them,--ten o'clock?"
+
+"If your lordship would condescend to accept a bed, we can accommodate
+your lordship and this gentleman, and start at any hour in the morning
+that--"
+
+"So be it," interrupted Vargrave.  "You speak like a man of business.
+Howard, be so kind as to order the horses for six o'clock to-morrow.
+We'll breakfast at Lisle Court."
+
+This matter settled, Lord Vargrave and Mr. Howard were shown into their
+respective apartments.  Travelling dresses were changed, the dinner put
+back, and the fish over-boiled; but what mattered common fish, when Mr.
+Hobbs had just caught such a big one?  Of what consequence he should be
+henceforth and ever!  A peer, a minister, a stranger to the county,--to
+come all this way to consult _him_! to be _his_ guest! to be shown off,
+and patted, and trotted out before all the rest of the company!  Mr.
+Hobbs was a made man!  Careless of all this, ever at home with any one,
+and delighted, perhaps, to escape a _tete-a-tete_ with Mr. Howard in a
+strange inn, Vargrave lounged into the drawing-room, and was formally
+presented to the expectant family and the famishing guests.
+
+During the expiring bachelorship of Mr. Robert Hobbs, his sister, Mrs.
+Tiddy (to whom the reader was first introduced as a bride gathering the
+wisdom of economy and large joints from the frugal lips of her
+mamma), officiated as lady of the house,--a comely matron, and
+well-preserved,--except that she had lost a front tooth,--in a jaundiced
+satinet gown, with a fall of British blonde, and a tucker of the same,
+Mr. Tiddy being a starch man, and not willing that the luxuriant charms
+of Mrs. T. should be too temptingly exposed!  There was also Mr. Tiddy,
+whom his wife had married for love, and who was now well to do,--a
+fine-looking man, with large whiskers, and a Roman nose, a little awry.
+Moreover, there was a Miss Biddy or Bridget Hobbs, a young lady of four
+or five and twenty, who was considering whether she might ask Lord
+Vargrave to write something in her album, and who cast a bashful look of
+admiration at the slim secretary, as he now sauntered into the room, in a
+black coat, black waistcoat, black trousers, and a black neckcloth, with
+a black pin,--looking much like an ebony cane split half-way up.  Miss
+Biddy was a fair young lady, a _leetle_ faded, with uncommonly thin arms
+and white satin shoes, on which the slim secretary cast his eyes
+and--shuddered!
+
+In addition to the family group were the Rector of -----, an agreeable
+man, who published sermons and poetry; also Sir William Jekyll, who was
+employing Mr. Hobbs to make a map of an estate he had just purchased;
+also two country squires and their two wives; moreover, the physician of
+the neighbouring town,--a remarkably tall man, who wore spectacles and
+told anecdotes; and, lastly, Mr. Onslow, the gentleman to whom Mr. Hobbs
+had referred,--an elderly man of prepossessing exterior, of high repute
+as the most efficient magistrate, the best farmer, and the most sensible
+person in the neighbourhood.  This made the party, to each individual of
+which the great man bowed and smiled; and the great man's secretary bent,
+condescendingly, three joints of his backbone.
+
+The bell was now rung, dinner announced.  Sir William Jekyll led the way
+with one of the she-squires, and Lord Vargrave offered his arm to the
+portly Mrs. Tiddy.
+
+Vargrave, as usual, was the life of the feast.  Mr. Howard, who sat next
+to Miss Bridget, conversed with her between the courses, "in dumb show."
+Mr. Onslow and the physician played second and third to Lord Vargrave.
+When the dinner was over, and the ladies had retired, Vargrave found
+himself seated next to Mr. Onslow, and discovered in his neighbour a most
+agreeable companion.  They talked principally about Lisle Court, and from
+Colonel Maltravers the conversation turned naturally upon Ernest.
+Vargrave proclaimed his early intimacy with the latter gentleman,
+complained, feelingly, that politics had divided them of late, and told
+two or three anecdotes of their youthful adventures in the East.  Mr.
+Onslow listened to him with much attention.
+
+"I made the acquaintance of Mr. Maltravers many years ago," said he, "and
+upon a very delicate occasion.  I was greatly interested in him; I never
+saw one so young (for he was then but a boy) manifest feelings so deep.
+By the dates you have referred to, your acquaintance with him must have
+commenced very shortly after mine.  Was he at that time cheerful, in good
+spirits?"
+
+"No, indeed; hypochondriacal to the greatest degree."
+
+"Your lordship's intimacy with him, and the confidence that generally
+exists between young men, induce me to suppose that he may have told you
+a little romance connected with his early years."
+
+Lumley paused to consider; and this conversation, which had been carried
+on apart, was suddenly broken into by the tall doctor, who wanted to know
+whether his lordship had ever heard the anecdote about Lord Thurlow and
+the late king.  The anecdote was as long as the doctor himself; and when
+it was over, the gentlemen adjourned to the drawing-room, and all
+conversation was immediately drowned by "Row, brothers, row," which had
+only been suspended till the arrival of Mr. Tiddy, who had a fine bass
+voice.
+
+Alas! eighteen years ago, in that spot of earth, Alice Darvil had first
+caught the soul of music from the lips of Genius and of Love!  But better
+as it is,--less romantic, but more proper,--as Hobbs' Lodge was less
+pretty, but more safe from the winds and rains, than Dale Cottage.
+
+Miss Bridget ventured to ask the good-humoured Lord Vargrave if he sang.
+"Not I, Miss Hobbs; but Howard, there!--ah, if you heard _him_!"  The
+consequence of this hint was, that the unhappy secretary, who, alone, in
+a distant corner, was unconsciously refreshing his fancy with some cool
+weak coffee, was instantly beset with applications from Miss Bridget,
+Mrs. Tiddy, Mr. Tiddy, and the tall doctor, to favour the company with a
+specimen of his talents.  Mr. Howard could sing,--he could even play the
+guitar.  But to sing at Hobbs' Lodge, to sing to the accompaniment of
+Mrs. Tiddy, to have his gentle tenor crushed to death in a glee by the
+heavy splayfoot of Mr. Tiddy's manly bass--the thought was insufferable!
+He faltered forth assurances of his ignorance, and hastened to bury his
+resentment in the retirement of a remote sofa.  Vargrave, who had
+forgotten the significant question of Mr. Onslow, renewed in a whisper
+his conversation with that gentleman relative to the meditated
+investment, while Mr. and Mrs. Tiddy sang "Come dwell with me;" and
+Onslow was so pleased with his new acquaintance, that he volunteered to
+make a fourth in Lumley's carriage the next morning, and accompany him to
+Lisle Court.  This settled, the party soon afterwards broke up.  At
+midnight Lord Vargrave was fast asleep; and Mr. Howard, tossing
+restlessly to and fro on his melancholy couch, was revolving all the
+hardships that await a native of St. James's, who ventures forth among--
+
+            "The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads
+             Do grow beneath their shoulders!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+  BUT how were these doubts to be changed into absolute certainty?
+                      EDGAR HUNTLEY.
+
+THE next morning, while it was yet dark, Lord Vargrave's carriage picked
+up Mr. Onslow at the door of a large old-fashioned house, at the entrance
+of the manufacturing town of -----.  The party were silent and sleepy
+till they arrived at Lisle Court.  The sun had then appeared, the morning
+was clear, the air frosty and bracing; and as, after traversing a noble
+park, a superb quadrangular pile of brick flanked by huge square turrets
+coped with stone broke upon the gaze of Lord Vargrave, his worldly heart
+swelled within him, and the image of Evelyn became inexpressibly lovely
+and seductive.
+
+Though the housekeeper was not prepared for Vargrave's arrival at so
+early an hour, yet he had been daily expected: the logs soon burned
+bright in the ample hearth of the breakfast-room; the urn hissed, the
+cutlets smoked; and while the rest of the party gathered round the fire,
+and unmuffled themselves of cloaks and shawl-handkerchiefs, Vargrave
+seized upon the housekeeper, traversed with delighted steps the
+magnificent suite of rooms, gazed on the pictures, admired the state
+bed-chambers, peeped into the offices, and recognized in all a mansion
+worthy of a Peer of England,--but which a more prudent man would have
+thought, with a sigh, required careful management of the rent-roll raised
+from the property adequately to equip and maintain.  Such an idea did not
+cross the mind of Vargrave; he only thought how much he should be
+honoured and envied, when, as Secretary of State, he should yearly fill
+those feudal chambers with the pride and rank of England!  It was
+characteristic of the extraordinary sanguineness and self-confidence of
+Vargrave, that he entirely overlooked one slight obstacle to this
+prospect, in the determined refusal of Evelyn to accept that passionate
+homage which he offered to--her fortune!
+
+When breakfast was over the steward was called in, and the party, mounted
+upon ponies, set out to reconnoitre.  After spending the short day most
+agreeably in looking over the gardens, pleasure-grounds, park, and
+home-farm, and settling to visit the more distant parts of the property
+the next day, the party were returning home to dine, when Vargrave's eye
+caught the glittering _whim_ of Sir Gregory Gubbins.
+
+He pointed it out to Mr. Onslow, and laughed much at hearing of the
+annoyance it occasioned to Colonel Maltravers.  "Thus," said Lumley, "do
+we all crumple the rose-leaf under us, and quarrel with couches the most
+luxuriant!  As for me, I will wager, that were this property mine, or my
+ward's, in three weeks we should have won the heart of Sir Gregory, made
+him pull down his _whim_, and coaxed him out of his interest in the city
+of -----.  A good seat for you, Howard, some day or other."
+
+"Sir Gregory has prodigiously bad taste," said Mr. Hobbs.  "For my part,
+I think that there ought to be a certain modest simplicity in the display
+of wealth got in business,--that was my poor father's maxim."
+
+"Ah!" said Vargrave, "Hobbs' Lodge is a specimen.  Who was your
+predecessor in that charming retreat?"
+
+"Why, the place--then called Dale Cottage--belonged to a Mr. Berners, a
+rich bachelor in business, who was rich enough not to mind what people
+said of him, and kept a lady there.  She ran off from him, and he then
+let it to some young man--a stranger, very eccentric, I hear--a Mr.--Mr.
+Butler--and he, too, gave the cottage an unlawful attraction,--a most
+beautiful girl, I have heard."
+
+"Butler!" echoed Vargrave,--"Butler!  Butler!"  Lumley recollected that
+such had been the real name of Mrs. Cameron.
+
+Onslow looked hard at Vargrave.
+
+"You recognize the name, my lord," said he in a whisper, as Hobbs had
+turned to address himself to Mr. Howard.  "I thought you very discreet
+when I asked you, last night, if you remembered the early follies of your
+friend."  A suspicion at once flashed upon the quick mind of Vargrave:
+Butler was a name on the mother's side in the family of Maltravers; the
+gloom of Ernest when he first knew him, the boy's hints that the gloom
+was connected with the affections, the extraordinary and single
+accomplishment of Lady Vargrave in that art of which Maltravers was so
+consummate a master, the similarity of name,--all taken in conjunction
+with the meaning question of Mr. Onslow, were enough to suggest to
+Vargrave that he might be on the verge of a family secret, the knowledge
+of which could be turned to advantage.  He took care not to confess his
+ignorance, but artfully proceeded to draw out Mr. Onslow's
+communications.
+
+"Why, it is true," said he, "that Maltravers and I had no secrets.  Ah,
+we were wild fellows then!  The name of Butler is in his family, eh?"
+
+"It is.  I see you know all."
+
+"Yes; he told me the story, but it is eighteen years ago.  Do refresh my
+memory.  Howard, my good fellow, just ride on and expedite dinner: Mr.
+Hobbs, will you go with Mr. What's-his-name, the steward, and look over
+the maps, out-goings, etc.?  Now, Mr. Onslow--so Maltravers took the
+cottage, and a lady with it?--ay, I remember."
+
+Mr. Onslow (who was in fact that magistrate to whom Ernest had confided
+his name and committed the search after Alice, and who was really anxious
+to know if any tidings of the poor girl had ever been ascertained) here
+related that history with which the reader is acquainted,--the robbery of
+the cottage, the disappearance of Alice, the suspicions that connected
+that disappearance with her ruffian father, the despair and search of
+Maltravers.  He added that Ernest, both before his departure from
+England, and on his return, had written to him to learn if Alice had ever
+been heard of; the replies of the magistrate were unsatisfactory.  "And
+do you think, my lord, that Mr. Maltravers has never to this day
+ascertained what became of the poor young woman?"
+
+"Why, let me see,--what was her name?"
+
+The magistrate thought a moment, and replied, "Alice Darvil."
+
+"Alice!" exclaimed  Vargrave.  "Alice!"--aware that such was the
+Christian name of his uncle's wife, and now almost convinced of the truth
+of his first vague suspicion.
+
+"You seem to know the name?"
+
+"Of Alice; yes--but not Darvil.  No, no; I believe he has never heard of
+the girl to this hour.  Nor you either?"
+
+"I have not.  One little circumstance related to me by Mr. Hobbs, your
+surveyor's father, gave me some uneasiness.  About two years after the
+young woman disappeared, a girl, of very humble dress and appearance,
+stopped at the gate of Hobbs' Lodge, and asked earnestly for Mr. Butler.
+On hearing he was gone, she turned away, and was seen no more.  It seems
+that this girl had an infant in her arms--which rather shocked the
+propriety of Mr. and Mrs. Hobbs.  The old gentleman told me the
+circumstance a few days after it happened, and I caused inquiry to be
+made for the stranger; but she could not be discovered.  I thought at
+first this possibly might be the lost Alice; but I learned that, during
+his stay at the cottage, your friend--despite his error, which we will
+not stop to excuse--had exercised so generous and wide a charity amongst
+the poor in the town and neighbourhood, that it was a more probable
+supposition of the two that the girl belonged to some family he had
+formerly relieved, and her visit was that of a mendicant, not a mistress.
+Accordingly, after much consideration, I resolved not to mention the
+circumstances to Mr. Maltravers, when he wrote to me on his return from
+the Continent.  A considerable time had then elapsed since the girl had
+applied to Mr. Hobbs; all trace of her was lost; the incident might open
+wounds that time must have nearly healed, might give false hopes--or,
+what was worse, occasion a fresh and unfounded remorse at the idea of
+Alice's destitution; it would, in fact, do no good, and might occasion
+unnecessary pain.  I therefore suppressed all mention of it."
+
+"You did right: and so the poor girl had an infant in her arms?--humph!
+What sort of looking person was this Alice Darvil,--pretty, of course?"
+
+"I never saw her; and none but the persons employed in the premises knew
+her by sight; they described her as remarkably lovely."
+
+"Fair and slight, with blue eyes, I suppose?--those are the orthodox
+requisites of a heroine."
+
+"Upon my word I forget; indeed I should never have remembered as much as
+I do, if the celebrity of Mr. Maltravers, and the consequence of his
+family in these parts, together with the sight of his own agony--the most
+painful I ever witnessed--had not served to impress the whole affair very
+deeply on my mind."
+
+"Was the girl who appeared at the gate of Hobbs' Lodge described to you?"
+
+"No; they scarcely observed her countenance, except that her complexion
+was too fair for a gypsy's; yet, now I think of it, Mrs. Tiddy, who was
+with her father when he told me the adventure, dwelt particularly on her
+having (as you so pleasantly conjecture) fair hair and blue eyes.  Mrs.
+Tiddy, being just married, was romantic at that day."
+
+"Well, it is an odd tale; but life is full of odd tales.  Here we are at
+the house; it really is a splendid old place!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+  PENDENT opera interrupta.*--VIRGIL.
+
+  * "The things begun are interrupted and suspended."
+
+THE history Vargrave had heard he revolved much when he retired to rest.
+He could not but allow that there was still little ground for more than
+conjecture that Alice Darvil and Alice Lady Vargrave were one and the
+same person.  It might, however, be of great importance to him to trace
+this conjecture to certainty.  The knowledge of a secret of early sin and
+degradation in one so pure, so spotless, as Lady Vargrave, might be of
+immense service in giving him a power over her, which he could turn to
+account with Evelyn.  How could he best prosecute further inquiry,--by
+repairing at once to Brook-Green, or--the thought struck him--by visiting
+and "pumping" Mrs. Leslie, the patroness of Mrs. Butler, of C-----, the
+friend of Lady Vargrave?  It was worth trying the latter,--it was little
+out of his way back to London.  His success in picking the brains of Mr.
+Onslow of a secret encouraged him in the hope of equal success with Mrs.
+Leslie.  He decided accordingly, and fell asleep to dream of Christmas
+_battues_, royal visitors, the Cabinet, the premiership!  Well, no
+possession equals the dream of it!  Sleep on, my lord! you would be
+restless enough if you were to get all you want.
+
+For the next three days, Lord Vargrave was employed in examining the
+general outlines of the estate; and the result of this survey satisfied
+him as to the expediency of the purchase.  On the third day, he was
+several miles from the house when a heavy rain came on.  Lord Vargrave
+was constitutionally hardy, and not having been much exposed to
+visitations of the weather of late years, was not practically aware that
+when a man is past forty, he cannot endure with impunity all that falls
+innocuously on the elasticity of twenty-six.  He did not, therefore, heed
+the rain that drenched him to the skin, and neglected to change his dress
+till he had finished reading some letters and newspapers which awaited
+his return at Lisle Court.  The consequence of this imprudence was, that
+the next morning when he woke, Lord Vargrave found himself, for almost
+the first time in his life, seriously ill.  His head ached violently,
+cold shiverings shook his frame like an ague; the very strength of the
+constitution on which the fever had begun to fasten itself augmented its
+danger.  Lumley--the last man in the world to think of the possibility of
+dying--fought up against his own sensations, ordered his post-horses, as
+his visit of survey was now over, and scarcely even alluded to his
+indisposition.  About an hour before he set off, his letters arrived; one
+of these informed him that Caroline, accompanied by Evelyn, had already
+arrived in Paris; the other was from Colonel Legard, respectfully
+resigning his office, on the ground of an accession of fortune by the
+sudden death of the admiral, and his intention to spend the ensuing year
+in a Continental excursion.  This last letter occasioned Vargrave
+considerable alarm; he had always felt a deep jealousy of the handsome
+ex-guardsman, and he at once suspected that Legard was about to repair to
+Paris as his rival.  He sighed, and looked round the spacious apartment,
+and gazed on the wide prospects of grove and turf that extended from the
+window, and said to himself, "Is another to snatch these from my grasp?"
+His impatience to visit Mrs. Leslie, to gain ascendency over Lady
+Vargrave, to repair to Paris, to scheme, to manoeuvre, to triumph,
+accelerated the progress of the disease that was now burning in his
+veins; and the hand that he held out to Mr. Hobbs, as he stepped into his
+carriage, almost scorched the cold, plump, moist fingers of the surveyor.
+Before six o'clock in the evening Lord Vargrave confessed reluctantly to
+himself that he was too ill to proceed much farther.  "Howard," said he
+then, breaking a silence that had lasted some hours, "don't be alarmed; I
+feel that I am about to have a severe attack; I shall stop at M-----
+(naming a large town they were approaching); I shall send for the best
+physician the place affords; if I am delirious to-morrow, or unable to
+give my own orders, have the kindness to send express for Dr.
+Holland,--but don't leave me yourself, my good fellow.  At my age, it is
+a hard thing to have no one in the world to care for me in illness;
+d-----n affection when I am well!"
+
+After this strange burst, which very much frightened Mr. Howard, Lumley
+relapsed into silence, not broken till he reached M-----.  The best
+physician was sent for; and the next morning, as he had half foreseen and
+foretold, Lord Vargrave _was_ delirious!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+  NOUGHT under Heaven so strongly doth allure
+  The sense of man, and all his mind possess,
+  As Beauty's love-bait.--SPENSER.
+
+LEGARD was, as I have before intimated, a young man of generous and
+excellent dispositions, though somewhat spoiled by the tenor of his
+education, and the gay and reckless society which had administered tonics
+to his vanity and opiates to his intellect.  The effect which the beauty,
+the grace, the innocence of Evelyn had produced upon him had been most
+deep and most salutary.  It had rendered dissipation tasteless and
+insipid; it had made him look more deeply into his own heart, and into
+the rules of life.  Though, partly from irksomeness of dependence upon an
+uncle at once generous and ungracious, partly from a diffident and
+feeling sense of his own inadequate pretensions to the hand of Miss
+Cameron, and partly from the prior and acknowledged claims of Lord
+Vargrave, he had accepted, half in despair, the appointment offered to
+him, he still found it impossible to banish that image which had been the
+first to engrave upon ardent and fresh affections an indelible
+impression.  He secretly chafed at the thought that it was to a fortunate
+rival that he owed the independence and the station he had acquired, and
+resolved to seize an early opportunity to free himself from obligations
+that he deeply regretted he had incurred.  At length he learned that Lord
+Vargrave had been refused,--that Evelyn was free; and within a few days
+from that intelligence, the admiral was seized with apoplexy; and Legard
+suddenly found himself possessed, if not of wealth, at least of a
+competence sufficient to redeem his character as a suitor from the
+suspicion attached to a fortune-hunter and adventurer.  Despite the new
+prospects opened to him by the death of his uncle, and despite the surly
+caprice which had mingled with and alloyed the old admiral's kindness,
+Legard was greatly shocked by his death; and his grateful and gentle
+nature was at first only sensible to grief for the loss he had sustained.
+But when, at last, recovering from his sorrow, he saw Evelyn disengaged
+and free, and himself in a position honourably to contest her hand, he
+could not resist the sweet and passionate hopes that broke upon him.  He
+resigned, as we have seen, his official appointment, and set out for
+Paris.  He reached that city a day or two after the arrival of Lord and
+Lady Doltimore.  He found the former, who had not forgotten the cautions
+of Vargrave, at first cold and distant; but partly from the indolent
+habit of submitting to Legard's dictates on matters of taste, partly from
+a liking to his society, and principally from the popular suffrages of
+fashion, which had always been accorded to Legard, and which were
+nowadays diminished by the news of his accession of fortune, Lord
+Doltimore, weak and vain, speedily yielded to the influences of his old
+associate, and Legard became quietly installed as the _enfant de la
+maison_.  Caroline was not in this instance a very faithful ally to
+Vargrave's views and policy.  In his singular _liaison_ with Lady
+Doltimore, the crafty manoeuvrer had committed the vulgar fault of
+intriguers: he had over-refined and had overreached himself.  At the
+commencement of their strange and unprincipled intimacy, Vargrave had
+had, perhaps, no other thought than that of piquing Evelyn, consoling his
+vanity, amusing his _ennui_, and indulging rather his propensities as a
+gallant than promoting his more serious objects as a man of the world.
+By degrees, and especially at Knaresdean, Vargrave himself became deeply
+entangled by an affair that he had never before contemplated as more
+important than a passing diversion; instead of securing a friend to
+assist him in his designs on Evelyn, he suddenly found that he had
+obtained a mistress anxious for his love and jealous of his homage.  With
+his usual promptitude and self-confidence, he was led at once to deliver
+himself of all the ill-consequences of his rashness,--to get rid of
+Caroline as a mistress, and to retain her as a tool, by marrying her to
+Lord Doltimore.  By the great ascendancy which his character acquired
+over her, and by her own worldly ambition, he succeeded in inducing her
+to sacrifice all romance to a union that gave her rank and fortune; and
+Vargrave then rested satisfied that the clever wife would not only secure
+him a permanent power over the political influence and private fortune of
+the weak husband, but also abet his designs in securing an alliance
+equally desirable for himself.  Here it was that Vargrave's incapacity to
+understand the refinements and scruples of a woman's affection and
+nature, however guilty the one, and however worldly the other, foiled and
+deceived him.  Caroline, though the wife of another, could not
+contemplate without anguish a similar bondage for her lover; and having
+something of the better qualities of her sex still left to her, she
+recoiled from being an accomplice in arts that were to drive the young,
+inexperienced, and guileless creature who called her "friend" into the
+arms of a man who openly avowed the most mercenary motives, and who took
+gods and men to witness that his heart was sacred to another.  Only in
+Vargrave's presence were these scruples overmastered; but the moment he
+was gone they returned in full force.  She had yielded, from positive
+fear, to his commands that she should convey Evelyn to Paris; but she
+trembled to think of the vague hints and dark menaces that Vargrave had
+let fall as to ulterior proceedings, and was distracted at the thought of
+being implicated in some villanous or rash design.  When, therefore, the
+man whose rivalry Vargrave most feared was almost established at her
+house, she made but a feeble resistance; she thought that, if Legard
+should become a welcome and accepted suitor before Lumley arrived, the
+latter would be forced to forego whatever hopes he yet cherished, and
+that she should be delivered from a dilemma, the prospect of which
+daunted and appalled her.  Added to this, Caroline was now, alas!
+sensible that a fool is not so easily governed; her resistance to an
+intimacy with Legard would have been of little avail: Doltimore, in these
+matters, had an obstinate will of his own; and, whatever might once have
+been Caroline's influence over her liege, certain it is that such
+influence had been greatly impaired of late by the indulgence of a
+temper, always irritable, and now daily more soured by regret, remorse,
+contempt for her husband,--and the melancholy discovery that fortune,
+youth, beauty, and station are no talismans against misery.
+
+It was the gayest season of Paris; and to escape from herself, Caroline
+plunged eagerly into the vortex of its dissipations.  If Doltimore's
+heart was disappointed, his vanity was pleased at the admiration Caroline
+excited; and he himself was of an age and temper to share in the pursuits
+and amusements of his wife.  Into these gayeties, new to their
+fascination, dazzled by their splendour, the young Evelyn entered with
+her hostess; and ever by her side was the unequalled form of Legard.
+Each of them in the bloom of youth, each of them at once formed to
+please, and to be pleased by that fair Armida which we call the World,
+there was, necessarily, a certain congeniality in their views and
+sentiments, their occupations and their objects; nor was there, in all
+that brilliant city, one more calculated to captivate the eye and fancy
+than George Legard.  But still, to a certain degree diffident and
+fearful, Legard never yet spoke of love; nor did their intimacy at this
+time ripen to that point in which Evelyn could have asked herself if
+there were danger in the society of Legard, or serious meaning in his
+obvious admiration.  Whether that melancholy, to which Lady Vargrave had
+alluded in her correspondence with Lumley, were occasioned by thoughts
+connected with Maltravers, or unacknowledged recollections of Legard, it
+remains for the acute reader himself to ascertain.
+
+The Doltimores had been about three weeks in Paris; and for a fortnight
+of that time Legard had been their constant guest, and half the inmate of
+their hotel, when, on that night which has been commemorated in our last
+book, Maltravers suddenly once more beheld the face of Evelyn, and in the
+same hour learned that she was free.  He quitted Valerie's box; with a
+burning pulse and a beating heart, joy and surprise and hope sparkling in
+his eyes and brightening his whole aspect, he hastened to Evelyn's side.
+
+It was at this time Legard, who sat behind Miss Cameron, unconscious of
+the approach of a rival, happened by one of those chances which occur in
+conversation to mention the name of Maltravers.  He asked Evelyn if she
+had yet met him.
+
+"What! is he, then, in Paris?" asked Evelyn, quickly.  "I heard, indeed,"
+she continued, "that he left Burleigh for Paris, but imagined he had gone
+on to Italy."
+
+"No, he is still here; but he goes, I believe, little into the society
+Lady Doltimore chiefly visits.  Is he one of your favourites, Miss
+Cameron?"
+
+There was a slight increase of colour in Evelyn's beautiful cheek, as she
+answered,--
+
+"Is it possible not to admire and be interested in one so gifted?"
+
+"He has certainly noble and fine qualities," returned Legard; "but I
+cannot feel at ease with him: a coldness, a _hauteur_, a measured
+distance of manner, seem to forbid even esteem.  Yet _I_ ought not to say
+so," he added, with a pang of self-reproach.
+
+"No, indeed, you ought not to say so," said Evelyn, shaking her head with
+a pretty affectation of anger; "for I know that you pretend to like what
+I like, and admire what I admire; and I am an enthusiast in all that
+relates to Mr. Maltravers!"
+
+"I know that I would wish to see all things in life through Miss
+Cameron's eyes," whispered Legard, softly; and this was the most meaning
+speech he had ever yet made.
+
+Evelyn turned away, and seemed absorbed in the opera; and at that instant
+the door of the box opened, and Maltravers entered.
+
+In her open, undisguised, youthful delight at seeing him again,
+Maltravers felt, indeed, "as if Paradise were opened in her face."  In
+his own agitated emotions, he scarcely noticed that Legard had risen and
+resigned his seat to him; he availed himself of the civility, greeted his
+old acquaintance with a smile and a bow, and in a few minutes he was in
+deep converse with Evelyn.
+
+Never had he so successfully exerted the singular, the master-fascination
+that he could command at will,--the more powerful from its contrast to
+his ordinary coldness.  In the very expression of his eyes, the very tone
+of his voice, there was that in Maltravers, seen at his happier moments,
+which irresistibly interested and absorbed your attention: he could make
+you forget everything but himself, and the rich, easy, yet earnest
+eloquence, which gave colour to his language and melody to his voice.  In
+that hour of renewed intercourse with one who had at first awakened, if
+not her heart, at least her imagination and her deeper thoughts, certain
+it is that even Legard was not missed.  As she smiled and listened,
+Evelyn dreamed not of the anguish she inflicted.  Leaning against the
+box, Legard surveyed the absorbed attention of Evelyn, the adoring eyes
+of Maltravers, with that utter and crushing wretchedness which no passion
+but jealousy, and that only while it is yet a virgin agony, can bestow!
+He had never before even dreamed of rivalry in such a quarter; but there
+was that ineffable instinct, which lovers have, and which so seldom errs,
+that told him at once that in Maltravers was the greatest obstacle his
+passion could encounter.  He waited in hopes that Evelyn would take the
+occasion to turn to him at least--when the fourth act closed.  She did
+not; and, unable to constrain his emotions, and reply to the small-talk
+of Lord Doltimore, he abruptly quitted the box.
+
+When the opera was over, Maltravers offered his arm to Evelyn; she
+accepted it, and then she looked round for Legard.  He was gone.
+
+
+
+BOOK VIII.
+
+  O Fate!  O Heaven!--what have ye then decreed?
+                 SOPHOCLES: _OEd. Tyr._ 738.
+
+  "Insolent pride  .  .  .
+  .  .  .  .  .  .
+  The topmost crag of the great precipice
+  Surmounts--to rush to ruin."
+                 _Ibid._ 874.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+  .  .  .  SHE is young, wise, fair,
+  In these to Nature she's immediate heir.
+  .  .  .  .  .  .
+  .  .  .  Honours best thrive
+  When rather from our acts we them derive
+  Than our foregoers!--_All's Well that Ends Well_.
+
+
+LETTER FROM ERNEST MALTRAVERS TO THE HON. FREDERICK CLEVELAND.
+
+
+EVELYN is free; she is in Paris; I have seen her,--I see her daily!
+
+How true it is that we cannot make a philosophy of indifference!  The
+affections are stronger than all our reasonings.  We must take them into
+our alliance, or they will destroy all our theories of self-government.
+Such fools of fate are we, passing from system to system, from scheme to
+scheme, vainly seeking to shut out passion and sorrow-forgetting that
+they are born within us--and return to the soul as the seasons to the
+earth!  Yet,--years, many years ago, when I first looked gravely into my
+own nature and being here, when I first awakened to the dignity and
+solemn responsibilities of human life, I had resolved to tame and curb
+myself into a thing of rule and measure.  Bearing within me the wound
+scarred over but never healed, the consciousness of wrong to the heart
+that had leaned upon me, haunted by the memory of my lost Alice, I
+shuddered at new affections bequeathing new griefs.  Wrapped in a haughty
+egotism, I wished not to extend my empire over a wider circuit than my
+own intellect and passions.  I turned from the trader-covetousness of
+bliss, that would freight the wealth of life upon barks exposed to every
+wind upon the seas of Fate; I was contented with the hope to pass life
+alone, honoured, though unloved.  Slowly and reluctantly I yielded to the
+fascinations of Florence Lascelles.  The hour that sealed the compact
+between us was one of regret and alarm.  In vain I sought to deceive
+myself,--I felt that I did not love.  And then I imagined that Love was
+no longer in my nature,--that I had exhausted its treasures before my
+time, and left my heart a bankrupt.  Not till the last--not till that
+glorious soul broke out in all its brightness the nearer it approached
+the source to which it has returned--did I feel of what tenderness she
+was worthy and I was capable.  She died, and the world was darkened!
+Energy, ambition, my former aims and objects, were all sacrificed at her
+tomb.  But amidst ruins and through the darkness, my soul yet supported
+me; I could no longer hope, but I could endure.  I was resolved that I
+would not be subdued, and that the world should not hear me groan.
+Amidst strange and far-distant scenes, amidst hordes to whom my very
+language was unknown, in wastes and forests, which the step of civilized
+man, with his sorrows and his dreams, had never trodden, I wrestled with
+my soul, as the patriarch of old wrestled with the angel,--and the angel
+was at last the victor!  You do not mistake me: you know that it was not
+the death of Florence alone that worked in me that awful revolution; but
+with that death the last glory fled from the face of things that had
+seemed to me beautiful of old.  Hers was a love that accompanied and
+dignified the schemes and aspirations of manhood,--a love that was an
+incarnation of ambition itself; and all the evils and disappointments
+that belong to ambition seemed to crowd around my heart like vultures to
+a feast allured and invited by the dead.  But this at length was over;
+the barbarous state restored me to the civilized.  I returned to my
+equals, prepared no more to be an actor in the strife, but a calm
+spectator of the turbulent arena.  I once more laid my head beneath the
+roof of my fathers; and if without any clear and definite object, I at
+least hoped to find amidst "my old hereditary trees" the charm of
+contemplation and repose.  And scarce--in the first hours of my
+arrival--had I indulged that dream, when a fair face, a sweet voice, that
+had once before left deep and unobliterated impressions on my heart,
+scattered all my philosophy to the winds.  I saw Evelyn! and if ever
+there was love at first sight, it was that which I felt for her: I lived
+in her presence, and forgot the Future!  Or, rather, I was with the
+Past,--in the bowers of my springtide of life and hope!  It was an
+after-birth of youth--my love for that young heart!
+
+It is, indeed, only in maturity that we know how lovely were our earliest
+years!  What depth of wisdom in the old Greek myth, that allotted Hebe as
+the prize to the god who had been the arch-labourer of life! and whom the
+satiety of all that results from experience had made enamoured of all
+that belongs to the Hopeful and the New!
+
+This enchanting child, this delightful Evelyn, this ray of undreamed of
+sunshine, smiled away all my palaces of ice.  I loved, Cleveland,--I
+loved more ardently, more passionately, more wildly than ever I did of
+old!  But suddenly I learned that she was affianced to another, and felt
+that it was not for me to question, to seek the annulment of the bond.  I
+had been unworthy to love Evelyn if I had not loved honour more!  I fled
+from her presence, honestly and resolutely; I sought to conquer a
+forbidden passion; I believed that I had not won affection in return; I
+believed, from certain expressions that I overheard Evelyn utter to
+another, that her heart as well as her hand was given to Vargrave.  I
+came hither; you know how sternly and resolutely I strove to eradicate a
+weakness that seemed without even the justification of hope!  If I
+suffered, I betrayed it not.  Suddenly Evelyn appeared again before
+me!--and suddenly I learned that she was free!  Oh, the rapture of that
+moment!  Could you have seen her bright face, her enchanting smile, when
+we met again!  Her ingenuous innocence did not conceal her gladness at
+seeing me!  What hopes broke upon me!  Despite the difference of our
+years, I think she loves me! that in that love I am about at last to
+learn what blessings there are in life.
+
+Evelyn has the simplicity, the tenderness, of Alice, with the refinement
+and culture of Florence herself; not the genius, not the daring spirit,
+not the almost fearful brilliancy of that ill-fated being,--but with a
+taste as true to the Beautiful, with a soul as sensitive to the Sublime!
+In Evelyn's presence I feel a sense of peace, of security, of home!
+Happy! thrice happy! he who will take her to his breast!  Of late she has
+assumed a new charm in my eyes,--a certain pensiveness and abstraction
+have succeeded to her wonted gayety.  Ah, Love is pensive,--is it not,
+Cleveland?  How often I ask myself that question!  And yet, amidst all my
+hopes, there are hours when I tremble and despond!  How can that innocent
+and joyous spirit sympathize with all that mine has endured and known?
+How, even though her imagination be dazzled by some prestige around my
+name, how can I believe that I have awakened her heart to that deep and
+real love of which it is capable, and which youth excites in youth?  When
+we meet at her home, or amidst the quiet yet brilliant society which is
+gathered round Madame de Ventadour or the Montaignes, with whom she is an
+especial favourite; when we converse; when I sit by her, and her soft
+eyes meet mine,--I feel not the disparity of years; my heart speaks to
+her, and _that_ is youthful still!  But in the more gay and crowded
+haunts to which her presence allures me, when I see that fairy form
+surrounded by those who have not outlived the pleasures that so naturally
+dazzle and captivate her, then, indeed, I feel that my tastes, my habits,
+my pursuits, belong to another season of life, and ask myself anxiously
+if my nature and my years are those that can make _her_ happy?  Then,
+indeed, I recognize the wide interval that time and trial place between
+one whom the world has wearied, and one for whom the world is new.  If
+she should discover hereafter that youth should love only youth, my
+bitterest anguish would be that of remorse!  I know how deeply I love by
+knowing how immeasurably dearer her happiness is than my own!  I will
+wait, then, yet a while, I will examine, I will watch well that I do not
+deceive myself.  As yet I think that I have no rivals whom I need fear:
+surrounded as she is by the youngest and the gayest, she still turns with
+evident pleasure to me, whom she calls her friend.  She will forego the
+amusements she most loves for society in which we can converse more at
+ease.  You remember, for instance, young Legard?  He is here; and, before
+I met Evelyn, was much at Lady Doltimore's house.  I cannot be blind to
+his superior advantages of youth and person; and there is something
+striking and prepossessing in the gentle yet manly frankness of his
+manner,--and yet no fear of his rivalship ever haunts me.  True, that of
+late he has been little in Evelyn's society; nor do I think, in the
+frivolity of his pursuits, he can have educated his mind to appreciate
+Evelyn, or be possessed of those qualities which would render him worthy
+of her.  But there is something good in the young man, despite his
+foibles,--something that wins upon me; and you will smile to learn, that
+he has even surprised from _me_--usually so reserved on such matters--the
+confession of my attachment and hopes!  Evelyn often talks to me of her
+mother, and describes her in colours so glowing that I feel the greatest
+interest in one who has helped to form so beautiful and pure a mind.  Can
+you learn who Lady Vargrave was?  There is evidently some mystery thrown
+over her birth and connections; and, from what I can hear, this arises
+from their lowliness.  You know that, though I have been accused of
+family pride, it is a pride of a peculiar sort.  I am proud, not of the
+length of a mouldering pedigree, but of some historical quarterings in my
+escutcheon,--of some blood of scholars and of heroes that rolls in my
+veins; it is the same kind of pride that an Englishman may feel in
+belonging to a country that has produced Shakspeare and Bacon.  I have
+never, I hope, felt the vulgar pride that disdains want of birth in
+others; and I care not three straws whether my friend or my wife be
+descended from a king or a peasant.  It is myself, and not my
+connections, who alone can disgrace my lineage; therefore, however humble
+Lady Vargrave's parentage, do not scruple to inform me, should you learn
+any intelligence that bears upon it.
+
+I had a conversation last night with Evelyn that delighted me.  By some
+accident we spoke of Lord Vargrave; and she told me, with an enchanting
+candour, of the position in which she stood with him, and the
+conscientious and noble scruples she felt as to the enjoyment of a
+fortune, which her benefactor and stepfather had evidently intended to be
+shared with his nearest relative.  In these scruples I cordially
+concurred; and if I marry Evelyn, my first care will be to carry them
+into effect,--by securing to Vargrave, as far as the law may permit, the
+larger part of the income; I should like to say all,--at least till
+Evelyn's children would have the right to claim it: a right not to be
+enforced during her own, and, therefore, probably not during Vargrave's
+life.  I own that this would be no sacrifice, for I am proud enough to
+recoil from the thought of being indebted for fortune to the woman I
+love.  It was that kind of pride which gave coldness and constraint to my
+regard for Florence; and for the rest, my own property (much increased by
+the simplicity of my habits of life for the last few years) will suffice
+for all Evelyn or myself could require.  Ah, madman that I am!  I
+calculate already on marriage, even while I have so much cause for
+anxiety as to love.  But my heart beats,--my heart has grown a dial that
+keeps the account of time; by its movements I calculate the moments--in
+an hour I shall see her!
+
+Oh, never, never, in my wildest and earliest visions, could I have
+fancied that I should love as I love now!  Adieu, my oldest and kindest
+friend!  If I am happy at last, it will be something to feel that at last
+I shall have satisfied your expectations of my youth.
+
+          Affectionately yours,
+
+               E. MALTRAVERS.
+
+     RUE DE -----, PARIS,
+          January --, 18--.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+            IN her youth
+  There is a prone and speechless dialect--
+  Such as moves men.--_Measure for Measure_.
+
+  _Abbess_.  Haply in private--
+  _Adriana_.  And in assemblies too.--_Comedy of Errors_.
+
+IT was true, as Maltravers had stated, that Legard had of late been
+little at Lady Doltimore's, or in the same society as Evelyn.  With the
+vehemence of an ardent and passionate nature, he yielded to the jealous
+rage and grief that devoured him.  He saw too clearly, and from the
+first, that Maltravers adored Evelyn; and in her familiar kindness of
+manner towards him, in the unlimited veneration in which she appeared to
+hold his gifts and qualities, he thought that that love might become
+reciprocal.  He became gloomy and almost morose; he shunned Evelyn, he
+forbore to enter into the lists against his rival.  Perhaps the
+intellectual superiority of Maltravers, the extraordinary conversational
+brilliancy that he could display when he pleased, the commanding dignity
+of his manners, even the matured authority of his reputation and years,
+might have served to awe the hopes, as well as to wound the vanity, of a
+man accustomed himself to be the oracle of a circle.  These might have
+strongly influenced Legard in withdrawing himself from Evelyn's society;
+but there was one circumstance, connected with motives much more
+generous, that mainly determined his conduct.  It happened that
+Maltravers, shortly after his first interview with Evelyn, was riding
+alone one day in the more sequestered part of the Bois de Boulogne, when
+he encountered Legard, also alone, and on horseback.  The latter, on
+succeeding to his uncle's fortune, had taken care to repay his debt to
+Maltravers; he had done so in a short but feeling and grateful letter,
+which had been forwarded to Maltravers at Paris, and which pleased and
+touched him.  Since that time he had taken a liking to the young man, and
+now, meeting him at Paris, he sought, to a certain extent, Legard's more
+intimate acquaintance.  Maltravers was in that happy mood when we are
+inclined to be friends with all men.  It is true, however, that, though
+unknown to himself, that pride of bearing, which often gave to the very
+virtues of Maltravers an unamiable aspect, occasionally irritated one who
+felt he had incurred to him an obligation of honour and of life never to
+be effaced; it made the sense of this obligation more intolerable to
+Legard; it made him more desirous to acquit himself of the charge.  But
+on this day there was so much cordiality in the greeting of Maltravers,
+and he pressed Legard in so friendly a manner to join him in his ride,
+that the young man's heart was softened, and they rode together,
+conversing familiarly on such topics as were in common between them.  At
+last the conversation fell on Lord and Lady Doltimore; and thence
+Maltravers, whose soul was full of one thought, turned it indirectly
+towards Evelyn.
+
+"Did you ever see Lady Vargrave?"
+
+"Never," replied Legard, looking another way; "but Lady Doltimore says
+she is as beautiful as Evelyn herself, if that be possible; and still so
+young in form and countenance, that she looks rather like her sister than
+her mother!"
+
+"How I should like to know her!" said Maltravers, with a sudden energy.
+
+Legard changed the subject.  He spoke of the Carnival, of balls, of
+masquerades, of operas, of reigning beauties!
+
+"Ah," said Maltravers, with a half sigh, "yours is the age for those
+dazzling pleasures; to me they are 'the twice-told tale.'"
+
+Maltravers meant it not, but this remark chafed Legard. He thought it
+conveyed a sarcasm on the childishness of his own mind or the levity of
+his pursuits; his colour mounted, as he replied,--
+
+"It is not, I fear, the slight difference of years between us,--it is the
+difference of intellect you would insinuate; but you should remember all
+men have not your resources; all men cannot pretend to genius!"
+
+"My dear Legard," said Maltravers, kindly, "do not fancy that I could
+have designed any insinuation half so presumptuous and impertinent.
+Believe me, I envy you, sincerely and sadly, all those faculties of
+enjoyment which I have worn away.  Oh, how I envy you! for, were they
+still mine, then--then, indeed, I might hope to mould myself into greater
+congeniality with the beautiful and the young!"
+
+Maltravers paused a moment, and resumed, with a grave smile: "I trust,
+Legard, that you will be wiser than I have been; that you will gather
+your roses while it is yet May: and that you will not live to thirty-six,
+pining for happiness and home, a disappointed and desolate man; till,
+when your ideal is at last found, you shrink back appalled, to discover
+that you have lost none of the tendencies to love, but many of the graces
+by which love is to be allured!"
+
+There was so much serious and earnest feeling in these words that they
+went home at once to Legard's sympathies.  He felt irresistibly impelled
+to learn the worst.
+
+"Maltravers," said he, in a hurried tone, "it would be an idle compliment
+to say that you are not likely to love in vain; perhaps it is indelicate
+in me to apply a general remark; and yet--yet I cannot but fancy that I
+have discovered your secret, and that you are not insensible to the
+charms of Miss Cameron!"
+
+"Legard!" said Maltravers,--and so strong was his fervent attachment to
+Evelyn, that it swept away all his natural coldness and reserve,--"I tell
+you plainly and frankly that in my love for Evelyn Cameron lie the last
+hopes I have in life.  I have no thought, no ambition, no sentiment that
+is not vowed to her.  If my love should be unreturned, I may strive to
+endure the blow, I may mix with the world, I may seem to occupy myself in
+the aims of others; but my heart will be broken!  Let us talk of this no
+more; you have surprised my secret, though it must have betrayed itself.
+Learn from me how preternaturally strong, how generally fatal is love
+deferred to that day when--in the stern growth of all the feelings--love
+writes itself on granite!"
+
+Maltravers, as if impatient of his own weakness, put spurs to his horse,
+and they rode on rapidly for some time without speaking.
+
+That silence was employed by Legard in meditating over all he had heard
+and witnessed, in recalling all that he owed to Maltravers; and before
+that silence was broken the young man nobly resolved not even to attempt,
+not even to hope, a rivalry with Maltravers; to forego all the
+expectations he had so fondly nursed, to absent himself from the company
+of Evelyn, to requite faithfully and firmly that act of generosity to
+which he owed the preservation of his life,--the redemption of his
+honour.
+
+Agreeably to this determination, he abstained from visiting those haunts
+in which Evelyn shone; and if accident brought them together, his manner
+was embarrassed and abrupt.  She wondered,--at last, perhaps she
+resented,--it may be that she grieved; for certain it is that Maltravers
+was right in thinking that her manner had lost the gayety that
+distinguished it at Merton Rectory.  But still it may be doubted whether
+Evelyn had seen enough of Legard, and whether her fancy and romance were
+still sufficiently free from the magical influences of the genius that
+called them forth in the eloquent homage of Maltravers, to trace,
+herself, to any causes connected with her younger lover the listless
+melancholy that crept over her.  In very young women--new alike to the
+world and the knowledge of themselves--many vague and undefined feelings
+herald the dawn of Love; shade after shade and light upon light succeeds
+before the sun breaks forth, and the earth awakens to his presence.
+
+It was one evening that Legard had suffered himself to be led into a
+party at the ----- ambassador's; and there, as he stood by the door, he
+saw at a little distance Maltravers conversing with Evelyn.  Again he
+writhed beneath the tortures of his jealous anguish; and there, as he
+gazed and suffered, he resolved (as Maltravers had done before him) to
+fly from the place that had a little while ago seemed to him Elysium!  He
+would quit Paris, he would travel, he would not see Evelyn again till the
+irrevocable barrier was passed, and she was the wife of Maltravers!  In
+the first heat of this determination, he turned towards some young men
+standing near him, one of whom was about to visit Vienna.  He gayly
+proposed to join him,--a proposal readily accepted, and began conversing
+on the journey, the city, its splendid and proud society, with all that
+cruel exhilaration which the forced spirits of a stricken heart can alone
+display, when Evelyn (whose conference with Maltravers was ended) passed
+close by him.  She was leaning on Lady Doltimore's arm, and the admiring
+murmur of his companions caused Legard to turn suddenly round.
+
+"You are not dancing to-night, Colonel Legard," said Caroline, glancing
+towards Evelyn.  "The more the season for balls advances, the more
+indolent you become."
+
+Legard muttered a confused reply, one half of which seemed petulant,
+while the other half was inaudible.
+
+"Not so indolent as you suppose," said his friend.  "Legard meditates an
+excursion sufficient, I hope, to redeem his character in your eyes.  It
+is a long journey, and, what is worse, a very cold journey, to Vienna."
+
+"Vienna! do you think of going to Vienna?" cried Caroline.
+
+"Yes," said Legard.  "I hate Paris; any place better than this odious
+city!" and he moved away.
+
+Evelyn's eyes followed him sadly and gravely.  She remained by Lady
+Doltimore's side, abstracted and silent for several minutes.
+
+Meanwhile Caroline, turning to Lord Devonport (the friend who had
+proposed the Viennese excursion), said, "It is cruel in you to go to
+Vienna,--it is doubly cruel to rob Lord Doltimore of his best friend and
+Paris of its best waltzer."
+
+"Oh, it is a voluntary offer of Legard's, Lady Doltimore,--believe me, I
+have used no persuasive arts.  But the fact is, that we have been talking
+of a fair widow, the beauty of Austria, and as proud and as unassailable
+as Ehrenbreitstein itself.  Legard's vanity is piqued; and so--as a
+professed lady-killer--he intends to see what can be effected by the
+handsomest Englishman of his time."
+
+Caroline laughed, and new claimants on her notice succeeded to Lord
+Devonport.  It was not till the ladies were waiting their carriage in the
+shawl-room that Lady Doltimore noticed the paleness and thoughtful brow
+of Evelyn.
+
+"Are you fatigued or unwell, dear?" she said.
+
+"No," answered Evelyn, forcing a smile; and at that moment they were
+joined by Maltravers, with the intelligence that it would be some minutes
+before the carriage could draw up.  Caroline amused herself in the
+interval by shrewd criticisms on the dresses and characters of her
+various friends.  Caroline had grown an amazing prude in her judgment of
+others!
+
+"What a turban!--prudent for Mrs. A----- to wear,--bright red; it puts
+out her face, as the sun puts out the fire.  Mr. Maltravers, do observe
+Lady B----- with that _very_ young gentleman.  After all her experience
+in angling, it is odd that she should still only throw in for small fish.
+Pray, why is the marriage between Lady C----- D----- and Mr. F-----
+broken off?  Is it true that he is so much in debt, and is so very--very
+profligate?  They say she is heartbroken."
+
+"Really, Lady Doltimore," said Maltravers, smiling, "I am but a bad
+scandal-monger.  But poor F----- is not, I believe, much worse than
+others.  How do we know whose fault it is when a marriage is broken off?
+Lady C----- D----- heartbroken! what an idea!  Nowadays there is never
+any affection in compacts of that sort; and the chain that binds the
+frivolous nature is but a gossamer thread!  Fine gentlemen and fine
+ladies, their loves and their marriages--
+
+                 "'May flourish and may fade;
+       A breath can make them, as a breath has made.'
+
+"Never believe that a heart long accustomed to beat only in good society
+can be broken,--it is rarely ever touched!"
+
+Evelyn listened attentively, and seemed struck.  She sighed, and said in
+a very low voice, as to herself, "It is true--how could I think
+otherwise?"
+
+For the next few days Evelyn was unwell, and did not quit her room.
+Maltravers was in despair.  The flowers, the books, the music he sent;
+his anxious inquiries, his earnest and respectful notes, touched with
+that ineffable charm which Heart and Intellect breathe into the most
+trifling coinage from their mint,--all affected Evelyn sensibly.  Perhaps
+she contrasted them with Legard's indifference and apparent caprice;
+perhaps in that contrast Maltravers gained more than by all his brilliant
+qualities.  Meanwhile, without visit, without message, without
+farewell,--unconscious, it is true, of Evelyn's illness,--Legard departed
+for Vienna.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+  A PLEASING land  .  .  .
+  Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye,
+    And of gay castles in the clouds that pass,
+  Forever flashing round a summer sky.--THOMSON.
+
+DAILY, hourly, increased the influence of Evelyn over Maltravers.  Oh,
+what a dupe is a man's pride! what a fool his wisdom!  That a girl, a
+mere child, one who scarce knew her own heart, beautiful as it
+was,--whose deeper feelings still lay coiled up in their sweet
+buds,--that she should thus master this proud, wise man!  But as
+thou--our universal teacher--as thou, O Shakspeare! haply speaking from
+the hints of thine own experience, hast declared--
+
+  "None are so truly caught, when they are catched,
+   As wit turned fool; folly in wisdom hatched,
+   Hath wisdom's warrant."
+
+Still, methinks that, in that surpassing and dangerously indulged
+affection which levelled thee, Maltravers, with the weakest, which
+overturned all thy fine philosophy of Stoicism, and made thee the veriest
+slave of the "Rose Garden,"--still, Maltravers, thou mightest at least
+have seen that thou hast lost forever all right to pride, all privilege
+to disdain the herd!  But thou wert proud of thine own infirmity!  And
+far sharper must be that lesson which can teach thee that Pride--thine
+angel--is ever pre-doomed to fall.
+
+What a mistake to suppose that the passions are strongest in youth!  The
+passions are not stronger, but the control over them is weaker.  They are
+more easily excited, they are more violent and more apparent; but they
+have less energy, less durability, less intense and concentrated power,
+than in maturer life.  In youth, passion succeeds to passion, and one
+breaks upon the other, as waves upon a rock, till the heart frets itself
+to repose.  In manhood, the great deep flows on, more calm, but more
+profound; its serenity is the proof of the might and terror of its
+course, were the wind to blow and the storm to rise.
+
+A young man's ambition is but vanity,--it has no definite aim, it plays
+with a thousand toys.  As with one passion, so with the rest.  In youth,
+Love is ever on the wing, but, like the birds in April, it hath not yet
+built its nest.  With so long a career of summer and hope before it, the
+disappointment of to-day is succeeded by the novelty of to-morrow, and
+the sun that advances to the noon but dries up its fervent tears.  But
+when we have arrived at that epoch of life,--when, if the light fail us,
+if the last rose wither, we feel that the loss cannot be retrieved, and
+that the frost and the darkness are at hand, Love becomes to us a
+treasure that we watch over and hoard with a miser's care.  Our
+youngest-born affection is our darling and our idol, the fondest pledge
+of the Past, the most cherished of our hopes for the Future.  A certain
+melancholy that mingles with our joy at the possession only enhances its
+charm.  We feel ourselves so dependent on it for all that is yet to come.
+Our other barks--our gay galleys of pleasure, our stately argosies of
+pride--have been swallowed up by the remorseless wave.  On this last
+vessel we freight our all, to its frail tenement we commit ourselves.
+The star that guides it is our guide, and in the tempest that menaces we
+behold our own doom!
+
+Still Maltravers shrank from the confession that trembled on his lips;
+still he adhered to the course he had prescribed to himself.  If ever (as
+he had implied in his letter to Cleveland)--if ever Evelyn should
+discover they were not suited to each other!  The possibility of such an
+affliction impressed his judgment, the dread of it chilled his heart.
+With all his pride, there was a certain humility in Maltravers that was
+perhaps one cause of his reserve.  He knew what a beautiful possession is
+youth,--its sanguine hopes, its elastic spirit, its inexhaustible
+resources!  What to the eyes of woman were the acquisitions which manhood
+had brought him,--the vast but the sad experience, the arid wisdom, the
+philosophy based on disappointment?  He might be loved but for the vain
+glitter of name and reputation,--and love might vanish as custom dimmed
+the illusion.  Men of strong affections are jealous of their own genius.
+They know how separate a thing from the household character genius often
+is,--they fear lest they should be loved for a quality, not for
+themselves.
+
+Thus communed he with himself; thus, as the path had become clear to his
+hopes, did new fears arise; and thus did love bring, as it ever does, in
+its burning wake,--
+
+                 "The pang, the agony, the doubt!"
+
+Maltravers then confirmed himself in the resolution he had formed: he
+would cautiously examine Evelyn and himself; he would weigh in the
+balance every straw that the wind should turn up; he would not aspire to
+the treasure, unless he could feel secure that the coffer could preserve
+the gem.  This was not only a prudent, it was a just and a generous
+determination.  It was one which we all ought to form if the fervour of
+our passions will permit us.  We have no right to sacrifice years to
+moments, and to melt the pearl that has no price in a single draught!
+But can Maltravers adhere to his wise precautions?  The truth must be
+spoken,--it was, perhaps, the first time in his life that Maltravers had
+been really in love.  As the reader will remember, he had not been in
+love with the haughty Florence; admiration, gratitude,--the affection of
+the head, not that of the feelings,--had been the links that bound him to
+the enthusiastic correspondent revealed in the gifted beauty; and the
+gloomy circumstances connected with her early fate had left deep furrows
+in his memory.  Time and vicissitude had effaced the wounds, and the
+Light of the Beautiful dawned once more in the face of Evelyn.  Valerie
+de Ventadour had been but the fancy of a roving breast.  Alice, the sweet
+Alice!--her, indeed, in the first flower of youth, he had loved with a
+boy's romance.  He had loved her deeply, fondly,--but perhaps he had
+never been in love with her; he had mourned her loss for
+years,--insensibly to himself her loss had altered his character and cast
+a melancholy gloom over all the colours of his life.  But she whose range
+of ideas was so confined, she who had but broke into knowledge, as the
+chrysalis into the butterfly--how much in that prodigal and gifted
+nature, bounding onwards into the broad plains of life, must the peasant
+girl have failed to fill!  They had had nothing in common but their youth
+and their love.  It was a dream that had hovered over the poet-boy in the
+morning twilight,--a dream he had often wished to recall, a dream that
+had haunted him in the noon-day,--but had, as all boyish visions ever
+have done, left the heart unexhausted, and the passions unconsumed!
+Years, long years, since then had rolled away, and yet, perhaps, one
+unconscious attraction that drew Maltravers so suddenly towards Evelyn
+was a something indistinct and undefinable that reminded him of Alice.
+There was no similarity in their features; but at times a tone in
+Evelyn's voice, a "trick of the manner," an air, a gesture, recalled him,
+over the gulfs of Time, to Poetry, and Hope, and Alice.
+
+In the youth of each--the absent and the present one--there was
+resemblance,--resemblance in their simplicity, their grace.  Perhaps
+Alice, of the two, had in her nature more real depth, more ardour of
+feeling, more sublimity of sentiment, than Evelyn.  But in her primitive
+ignorance half her noblest qualities were embedded and unknown.  And
+Evelyn--his equal in rank; Evelyn, well cultivated; Evelyn, so long
+courted, so deeply studied--had such advantages over the poor peasant
+girl!  Still the poor peasant girl often seemed to smile on him from that
+fair face; and in Evelyn he half loved Alice again!
+
+So these two persons now met daily; their intercourse was even more
+familiar than before, their several minds grew hourly more developed and
+transparent to each other.  But of love Maltravers still forbore to
+speak; they were friends,--no more; such friends as the disparity of
+their years and their experience might warrant them to be.  And in that
+young and innocent nature--with its rectitude, its enthusiasm, and its
+pious and cheerful tendencies--Maltravers found freshness in the desert,
+as the camel-driver lingering at the well.  Insensibly his heart warmed
+again to his kind; and as the harp of David to the ear of Saul, was the
+soft voice that lulled remembrance and awakened hope in the lonely man.
+
+Meanwhile, what was the effect that the presence, the attentions, of
+Maltravers produced on Evelyn?  Perhaps it was of that kind which most
+flatters us and most deceives.  She never dreamed of comparing him with
+others.  To her thoughts he stood aloof and alone from all his kind.  It
+may seem a paradox, but it might be that she admired and venerated him
+almost too much for love.  Still her pleasure in his society was so
+evident and unequivocal, her deference to his opinion so marked, she
+sympathized in so many of his objects, she had so much blindness or
+forbearance for his faults (and he never sought to mask them), that the
+most diffident of men might have drawn from so many symptoms hopes the
+most auspicious.  Since the departure of Legard, the gayeties of Paris
+lost their charm for Evelyn, and more than ever she could appreciate the
+society of her friend.  He thus gradually lost his earlier fears of her
+forming too keen an attachment to the great world; and as nothing could
+be more apparent than Evelyn's indifference to the crowd of flatterers
+and suitors that hovered round her, Maltravers no longer dreaded a rival.
+He began to feel assured that they had both gone through the ordeal; and
+that he might ask for love without a doubt of its immutability and faith.
+At this period they were both invited, with the Doltimores, to spend a
+few days at the villa of De Montaigne, near St. Cloud.  And there it was
+that Maltravers determined to know his fate!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+  CHAOS of Thought and Passion all confused.--POPE.
+
+IT is to the contemplation of a very different scene that the course of
+our story now conducts us.
+
+Between St. Cloud and Versailles there was at that time--perhaps there
+still is--a lone and melancholy house, appropriated to the
+insane,--melancholy, not from its site, but the purpose to which it is
+devoted.  Placed on an eminence, the windows of the mansion
+command--beyond the gloomy walls that gird the garden ground--one of
+those enchanting prospects which win for France her title to _La Belle_.
+There the glorious Seine is seen in the distance, broad and winding
+through the varied plains, and beside the gleaming villages and villas.
+There, too, beneath the clear blue sky of France, the forest-lands of
+Versailles and St. Germains stretch in dark luxuriance around and afar.
+There you may see sleeping on the verge of the landscape the mighty
+city,--crowned with the thousand spires from which, proud above the rest,
+rises the eyry of Napoleon's eagle, the pinnacle of Notre Dame.
+
+Remote, sequestered, the place still commands the survey of the turbulent
+world below; and Madness gazes upon prospects that might well charm the
+thoughtful eyes of Imagination or of Wisdom!  In one of the rooms of this
+house sat Castruccio Cesarini.  The apartment was furnished even with
+elegance; a variety of books strewed the table; nothing for comfort or
+for solace that the care and providence of affection could dictate was
+omitted.  Cesarini was alone: leaning his cheek upon his hand, he gazed
+on the beautiful and tranquil view we have described.  "And am I never to
+set a free foot on that soil again?" he muttered indignantly, as he broke
+from his revery.
+
+The door opened, and the keeper of the sad abode (a surgeon of humanity
+and eminence) entered, followed by De Montaigne.  Cesarini turned round
+and scowled upon the latter; the surgeon, after a few words of
+salutation, withdrew to a corner of the room, and appeared absorbed in a
+book.  De Montaigne approached his brother-in-law,--"I have brought you
+some poems just published at Milan, my dear Castruccio,--they will please
+you."
+
+"Give me my liberty!" cried Cesarini, clenching his hands.  "Why am I to
+be detained here?  Why are my nights to be broken by the groans of
+maniacs, and my days devoured in a solitude that loathes the aspect of
+things around me?  Am I mad?  You know I am not!  It is an old trick to
+say that poets are mad,--you mistake our agonies for insanity.  See, I am
+calm; I can reason: give me any test of sound mind--no matter how
+rigid--I will pass it; I am not mad,--I swear I am not!"
+
+"No, my dear Castruccio," said De Montaigne, soothingly; "but you are
+still unwell,--you still have fever; when next I see you perhaps you may
+be recovered sufficiently to dismiss the doctor and change the air.
+Meanwhile is there anything you would have added or altered?"
+
+Cesarini had listened to this speech with a mocking sarcasm on his lip,
+but an expression of such hopeless wretchedness in his eyes, as they
+alone can comprehend who have witnessed madness in its lucid intervals.
+He sank down, and his head drooped gloomily on his breast.  "No," said
+he; "I want nothing but free air or death,--no matter which."
+
+De Montaigne stayed some time with the unhappy man, and sought to soothe
+him; but it was in vain.  Yet when he rose to depart, Cesarini started
+up, and fixing on him his large wistful eyes, exclaimed, "Ah! do not
+leave me yet.  It is so dreadful to be alone with the dead and the worse
+than dead!"
+
+The Frenchman turned aside to wipe his eyes, and stifle the rising at his
+heart; and again he sat, and again he sought to soothe.  At length
+Cesarini, seemingly more calm, gave him leave to depart.  "Go," said he,
+"go; tell Teresa I am better, that I love her tenderly, that I shall live
+to tell her children not to be poets.  Stay, you asked if there was aught
+I wished changed: yes, this room; it is too still: I hear my own pulse
+beat so loudly in the silence, it is horrible!  There is a room below, by
+the window of which there is a tree, and the winds rock its boughs to and
+fro, and it sighs and groans like a living thing; it will be pleasant to
+look at that tree, and see the birds come home to it,--yet that tree is
+wintry and blasted too!  It will be pleasant to hear it fret and chafe in
+the stormy nights; it will be a friend to me, that old tree! let me have
+that room.  Nay, look not at each other,--it is not so high as this; but
+the window is  barred,--I cannot escape!"  And Cesarini smiled.
+
+"Certainly," said the surgeon, "if you prefer that room; but it has not
+so fine a view."
+
+"I hate the view of the world that has cast me off.  When may I change?"
+
+"This very evening."
+
+"Thank you; it will be a great revolution in my life."
+
+And Cesarini's eyes brightened, and he looked happy.  De Montaigne,
+thoroughly unmanned, tore himself away.
+
+The promise was kept, and Cesarini was transferred that night to the
+chamber he had selected.
+
+As soon as it was deep night, the last visit of the keeper paid, and,
+save now and then, by some sharp cry in the more distant quarter of the
+house, all was still, Cesarini rose from his bed; a partial light came
+from the stars that streamed through the frosty and keen air, and cast a
+sickly gleam through the heavy bars of the casement.  It was then that
+Cesarini drew from under his pillow a long-cherished and
+carefully-concealed treasure.  Oh, with what rapture had he first
+possessed himself of it! with what anxiety had it been watched and
+guarded! how many cunning stratagems and profound inventions had gone
+towards the baffling, the jealous search of the keeper and his myrmidons!
+The abandoned and wandering mother never clasped her child more fondly to
+her bosom, nor gazed upon his features with more passionate visions for
+the future.  And what had so enchanted the poor prisoner, so deluded the
+poor maniac?  A large nail!  He had found it accidentally in the garden;
+he had hoarded it for weeks,--it had inspired him with the hope of
+liberty.  Often, in the days far gone, he had read of the wonders that
+had been effected, of the stones removed, and the bars filed, by the
+self-same kind of implement.  He remembered that the most celebrated of
+those bold unfortunates who live a life against the law, had said,
+"Choose my prison, and give me but a rusty nail, and I laugh at your
+jailers and your walls!"  He crept to the window; he examined his relic
+by the dim starlight; he kissed it passionately, and the tears stood in
+his eyes.
+
+Ah, who shall determine the worth of things?  No king that night so
+prized his crown as the madman prized that rusty inch of wire,--the
+proper prey of the rubbish-cart and dunghill.  Little didst thou think,
+old blacksmith, when thou drewest the dull metal from the fire, of what
+precious price it was to become!
+
+Cesarini, with the astuteness of his malady, had long marked out this
+chamber for the scene of his operations; he had observed that the
+framework in which the bars were set seemed old and worm-eaten; that the
+window was but a few feet from the ground; that the noise made in the
+winter nights by the sighing branches of the old tree without would
+deaden the sound of the lone workman.  Now, then, his hopes were to be
+crowned.  Poor fool! and even _thou_ hast hope still!  All that night he
+toiled and toiled, and sought to work his iron into a file; now he tried
+the bars, and now the framework.  Alas! he had not learned the skill in
+such tools, possessed by his renowned model and inspirer; the flesh was
+worn from his fingers, the cold drops stood on his brow; and morning
+surprised him, advanced not a hair-breadth in his labour.
+
+He crept back to bed, and again hid the useless implement, and at last he
+slept.
+
+And, night after night, the same task, the same results!  But at length,
+one day, when Cesarini returned from his moody walk in the gardens
+(_pleasure_-grounds they were called by the owner), he found better
+workmen than he at the window; they were repairing the framework, they
+were strengthening the bars,--all hope was now gone!  The unfortunate
+said nothing; too cunning to show his despair he eyed them silently, and
+cursed them; but the old tree was left still, and that was
+something,--company and music.
+
+A day or two after this barbarous counterplot, Cesarini was walking in
+the gardens towards the latter part of the afternoon (just when in the
+short days the darkness begins to steal apace over the chill and western
+sun), when he was accosted by a fellow-captive, who had often before
+sought his acquaintance; for they try to have friends,--those poor
+people!  Even _we_ do the same; though _we_ say we are _not_ mad!  This
+man had been a warrior, had served with Napoleon, had received honours
+and ribbons,--might, for aught we know, have dreamed of being a marshal!
+But the demon smote him in the hour of his pride.  It was his disease to
+fancy himself a monarch.  He believed, for he forgot chronology, that he
+was at once the Iron Mask, and the true sovereign of France and Navarre,
+confined in state by the usurpers of his crown.  On other points he was
+generally sane; a tall, strong man, with fierce features, and stern
+lines, wherein could be read many a bloody tale of violence and wrong, of
+lawless passions, of terrible excesses, to which madness might be at once
+the consummation and the curse.  This man had taken a fancy to Cesarini;
+and, in some hours Cesarini had shunned him less than others,--for they
+could alike rail against all living things.  The lunatic approached
+Cesarini with an air of dignity and condescension.
+
+"It is a cold night, sir,--and there will be no moon.  Has it never
+occurred to you that the winter is the season for escape?"
+
+Cesarini started; the ex-officer continued,--
+
+"Ay, I see by your manner that you, too, chafe at our ignominious
+confinement.  I think that together we might brave the worst.  You
+probably are confined on some state offence.  I give you full pardon, if
+you assist me.  For myself I have but to appear in my capital; old Louis
+le Grand must be near his last hour."
+
+"This madman my best companion!" thought Cesarini, revolting at his own
+infirmity, as Gulliver started from the Yahoo.  "No matter, he talks of
+escape.
+
+"And how think you," said the Italian, aloud,--"how think you, that we
+have any chance of deliverance?"
+
+"Hush, speak lower," said the soldier.  "In the inner garden, I have
+observed for the last two days that a gardener is employed in nailing
+some fig-trees and vines to the wall.  Between that garden and these
+grounds there is but a paling, which we can easily scale.  He works till
+dusk; at the latest hour we can, let us climb noiselessly over the
+paling, and creep along the vegetable beds till we reach the man.  He
+uses a ladder for his purpose; the rest is clear,--we must fell and gag
+him,--twist his neck if necessary,--I have twisted a neck before," quoth
+the maniac, with a horrid smile.  "The ladder will help us over the wall,
+and the night soon grows dark at this season."
+
+Cesarini listened, and his heart beat quick.  "Will it be too late to try
+to-night?" said he in a whisper.
+
+"Perhaps not," said the soldier, who retained all his military acuteness.
+"But are you prepared,--don't you require time to man yourself?"
+
+"No--no,--I have had time enough!--I am ready."
+
+"Well, then,--hist!---we are watched--one of the jailers!  Talk easily,
+smile, laugh.  This way."
+
+They passed by one of the watch of the place, and just as they were in
+his hearing, the soldier turned to Cesarini, "Sir, will you favour me
+with your snuff-box?"
+
+"I have none."
+
+"None? what a pity!  My good friend," and he turned to the scout, "may I
+request you to look in my room for my snuff-box?  It is on the
+chimney-piece,--it will not take you a minute."
+
+The soldier was one of those whose insanity was deemed most harmless, and
+his relations, who were rich and wellborn, had requested every indulgence
+to be shown to him. The watch suspected nothing, and repaired to the
+house.  As soon as the trees hid him,--"Now," said the soldier, "stoop
+almost on all fours, and run quick."
+
+So saying the maniac crouched low, and glided along with a rapidity which
+did not distance Cesarini.  They reached the paling that separated the
+vegetable garden from the pleasure-ground; the soldier vaulted over it
+with ease, Cesarini with more difficulty followed.  They crept along; the
+herbs and vegetable beds, with their long bare stalks, concealed their
+movements; the man was still on the ladder.  "_La bonne Esperance_" said
+the soldier through his ground teeth, muttering some old watchword of the
+wars, and (while Cesarini, below, held the ladder steadfast) he rushed up
+the steps, and with a sudden effort of his muscular arm, hurled the
+gardener to the ground.  The man, surprised, half stunned, and wholly
+terrified, did not attempt to wrestle with the two madmen, he uttered
+loud cries for help!  But help came too late; these strange and fearful
+comrades had already scaled the wall, had dropped on the other side, and
+were fast making across the dusky fields to the neighbouring forest.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+                      HOPES and Fears
+  Start up alarmed, and o'er life's narrow verge
+  Look down: on what?--a fathomless abyss!--YOUNG.
+
+MIDNIGHT--and intense frost!  There they were--houseless and
+breadless--the two fugitives, in the heart of that beautiful forest which
+has rung to the horns of many a royal chase.  The soldier, whose youth
+had been inured to hardships, and to the conquests which our mother-wit
+wrings from the stepdame Nature, had made a fire by the friction of two
+pieces of dry wood; such wood was hard to be found, for the snow whitened
+the level ground, and lay deep in the hollows; and when it was
+discovered, the fuel was slow to burn; however, the fire blazed red at
+last.  On a little mound, shaded by a semicircle of huge trees, sat the
+Outlaws of Human Reason.  They cowered over the blaze opposite to each
+other, and the glare crimsoned their features.  And each in his heart
+longed to rid himself of his mad neighbour; and each felt the awe of
+solitude,--the dread of sleep beside a comrade whose soul had lost God's
+light!
+
+"Ho!" said the warrior, breaking a silence that had been long kept, "this
+is cold work at the best, and hunger pinches me; I almost regret the
+prison."
+
+"I do not feel the cold," said Cesarini, "and I do not care for hunger: I
+am revelling only in the sense of liberty!"
+
+"Try and sleep," quoth the soldier, with a coaxing and, sinister softness
+of voice; "we will take it by turns to watch."
+
+"I cannot sleep,--take you the first turn."
+
+"Hark ye, sir!" said the soldier sullenly; "I must not have my commands
+disputed; now we are free, we are no longer equal: I am heir to the
+crowns of France and Navarre.  Sleep, I say!"
+
+"And what Prince or Potentate, King or Kaiser," cried Cesarini, catching
+the quick contagion of the fit that had seized his comrade, "can dictate
+to the monarch of Earth and Air, the Elements and the music-breathing
+Stars?  I am Cesarini the Bard! and the huntsman Orion halts in his chase
+above to listen to my lyre!  Be stilled, rude man!--thou scarest away the
+angels, whose breath even now was rushing through my hair!"
+
+"It is too horrible!" cried the grim man of blood, shivering; "my enemies
+are relentless, and give me a madman for a jailer!"
+
+"Ha! a madman!" exclaimed Cesarini, springing to his feet, and glaring at
+the soldier with eyes that caught and rivalled the blaze of the fire.
+"And who are you?--what devil from the deep hell, that art leagued with
+my persecutors against me?"
+
+With the instinct of his old calling and valour, the soldier also rose
+when he saw the movement of his companion; and his fierce features worked
+with rage and fear.
+
+"Avaunt!" said he, waving his arm; "we banish thee from our presence!
+This is our palace!--and our guards are at hand!" pointing to the still
+and skeleton trees that grouped round in ghastly bareness.  "Begone!"
+
+At that moment they heard at a distance the deep barking of a dog, and
+each cried simultaneously, "They are after me!--betrayed!" The soldier
+sprang at the throat of Cesarini; but the Italian, at the same instant,
+caught a half-burned brand from the fire, and dashed the blazing end in
+the face of his assailant.  The soldier uttered a cry of pain, and
+recoiled back, blinded and dismayed.  Cesarini, whose madness, when
+fairly roused, was of the most deadly nature, again raised his weapon,
+and probably nothing but death could have separated the foes; but again
+the bay of the dog was heard, and Cesarini, answering the sound by a wild
+yell, threw down the brand, and fled away through the forest with
+inconceivable swiftness.  He hurried on through bush and dell,--and the
+boughs tore his garments and mangled his flesh,--but stopped not his
+progress till he fell at last on the ground, breathless and exhausted,
+and heard from some far-off clock the second hour of morning.  He had
+left the forest; a farmhouse stood before him, and the whitened roofs of
+scattered cottages sloped to the tranquil sky.  The witness of man--the
+social tranquil sky and the reasoning man--operated like a charm upon the
+senses which recent excitement had more than usually disturbed.  The
+unhappy wretch gazed at the peaceful abodes, and sighed heavily; then,
+rising from the earth, he crept into one of the sheds that adjoined the
+farmhouse, and throwing himself on some straw, slept sound and quietly
+till daylight, and the voices of peasants in the shed awakened him.
+
+He rose refreshed, calm, and, for ordinary purposes, sufficiently sane to
+prevent suspicion of his disease.  He approached the startled peasants,
+and representing himself as a traveller who had lost his way in the night
+and amidst the forest, begged for food and water.  Though his garments
+were torn, they were new and of good fashion; his voice was mild; his
+whole appearance and address those of one of some station--and the French
+peasant is a hospitable fellow.  Cesarini refreshed and rested himself an
+hour or two at the farm, and then resumed his wanderings; he offered no
+money, for the rules of the asylum forbade money to its inmates,--he had
+none with him; but none was expected from him, and they bade him farewell
+as kindly as if he had bought their blessings.  He then began to consider
+where he was to take refuge, and how provide for himself; the feeling of
+liberty braced, and for a time restored, his intellect.
+
+Fortunately, he had on his person, besides some rings of trifling cost, a
+watch of no inconsiderable value, the sale of which might support him, in
+such obscure and humble quarter as he could alone venture to inhabit, for
+several weeks, perhaps months.  This thought made him cheerful and
+elated; he walked lustily on, shunning the high road.  The day was clear,
+the sun bright, the air full of racy health.  Oh, what soft raptures
+swelled the heart of the wanderer, as he gazed around him!  The Poet and
+the Freeman alike stirred within his shattered heart!  He paused to
+contemplate the berries of the icy trees, to listen to the sharp glee of
+the blackbird; and once--when he found beneath a hedge a cold, scentless
+group of hardy violets--he laughed aloud in his joy.  In that laughter
+there was no madness, no danger; but when as he journeyed on, he passed
+through a little hamlet, and saw the children at play upon the ground,
+and heard from the open door of a cabin the sound of rustic music, then
+indeed he paused abruptly; the past gathered over him: _he knew that
+which he had been, that which he was now_!--an awful memory! a dread
+revelation!  And, covering his face with his hands, he wept aloud.  In
+those tears were the peril and method of madness.  He woke from them to
+think of his youth, his hopes, of Florence, of revenge!  Lumley Lord
+Vargrave! better, from that hour, to encounter the tiger in his lair than
+find thyself alone with that miserable man!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+  IT seemed the laurel chaste and stubborn oak,
+  And all the gentle trees on earth that grew,
+  It seemed the land, the sea, and heaven above,
+  All breathed out fancy sweet, and sighed out love.
+                          FAIRFAX'S _Tasso_.
+
+AT De Montaigne's villa, Evelyn, for the first time, gathered from the
+looks, the manners, of Maltravers that she was beloved.  It was no longer
+possible to mistake the evidences of affection.  Formerly, Maltravers had
+availed himself of his advantage of years and experience, and would warn,
+admonish, dispute, even reprove; formerly, there had been so much of
+seeming caprice, of cold distance, of sudden and wayward haughtiness, in
+his bearing; but now the whole man was changed,--the Mentor had vanished
+in the Lover; he held his being on her breath.  Her lightest pleasure
+seemed to have grown his law, no coldness ever alternated the deep
+devotion of his manner; an anxious, a timid, a watchful softness replaced
+all his stately self-possession.  Evelyn saw that she was loved; and she
+then looked into her own heart.
+
+I have said before that Evelyn was gentle, even to _yieldingness_; that
+her susceptibility made her shrink from the thought of pain to another:
+and so thoroughly did she revere Maltravers, so grateful did she feel for
+a love that could not but flatter pride, and raise her in her
+self-esteem, that she felt it impossible that she could reject his suit.
+"Then, do I love him as I dreamed I could love?" she asked herself; and
+her heart gave no intelligible reply.  "Yes, it must be so; in his
+presence I feel a tranquil and eloquent charm; his praise delights me;
+his esteem is my most high ambition;--and yet--and yet--" she sighed and
+thought of Legard; "but _he_ loved me not!" and she turned restlessly
+from that image.  "He thinks but of the world, of pleasure; Maltravers is
+right,--the spoiled children of society cannot love: why should I think
+of him?"
+
+There were no guests at the villa, except Maltravers, Evelyn, and Lord
+and Lady Doltimore.  Evelyn was much captivated by the graceful vivacity
+of Teresa, though that vivacity was not what it had been before her
+brother's affliction; their children, some of whom had grown up,
+constituted an amiable and intelligent family; and De Montaigne himself
+was agreeable and winning, despite his sober manners and his love of
+philosophical dispute.  Evelyn often listened thoughtfully to Teresa's
+praises of her husband,--to her account of the happiness she had known in
+a marriage where there had been so great a disparity of years; Evelyn
+began to question the truth of her early visions of romance.
+
+Caroline saw the unequivocal attachment of Maltravers with the same
+indifference with which she had anticipated the suit of Legard.  It was
+the same to her what hand delivered Evelyn and herself from the designs
+of Vargrave; but Vargrave occupied nearly all her thoughts.  The
+newspapers had reported him as seriously ill,--at one time in great
+danger.  He was now recovering, but still unable to quit his room.  He
+had written to her once, lamenting his ill-fortune, trusting soon to be
+at Paris; and touching, with evident pleasure, upon Legard's departure
+for Vienna, which he had seen in the "Morning Post."  But he was
+afar--alone, ill, untended; and though Caroline's guilty love had been
+much abated by Vargrave's icy selfishness, by absence and remorse, still
+she had the heart of a woman,--and Vargrave was the only one that had
+ever touched it.  She felt for him, and grieved in silence; she did not
+dare to utter sympathy aloud, for Doltimore had already given evidence of
+a suspicious and jealous temper.
+
+Evelyn was also deeply affected by the account of her guardian's illness.
+As I before said, the moment he ceased to be her lover, her childish
+affection for him returned.  She even permitted herself to write to him;
+and a tone of melancholy depression which artfully pervaded his reply
+struck her with something like remorse.  He told her in the letter that
+he had much to say to her relative to an investment, in conformity with
+her stepfather's wishes, and he should hasten to Paris, even before the
+doctor would sanction his removal.  Vargrave forbore to mention what the
+meditated investment was.  The last public accounts of the minister had,
+however, been so favourable, that his arrival might be almost daily
+expected; and both Caroline and Evelyn felt relieved.
+
+To De Montaigne, Maltravers confided his attachment, and both the
+Frenchman and Teresa sanctioned and encouraged it.  Evelyn enchanted
+them; and they had passed that age when they could have imagined it
+possible that the man they had known almost as a boy was separated by
+years from the lively feelings and extreme youth of Evelyn.  They could
+not believe that the sentiments he had inspired were colder than those
+that animated himself.
+
+One day, Maltravers had been absent for some hours on his solitary
+rambles, and De Montaigne had not yet returned from Paris, which he
+visited almost daily.  It was so late in the noon as almost to border on
+evening, when Maltravers; on his return, entered the grounds by a gate
+that separated them from an extensive wood.  He saw Evelyn, Teresa, and
+two of her children walking on a terrace immediately before him.  He
+joined them; and, somehow or other, it soon chanced that Teresa and
+himself loitered behind the rest, a little out of hearing.  "Ah, Mr.
+Maltravers," said the former, "we miss the soft skies of Italy and the
+beautiful hues of Como."
+
+"And, for my part, I miss the youth that gave 'glory to the grass and
+splendour to the flower.'"
+
+"Nay; we are happier now, believe me,--or at least I should be, if--But I
+must not think of my poor brother.  Ah, if his guilt deprived you of one
+who was worthy of you, it would be some comfort to his sister to think at
+last that the loss was repaired.  And you still have scruples?"
+
+"Who that loves truly has not?  How young, how lovely, how worthy of
+lighter hearts and fairer forms than mine!  Give me back the years that
+have passed since we last met at Como, and I might hope!"
+
+"And this to me who have enjoyed such happiness with one older, when we
+married, by ten years than you are now!"
+
+"But you, Teresa, were born to see life through the Claude glass."
+
+"Ah, you provoke me with these refinements; you turn from a happiness you
+have but to demand."
+
+"Do not--do not raise my hopes too high," cried Maltravers, with great
+emotion; "I have been schooling myself all day.  But if I _am_ deceived!"
+
+"Trust me, you are not.  See, even now she turns round to look for you;
+she loves you,--loves you as you deserve.  This difference of years that
+you so lament does but deepen and elevate her attachment!"
+
+Teresa turned to Maltravers, surprised at his silence.  How joyous sat
+his heart upon his looks,--no gloom on his brow, no doubt in his
+sparkling eyes!  He was mortal, and he yielded to the delight of
+believing himself beloved.  He pressed Teresa's hand in silence, and,
+quitting her abruptly, gained the side of Evelyn.  Madame de Montaigne
+comprehended all that passed within him; and as she followed, she soon
+contrived to detach her children, and returned with them to the house on
+a whispered pretence of seeing if their father had yet arrived.  Evelyn
+and Maltravers continued to walk on,--not aware, at first, that the rest
+of the party were not close behind.
+
+The sun had set; and they were in a part of the grounds which, by way of
+contrast to the rest, was laid out in the English fashion; the walk
+wound, serpent-like, among a profusion of evergreens irregularly planted;
+the scene was shut in and bounded, except where at a distance, through an
+opening of the trees, you caught the spire of a distant church, over
+which glimmered, faint and fair, the smile of the evening star.
+
+"This reminds me of home," said Evelyn, gently.
+
+"And hereafter it will remind me of you," said Maltravers, in whispered
+accents.  He fixed his eyes on her as he spoke.  Never had his look been
+so true to his heart; never had his voice so undisguisedly expressed the
+profound and passionate sentiment which had sprung up within him,--to
+constitute, as he then believed, the latest bliss, or the crowning
+misery, of his life!  At that moment, it was a sort of instinct that told
+him they were _alone_; for who has not felt--in those few and memorable
+hours of life when love long suppressed overflows the fountain, and seems
+to pervade the whole frame and the whole spirit--that there is a magic
+around and within us that hath a keener intelligence than intellect
+itself?  Alone at such an hour with the one we love, the whole world
+besides seems to vanish, and our feet to have entered the soil, and our
+lips to have caught the air, of Fairyland.
+
+They were alone.  And why did Evelyn tremble?  Why did she feel that a
+crisis of existence was at hand?
+
+"Miss Cameron--Evelyn," said Maltravers, after they had walked some
+moments in silence, "hear me--and let your reason as well as your heart
+reply.  From the first moment we met, you became dear to me.  Yes, even
+when a child, your sweetness and your fortitude foretold so well what you
+would be in womanhood; even then you left upon my memory a delightful and
+mysterious shadow,--too prophetic of the light that now hallows and wraps
+your image!  We met again,--and the attraction that had drawn me towards
+you years before was suddenly renewed.  I love you, Evelyn!  I love you
+better than all words can tell!  Your future fate, your welfare, your
+happiness, contain and embody all the hopes left to me in life!  But our
+years are different, Evelyn; I have known sorrows,--and the
+disappointments and the experience that have severed me from the common
+world have robbed me of more than time itself hath done.  They have
+robbed me of that zest for the ordinary pleasures of our race,--which may
+it be yours, sweet Evelyn, ever to retain!  To me, the time foretold by
+the Preacher as the lot of age has already arrived, when the sun and the
+moon are darkened, and when, save in you and through you, I have no
+pleasure in anything.  Judge, if such a being you can love!  Judge, if my
+very confession does not revolt and chill, if it does not present to you
+a gloomy and cheerless future, were it possible that you could unite your
+lot to mine!  Answer not from friendship or from pity; the love I feel
+for you can have a reply from love alone, and from that reasoning which
+love, in its enduring power, in its healthful confidence, in its
+prophetic foresight, alone supplies!  I can resign you without a murmur;
+but I could not live with you and even fancy that you had one care I
+could not soothe, though you might have happiness I could not share.  And
+fate does not present to me any vision so dark and terrible--no, not your
+loss itself; no, not your indifference; no, not your aversion--as your
+discovery, after time should make regret in vain, that you had mistaken
+fancy or friendship for affection, a sentiment for love.  Evelyn, I have
+confided to you all,--all this wild heart, now and evermore your own.  My
+destiny is with you."
+
+Evelyn was silent; he took her hand, and her tears fell warm and fast
+upon it.  Alarmed and anxious, he drew her towards him and gazed upon her
+face.
+
+"You fear to wound me," he said, with pale lips and trembling voice.
+"Speak on,--I can bear all."
+
+"No, no," said Evelyn, falteringly; "I have no fear but not to deserve
+you."
+
+"You love me, then,--you love me!" cried Maltravers wildly, and clasping
+her to his heart.
+
+The moon rose at that instant, and the wintry sward and the dark trees
+were bathed in the sudden light.  The time--the light--so exquisite to
+all, even in loneliness and in sorrow--how divine in such companionship!
+in such overflowing and ineffable sense of bliss!  There and then for the
+first time did Maltravers press upon that modest and blushing cheek the
+kiss of Love, of Hope,--the seal of a union he fondly hoped the grave
+itself could not dissolve!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+  _Queen_.  Whereon do you look?
+  _Hamlet_. On him, on him,--look you how pale he glares!--_Hamlet_.
+
+PERHAPS to Maltravers those few minutes which ensued, as they walked
+slowly on, compensated for all the troubles and cares of years; for
+natures like his feel joy even yet more intensely than sorrow.  It might
+be that the transport, the delirium of passionate and grateful thoughts
+that he poured forth, when at last he could summon words, expressed
+feelings the young Evelyn could not comprehend, and which less delighted
+than terrified her with the new responsibility she had incurred.  But
+love so honest, so generous, so intense, dazzled and bewildered and
+carried her whole soul away.  Certainly at that hour she felt no
+regret--no thought but that one in whom she had so long recognized
+something nobler than is found in the common world was thus happy and
+thus made happy by a word, a look from her!  Such a thought is woman's
+dearest triumph; and one so thoroughly unselfish, so yielding, and so
+soft, could not be insensible to the rapture she had caused.
+
+"And oh!" said Maltravers, as he clasped again and again the hand that he
+believed he had won forever, "now, at length, have I learned how
+beautiful is life!  For this--for this I have been reserved!  Heaven is
+merciful to me, and the waking world is brighter than all my dreams!"
+
+He ceased abruptly.  At that instant they were once more on the terrace
+where he had first joined Teresa, facing the wood, which was divided by a
+slight and low palisade from the spot where they stood.  He ceased
+abruptly, for his eyes encountered a terrible and ominous apparition,--a
+form connected with dreary associations of fate and woe.  The figure had
+raised itself upon a pile of firewood on the other side of the fence, and
+hence it seemed almost gigantic in its stature.  It gazed upon the pair
+with eyes that burned with a preternatural blaze, and a voice which
+Maltravers too well remembered shrieked out "Love! love!  What! _thou_
+love again?  Where is the Dead!  Ha, ha!  Where is the Dead?"
+
+Evelyn, startled by the words, looked up, and clung in speechless terror
+to Maltravers.  He remained rooted to the spot.
+
+"Unhappy man," said he, at length, and soothingly, "how came you hither?
+Fly not, you are with friends."
+
+"Friends!" said the maniac, with a scornful laugh.  "I know thee, Ernest
+Maltravers,--I know thee: but it is not thou who hast locked me up in
+darkness and in hell, side by side with the mocking fiend!  Friends! ah,
+but no Friends shall catch me now!  I am free!  I am free!  Air and wave
+are not more free!"  And the madman laughed with horrible glee.  "She is
+fair--fair," he said, abruptly checking himself, and with a changed
+voice, "but not so fair as the Dead.  Faithless that thou art--and yet
+she loved _thee_!  Woe to thee! woe!  Maltravers, the perfidious!  Woe to
+thee--and remorse--and shame!"
+
+"Fear not, Evelyn,--fear not," whispered Maltravers, gently, and placing
+her behind him; "support your courage,--nothing shall harm you."
+
+Evelyn, though very pale, and trembling from head to foot, retained her
+senses.  Maltravers advanced towards the mad man.  But no sooner did the
+quick eye of the last perceive the movement, than, with the fear which
+belongs to that dread disease,--the fear of losing liberty,--he turned,
+and with a loud cry fled into the wood.  Maltravers leaped over the
+fence, and pursued him some way in vain.  The thick copses of the wood
+snatched every trace of the fugitive from his eye.
+
+Breathless and exhausted, Maltravers returned to the spot where he had
+left Evelyn.  As he reached it, he saw Teresa and her husband approaching
+towards him, and Teresa's merry laugh sounded clear and musical in the
+racy air.  The sound appalled him; he hastened his steps to Evelyn.
+
+"Say nothing of what we have seen to Madame de Montaigne, I beseech you,"
+said he; "I will explain why hereafter."
+
+Evelyn, too overcome to speak, nodded her acquiescence.  They joined the
+De Montaignes, and Maltravers took the Frenchman aside.
+
+But before he could address him, De Montaigne said,--
+
+"Hush! do not alarm my wife--she knows nothing; but I have just heard at
+Paris, that--that he has escaped--you know whom I mean?"
+
+"I do; he is at hand; send in search of him!  I have seen him.  Once more
+I have seen Castruccio Cesarini!"
+
+
+
+BOOK IX.
+
+  "Woe, woe: all things are clear."--SOPHOCLES: OEd. Tyr. 754.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+  THE privilege that statesmen ever claim,
+  Who private interest never yet pursued,
+  But still pretended 'twas for others' good.
+  .  .  .  .  .  .
+  From hence on every humorous wind that veered
+  With shifted sails a several course you steered.
+                 _Absalom and Achitophel_, Part ii.
+
+LORD VARGRAVE had for more than a fortnight remained at the inn at
+M-----, too ill to be removed with safety in a season so severe.  Even
+when at last, by easy stages, he reached London, he was subjected to a
+relapse; and his recovery was slow and gradual.  Hitherto unused to
+sickness, he bore his confinement with extreme impatience; and against
+the commands of his physician insisted on continuing to transact his
+official business, and consult with his political friends in his
+sick-room; for Lumley knew well, that it is most pernicious to public men
+to be considered failing in health,--turkeys are not more unfeeling to a
+sick brother than politicians to an ailing statesman; they give out that
+his head is touched, and see paralysis and epilepsy in every speech and
+every despatch.  The time, too, nearly ripe for his great schemes, made
+it doubly necessary that he should exert himself, and prevent being
+shelved with a plausible excuse of tender compassion for his infirmities.
+As soon therefore as he learned that Legard had left Paris, he thought
+himself safe for a while in that quarter, and surrendered his thoughts
+wholly to his ambitious projects.  Perhaps, too, with the susceptible
+vanity of a middle-aged man, who has had his _bonnes fortunes_, Lumley
+deemed, with Rousseau, that a lover, pale and haggard--just raised from
+the bed of suffering--is more interesting to friendship than attractive
+to love.  He and Rousseau were, I believe, both mistaken; but that is a
+matter of opinion: they both thought very coarsely of women,--one from
+having no sentiment, and the other from having a sentiment that was but a
+disease.  At length, just as Lumley was sufficiently recovered to quit
+his house, to appear at his office, and declare that his illness had
+wonderfully improved his constitution, intelligence from Paris, the more
+startling from being wholly unexpected, reached him.  From Caroline he
+learned that Maltravers had proposed to Evelyn, and been accepted.  From
+Maltravers himself he heard the confirmation of the news.  The last
+letter was short, but kind and manly.  He addressed Lord Vargrave as
+Evelyn's guardian; slightly alluded to the scruples he had entertained
+till Lord Vargrave's suit was broken off; and feeling the subject too
+delicate for a letter, expressed a desire to confer with Lumley
+respecting Evelyn's wishes as to certain arrangements in her property.
+
+And for this was it that Lumley had toiled! for this had he visited Lisle
+Court! and for this had he been stricken down to the bed of pain!  Was it
+only to make his old rival the purchaser, if he so pleased it, of the
+possessions of his own family?  Lumley thought at that moment less of
+Evelyn than of Lisle Court.  As he woke from the stupor and the first fit
+of rage into which these epistles cast him, the recollection of the story
+he had heard from Mr. Onslow flashed across him.  Were his suspicions
+true, what a secret he would possess! How fate might yet befriend him!
+Not a moment was to be lost.  Weak, suffering as he still was, he ordered
+his carriage, and hastened down to Mrs. Leslie.
+
+In the interview that took place, he was careful not to alarm her into
+discretion.  He managed the conference with his usual consummate
+dexterity.  He did not appear to believe that there had been any actual
+connection between Alice and the supposed Butler.  He began by simply
+asking whether Alice had ever, in early life, been acquainted with a
+person of that name, and when residing in the neighbourhood of -----.
+The change of countenance, the surprised start of Mrs. Leslie, convinced
+him that his suspicions were true.
+
+"And why do you ask, my lord?" said the old lady.  "Is it to ascertain
+this point that you have done me the honour to visit me?"
+
+"Not exactly, my dear madam," said Lumley, smiling.  "But I am going to
+C----- on business; and besides that I wished to give an account of your
+health to Evelyn, whom I shall shortly see at Paris, I certainly did
+desire to know whether it would be any gratification to Lady Vargrave,
+for whom I have the deepest regard, to renew her acquaintance with the
+said Mr. Butler."
+
+"What does your lordship know of him?  What is he; who is he?"
+
+"Ah, my dear lady, you turn the tables on me, I see,--for my one question
+you would give me fifty.  But, seriously, before I answer you, you must
+tell me whether Lady Vargrave does know a gentleman of that name; yet,
+indeed, to save trouble, I may as well inform you, that I know it was
+under that name that she resided at C-----, when my poor uncle first made
+her acquaintance.  What I ought to ask is this,--supposing Mr. Butler be
+still alive, and a gentleman of character and fortune, would it please
+Lady Vargrave to meet with him once more?"
+
+"I cannot tell you," said Mrs. Leslie, sinking back in her chair, much
+embarrassed.
+
+"Enough, I shall not stir further in the matter.  Glad to see you looking
+so well.  Fine place, beautiful trees.  Any commands at C-----, or any
+message for Evelyn?"
+
+Lumley rose to depart.
+
+"Stay," said Mrs. Leslie, recalling all the pining, restless, untiring
+love that Lady Vargrave had manifested towards the lost, and feeling that
+she ought not to sacrifice to slight scruples the chance of happiness for
+her friend's future years,--"stay; I think this question you should
+address to Lady Vargrave,--or shall I?"
+
+"As you will,--perhaps I had better write.  Good-day," and Vargrave
+hurried away.
+
+He had satisfied himself, but he had another yet to satisfy,--and that,
+from certain reasons known but to himself, without bringing the third
+person in contact with Lady Vargrave.  On arriving at C----- he wrote,
+therefore, to Lady Vargrave as follows:--
+
+
+MY DEAR FRIEND,--Do not think me impertinent or intrusive--but you know
+me too well for that.  A gentleman of the name of Butler is exceedingly
+anxious to ascertain if you once lived near -----, in a pretty little
+cottage,--Dove, or Dale, or Dell cottage (some such appellation),--and if
+you remember a person of his name.  Should you care to give a reply to
+these queries, send me a line addressed to London, which I shall get on
+my way to Paris.
+
+     Yours most truly,
+
+          VARGRAVE.
+
+
+As soon as he had concluded, and despatched this letter, Vargrave wrote
+to Mr. Winsley as follows:--
+
+
+MY DEAR SIR,--I am so unwell as to be unable to call on you, or even to
+see any one, however agreeable (nay, the more agreeable the more
+exciting!).  I hope, however, to renew our personal acquaintance before
+quitting C-----.  Meanwhile, oblige me with a line to say if I did not
+understand you to signify that you could, if necessary, prove that Lady
+Vargrave once resided in this town as Mrs. Butler, a very short time
+before she married my uncle, under the name of Cameron, in Devonshire;
+and had she not also at that time a little girl,--an infant, or nearly
+so,--who must necessarily be the young lady who is my uncle's heiress,
+Miss Evelyn Cameron.  My reason for thus troubling you is obvious.  As
+Miss Cameron's guardian, I have very shortly to wind up certain affairs
+connected with my uncle's will; and, what is more, there is some property
+bequeathed by the late Mr. Butler, which may make it necessary to prove
+identity.
+
+     Truly yours,
+
+          VARGRAVE.
+
+
+The answer to the latter communication ran thus:--
+
+
+"MY LORD,--I am very sorry to hear your lordship is so unwell, and will
+pay my respects to-morrow.  I certainly can swear that the present Lady
+Vargrave was the Mrs. Butler who resided at C-----, and taught music.
+And as the child with her was of the same sex, and about the same age as
+Miss Cameron, there can, I should think, be no difficulty in establishing
+the identity between that young lady and the child Lady Vargrave had by
+her first husband, Mr. Butler; but of this, of course, I cannot speak.
+
+     "I have the honour, etc."
+
+
+The next morning Vargrave despatched a note to Mr. Winsley, saying that
+his health required him to return to town immediately,--and to town, in
+fact, he hastened.  The day after his arrival, he received, in a hurried
+hand--strangely blurred and blotted, perhaps by tears--this short
+letter:--
+
+
+For Heaven's sake, tell me what you mean!  Yes, yes, I did once reside at
+Dale Cottage, I did know one of the name of Butler!  Has _he_ discovered
+the name _I_ bear?  Where is he?  I implore you to write, or let me see
+you before you leave England!
+
+          ALICE VARGRAVE.
+
+
+Lumley smiled triumphantly when he read and carefully put up this letter.
+
+"I must now amuse and put her off--at all events for the present."
+
+In answer to Lady Vargrave's letter, he wrote a few lines to say that he
+had only heard through a third person (a lawyer) of a Mr. Butler residing
+somewhere abroad, who had wished these inquiries to be made; that he
+believed it only related to some disposition of property; that,
+_perhaps_, the Mr. Butler who made the inquiry was heir to the Mr. Butler
+she had known; that he could learn nothing else at present, as the
+purport of her reply must be sent abroad,--the lawyer would or could say
+nothing more; that directly he received a further communication it should
+be despatched to her, that he was most affectionately and most truly
+hers.
+
+The rest of that morning Vargrave devoted to Lord Saxingham and his
+allies; and declaring, and believing, that he should not be long absent
+at Paris, he took an early dinner, and was about once more to commit
+himself to the risks of travel, when, as he crossed the hall, Mr. Douce
+came hastily upon him.
+
+"My lord--my lord--I must have a word with your l-l-lordship;--you are
+going to--that is--" (and the little man looked frightened) "you intend
+to--to go to--that is--ab-ab-ab--"
+
+"Not abscond, Mr. Douce; come into the library: I am in a great hurry,
+but I have always time for _you_.  What's the matter?"
+
+"Why, then, my  lord,--I--I have heard nothing m-m-more from your
+lordship about the pur-pur--"
+
+"Purchase?--I am going to Paris, to settle all particulars with Miss
+Cameron; tell the lawyers so."
+
+"May--may--we draw out the money to--to--show--that--that we are in
+earnest?  Otherwise I fear--that is, I suspect--I mean I know, that
+Colonel Maltravers will be off the bargain."
+
+"Why, Mr. Douce, really I must just see my ward first; but you shall hear
+from me in a day or two;--and the ten thousand pounds I owe you!"
+
+"Yes, indeed, the  ten--ten--ten!--my  partner is very--"
+
+"Anxious for it, no doubt!  My compliments to him.  God bless you!--take
+care of yourself,--must be off to save the packet;" and Vargrave hurried
+away, muttering, "Heaven sends money, and the devil sends duns!"
+
+Douce gasped like a fish for breath, as his eyes followed the rapid steps
+of Vargrave; and there was an angry scowl of disappointment on his small
+features.  Lumley, by this time, seated in his carriage, and wrapped up
+in his cloak, had forgotten the creditor's existence, and whispered to
+his aristocratic secretary, as he bent his head out of the carriage
+window, "I have told Lord Saxingham to despatch you to me, if there is
+any--the least--necessity for me in London.  I leave you behind, Howard,
+because your sister being at court, and your cousin with our notable
+premier, you will find out every change in the wind--you understand.
+And, I say, Howard, don't think I forget your kindness!--you know that no
+man ever served me in vain!  Oh, there's that horrid little Douce behind
+you,--tell them to drive on!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+            HEARD you that?
+  What prodigy of horror is disclosing?--LILLO: _Fatal Curiosity_.
+
+THE unhappy companion of Cesarini's flight was soon discovered and
+recaptured; but all search for Cesarini himself proved ineffectual, not
+only in the neighbourhood of St. Cloud, but in the surrounding country
+and in Paris.  The only comfort was in thinking that his watch would at
+least preserve him for some time from the horrors of want; and that by
+the sale of the trinket, he might be traced.  The police, too, were set
+at work,--the vigilant police of Paris!  Still day rolled on day, and no
+tidings.  The secret of the escape was carefully concealed from Teresa;
+and public cares were a sufficient excuse for the gloom on De Montaigne's
+brow.
+
+Evelyn heard from Maltravers with mingled emotions of compassion, grief,
+and awe the gloomy tale connected with the history of the maniac.  She
+wept for the fate of Florence; she shuddered at the curse that had fallen
+on Cesarini; and perhaps Maltravers grew dearer to her from the thought
+that there was so much in the memories of the past that needed a
+comforter and a soother.
+
+They returned to Paris, affianced and plighted lovers; and then it was
+that Evelyn sought carefully and resolutely to banish from her mind all
+recollection, all regret, of the absent Legard: she felt the solemnity of
+the trust confided in her, and she resolved that no thought of hers
+should ever be of a nature to gall the generous and tender spirit that
+had confided its life of life to her care.  The influence of Maltravers
+over her increased in their new and more familiar position, and yet still
+it partook too much of veneration, too little of passion; but that might
+be her innocence and youth.  He, at least, was sensible of no want,--she
+had chosen him from the world; and fastidious as he deemed himself, he
+reposed, without a doubt, on the security of her faith.  None of those
+presentiments which had haunted him when first betrothed to Florence
+disturbed him now.  The affection of one so young and so guileless seemed
+to bring back to him all his own youth--we are ever young while the young
+can love us!  Suddenly, too, the world took to his eyes a brighter and
+fairer aspect.  Hope, born again, reconciled him to his career and to his
+race!  The more he listened to Evelyn, the more he watched every evidence
+of her docile but generous nature, the more he felt assured that he had
+found at last a heart suited to his own.  Her beautiful serenity of
+temper, cheerful, yet never fitful or unquiet, gladdened him with its
+insensible contagion.  To be with Evelyn was like basking in the sunshine
+of some happy sky!  It was an inexpressible charm to one wearied with
+"the hack sights and sounds" of this jaded world,--to watch the
+ever-fresh and sparkling the thoughts and fancies which came from a soul
+so new to life!  It enchanted one, painfully fastidious in what relates
+to the true nobility of character, that, however various the themes
+discussed, no low or mean thought ever sullied those beautiful lips.  It
+was not the mere innocence of inexperience, but the moral incapability of
+guile, that charmed him in the companion he had chosen on his path to
+Eternity!  He was also delighted to notice Evelyn's readiness of
+resources: she had that faculty, without which woman has no independence
+from the world, no pledge that domestic retirement will not soon languish
+into wearisome monotony,--the faculty of making trifles contribute to
+occupation or amusement; she was easily pleased, and yet she so soon
+reconciled herself to disappointment.  He felt, and chid his own dulness
+for not feeling it before, that, young and surpassingly lovely as she
+was, she required no stimulant from the heated pursuits and the hollow
+admiration of the crowd.
+
+"Such," thought he, "are the natures that alone can preserve through
+years the poetry of the first passionate illusion, that can alone render
+wedlock the seal that confirms affection, and not the mocking ceremonial
+that vainly consecrates its grave!"
+
+Maltravers, as we have seen, formally wrote to Lumley some days after
+their return to Paris.  He would have written also to Lady Vargrave, but
+Evelyn thought it best to prepare her mother by a letter from herself.
+
+Miss Cameron now wanted but a few weeks to the age of eighteen, at which
+she was to be the sole mistress of her own destiny.  On arriving at that
+age the marriage was to take place.  Valerie heard with sincere delight
+of the new engagement her friend had formed.  She eagerly sought every
+opportunity to increase her intimacy with Evelyn, who was completely won
+by her graceful kindness; the result of Valerie's examination was, that
+she did not wonder at the passionate love of Maltravers, but that her
+deep knowledge of the human heart (that knowledge so remarkable in the
+women of her country!) made her doubt how far it was adequately returned,
+how far Evelyn deceived herself.  Her first satisfaction became mingled
+with anxiety, and she relied more for the future felicity of her friend
+on Evelyn's purity of thought and general tenderness of heart than on the
+exclusiveness and ardour of her love.  Alas! few at eighteen are not too
+young for the irrevocable step,--and Evelyn was younger than her years!
+One evening at Madame de Ventadour's Maltravers asked Evelyn if she had
+yet heard from Lady Vargrave.  Evelyn expressed her surprise that she had
+not, and the conversation fell, as was natural, upon Lady Vargrave
+herself.  "Is she as fond of music as you are?" asked Maltravers.
+
+"Yes, indeed, I think so--and of the songs of a certain person in
+particular; they always had for her an indescribable charm.  Often have I
+heard her say that to read your writings was like talking to an early
+friend.  Your name and genius seemed to make her solitary connection with
+the great world.  Nay--but you will not be angry--I half think it was her
+enthusiasm, so strange and rare, that first taught me interest in
+yourself."
+
+"I have a double reason, then, for loving your mother," said Maltravers,
+much pleased and flattered.  "And does she not like Italian music?"
+
+"Not much; she prefers some rather old-fashioned German airs, very
+simple, but very touching."
+
+"My own early passion," said Maltravers, more and more interested.
+
+"But there are also one or two English songs which I have occasionally,
+but very seldom, heard her sing.  One in especial affects her so deeply,
+even when she plays the air, that I have always attached to it a certain
+mysterious sanctity.  I should not like to sing it before a crowd, but
+to-morrow, when you call on me, and we are alone--"
+
+"Ah, to-morrow I will not fail to remind you."
+
+Their conversation ceased; yet, somehow or other, that night when he
+retired to rest the recollection of it haunted Maltravers.  He felt a
+vague, unaccountable curiosity respecting this secluded and solitary
+mother; all concerning her early fate seemed so wrapped in mystery.
+Cleveland, in reply to his letter, had informed him that all inquiries
+respecting the birth and first marriage of Lady Vargrave had failed.
+Evelyn evidently knew but little of either, and he felt a certain
+delicacy in pressing questions which might be ascribed to the
+inquisitiveness of a vulgar family pride.  Moreover, lovers have so much
+to say to each other, that he had not time to talk at length to Evelyn
+about third persons.  He slept ill that night,--dark and boding dreams
+disturbed his slumber.  He rose late and dejected by presentiments he
+could not master: his morning meal was scarcely over, and he had already
+taken his hat to go to Evelyn's for comfort and sunshine, when the door
+opened, and he was surprised by the entrance of Lord Vargrave.
+
+Lumley seated himself with a formal gravity very unusual to him, and as
+if anxious to waive unnecessary explanations, began as follows, with a
+serious and impressive voice and aspect:--
+
+"Maltravers, of late years we have been estranged from each other.  I do
+not presume to dictate to you your friendships or your dislikes.  Why
+this estrangement has happened you alone can determine.  For my part I am
+conscious of no offence; that which I was I am still.  It is you who have
+changed.  Whether it be the difference of our political opinions, or any
+other and more secret cause, I know not.  I lament, but it is now too
+late to attempt to remove it.  If you suspect me of ever seeking, or even
+wishing, to sow dissension between yourself and my ill-fated cousin, now
+no more, you are mistaken.  I ever sought the happiness and union of you
+both.  And yet, Maltravers, you then came between me and an early and
+cherished dream.  But I suffered in silence; my course was at least
+disinterested, perhaps generous: let it pass.  A second time you cross my
+path,--you win from me a heart I had long learned to consider mine.  You
+have no scruple of early friendship, you have no forbearance towards
+acknowledged and affianced ties.  You are my rival with Evelyn Cameron,
+and your suit has prospered."
+
+"Vargrave," said Maltravers, "you have spoken frankly; and I will reply
+with an equal candour.  A difference of tastes, tempers, and opinions led
+us long since into opposite paths.  I am one who cannot disunite public
+morality from private virtue.  From motives best known to you, but which
+I say openly I hold to have been those of interest or ambition, you did
+not change your opinions (there is no sin in that), but retaining them in
+private, professed others in public, and played with the destinies of
+mankind as if they were but counters to mark a mercenary game.  This led
+me to examine your character with more searching eyes; and I found it one
+I could no longer trust.  With respect to the Dead, let the pall drop
+over that early grave,--I acquit you of all blame.  He who sinned has
+suffered more than would atone the crime!  You charge me with my love to
+Evelyn.  Pardon me, but I seduced no affection, I have broken no tie.
+Not till she was free in heart and in hand to choose between us, did I
+hint at love.  Let me think that a way may be found to soften one portion
+at least of the disappointment you cannot but feel acutely."
+
+"Stay!" said Lord Vargrave (who, plunged in a gloomy revery, had scarcely
+seemed to hear the last few sentences of his rival): "stay, Maltravers.
+Speak not of love to Evelyn!  A horrible foreboding tells me that, a few
+hours hence, you would rather pluck out your tongue by the roots than
+couple the words of love with the thought of that unfortunate girl!  Oh,
+if I were vindictive, what awful triumph would await me now!  What
+retaliation on your harsh judgment, your cold contempt, your momentary
+and wretched victory over me!  Heaven is my witness, that my only
+sentiment is that of terror and woe!  Maltravers, in your earliest youth,
+did you form connection with one whom they called Alice Darvil?"
+
+"Alice! merciful Heaven! what of her?"
+
+"Did you never know that the Christian name of Evelyn's mother is Alice?"
+
+"I never asked, I never knew; but it is a common name," faltered
+Maltravers.
+
+"Listen to me," resumed Vargrave: "with Alice Darvil you lived in the
+neighbourhood of -----, did you not?"
+
+"Go on, go on!"
+
+"You took the name of Butler; by that name Alice Darvil was afterwards
+known in the town in which my uncle resided--there are gaps in the
+history that I cannot of my own knowledge fill up,--she taught music; my
+uncle became enamoured of her, but he was vain and worldly.  She removed
+into Devonshire, and he married her there, under the name of Cameron, by
+which name he hoped to conceal from the world the lowness of her origin,
+and the humble calling she had followed.  Hold! do not interrupt me.
+Alice had one daughter, as was supposed, by a former marriage; that
+daughter was the offspring of him whose name she bore--yes, of the false
+Butler!--that daughter is Evelyn Cameron!"
+
+"Liar! devil!" cried Maltravers, springing to his feet, as if a shot had
+pierced his heart.  "Proofs! proofs!"
+
+"Will these suffice?" said Vargrave, as he drew forth the letters of
+Winsley and Lady Vargrave.  Maltravers took them, but it was some moments
+before he could dare to read.  He supported himself with difficulty from
+falling to the ground; there was a gurgle in his throat like the sound of
+the death-rattle; at last he read, and dropped the letters from his hand.
+
+"Wait me here," he said very faintly, and moved mechanically to the door.
+
+"Hold!" said Lord Vargrave, laying his hand upon Ernest's arm.  "Listen
+to me for Evelyn's sake, for her mother's.  You are about to seek
+Evelyn,--be it so!  I know that you possess the god-like gift of
+self-control.  You will not suffer her to learn that her mother has done
+that which dishonours alike mother and child?  You will not consummate
+your wrong to Alice Darvil by robbing her of the fruit of a life of
+penitence and remorse?  You will not unveil her shame to her own
+daughter?  Convince yourself, and master yourself while you do so!"
+
+"Fear me not," said Maltravers, with a terrible smile; "I will not
+afflict my conscience with a double curse.  As I have sowed, so must I
+reap.  Wait me here!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+  .  .  .  MISERY
+  That gathers force each moment as it rolls,
+  And must, at last, o'erwhelm me.--LILLO: _Fatal Curiosity_.
+
+MALTRAVERS found Evelyn alone; she turned towards him with her usual
+sweet smile of welcome; but the smile vanished at once, as her eyes met
+his changed and working countenance; cold drops stood upon the rigid and
+marble brow, the lips writhed as if in bodily torture, the muscles of the
+face had fallen, and there was a wildness which appalled her in the fixed
+and feverish brightness of the eyes.
+
+"You are ill, Ernest,--dear Ernest, you are ill,--your look freezes me!"
+
+"Nay, Evelyn," said Maltravers, recovering himself by one of those
+efforts of which men who have _suffered without sympathy_ are alone
+capable,--"nay, I am better now; I have been ill--very ill--but I am
+better!"
+
+"Ill! and I not know of it?" She attempted to take his hand as she spoke.
+Maltravers recoiled.
+
+"It is fire! it burns!  Avaunt!" he cried, frantically.  "O Heaven!
+spare me, spare me!"
+
+Evelyn was not seriously alarmed; she gazed on him with the tenderest
+compassion.  Was this one of those moody and overwhelming paroxysms to
+which it had been whispered abroad that he was subject?  Strange as it
+may seem, despite her terror, he was dearer to her in that hour--as she
+believed, of gloom and darkness--than in all the glory of his majestic
+intellect, or all the blandishments of his soft address.
+
+"What has happened to you?" she said, approaching him again; "have you
+seen Lord Vargrave?  I know that he has arrived, for his servant has been
+here to say so; has he uttered anything to distress you? or has--" (she
+added falteringly and timidly)--"has poor Evelyn offended you?  Speak to
+me,--only speak!"
+
+Maltravers turned, and his face was now calm and serene save by its
+extreme and almost ghastly paleness, no trace of the hell within him
+could be discovered.
+
+"Pardon me," said he, gently, "I know not this morning what I say or do;
+think not of it, think not of me,--it will pass away when I hear your
+voice."
+
+"Shall I sing to you the words I spoke of last night?  See, I have them
+ready; I know them by heart, but I thought you might like to read them,
+they are so full of simple but deep feeling."
+
+Maltravers took the song from her hands, and bent over the paper; at
+first, the letters seemed dim and indistinct, for there was a mist before
+his eyes; but at last a chord of memory was struck,--he recalled the
+words: they were some of those he had composed for Alice in the first
+days of their delicious intercourse,--links of the golden chain, in which
+he had sought to bind the spirit of knowledge to that of love.
+
+"And from whom," said he, in a faint voice, as he calmly put down the
+verses,--"from whom did your mother learn these words?"
+
+"I know not; some dear friend, years ago, composed and gave them to her.
+It must have been one very dear to her, to judge by the effect they still
+produce."
+
+"Think you," said Maltravers, in a hollow voice, "think you IT WAS YOUR
+FATHER?"
+
+"My father!  She never speaks of him!  I have been early taught to shun
+all allusion to his memory.  My father!--it is probable; yes, it may have
+been my father; whom else could she have loved so fondly?"
+
+There was a long silence; Evelyn was the first to break it.
+
+"I have heard from my mother to-day, Ernest; her letter alarms me,--I
+scarce know why!"
+
+"Ah! and how--"
+
+"It is hurried and incoherent,--almost wild: she says she has learned
+some intelligence that has unsettled and unstrung her mind; she has
+requested me to inquire if any one I am acquainted with has heard of, or
+met abroad, some person of the name of Butler.  You start!--have you
+known one of that name?"
+
+"I!--did your mother never allude to that name before?"
+
+"Never!--and yet, once I remember--"
+
+"What?"
+
+That I was reading an account in the papers of the sudden death of some
+Mr. Butler; and her agitation made a powerful and strange impression upon
+me,--in fact, she fainted, and seemed almost delirious when she
+recovered; she would not rest till I had completed the account, and when
+I came to the particulars of his age, etc. (he was old, I think) she
+clasped her hands, and wept; but they seemed tears of joy.  The name is
+so common--whom of that name have you known?"
+
+"It is no matter.  Is that your mother's letter; is that her
+handwriting?"
+
+"Yes;" and Evelyn gave the letter to Maltravers.  He glanced over the
+characters; he had once or twice seen Lady Vargrave's handwriting before,
+and had recognized no likeness between that handwriting and such early
+specimens of Alice's art as he had witnessed so many years ago; but now,
+"trifles light as air" had grown "confirmation strong as proof of Holy
+Writ,"--he thought he detected Alice in every line of the hurried and
+blotted scroll; and when his eye rested on the words, "Your affectionate
+MOTHER, _Alice_!" his blood curdled in his veins.
+
+"It is strange!" said he, still struggling for self-composure; "strange
+that I never thought of asking her name before!  Alice! her name is
+Alice?"
+
+"A sweet name, is it not?  It accords so well with her simple
+character--how you would love her!"
+
+As she said this, Evelyn turned to Maltravers with enthusiasm, and again
+she was startled by his aspect; for again it was haggard, distorted, and
+convulsed.
+
+"Oh, if you love me," she cried, "do send immediately for advice!  And
+yet; is it illness, Ernest, or is it some grief that you hide from me?"
+
+"It is illness, Evelyn," said Maltravers, rising: and his knees knocked
+together.  "I am not fit even for your companionship,--I will go home."
+
+"And send instantly for advice?"
+
+"Ay; it waits me there already."
+
+"Thank Heaven! and you will write to me one little word--to relieve me?
+I am so uneasy!"
+
+"I will write to you."
+
+"This evening?"
+
+"Ay!"
+
+"Now go,--I will not detain you."
+
+He walked slowly to the door, but when he reached it he turned, and
+catching her anxious gaze, he opened his arms; overpowered with strange
+fear and affectionate sympathy, she burst into passionate tears; and
+surprised out of the timidity and reserve which had hitherto
+characterized her pure and meek attachment to him, she fell on his
+breast, and sobbed aloud.  Maltravers raised his hands, and, placing them
+solemnly on her young head, his lips muttered as if in prayer.  He
+paused, and strained her to his heart; but he shunned that parting kiss,
+which, hitherto, he had so fondly sought.  That embrace was one of agony,
+and not of rapture; and yet Evelyn dreamed not that he designed it for
+the last!
+
+
+
+Maltravers re-entered the room in which he had left Lord Vargrave, who
+still awaited his return.
+
+He walked up to Lumley, and held out his hand.  "You have saved me from a
+dreadful crime,--from an everlasting remorse.  I thank you!"
+
+Hardened and frigid as his nature was, Lumley was touched; the movement
+of Maltravers took him by surprise.  "It has been a dreadful duty,
+Ernest," said he, pressing the hand he held; "but to come, too, from
+_me_,--your rival!"
+
+"Proceed, proceed, I pray you; explain all this--yet explanation! what do
+I want to know?  Evelyn is my daughter,--Alice's child!  For Heaven's
+sake, give me hope; say it is not so; say that she is Alice's child, but
+not _mine_!  Father! father!--and they call it a holy name--it is a
+horrible one!"
+
+"Compose yourself, my dear friend: recollect what you have escaped!  You
+will recover this shock.  Time, travel--"
+
+"Peace, man,--peace!  Now then I am calm!  When Alice left me she had no
+child.  I knew not that she bore within her the pledge of our ill-omened
+and erring love.  Verily, the sins of my youth have arisen against me;
+and the curse has come home to roost!"
+
+"I cannot explain to you all details."
+
+"But why not have told me of this?  Why not have warned me; why not have
+said to me, when my heart could have been satisfied by so sweet a tie,
+'Thou hast a daughter: thou art not desolate'?  Why reserve the knowledge
+of the blessing until it has turned to poison?  Fiend that you are! you
+have waited this hour to gloat over the agony from which a word from you
+a year, nay, a month ago--a little month ago--might have saved me and
+her!"
+
+Maltravers, as he spoke, approached Vargrave, with eyes sparkling with
+fierce passion, his hand clenched, his form dilated, the veins on his
+forehead swelled like cords.  Lumley, brave as he was, recoiled.
+
+"I knew not of this secret," said he, deprecatingly, "till a few days
+before I came hither; and I came hither at once to disclose it to you.
+Will you listen to me?  I knew that my uncle had married a person much
+beneath him in rank; but he was guarded and cautious, and I knew no more,
+except that by a first husband that lady had one daughter,--Evelyn.  A
+chain of accidents suddenly acquainted me with the rest."
+
+Here Vargrave pretty faithfully repeated what he had learned from the
+brewer at C-----, and from Mr. Onslow; but when he came to the tacit
+confirmation of all his suspicions received from Mrs. Leslie, he greatly
+exaggerated and greatly distorted the account.  "Judge, then," concluded
+Lumley, "of the horror with which I heard that you had declared an
+attachment to Evelyn, and that it was returned.  Ill as I was, I hastened
+hither: you know the rest.  Are you satisfied?"
+
+"I will go to Alice!  I will learn from her own lips--yet, how can I meet
+her again?  How say to her, 'I have taken from thee thy last hope,--I
+have broken thy child's heart'?"
+
+"Forgive me, but I should confess to you, that, from all I can learn from
+Mrs. Leslie, Lady Vargrave has but one prayer, one hope in life,--that
+she may never again meet with her betrayer.  You may, indeed, in her own
+letter perceive how much she is terrified by the thought of your
+discovering her.  She has, at length, recovered peace of mind and
+tranquillity of conscience.  She shrinks with dread from the prospect of
+ever again encountering one once so dear, now associated in her mind with
+recollections of guilt and sorrow.  More than this, she is sensitively
+alive to the fear of shame, to the dread of detection.  If ever her
+daughter were to know her sin, it would be to her as a death-blow.  Yet
+in her nervous state of health, her ever-quick and uncontrollable
+feelings, if you were to meet her, she would disguise nothing, conceal
+nothing.  The veil would be torn aside: the menials in her own house
+would tell the tale, and curiosity circulate, and scandal blacken the
+story of her early errors.  No, Maltravers, at least wait awhile before
+you see her; wait till her mind can be prepared for such an interview,
+till precautions can be taken, till you yourself are in a calmer state of
+mind."
+
+Maltravers fixed his piercing eyes on Lumley while he thus spoke, and
+listened in deep attention.
+
+"It matters not," said he, after a long pause, "whether these be your
+real reasons for wishing to defer or prevent a meeting between Alice and
+myself.  The affliction that has come upon me bursts with too clear and
+scorching a blaze of light for me to see any chance of escape or
+mitigation.  Even if Evelyn were the daughter of Alice by another, she
+would be forever separated from me.  The mother and the child! there is a
+kind of incest even in that thought!  But such an alleviation of my
+anguish is forbidden to my reason.  No, poor Alice, I will not disturb
+the repose thou hast won at last!  Thou shalt never have the grief to
+know that our error has brought upon thy lover so black a doom!  All is
+over! the world never shall find me again.  Nothing is left for me but
+the desert and the grave!"
+
+"Speak not so, Ernest," said Lord Vargrave, soothingly; "a little while,
+and you will recover this blow: your control over passion has, even in
+youth, inspired me with admiration and surprise; and now, in calmer
+years, and with such incentives to self-mastery, your triumph will come
+sooner than you think.  Evelyn, too, is so young; she has not known you
+long; perhaps her love, after all, is that caused by some mystic, but
+innocent working of nature, and she would rejoice to call you 'father.'
+Happy years are yet in store for you."
+
+Maltravers did not listen to these vain and hollow consolations.  With
+his head drooping on his bosom, his whole form unnerved, the large tears
+rolling unheeded down his cheeks, he seemed the very picture of a
+broken-hearted man, whom fate never again could raise from despair.  He,
+who had, for years, so cased himself in pride, on whose very front was
+engraved the victory over passion and misfortune, whose step had trod the
+earth in the royalty of the conqueror; the veriest slave that crawls bore
+not a spirit more humbled, fallen, or subdued!  He who had looked with
+haughty eyes on the infirmities of others, who had disdained to serve his
+race because of their human follies and partial frailties,--_he_, even
+_he_, the Pharisee of Genius,--had but escaped by a chance, and by the
+hand of the man he suspected and despised, from a crime at which nature
+herself recoils,--which all law, social and divine, stigmatizes as
+inexpiable, which the sternest imagination of the very heathen had
+invented as the gloomiest catastrophe that can befall the wisdom and the
+pride of mortals!  But one step farther, and the fabulous OEdipus had not
+been more accursed!
+
+Such thoughts as these, unformed, confused, but strong enough to bow him
+to the dust, passed through the mind of this wretched man.  He had been
+familiar with grief, he had been dull to enjoyment; sad and bitter
+memories had consumed his manhood: but pride had been left him still; and
+he had dared in his secret heart to say, "I can defy Fate!"  Now the bolt
+had fallen; Pride was shattered into fragments, Self-abasement was his
+companion, Shame sat upon his prostrate soul.  The Future had no hope
+left in store.  Nothing was left for him but to die!
+
+Lord Vargrave gazed at him in real pain, in sincere compassion; for his
+nature, wily, deceitful, perfidious though it was, had cruelty only so
+far as was necessary to the unrelenting execution of his schemes.  No
+pity could swerve him from a purpose; but he had enough of the man within
+him to feel pity not the less, even for his own victim!  At length
+Maltravers lifted his head, and waved his hand gently to Lord Vargrave.
+
+"All is now explained," said he, in a feeble voice; "our interview is
+over.  I must be alone; I have yet to collect my reason, to commune
+calmly and deliberately with myself; I have to write to her--to invent,
+to lie,--I, who believed I could never, never utter, even to an enemy,
+what was false! And I must not soften the blow to her.  I must not utter
+a word of love,--love, it is incest!  I must endeavour brutally to crush
+out the very affection I created!  She must hate me!--oh, _teach_ her to
+hate me!  Blacken my name, traduce my motives,--let her believe them
+levity or perfidy, what you will.  So will she forget me the sooner; so
+will she the easier bear the sorrow which the father brings upon the
+child.  And _she_ has not sinned!  O Heaven, the sin was mine!  Let my
+punishment be a sacrifice that Thou wilt accept for her!"
+
+Lord Vargrave attempted again to console; but this time the words died
+upon his lips.  His arts failed him.  Maltravers turned impatiently away
+and pointed to the door.
+
+"I will see you again," said he, "before I quit Paris; leave your address
+below."
+
+Vargrave was not, perhaps, unwilling to terminate a scene so painful: he
+muttered a few incoherent words, and abruptly withdrew.  He heard the
+door locked behind him as he departed.  Ernest Maltravers was
+alone!--what a solitude!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+  PITY me not, but lend thy serious hearing
+  To what I shall unfold.--_Hamlet_.
+
+
+LETTER FROM ERNEST MALTRAVERS TO EVELYN CAMERON.
+
+
+EVELYN!
+
+All that you have read of faithlessness and perfidy will seem tame to you
+when compared with that conduct which you are doomed to meet from me.  We
+must part, and for ever.  We have seen each other for the last time.  It
+is bootless even to ask the cause.  Believe that I am fickle, false,
+heartless,--that a whim has changed me, if you will.  My resolve is
+unalterable.  We meet no more even as friends.  I do not ask you either
+to forgive or to remember me.  Look on me as one wholly unworthy even of
+resentment!  Do not think that I write this in madness or in fever or
+excitement.  Judge me not by my seeming illness this morning.  I invent
+no excuse, no extenuation, for my broken faith and perjured vows.
+Calmly, coldly, and deliberately I write; and thus writing, I renounce
+your love.
+
+This language is wanton cruelty,--it is fiendish insult,--is it not,
+Evelyn?  Am I not a villain?  Are you not grateful for your escape?  Do
+you not look on the past with a shudder at the precipice on which you
+stood?
+
+I have done with this subject,--I turn to another.  We are parted,
+Evelyn, and forever.  Do not fancy,--I repeat, do not fancy that there is
+any error, any strange infatuation on my mind, that there is any
+possibility that the sentence can be annulled.  It were almost easier to
+call the dead from the grave than bring us again together, as we were and
+as we hoped to be.  Now that you are convinced of that truth, learn, as
+soon as you have recovered the first shock of knowing how much wickedness
+there is on earth,--learn to turn to the future for happier and more
+suitable ties than those you could have formed with me.  You are very
+young; in youth our first impressions are lively but evanescent,--you
+will wonder hereafter at having fancied you loved me.  Another and a
+fairer image will replace mine.  This is what I desire and pray for.  _As
+soon as I learn that you love another, that you are wedded to another, I
+will re-appear in the world; till then, I am a wanderer and an exile.
+Your hand alone can efface from my brow the brand of Cain!_  When I am
+gone, Lord Vargrave will probably renew his suit.  I would rather you
+married one of your own years,--one whom you could love fondly, one who
+would chase away every remembrance of the wretch who now forsakes you.
+But perhaps I have mistaken Lord Vargrave's character; perhaps he may be
+worthier of you than I deemed (_I_ who set up for the censor of other
+men!); perhaps he may both win and deserve your affection.
+
+Evelyn, farewell!  God, who tempers the wind to the shorn lamb, will
+watch over you!
+
+          ERNEST MALTRAVERS.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+  OUR acts our angels are, or good or ill,
+  The fatal shadows that walk by us still.--JOHN FLETCHER.
+
+THE next morning came; the carriage was at the door of Maltravers, to
+bear him away he cared not whither.  Where could he fly from memory?  He
+had just despatched the letter to Evelyn,--a letter studiously written
+for the object of destroying all the affection to which he had so fondly
+looked as the last charm of life.  He was now only waiting for Vargrave,
+to whom he had sent, and who hastened to obey the summons.
+
+When Lumley arrived, he was shocked at the alteration which a single
+night had effected in the appearance of Maltravers; but he was surprised
+and relieved to find him calm and self-possessed.
+
+"Vargrave," said Maltravers, "whatever our past coldness, henceforth I
+owe to you an eternal gratitude; and henceforth this awful secret makes
+between us an indissoluble bond.  If I have understood you rightly,
+neither Alice nor other living being than yourself know that in me,
+Ernest Maltravers, stands the guilty object of Alice's first love.  Let
+that secret still be kept; relieve Alice's mind from the apprehension of
+learning that the man who betrayed her yet lives: he will not live long!
+I leave time and method of explanation to your own judgment and
+acuteness.  Now for Evelyn."  Here Maltravers stated generally the tone
+of the letter he had written.  Vargrave listened thoughtfully.
+
+"Maltravers," said he, "it is right to try first the effect of your
+letter.  But if it fail, if it only serve to inflame the imagination and
+excite the interest, if Evelyn still continue to love you, if that love
+preys upon her, if it should undermine health and spirit, if it should
+destroy her?"
+
+Maltravers groaned.  Lumley proceeded: "I say this not to wound you, but
+to provide against all circumstances.  I too have spent the night in
+revolving what is best to be done in such a case; and this is the plan I
+have formed.  Let us, if need be, tell the truth to Evelyn, robbing the
+truth only of its shame.  Nay, nay, listen.  Why not say that under a
+borrowed name and in the romance of early youth you knew and loved Alice
+(though in innocence and honour)?  Your tender age, the difference of
+rank, forbade your union.  Her father, discovering your clandestine
+correspondence, suddenly removed her from the country, and destroyed all
+clew for your inquiries.  You lost sight of each other,--each was taught
+to believe the other dead.  Alice was compelled by her father to marry
+Mr. Cameron; and after his death, her poverty and her love for her only
+child induced her to accept my uncle.  You have now learned all,--have
+learned that Evelyn is the daughter of your first love, the daughter of
+one who adores you still, and whose life your remembrance has for so many
+years embittered.  Evelyn herself will at once comprehend all the
+scruples of a delicate mind; Evelyn herself will recoil from the thought
+of making the child the rival to the mother.  She will understand why you
+have flown from her; she will sympathize with your struggles; she will
+recall the constant melancholy of Alice; she will hope that the ancient
+love may be renewed, and efface all grief; Generosity and Duty alike will
+urge her to conquer her own affection!  And hereafter, when time has
+restored you both, father and child may meet with such sentiments as
+father and child may own!"
+
+Maltravers was silent for some minutes; at length he said abruptly, "And
+you really loved her, Vargrave,--you love her still?  Your dearest care
+must be her welfare."
+
+"It is! indeed, it is!"
+
+"Then I must trust to your discretion; I can have no other confidant; I
+myself am not fit to judge.  My mind is darkened--you may be right--I
+think so."
+
+"One word more,--she may discredit my tale, if unsupported.  Will you
+write one line to me to say that I am authorized to reveal the secret,
+and that it is known only to me?  I will not use it unless I should think
+it absolutely required."
+
+Hastily and mechanically Maltravers wrote a few words to the effect of
+what Lumley had suggested.  "I will inform you," he said to Vargrave as
+he gave him the paper, "of whatever spot may become my asylum; and you
+can communicate to me all that I dread and long to hear; but let no man
+know the refuge of despair!"
+
+There was positively a tear in Vargrave's cold eye,--the only tear that
+had glistened there for many years; he paused irresolute, then advanced,
+again halted, muttered to himself, and turned aside.
+
+"As for the world," Lumley resumed, after a pause, "your engagement has
+been public,--some public account of its breach must be invented.  You
+have always been considered a proud man; we will say that it was low
+birth on the side of both mother and father (the last only just
+discovered) that broke off the alliance!"
+
+Vargrave was talking to the deaf; what cared Maltravers for the world?
+He hastened from the room, threw himself into his carriage, and Vargrave
+was left to plot, to hope, and to aspire.
+
+
+
+BOOK X.
+
+  "A dream!"--HOMER, I, 3.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+  QUALIS ubi in lucem coluber
+  .  .  .  Mala gramina pastus.*--VIRGIL.
+
+  Pars minima est ipsa puella sui.**--OVID.
+
+  * "As when a snake glides into light, having fed on pernicious
+    pastures."
+
+  ** "The girl is the least part of himself."
+
+IT would be superfluous, and, perhaps, a sickening task, to detail at
+length the mode and manner in which Vargrave coiled his snares round the
+unfortunate girl whom his destiny had marked out for his prey.  He was
+right in foreseeing that, after the first amazement caused by the letter
+of Maltravers, Evelyn would feel resentment crushed beneath her certainty
+of his affection her incredulity at his self-accusations, and her secret
+conviction that some reverse, some misfortune he was unwilling she should
+share, was the occasion of his farewell and flight.  Vargrave therefore
+very soon communicated to Evelyn the tale he had suggested to Maltravers.
+He reminded her of the habitual sorrow, the evidence of which was so
+visible in Lady Vargrave; of her indifference to the pleasures of the
+world; of her sensitive shrinking from all recurrence to her early fate.
+"The secret of this," said he, "is in a youthful and most fervent
+attachment; your mother loved a young stranger above her in rank, who
+(his head being full of German romance) was then roaming about the
+country on pedestrian and adventurous excursions, under the assumed name
+of Butler.  By him she was most ardently beloved in return.  Her father,
+perhaps, suspected the rank of her lover, and was fearful of her honour
+being compromised.  He was a strange man, that father! and I know not his
+real character and motives; but he suddenly withdrew his daughter from
+the suit and search of her lover,--they saw each other no more; her lover
+mourned her as one dead.  In process of time your mother was constrained
+by her father to marry Mr. Cameron, and was left a widow with an only
+child,--yourself: she was poor;--very poor! and her love and anxiety for
+you at last induced her to listen to the addresses of my late uncle; for
+your sake she married again; again death dissolved the tie!  But still,
+unceasingly and faithfully, she recalled that first love, the memory of
+which darkened and embittered all her life, and still she lived upon the
+hope to meet with the lost again.  At last, and most recently, it was my
+fate to discover that the object of this unconquerable affection
+lived,--was still free in hand if not in heart: you behold the lover of
+your mother in Ernest Maltravers!  It devolved on me (an invidious--a
+reluctant duty) to inform Maltravers of the identity of Lady Vargrave
+with the Alice of his boyish passion; to prove to him her suffering,
+patient, unsubdued affection; to convince him that the sole hope left to
+her in life was that of one day or other beholding him once again.  You
+know Maltravers,--his high-wrought, sensitive, noble character; he
+recoiled in terror from the thought of making his love to the daughter
+the last and bitterest affliction to the mother he had so loved; knowing
+too how completely that mother had entwined herself round your
+affections, he shuddered at the pain and self-reproach that would be
+yours when you should discover to whom you had been the rival, and whose
+the fond hopes and dreams that your fatal beauty had destroyed.
+Tortured, despairing, and half beside himself, he has fled from this
+ill-omened passion, and in solitude he now seeks to subdue that passion.
+Touched by the woe, the grief, of the Alice of his youth, it is his
+intention, as soon as he can know you restored to happiness and content,
+to hasten to your mother, and offer his future devotion as the fulfilment
+of former vows.  On you, and you alone, it depends to restore Maltravers
+to the world,--on you alone it depends to bless the remaining years of
+the mother who so dearly loves you!"
+
+It may be easily conceived with what sensations of wonder, compassion,
+and dismay, Evelyn listened to this tale, the progress of which her
+exclamations, her sobs, often interrupted.  She would write instantly to
+her mother, to Maltravers.  Oh, how gladly she would relinquish his suit:
+How cheerfully promise to rejoice in that desertion which brought
+happiness to the mother she had so loved!
+
+"Nay," said Vargrave, "your mother must not know, till the intelligence
+can be breathed by his lips, and softened by his protestations of
+returning affection, that the mysterious object of her early romance is
+that Maltravers whose vows have been so lately offered to her own child.
+Would not such intelligence shock all pride, and destroy all hope?  How
+could she then consent to the sacrifice which Maltravers is prepared to
+make?  No! not till you are another's--not (to use the words of
+Maltravers) till you are a happy and beloved wife--must your mother
+receive the returning homage of Maltravers; not till then can she know
+where that homage has been recently rendered; not till then can
+Maltravers feel justified in the atonement he meditates.  He is willing
+to sacrifice himself; he trembles at the thought of sacrificing you!  Say
+nothing to your mother, till from her own lips she tells you that she has
+learned all."
+
+Could Evelyn hesitate; could Evelyn doubt?  To allay the fears, to fulfil
+the prayers of the man whose conduct appeared so generous, to restore him
+to peace and the world; above all, to pluck from the heart of that
+beloved and gentle mother the rankling dart, to shed happiness over her
+fate, to reunite her with the loved and lost,--what sacrifice too great
+for this?
+
+Ah, why was Legard absent?  Why did she believe him capricious, light,
+and false?  Why had she shut her softest thoughts from her soul?  But
+he--the true lover--was afar, and his true love unknown! and Vargrave,
+the watchful serpent, was at hand.
+
+In a fatal hour, and in the transport of that enthusiasm which inspires
+alike our more rash and our more sublime deeds, which makes us alike
+dupes and martyrs,--the enthusiasm that tramples upon self, that forfeits
+all things to a high-wrought zeal for others, Evelyn consented to become
+the wife of Vargrave!  Nor was she at first sensible of the
+sacrifice,--sensible of anything but the glow of a noble spirit and an
+approving conscience.  Yes, thus, and thus alone, did she obey both
+duties,--that, which she had well-nigh abandoned, to her dead benefactor,
+and that to the living mother.  Afterwards came a dread reaction; and
+then, at last, that passive and sleep-like resignation, which is Despair
+under a milder name.  Yes,--such a lot had been predestined from the
+first; in vain had she sought to fly it: Fate had overtaken her, and she
+must submit to the decree!
+
+She was most anxious that the intelligence of the new bond might be
+transmitted instantly to Maltravers.  Vargrave promised, but took care
+not to perform.  He was too acute not to know that in so sudden a step
+Evelyn's motives would be apparent, and his own suit indelicate and
+ungenerous.  He was desirous that Maltravers should learn nothing till
+the vows had been spoken, and the indissoluble chain forged.  Afraid to
+leave Evelyn, even for a day, afraid to trust her in England to an
+interview with her mother,--he remained at Paris, and hurried on all the
+requisite preparations.  He sent to Douce, who came in person, with the
+deeds necessary for the transfer of the money for the purchase of Lisle
+Court, which was now to be immediately completed.  The money was to be
+lodged in Mr. Douce's bank till the lawyers had completed their
+operations; and in a few weeks, when Evelyn had attained the allotted
+age, Vargrave trusted to see himself lord alike of the betrothed bride,
+and the hereditary lands of the crushed Maltravers.  He refrained from
+stating to Evelyn who was the present proprietor of the estate to become
+hers; he foresaw all the objections she would form;--and, indeed, she was
+unable to think, to talk, of such matters.  One favour she had asked, and
+it had been granted,--that she was to be left unmolested to her solitude
+till the fatal day.  Shut up in her lonely room, condemned not to confide
+her thoughts, to seek for sympathy even in her mother,--the poor girl in
+vain endeavoured to keep up to the tenor of her first enthusiasm, and
+reconcile herself to a step, which, however, she was heroine enough not
+to retract or to repent, even while she recoiled from its contemplation.
+
+Lady Doltimore, amazed at what had passed,--at the flight of Maltravers,
+the success of Lumley,--unable to account for it, to extort explanation
+from Vargrave or from Evelyn, was distracted by the fear of some
+villanous deceit which she could not fathom.  To escape herself she
+plunged yet more eagerly into the gay vortex.  Vargrave, suspicious, and
+fearful of trusting to what she might say in her nervous and excited
+temper if removed from his watchful eye, deemed himself compelled to
+hover round her.  His manner, his conduct, were most guarded; but
+Caroline herself, jealous, irritated, unsettled, evinced at times a right
+both to familiarity and anger, which drew upon her and himself the sly
+vigilance of slander.  Meanwhile Lord Doltimore, though too cold and
+proud openly to notice what passed around him, seemed disturbed and
+anxious.  His manner to Vargrave was distant; he shunned all
+_tete-a-tetes_ with his wife.  Little, however, of this did Lumley heed.
+A few weeks more, and all would be well and safe.  Vargrave did not
+publish his engagement with Evelyn: he sought carefully to conceal it
+till the very day was near at hand; but it was whispered abroad; some
+laughed, some believed.  Evelyn herself was seen nowhere.  De Montaigne
+had, at first, been indignantly incredulous at the report that Maltravers
+had broken off a connection he had so desired from a motive so weak and
+unworthy as that of mere family pride.  A letter from Maltravers, who
+confided to him and Vargrave alone the secret of his retreat, reluctantly
+convinced him that the wise are but pompous fools; he was angry and
+disgusted; and still more so when Valerie and Teresa (for female friends
+stand by us right or wrong) hinted at excuses, or surmised that other
+causes lurked behind the one alleged.  But his thoughts were much drawn
+from this subject by increasing anxiety for Cesarini, whose abode and
+fate still remained an alarming mystery.
+
+It so happened that Lord Doltimore, who had always had a taste for the
+antique, and who was greatly displeased with his own family-seat because
+it was comfortable and modern, fell, from _ennui_, into a
+habit, fashionable enough in Paris, of buying curiosities and
+cabinets,--high-back chairs and oak-carvings; and with this habit
+returned the desire and the affection for Burleigh.  Understanding from
+Lumley that Maltravers had probably left his native land forever, he
+imagined it extremely probable that the latter would now consent to the
+sale, and he begged Vargrave to forward a letter from him to that effect.
+
+Vargrave made some excuse, for he felt that nothing could be more
+indelicate than such an application forwarded through his hands at such a
+time; and Doltimore, who had accidentally heard De Montaigne confess that
+he knew the address of Maltravers, quietly sent his letter to the
+Frenchman, and, without mentioning its contents, begged him to forward
+it.  De Montaigne did so.  Now it is very strange how slight men and
+slight incidents bear on the great events of life; but that simple letter
+was instrumental to a new revolution in the strange history of
+Maltravers.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+  QUID frustra simulacra fugacia captas?--
+  Quod petis est nusquam.*--OVID: _Met._ iii. 432.
+
+  * "Why, in vain, do you catch at fleeting shadows?
+     That which you seek is nowhere."
+
+TO no clime dedicated to the indulgence of majestic griefs or to the soft
+melancholy of regret--not to thy glaciers, or thy dark-blue lakes,
+beautiful Switzerland, mother of many exiles; nor to thy fairer earth and
+gentler heaven, sweet Italy,--fled the agonized Maltravers.  Once, in his
+wanderings, he had chanced to pass by a landscape so steeped in sullen
+and desolate gloom, that it had made a powerful and uneffaced impression
+upon his mind: it was amidst those swamps and morasses that formerly
+surrounded the castle of Gil de Retz, the ambitious Lord, the dreaded
+Necromancer, who perished at the stake, after a career of such power and
+splendour as seemed almost to justify the dark belief in his
+preternatural agencies.*
+
+  * See, for description of this scenery, and the fate of De Retz,
+    the high-wrought and glowing romance by Mr. Ritchie called
+    "The Magician."
+
+Here, in a lonely and wretched inn, remote from other habitations,
+Maltravers fixed himself.  In gentler griefs there is a sort of luxury in
+bodily discomfort; in his inexorable and unmitigated anguish, bodily
+discomfort was not felt.  There is a kind of magnetism in extreme woe, by
+which the body itself seems laid asleep, and knows no distinction between
+the bed of Damiens and the rose-couch of the Sybarite.  He left his
+carriage and servants at a post-house some miles distant.  He came to
+this dreary abode alone; and in that wintry season, and that most
+disconsolate scene, his gloomy soul found something congenial, something
+that did not mock him, in the frowns of the haggard and dismal Nature.
+Vain would it be to describe what he then felt, what he then endured.
+Suffice it that, through all, the diviner strength of man was not wholly
+crushed, and that daily, nightly, hourly, he prayed to the Great
+Comforter to assist him in wrestling against a guilty love.  No man
+struggles so honestly, so ardently as he did, utterly in vain; for in us
+all, if we would but cherish it, there is a spirit that must rise at
+last--a crowned, if bleeding conqueror--over Fate and all the Demons!
+
+One day after a prolonged silence from Vargrave, whose letters all
+breathed comfort and assurance in Evelyn's progressive recovery of spirit
+and hope, his messenger returned from the post-town with a letter in the
+hand of De Montaigne.  It contained, in a blank envelope (De Montaigne's
+silence told him how much he had lost in the esteem of his friend), the
+communication of Lord Doltimore.  It ran thus:--
+
+
+MY DEAR SIR,--As I hear that your plans are likely to make you a long
+resident on the Continent, may I again inquire if you would be induced to
+dispose of Burleigh?  I am willing to give more than its real value, and
+would raise a mortgage on my own property sufficient to pay off, at once,
+the whole purchase-money.  Perhaps you may be the more induced to the
+sale from the circumstance of having an example in the head of your
+family, Colonel Maltravers, as I learn through Lord Vargrave, having
+resolved to dispose of Lisle Court.  Waiting your answer,
+
+     I am, dear Sir, truly yours,
+
+          DOLTIMORE.
+
+
+"Ay," said Maltravers, bitterly, crushing the letter in his hand, "let
+our name be blotted out from the land, and our hearths pass to the
+stranger.  How could I ever visit the place where I first saw _her_?"
+
+He resolved at once,--he would write to England, and place the matter in
+the hands of agents.  This was but a short-lived diversion to his
+thoughts, and their cloudy darkness soon gathered round him again.
+
+What I am now about to relate may appear, to a hasty criticism, to savour
+of the Supernatural; but it is easily accounted for by ordinary agencies,
+and it is strictly to the letter of the truth.
+
+In his sleep that night a dream appeared to Maltravers.  He thought he
+was alone in the old library at Burleigh, and gazing on the portrait of
+his mother; as he so gazed, he fancied that a cold and awful tremor
+seized upon him, that he in vain endeavoured to withdraw his eyes from
+the canvas--his sight was chained there by an irresistible spell.  Then
+it seemed to him that the portrait gradually changed,--the features the
+same, but the bloom vanished into a white and ghastly hue; the colours of
+the dress faded, their fashion grew more large and flowing, but heavy and
+rigid as if cut in stone,--the robes of the grave.  But on the face there
+was a soft and melancholy smile, that took from its livid aspect the
+natural horror; the lips moved, and, it seemed as if without a sound, the
+released soul spoke to that which the earth yet owned.
+
+"Return," it said, "to thy native land, and thine own home.  Leave not
+the last relic of her who bore and yet watches over thee to stranger
+hands.  Thy good Angel shall meet thee at thy hearth!"
+
+The voice ceased.  With a violent effort Maltravers broke the spell that
+had forbidden his utterance.  He called aloud, and the dream vanished: he
+was broad awake, his hair erect, the cold dews on his brow.  The pallet,
+rather than bed on which he lay, was opposite to the window, and the
+wintry moonlight streamed wan and spectral into the cheerless room.  But
+between himself and the light there seemed to stand a shape, a shadow,
+that into which the portrait had changed in his dream,--that which had
+accosted and chilled his soul.  He sprang forward, "My mother! even in
+the grave canst thou bless thy wretched son!  Oh, leave me not--say that
+thou--" The delusion vanished, and Maltravers fell back insensible.
+
+It was long in vain, when, in the healthful light of day, he revolved
+this memorable dream, that Maltravers sought to convince himself that
+dreams need no ministers from heaven or hell to bring the gliding
+falsehoods along the paths of sleep; that the effect of that dream
+itself, on his shattered nerves, his excited fancy, was the real and sole
+raiser of the spectre he had thought to behold on waking.  Long was it
+before his judgment could gain the victory, and reason disown the empire
+of a turbulent imagination; and even when at length reluctantly
+convinced, the dream still haunted him, and he could not shake it from
+his breast.  He longed anxiously for the next night; it came, but it
+brought neither dreams nor sleep, and the rain beat, and the winds
+howled, against the casement.  Another night, and the moon was again
+bright; and he fell into a deep sleep; no vision disturbed or hallowed
+it.  He woke ashamed of his own expectation.  But the event, such as it
+was, by giving a new turn to his thoughts, had roused and relieved his
+spirit, and misery sat upon him with a lighter load.  Perhaps, too, to
+that still haunting recollection was mainly owing a change in his former
+purpose.  He would still sell the old Hall; but he would first return,
+and remove that holy portrait, with pious hands; he would garner up and
+save all that had belonged to her whose death had been his birth.  Ah,
+never had she known for what trials the infant had been reserved!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+            THE weary hours steal on
+  And flaky darkness breaks.--_Richard III._
+
+ONCE more, suddenly and unlooked for, the lord of Burleigh appeared at
+the gates of his deserted hall! and again the old housekeeper and her
+satellites were thrown into dismay and consternation.  Amidst blank and
+welcomeless faces, Maltravers passed into his study: and as soon as the
+logs burned and the bustle was over, and he was left alone, he took up
+the light and passed into the adjoining library.  It was then about nine
+o'clock in the evening; the air of the room felt damp and chill, and the
+light but faintly struggled against the mournful gloom of the dark
+book-lined walls and sombre tapestry.  He placed the candle on the table,
+and drawing aside the curtain that veiled the portrait, gazed with deep
+emotion, not unmixed with awe, upon the beautiful face whose eyes seemed
+fixed upon him with mournful sweetness.  There is something mystical
+about those painted ghosts of ourselves, that survive our very dust!
+Who, gazing upon them long and wistfully, does not half fancy that they
+seem not insensible to his gaze, as if we looked our own life into them,
+and the eyes that followed us where we moved were animated by a stranger
+art than the mere trick of the limner's colours?
+
+With folded arms, rapt and motionless, Maltravers contemplated the form
+that, by the upward rays of the flickering light, seemed to bend down
+towards the desolate son.  How had he ever loved the memory of his
+mother! how often in his childish years had he stolen away, and shed wild
+tears for the loss of that dearest of earthly ties, never to be
+compensated, never to be replaced!  How had he respected, how sympathized
+with the very repugnance which his father had at first testified towards
+him, as the innocent cause of her untimely death!  He had never seen
+her,--never felt her passionate kiss; and yet it seemed to him, as he
+gazed, as if he had known her for years.  That strange kind of inner and
+spiritual memory which often recalls to us places and persons we have
+never seen before, and which Platonists would resolve to the unquenched
+and struggling consciousness of a former life, stirred within him, and
+seemed to whisper, "You were united in the old time."  "Yes!" he said,
+half aloud, "we will never part again.  Blessed be the delusion of the
+dream that recalled to my heart the remembrance of thee, which, at least,
+I can cherish without a sin.  'My good angel shall meet me at my hearth!'
+so didst thou say in the solemn vision.  Ah, does thy soul watch over me
+still?  How long shall it be before the barrier is broken! how long
+before we meet, but not in dreams!"
+
+The door opened, the housekeeper looked in.  "I beg pardon, sir, but I
+thought your honour would excuse the liberty, though I know it is very
+bold to--"
+
+"What is the matter?  What do you want?"
+
+"Why, sir, poor Mrs. Elton is dying,--they say she cannot get over the
+night; and as the carriage drove by the cottage window, the nurse told
+her that the squire was returned; and she has sent up the nurse to
+entreat to see your honour before she dies.  I am sure I was most loth to
+disturb you, sir, with such a message; and says I, the squire has only
+just come off a journey--"
+
+"Who is Mrs. Elton?"
+
+"Don't your honour remember the poor woman that was run over, and you
+were so good to, and brought into the house the day Miss Cameron--"
+
+"I remember,--say I will be with her in a few minutes.  About to die!"
+muttered Maltravers; "she is to be envied,--the prisoner is let loose,
+the bark leaves the desert isle!"
+
+He took his hat and walked across the park, dimly lighted by the stars,
+to the cottage of the sufferer.  He reached her bedside, and took her
+hand kindly.  She seemed to rally at the sight of him; the nurse was
+dismissed, they were left alone.  Before morning, the spirit had left
+that humble clay; and the mists of dawn were heavy on the grass as
+Maltravers returned home.  There were then on his countenance the traces
+of recent and strong emotion, and his step was elastic, and his cheek
+flushed.  Hope once more broke within him, but mingled with doubt, and
+faintly combated by reason.  In another hour Maltravers was on his way to
+Brook-Green.  Impatient, restless, fevered, he urged on the horses, he
+sowed the road with gold; and at length the wheels stopped before the
+door of the village inn.  He descended, asked the way to the curate's
+house; and crossing the burial-ground, and passing under the shadow of
+the old yew-tree, entered Aubrey's garden.  The curate was at home, and
+the conference that ensued was of deep and breathless interest to the
+visitor.
+
+It is now time to place before the reader, in due order and connection,
+the incidents of that story, the knowledge of which, at that period,
+broke in detached and fragmentary portions on Maltravers.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+  I CANNA chuse, but ever will
+  Be luving to thy father still,
+  Whaireir he gae, whaireir he ryde,
+  My luve with him maun still abyde;
+  In weil or wae, whaireir he gae,
+  Mine heart can neir depart him frae.
+                 Lady Anne Bothwell's Lament.
+
+IT may be remembered that in the earlier part of this continuation of the
+history of Maltravers it was stated that Aubrey had in early life met
+with the common lot of a disappointed affection.  Eleanor Westbrook, a
+young woman of his own humble rank, had won, and seemed to return, his
+love; but of that love she was not worthy.  Vain, volatile, and
+ambitious, she forsook the poor student for a more brilliant marriage.
+She accepted the hand of a merchant, who was caught by her beauty, and
+who had the reputation of great wealth.  They settled in London, and
+Aubrey lost all traces of her.  She gave birth to an only daughter: and
+when that child had attained her fourteenth year, her husband suddenly,
+and seemingly without cause, put an end to his existence.  The cause,
+however, was apparent before he was laid in his grave.  He was involved
+far beyond his fortune,--he had died to escape beggary and a jail.  A
+small annuity, not exceeding one hundred pounds, had been secured on the
+widow.  On this income she retired with her child into the country; and
+chance, the vicinity of some distant connections, and the cheapness of
+the place, concurred to fix her residence in the outskirts of the town of
+C-----.  Characters that in youth have been most volatile and most
+worldly, often when bowed down and dejected by the adversity which they
+are not fitted to encounter, become the most morbidly devout; they ever
+require an excitement, and when earth denies, they seek it impatiently
+from heaven.
+
+This was the case with Mrs. Westbrook; and this new turn of mind brought
+her naturally into contact with the principal saint of the neighbourhood,
+Mr. Richard Templeton.  We have seen that that gentleman was not happy in
+his first marriage; death had not then annulled the bond.  He was of an
+ardent and sensual temperament, and quietly, under the broad cloak of his
+doctrines, he indulged his constitutional tendencies.  Perhaps in this
+respect he was not worse than nine men out of ten.  But then he professed
+to be better than nine hundred thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine men
+out of a million!  To a fault of temperament was added the craft of
+hypocrisy, and the vulgar error became a dangerous vice.  Upon Mary
+Westbrook, the widow's daughter, he gazed with eyes that were far from
+being the eyes of the spirit.  Even at the age of fourteen she charmed
+him; but when, after watching her ripening beauty expand, three years
+were added to that age, Mr. Templeton was most deeply in love.  Mary was
+indeed lovely,--her disposition naturally good and gentle, but her
+education worse than neglected.  To the frivolities and meannesses of a
+second-rate fashion, inculcated into her till her father's death, had now
+succeeded the quackeries, the slavish subservience, the intolerant
+bigotries, of a transcendental superstition.  In a change so abrupt and
+violent, the whole character of the poor girl was shaken; her principles
+unsettled, vague, and unformed, and naturally of mediocre and even feeble
+intellect, she clung to the first plank held out to her in "that wide sea
+of wax" in which "she halted."  Early taught to place the most implicit
+faith in the dictates of Mr. Templeton, fastening her belief round him as
+the vine winds its tendrils round the oak, yielding to his ascendency,
+and pleased with his fostering and almost caressing manner, no confessor
+in Papal Italy ever was more dangerous to village virtue than Richard
+Templeton (who deemed himself the archetype of the only pure
+Protestantism) to the morals and heart of Mary Westbrook.
+
+Mrs. Westbrook, whose constitution had been prematurely broken by long
+participation in the excesses of London dissipation and by the reverse of
+fortune which still preyed upon a spirit it had rather soured than
+humbled, died when Mary was eighteen.  Templeton became the sole friend,
+comforter, and supporter of the daughter.
+
+In an evil hour (let us trust not from premeditated villany),--an hour
+when the heart of one was softened by grief and gratitude, and the
+conscience of the other laid asleep by passion, the virtue of Mary
+Westbrook was betrayed.  Her sorrow and remorse, his own fears of
+detection and awakened self-reproach, occasioned Templeton the most
+anxious and poignant regret.  There had been a young woman in Mrs.
+Westbrook's service, who had left it a short time before the widow died,
+in consequence of her marriage.  Her husband ill-used her; and glad to
+escape from him and prove her gratitude to her employer's daughter, of
+whom she had been extremely fond, she had returned to Miss Westbrook
+after the funeral of her mother.  The name of this woman was Sarah Miles.
+Templeton saw that Sarah more than suspected his connection with Mary; it
+was necessary to make a confidant,--he selected her.  Miss Westbrook was
+removed to a distant part of the country, and Templeton visited her
+cautiously and rarely.  Four months afterwards, Mrs. Templeton died, and
+the husband was free to repair his wrong.  Oh, how he then repented of
+what had passed! but four months' delay, and all this sin and sorrow
+might have been saved!  He was now racked with perplexity and doubt: his
+unfortunate victim was advanced in her pregnancy.  It was necessary, if
+he wished his child to be legitimate--still more if he wished to preserve
+the honour of its mother--that he should not hesitate long in the
+reparation to which duty and conscience urged him.  But on the other
+hand, he, the saint, the oracle, the immaculate example for all forms,
+proprieties, and decorums, to scandalize the world by so rapid and
+premature a hymen--
+
+  "Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
+   Had left the flushing in his galled eyes,
+   To marry."
+
+No! he could not brave the sneer of the gossips, the triumph of his foes,
+the dejection of his disciples, by so rank and rash a folly.  But still
+Mary pined so, he feared for her health--for his own unborn offspring.
+There was a middle path,--a compromise between duty and the world; he
+grasped at it as most men similarly situated would have done,--they were
+married, but privately, and under feigned names: the secret was kept
+close.  Sarah Miles was the only witness acquainted with the real
+condition and names of the parties.
+
+Reconciled to herself, the bride recovered health and spirits, Templeton
+formed the most sanguine hopes.  He resolved, as soon as the confinement
+was over, to go abroad; Mary should follow; in a foreign land they should
+be publicly married; they would remain some years on the Continent; when
+he returned, his child's age could be put back a year.  Oh, nothing could
+be more clear and easy!
+
+Death shivered into atoms all the plans of Mr. Templeton. Mary suffered
+most severely in childbirth, and died a few weeks afterwards.  Templeton
+at first was inconsolable, but worldly thoughts were great comforters.
+He had done all that conscience could do to atone a sin, and he was freed
+from a most embarrassing dilemma, and from a temporary banishment utterly
+uncongenial and unpalatable to his habits and ideas.  But now he had a
+child,--a legitimate child, successor to his name, his wealth; a
+first-born child,--the only one ever sprung from him, the prop and hope
+of advancing years!  On this child he doted with all that paternal
+passion which the hardest and coldest men often feel the most for their
+own flesh and blood--for fatherly love is sometimes but a transfer of
+self-love from one fund to another.
+
+Yet this child--this darling that he longed to show to the whole
+world--it was absolutely necessary, for the present, that he should
+conceal and disown.  It had happened that Sarah's husband died of his own
+excesses a few weeks before the birth of Templeton's child, she having
+herself just recovered from her confinement; Sarah was therefore free
+forever from her husband's vigilance and control.  To her care the
+destined heiress was committed, and her own child put out to nurse.  And
+this was the woman and this the child who had excited so much benevolent
+curiosity in the breasts of the worthy clergyman and the three old maids
+of C-----.* Alarmed at Sarah's account of the scrutiny of the parson, and
+at his own rencontre with that hawk-eyed pastor, Templeton lost no time
+in changing the abode of the nurse; and to her new residence had the
+banker bent his way, with rod and angle, on that evening which witnessed
+his adventure with Luke Darvil.** When Mr. Templeton first met Alice, his
+own child was only about thirteen or fourteen months old,--but little
+older than Alice's.  If the beauty of Mrs. Leslie's _protege_ first
+excited his coarser nature, her maternal tenderness, her anxious care for
+her little one, struck a congenial chord in the father's heart.  It
+connected him with her by a mute and unceasing sympathy.  Templeton had
+felt so deeply the alarm and pain of illicit love, he had been (as he
+profanely believed) saved from the brink of public shame by so signal an
+interference of grace, that he resolved no more to hazard his good name
+and his peace of mind upon such perilous rocks.  The dearest desire at
+his heart was to have his daughter under his roof,--to fondle, to play
+with her, to watch her growth, to win her affection.  This, at present,
+seemed impossible.  But if he were to marry,--marry a widow, to whom he
+might confide all, or a portion, of the truth; if that child could be
+passed off as hers--ah, that was the best plan!  And Templeton wanted a
+wife!  Years were creeping on him, and the day would come when a wife
+would be useful as a nurse.  But Alice was supposed to be a widow; and
+Alice was so meek, so docile, so motherly.  If she could be induced to
+remove from C-----, either part with her own child or call it her
+niece,--and adopt his.  Such, from time to time, were Templeton's
+thoughts, as he visited Alice, and found, with every visit, fresh
+evidence of her tender and beautiful disposition; such the objects which,
+in the First Part of this work, we intimated were different from those of
+mere admiration for her beauty.*** But again, worldly doubts and
+fears--the dislike of so unsuitable an alliance, the worse than lowness
+of Alice's origin, the dread of discovery for her early error--held him
+back, wavering and irresolute.  To say truth, too, her innocence and
+purity of thought kept him at a certain distance.  He was acute enough to
+see that he--even he, the great Richard Templeton--might be refused by
+the faithful Alice.
+
+  * See "Ernest Maltravers," book iv., p. 164.
+
+  ** "Ernest Maltravers," book iv., p. 181.
+
+  *** "Our banker always seemed more struck by Alice's moral
+  feelings than even by her physical beauty.  Her love for her
+  child, for instance, impressed him powerfully," etc.  "His
+  feelings altogether for Alice, the designs he entertained
+  towards her, were of a very complicated nature, and it will
+  be long, perhaps, before the reader can thoroughly comprehend
+  them."--See "Ernest Maltravers," book iv., p. 178.
+
+At last Darvil was dead; he breathed more freely, he revolved more
+seriously his projects; and at this time, Sarah, wooed by her first
+lover, wished to marry again; his secret would pass from her breast to
+her second husband's, and thence how far would it travel?  Added to this,
+Sarah's conscience grew uneasy; the brand ought to be effaced from the
+memory of the dead mother, the legitimacy of the child proclaimed; she
+became importunate, she wearied and she alarmed the pious man.  He
+therefore resolved to rid himself of the only witness to his marriage
+whose testimony he had cause to fear,--of the presence of the only one
+acquainted with his sin and the real name of the husband of Mary
+Westbrook.  He consented to Sarah's marriage with William Elton, and
+offered a liberal dowry on the condition that she should yield to the
+wish of Elton himself, an adventurous young man, who desired to try his
+fortunes in the New World.  His daughter he must remove elsewhere.
+
+While this was going on, Alice's child, long delicate and drooping,
+became seriously ill.  Symptoms of decline appeared; the physician
+recommended a milder air, and Devonshire was suggested.  Nothing could
+equal the generous, the fatherly kindness which Templeton evinced on this
+most painful occasion.  He insisted on providing Alice with the means to
+undertake the journey with ease and comfort; and poor Alice, with a heart
+heavy with gratitude and sorrow, consented for her child's sake to all he
+offered.
+
+Now the banker began to perceive that all his hopes and wishes were in
+good train.  He foresaw that the child of Alice was doomed!--that was one
+obstacle out of the way.  Alice herself was to be removed from the sphere
+of her humble calling.  In a distant county she might appear of better
+station, and under another name.  Conformably to these views, he
+suggested to her that, in proportion to the seeming wealth and
+respectability of patients, did doctors attend to their complaints.  He
+proposed that Alice should depart privately to a town many miles off;
+that there he would provide for her a carriage, and engage a servant;
+that he would do this for her as for a relation, and that she should take
+that relation's name.  To this, Alice rapt in her child, and submissive
+to all that might be for the child's benefit, passively consented.  It
+was arranged then as proposed, and under the name of Cameron, which, as
+at once a common yet a well-sounding name, occurred to his invention,
+Alice departed with her sick charge and a female attendant (who knew
+nothing of her previous calling or story), on the road to Devonshire.
+Templeton himself resolved to follow her thither in a few days; and it
+was fixed that they should meet at Exeter.
+
+It was on this melancholy journey that occurred that memorable day when
+Alice once more beheld Maltravers; and, as she believed, uttering the
+vows of love to another.* The indisposition of her child had delayed her
+some hours at the inn: the poor sufferer had fallen asleep; and Alice had
+stolen from its couch for a little while, when her eyes rested on the
+father.  Oh, how then she longed, she burned to tell him of the new
+sanctity, that, by a human life, had been added to their early love!  And
+when, crushed and sick at heart, she turned away, and believed herself
+forgotten and replaced, it was the pride of the mother rather than of the
+mistress that supported her.  She, meek creature, felt not the injury to
+herself; but _his_ child,--the sufferer, perhaps the dying one,--_there_,
+_there_ was the wrong!  No! she would not hazard the chance of a
+cold--great Heaven! perchance an _incredulous_--look upon the hushed,
+pale face above.  But little time was left for thought, for explanation,
+for discovery.  She saw him--unconscious of the ties so near, and thus
+lost--depart as a stranger from the spot; and henceforth was gone the
+sweet hope of living for the future.  Nothing was left her but the pledge
+of that which had been.  Mournful, despondent, half broken-hearted, she
+resumed her journey.  At Exeter she was joined, as agreed, by Mr.
+Templeton; and with him came a fair, a blooming, and healthful girl to
+contrast her own drooping charge.  Though but a few weeks older, you
+would have supposed the little stranger by a year the senior of Alice's
+child: the one was so well grown, so advanced; the other so backward, so
+nipped in the sickly bud.
+
+  * See "Ernest Maltravers," book v., p. 221.
+
+"You can repay me for all, for more than I have done; more than I ever
+can do for you and yours," said Templeton, "by taking this young stranger
+also under your care.  It is the child of one dear, most dear to me; an
+orphan; I know not with whom else to place it.  Let it for the present be
+supposed your own,--the elder child."
+
+Alice could refuse nothing to her benefactor; but her heart did not open
+at first to the beautiful girl, whose sparkling eyes and rosy cheeks
+mocked the languid looks and faded hues of her own darling.  But the
+sufferer seemed to hail a playmate; it smiled, it put forth its poor,
+thin hands; it uttered its inarticulate cry of pleasure, and Alice burst
+into tears, and clasped them _both_ to her heart.
+
+Mr. Templeton took care not to rest under the same roof with her he now
+seriously intended to make his wife; but he followed Alice to the
+seaside, and visited her daily.  Her infant rallied; it was tenacious of
+the upper air; it clung to life so fondly; poor child, it could not
+foresee what a bitter thing to some of us life is!  And now it was that
+Templeton, learning from Alice her adventure with her absent lover,
+learning that all hope in that quarter was gone, seized the occasion, and
+pressed his suit.  Alice at the hour was overflowing with gratitude; in
+her child's reviving looks she read all her obligations to her
+benefactor.  But still, at the word _love_, at the name of _marriage_,
+her heart recoiled; and the lost, the faithless, came back to his fatal
+throne.  In choked and broken accents, she startled the banker with the
+refusal--the faltering, tearful, but resolute refusal--of his suit.
+
+But Templeton brought new engines to work: he wooed her through her
+child; he painted all the brilliant prospects that would open to the
+infant by her marriage with him.  He would cherish, rear, provide for it
+as his own.  This shook her resolves; but this did not prevail.  He had
+recourse to a more generous appeal: he told her so much of his history
+with Mary Westbrook as commenced with his hasty and indecorous
+marriage,--attributing the haste to love! made her comprehend his
+scruples in owning the child of a union the world would be certain to
+ridicule or condemn; he expatiated on the inestimable blessings she could
+afford him, by delivering him from all embarrassment, and restoring his
+daughter, though under a borrowed name, to her father's roof.  At this
+Alice mused; at this she seemed irresolute.  She had long seen how
+inexpressibly dear to Templeton was the child confided to her care; how
+he grew pale if the slightest ailment reached her; how he chafed at the
+very wind if it visited her cheek too roughly; and she now said to him
+simply,--
+
+"Is your child, in truth, your dearest object in life?  Is it with her,
+and her alone, that your dearest hopes are connected?"
+
+"It is,--it is indeed!" said the banker, honestly surprised out of his
+gallantry; "at least," he added, recovering his self-possession, "as much
+so as is compatible with my affection for you."
+
+"And only if I marry you, and adopt her as my own, do you think that your
+secret may be safely kept, and all your wishes with respect to her be
+fulfilled?"
+
+"Only so."
+
+"And for that reason, chiefly, nay entirely, you condescend to forget
+what I have been, and seek my hand?  Well, if that were all, I owe you
+too much; my poor babe tells me too loudly what I owe you to draw back
+from anything that can give you so blessed an enjoyment.  Ah, one's
+child! one's own child, under one's own roof, it _is_ such a blessing!
+But then, if I marry you, it can be only to secure to you that object; to
+be as a mother to your child; but wife only in name to you!  I am not so
+lost as to despise myself.  I know now, though I knew it not at first,
+that I have been guilty; nothing can excuse that guilt but fidelity to
+_him_!  Oh, yes!  I never, never can be unfaithful to my babe's father!
+As for all else, dispose of me as you will."  And Alice, who from very
+innocence had uttered all this without a blush, now clasped her hands
+passionately, and left Templeton speechless with mortification and
+surprise.
+
+When he recovered himself, he affected not to understand her; but Alice
+was not satisfied, and all further conversation ceased.  He began slowly,
+and at last, and after repeated conferences and urgings, to comprehend
+how strange and stubborn in some points was the humble creature whom his
+proposals so highly honoured.  Though his daughter was indeed his first
+object in life; though for her he was willing to make a _mesalliance_,
+the extent of which it would be incumbent on him studiously to
+conceal,--yet still, the beauty of Alice awoke an earthlier sentiment
+that he was not disposed to conquer.  He was quite willing to make
+promises, and talk generously; but when it came to an oath,--a solemn, a
+binding oath--and this Alice rigidly exacted,--he was startled, and drew
+back.  Though hypocritical, he was, as we have before said, a most
+sincere believer.  He might creep through a promise with unbruised
+conscience; but he was not one who could have dared to violate an oath,
+and lay the load of perjury on his soul.  Perhaps, after all, the union
+never would have taken place, but Templeton fell ill; that soft and
+relaxing air did not agree with him; a low but dangerous fever seized
+him, and the worldly man trembled at the aspect of Death.  It was in this
+illness that Alice nursed him with a daughter's vigilance and care; and
+when at length he recovered, impressed with her zeal and kindness,
+softened by illness, afraid of the approach of solitary age,--and feeling
+more than ever his duties to his motherless child, he threw himself at
+Alice's feet, and solemnly vowed all that she required.
+
+It was during this residence in Devonshire, and especially during his
+illness, that Templeton made and cultivated the acquaintance of Mr.
+Aubrey.  The good clergyman prayed with him by his sick-bed; and when
+Templeton's danger was at its height, he sought to relieve his conscience
+by a confession of his wrongs to Mary Westbrook.  The name startled
+Aubrey; and when he learned that the lovely child who had so often sat on
+his knee, and smiled in his face, was the granddaughter of his first and
+only love, he had a new interest in her welfare, a new reason to urge
+Templeton to reparation, a new motive to desire to procure for the infant
+years of Eleanor's grandchild the gentle care of the young mother, whose
+own bereavement he sorrowfully foretold.  Perhaps the advice and
+exhortations of Aubrey went far towards assisting the conscience of Mr.
+Templeton, and reconciling him to the sacrifice he made to his affection
+for his daughter. Be that as it may, he married Alice, and Aubrey
+solemnized and blessed the chill and barren union.
+
+But now came a new and inexpressible affliction; the child of Alice had
+rallied but for a time.  The dread disease had but dallied with its prey;
+it came on with rapid and sudden force; and within a month from the day
+that saw Alice the bride of Templeton, the last hope was gone, and the
+mother was bereft and childless!
+
+The blow that stunned Alice was not, after the first natural shock of
+sympathy, an unwelcome event to the banker.  Now _his_ child would be
+Alice's sole care; now there could be no gossip, no suspicion why, in
+life and after death, he should prefer one child, supposed not his own,
+to the other.
+
+He hastened to remove Alice from the scene of her affliction.  He
+dismissed the solitary attendant who had accompanied her on her journey;
+he bore his wife to London, and finally settled, as we have seen, at a
+villa in its vicinity.  And there, more and more, day by day, centred his
+love upon the supposed daughter of Mrs. Templeton, his darling and his
+heiress, the beautiful Evelyn Cameron.
+
+For the first year or two, Templeton evinced some alarming disposition to
+escape from the oath he had imposed upon himself; but on the slightest
+hint there was a sternness in the wife, in all else so respectful, so
+submissive, that repressed and awed him.  She even threatened--and at one
+time was with difficulty prevented carrying the threat into effect--to
+leave his roof forever, if there were the slightest question of the
+sanctity of his vow.  Templeton trembled; such a separation would excite
+gossip, curiosity, scandal, a noise in the world, public talk, possible
+discovery.  Besides, Alice was necessary to Evelyn, necessary to his own
+comfort; something to scold in health, something to rely upon in illness.
+Gradually then, but sullenly, he reconciled himself to his lot; and as
+years and infirmities grew upon him, he was contented at least to have
+secured a faithful friend and an anxious nurse.  Still a marriage of this
+sort was not blessed: Templeton's vanity was wounded; his temper, always
+harsh, was soured; he avenged his affront by a thousand petty tyrannies;
+and, without a murmur, Alice perhaps in those years of rank and opulence
+suffered more than in all her wanderings, with love at her heart and her
+infant in her arms.
+
+Evelyn was to be the heiress to the wealth of the banker.  But the
+_title_ of the new peer!--if he could unite wealth and title, and set the
+coronet on that young brow!  This had led him to seek the alliance with
+Lumley.  And on his death-bed, it was not the secret of Alice, but that
+of Mary Westbrook and his daughter, which he had revealed to his dismayed
+and astonished nephew, in excuse for the apparently unjust alienation of
+his property, and as the cause of the alliance he had sought.
+
+While her husband, if husband he might be called, lived, Alice had seemed
+to bury in her bosom her regret--deep, mighty, passionate, as it was--for
+her lost child, the child of the unforgotten lover, to whom, through such
+trials, and amid such new ties, she had been faithful from first to last.
+But when once more free, her heart flew back to the far and lowly grave.
+Hence her yearly visits to Brook-Green; hence her purchase of the
+cottage, hallowed by memories of the dead.  There, on that lawn, had she
+borne forth the fragile form, to breathe the soft noontide air; there, in
+that chamber, had she watched and hoped, and prayed and despaired; there,
+in that quiet burial-ground, rested the beloved dust!  But Alice, even in
+her holiest feelings, was not selfish: she forbore to gratify the first
+wish of her heart till Evelyn's education was sufficiently advanced to
+enable her to quit the neighbourhood; and then, to the delight of Aubrey
+(who saw in Evelyn a fairer, and nobler, and purer Eleanor), she came to
+the solitary spot, which, in all the earth, was the _least_ solitary to
+her!
+
+And now the image of the lover of her youth--which during her marriage
+she had _sought_, at least, to banish--returned to her, and at times
+inspired her with the only hopes that the grave had not yet transferred
+to heaven!  In relating her tale to Aubrey or in conversing with Mrs.
+Leslie, whose friendship she still maintained, she found that both
+concurred in thinking that this obscure and wandering Butler, so skilled
+in an art in which eminence in man is generally professional, must be of
+mediocre or perhaps humble station.  Ah! now that she was free and rich,
+if she were to meet him again, and his love was not all gone, and he
+would believe in _her_ strange and constant truth; now, _his_ infidelity
+could be forgiven,--forgotten in the benefits it might be hers to bestow!
+And how, poor Alice, in that remote village, was chance to throw him in
+your way?  She knew not: but something often whispered to her, "Again you
+shall meet those eyes; again you shall hear that voice; and you shall
+tell him, weeping on his breast, how you loved his child!"  And would he
+not have forgotten her; would he not have formed new ties?--could he read
+the loveliness of unchangeable affection in that pale and pensive face!
+Alas, when we love intensely, it is difficult to make us fancy that there
+is no love in return!
+
+The reader is acquainted with the adventures of Mrs. Elton, the sole
+confidant of the secret union of Templeton and Evelyn's mother.  By a
+singular fatality, it was the selfish and characteristic recklessness of
+Vargrave that had, in fixing her home at Burleigh, ministered to the
+revelation of his own villanous deceit.  On returning to England she had
+inquired for Mr. Templeton; she had learned that he had married again,
+had been raised to the peerage under the title of Lord Vargrave, and was
+gathered to his fathers.  She had no claim on his widow or his family.
+But the unfortunate child who should have inherited his property, she
+could only suppose her dead.
+
+When she first saw Evelyn, she was startled by her likeness to her
+unfortunate mother.  But the unfamiliar name of Cameron, the intelligence
+received from Maltravers that Evelyn's mother still lived, dispelled her
+suspicions; and though at times the resemblance haunted her, she doubted
+and inquired no more.  In fact, her own infirmities grew upon her, and
+pain usurped her thoughts.
+
+Now it so happened that the news of the engagement of Maltravers to Miss
+Cameron became known to the county but a little time before he
+arrived,--for news travels slow from the Continent to our
+provinces,--and, of course, excited all the comment of the villagers.
+Her nurse repeated the tale to Mrs. Elton, who instantly remembered the
+name, and recalled the resemblance of Miss Cameron to the unfortunate
+Mary Westbrook.
+
+"And," said the gossiping nurse, "she was engaged, they say, to a great
+lord, and gave him up for the squire,--a great lord in the court, who had
+been staying at Parson Merton's, Lord Vargrave!"
+
+"Lord Vargrave!" exclaimed Mrs. Elton, remembering the title to which Mr.
+Templeton had been raised.
+
+"Yes; they do say as how the late lord left Miss Cameron all his
+money--such a heap of it--though she was not his child, over the head of
+his nevy, the present lord, on the understanding like that they were to
+be married when she came of age.  But she would not take to him after she
+had seen the squire.  And, to be sure, the squire is the finest-looking
+gentleman in the county."
+
+"Stop! stop!" said Mrs. Elton, feebly; "the late lord left all his
+fortune to Miss Cameron,--not his child!  I guess the riddle!  I
+understand it all! my foster-child!" she murmured, turning away; "how
+could I have mistaken that likeness?"
+
+The agitation of the discovery she supposed she had made, her joy at the
+thought that the child she had loved as her own was alive and possessed
+of its rights, expedited the progress of Mrs. Elton's disease; and
+Maltravers arrived just in time to learn her confession (which she
+naturally wished to make to one who was at once her benefactor, and
+supposed to be the destined husband of her foster-child), and to be
+agitated with hope, with joy, at her solemn conviction of the truth of
+her surmises.  If Evelyn were not his daughter--even if not to be his
+bride--what a weight from his soul!  He hastened to Brook-Green; and
+dreading to rush at once to the presence of Alice, he recalled Aubrey to
+his recollection.  In the interview he sought, all, or at least much, was
+cleared up.  He saw at once the premeditated and well-planned villany of
+Vargrave.  And Alice, her tale--her sufferings--her indomitable
+love!--how should he meet _her_?
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+  YET once more, O ye laurels! and once more,
+  Ye myrtles!--LYCIDAS.
+
+WHILE Maltravers was yet agitated and excited by the disclosures of the
+curate, to whom, as a matter of course, he had divulged his own identity
+with the mysterious Butler, Aubrey, turning his eyes to the casement, saw
+the form of Lady Vargrave slowly approaching towards the house.
+
+"Will you withdraw to the inner room?" said he; "she is coming; you are
+not yet prepared to meet her!--nay, would it be well?"
+
+"Yes, yes; I am prepared.  We must be alone.  I will await her here."
+
+"But--"
+
+"Nay, I implore you!"
+
+The curate, without another word, retired into the inner apartment, and
+Maltravers sinking in a chair breathlessly awaited the entrance of Lady
+Vargrave.  He soon heard the light step without; the door, which opened
+at once on the old-fashioned parlour, was gently unclosed, and Lady
+Vargrave was in the room!  In the position he had taken, only the outline
+of Ernest's form was seen by Alice, and the daylight came dim through the
+cottage casement; and seeing some one seated in the curate's accustomed
+chair, she could but believe that it was Aubrey himself.
+
+"Do not let me interrupt you," said that sweet, low voice, whose music
+had been dumb for so many years to Maltravers, "but I have a letter from
+France, from a stranger.  It alarms me so; it is about Evelyn;" and, as
+if to imply that she meditated a longer visit than ordinary, Lady
+Vargrave removed her bonnet, and placed it on the table.  Surprised that
+the curate had not answered, had not come forward to welcome her, she
+then approached; Maltravers rose, and they stood before each other face
+to face.  And how lovely still was Alice! lovelier he thought even than
+of old!  And those eyes, so divinely blue, so dovelike and soft, yet
+with some spiritual and unfathomable mystery in their clear depth, were
+once more fixed upon him.  Alice seemed turned to stone; she moved not,
+she spoke not, she scarcely breathed; she gazed spellbound, as if her
+senses--as if life itself--had deserted her.
+
+"Alice!" murmured Maltravers,--"Alice, we meet at last!"
+
+His voice restored memory, consciousness, youth, at once to her!  She
+uttered a loud cry of unspeakable joy, of rapture!  She sprang
+forward--reserve, fear, time, change, all forgotten; she threw herself
+into his arms, she clasped him to her heart again and again!--the
+faithful dog that has found its master expresses not his transport more
+uncontrollably, more wildly.  It was something fearful--the excess of her
+ecstasy!  She kissed his hands, his clothes; she laughed, she wept; and
+at last, as words came, she laid her head on his breast, and said
+passionately, "I have been true to thee!  I have been true to thee!--or
+this hour would have killed me!"  Then, as if alarmed by his silence, she
+looked up into his face, and as his burning tears fell upon her cheek,
+she said again and with more hurried vehemence, "I _have_ been
+faithful,--do you not believe me?"
+
+"I do, I do, noble, unequalled Alice!  Why, why were you so long lost to
+me?  Why now does your love so shame my own?"
+
+At these words, Alice appeared to awaken from her first oblivion of all
+that had chanced since they met; she blushed deeply, and drew herself
+gently and bashfully from his embrace.  "Ah," she said, in altered and
+humbled accents, "you have loved another!  Perhaps you have no love left
+for me!  Is it so; is it?  No, no; those eyes--you love me--you love me
+still!"
+
+And again she clung to him, as if it were heaven to believe all things,
+and death to doubt.  Then, after a pause, she drew him gently with both
+her hands towards the light, and gazed upon him fondly, proudly, as if to
+trace, line by line, and feature by feature, the countenance which had
+been to her sweet thoughts as the sunlight to the flowers.  "Changed,
+changed," she muttered; "but still the same,--still beautiful, still
+divine!"  She stopped.  A sudden thought struck her: his garments were
+worn and soiled by travel, and that princely crest, fallen and dejected,
+no longer towered in proud defiance above the sons of men.  "You are not
+rich," she exclaimed eagerly,--"say you are not rich!  I am rich enough
+for both; it is all yours,--all yours; I did not betray you for it; there
+is no shame in it.  Oh, we shall be so happy!  Thou art come back to thy
+poor Alice! thou knowest how she loved thee!"
+
+There was in Alice's manner, her wild joy, something so different from
+her ordinary self, that none who could have seen her--quiet, pensive,
+subdued--would have fancied her the same being.  All that Society and its
+woes had taught were gone; and Nature once more claimed her fairest
+child.  The very years seemed to have fallen from her brow, and she
+looked scarcely older than when she had stood with him beneath the
+moonlight by the violet banks far away.  Suddenly, her colour faded; the
+smile passed from the dimpled lips; a sad and solemn aspect succeeded to
+that expression of passionate joy.  "Come," she said, in a whisper,
+"come, follow;" and still clasping his hand, she drew him to the door.
+Silent and wonderingly he followed her across the lawn, through the
+moss-grown gate, and into the lonely burial-ground.  She moved on with a
+noiseless and gliding step,--so pale, so hushed, so breathless, that even
+in the noonday you might have half fancied the fair shape was not owned
+by earth.  She paused where the yew-tree cast its gloomy shadow; and the
+small and tombless mound, separated from the rest, was before them.  She
+pointed to it, and falling on her knees beside it, murmured, "Hush, it
+sleeps below,--thy child!" She covered her face with both her hands, and
+her form shook convulsively.
+
+Beside that form and before that grave knelt Maltravers.  There vanished
+the last remnant of his stoic pride; and there--Evelyn herself
+forgotten--there did he pray to Heaven for pardon to himself, and
+blessings on the heart he had betrayed.  There solemnly did he vow, the
+remainder of his years, to guard from all future ill the faithful and
+childless mother.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+  WILL Fortune never come with both hands full,
+  But write her fair words still in foulest letters?
+                      _Henry IV._ Part ii.
+
+I PASS over those explanations, that record of Alice's eventful history,
+which Maltravers learned from her own lips, to confirm and add to the
+narrative of the curate, the purport of which is already known to the
+reader.
+
+It was many hours before Alice was sufficiently composed to remember the
+object for which she had sought the curate.  But she had laid the letter
+which she had brought, and which explained all, on the table at the
+vicarage; and when Maltravers, having at last induced Alice, who seemed
+afraid to lose sight of him for an instant, to retire to her room, and
+seek some short repose, returned towards the vicarage, he met Aubrey in
+the garden.  The old man had taken the friend's acknowledged license to
+read the letter evidently meant for his eye; and, alarmed and anxious, he
+now eagerly sought a consultation with Maltravers.  The letter, written
+in English, as familiar to the writer as her own tongue, was from Madame
+de Ventadour.  It had been evidently dictated by the kindest feelings.
+After apologizing briefly for her interference, she stated that Lord
+Vargrave's marriage with Miss Cameron was now a matter of public
+notoriety; that it would take place in a few days; that it was observed
+with suspicion that Miss Cameron appeared nowhere; that she seemed almost
+a prisoner in her room; that certain expressions which had dropped from
+Lady Doltimore had alarmed her greatly.  According to these expressions,
+it would seem that Lady Vargrave was not apprised of the approaching
+event; that, considering Miss Cameron's recent engagement to Mr.
+Maltravers suddenly (and, as Valerie thought, unaccountably) broken off
+on the arrival of Lord Vargrave; considering her extreme youth, her
+brilliant fortune; and, Madame de Ventadour delicately hinted,
+considering also Lord Vargrave's character for unscrupulous determination
+in the furtherance of any object on which he was bent,--considering all
+this, Madame de Ventadour had ventured to address Miss Cameron's mother,
+and to guard her against the possibility of design or deceit.  Her best
+apology for her intrusion must be her deep interest in Miss Cameron, and
+her long friendship for one to whom Miss Cameron had been so lately
+betrothed.  If Lady Vargrave were aware of the new engagement, and had
+sanctioned it, of course her intrusion was unseasonable and superfluous;
+but if ascribed to its real motive, would not be the less forgiven.
+
+It was easy for Maltravers to see in this letter how generous and zealous
+had been that friendship for himself which could have induced the woman
+of the world to undertake so officious a task.  But of this he thought
+not, as he hurried over the lines, and shuddered at Evelyn's urgent
+danger.
+
+"This intelligence," said Aubrey, "must be, indeed, a surprise to Lady
+Vargrave.  For we have not heard a word from Evelyn or Lord Vargrave to
+announce such a marriage; and she (and myself till this day) believed
+that the engagement between Evelyn and Mr. -----, I mean," said Aubrey
+with confusion,--"I mean yourself, was still in force.  Lord Vargrave's
+villany is apparent; we must act immediately.  What is to be done?"
+
+"I will return to Paris to-morrow; I will defeat his machination, expose
+his falsehood!"
+
+"You may need a proxy for Lady Vargrave, an authority for Evelyn; one
+whom Lord Vargrave knows to possess the secret of her birth, her rights:
+I will go with you.  We must speak to Lady Vargrave."
+
+Maltravers turned sharply round.  "And Alice knows not who I am; that
+I--I am, or was, a few weeks ago, the suitor of another; and that other
+the child she has reared as her own!  Unhappy Alice! in the very hour of
+her joy at my return, is she to writhe beneath this new affliction?"
+
+"Shall I break it to her?" said Aubrey, pityingly.
+
+"No, no; these lips must inflict the last wrong!" Maltravers walked away,
+and the curate saw him no more till night.
+
+In the interval, and late in the evening, Maltravers rejoined Alice.
+
+The fire burned clear on the hearth, the curtains were drawn, the
+pleasant but simple drawing-room of the cottage smiled its welcome as
+Maltravers entered, and Alice sprang up to greet him!  It was as if the
+old days of the music-lesson and the meerschaum had come back.
+
+"This is yours," said Alice, tenderly, as he looked round the apartment.
+"Now--now I know what a blessed thing riches are!  Ah, you are looking on
+that picture; it is of her who supplied your daughter's place,--she is so
+beautiful, so good, you will love her as a daughter.  Oh, that
+letter--that--that letter--I forgot it till now--it is at the vicarage--I
+must go there immediately, and you will come too,--you will advise us."
+
+"Alice, I have read the letter,--I know all.  Alice, sit down and hear
+me,--it is you who have to learn from me.  In our young days I was
+accustomed to tell you stories in winter nights like these,--stories of
+love like our own, of sorrows which, at that time, we only knew by
+hearsay.  I have one now for your ear, truer and sadder than they were.
+Two children, for they were then little more--children in ignorance of
+the world, children in freshness of heart, children almost in years--were
+thrown together by strange vicissitudes, more than eighteen years ago.
+They were of different sexes,--they loved and they erred.  But the error
+was solely with the boy; for what was innocence in her was but passion in
+him.  He loved her dearly; but at that age her qualities were half
+developed.  He knew her beautiful, simple, tender; but he knew not all
+the virtue, the faith, and the nobleness that Heaven had planted in her
+soul.  They parted,--they knew not each other's fate.  He sought her
+anxiously, but in vain; and sorrow and remorse long consumed him, and her
+memory threw a shadow over his existence.  But again--for his love had
+not the exalted holiness of hers (_she_ was true!)--he sought to renew in
+others the charm he had lost with her.  In vain,--long, long in vain.
+Alice, you know to whom the tale refers.  Nay, listen yet.  I have heard
+from the old man yonder that you were witness to a scene many years ago
+which deceived you into the belief that you beheld a rival.  It was not
+so: that lady yet lives,--then, as now, a friend to me; nothing more.  I
+grant that, at one time, my fancy allured me to her, but my heart was
+still true to thee."
+
+"Bless you for those words!" murmured Alice; and she crept more closely
+to him.
+
+He went on.  "Circumstances, which at some calmer occasion you shall
+hear, again nearly connected my fate by marriage to another.  I had then
+seen you at a distance, unseen by you,--seen you apparently surrounded by
+respectability and opulence; and I blessed Heaven that your lot, at
+least, was not that of penury and want."  (Here Maltravers related where
+he had caught that brief glimpse of Alice,*--how he had sought for her
+again and again in vain.) "From that hour," he continued, "seeing you in
+circumstances of which I could not have dared to dream, I felt more
+reconciled to the past; yet, when on the verge of marriage with
+another--beautiful, gifted, generous as she was--a thought, a memory half
+acknowledged, dimly traced, chained back my sentiments; and admiration,
+esteem, and gratitude were not love!  Death--a death melancholy and
+tragic--forbade this union; and I went forth in the world, a pilgrim and
+a wanderer.  Years rolled away, and I thought I had conquered the desire
+for love,--a desire that had haunted me since I lost thee.  But, suddenly
+and recently, a being, beautiful as yourself--sweet, guileless, and young
+as you were when we met--woke in me a new and a strange sentiment.  I
+will not conceal it from you: Alice, at last I loved another!  Yet,
+singular as it may seem to you, it was a certain resemblance to yourself,
+not in feature, but in the tones of the voice, the nameless grace of
+gesture and manner, the very music of your once happy laugh,--those
+traits of resemblance which I can now account for, and which children
+catch not from their parents only, but from those they most see, and,
+loving most, most imitate in their tender years,--all these, I say, made
+perhaps a chief attraction, that drew me towards--Alice, are you prepared
+for it?--drew me towards Evelyn Cameron.  Know me in my real character,
+by my true name: I am that Maltravers to whom the hand of Evelyn was a
+few weeks ago betrothed!"
+
+  * See "Ernest Maltravers," book v., p. 228.
+
+He paused, and ventured to look up at Alice; she was exceedingly pale,
+and her hands were tightly clasped together, but she neither wept nor
+spoke.  The worst was over; he continued more rapidly, and with less
+constrained an effort: "By the art, the duplicity, the falsehood of Lord
+Vargrave, I was taught in a sudden hour to believe that Evelyn was our
+daughter, that you recoiled from the prospect of beholding once more the
+author of so many miseries.  I need not tell you, Alice, of the horror
+that succeeded to love. I pass over the tortures I endured.  By a train
+of incidents to be related to you hereafter, I was led to suspect the
+truth of Vargrave's tale.  I came hither; I have learned all from Aubrey.
+I regret no more the falsehood that so racked me for the time; I regret
+no more the rupture of my bond with Evelyn; I regret nothing that brings
+me at last free and unshackled to thy feet, and acquaints me with thy
+sublime faith and ineffable love.  Here then--here beneath your own
+roof--here he, at once your earliest friend and foe, kneels to you for
+pardon and for hope!  He woos you as his wife, his companion to the
+grave!  Forget all his errors, and be to him, under a holier name, all
+that you were to him of old!"
+
+"And you are then Evelyn's suitor,--you are he whom she loves?  I see it
+all--all!"  Alice rose, and, before he was even aware of her purpose, or
+conscious of what she felt, she had vanished from the room.
+
+Long, and with the bitterest feelings, he awaited her return; she came
+not.  At last he wrote a hurried note, imploring her to join him again,
+to relieve his suspense; to believe his sincerity; to accept his vows.
+He sent it to her own room, to which she had hastened to bury her
+emotions.  In a few minutes there came to him this answer, written in
+pencil, blotted with tears.
+
+
+"I thank you, I understand your heart; but forgive me--I cannot see you
+yet.  She is so beautiful and good, she is worthy of you.  I shall soon
+be reconciled.  God bless you,--bless you both!"
+
+
+The door of the vicarage was opened abruptly, and Maltravers entered with
+a hasty but heavy tread.
+
+"Go to her, go to that angel; go, I beseech you!  Tell her that she
+wrongs me, if she thinks I can ever wed another, ever have an object in
+life, but to atone to, to merit her.  Go, plead for me."
+
+Aubrey, who soon gathered from Maltravers what had passed, departed to
+the cottage.  It was near midnight before he returned.  Maltravers met
+him in the churchyard, beside the yew-tree.  "Well, well, what message do
+you bring?"
+
+"She wishes that we should both set off for Paris to-morrow.  Not a day
+is to be lost,--we must save Evelyn from this snare."
+
+"Evelyn!  Yes, Evelyn shall be saved; but the rest--the rest--why do you
+turn away?"
+
+"'You are not the poor artist, the wandering adventurer; you are the
+high-born, the wealthy, the renowned Maltravers: Alice has nothing to
+confer on you.  You have won the love of Evelyn,--Alice cannot doom the
+child confided to her care to hopeless affection; you love Evelyn,--Alice
+cannot compare herself to the young and educated and beautiful creature,
+whose love is a priceless treasure.  Alice prays you not to grieve for
+her; she will soon be content and happy in your happiness.' This is the
+message."
+
+"And what said you,--did you not tell her such words would break my
+heart?"
+
+"No matter what I said; I mistrust myself when I advise her.  Her
+feelings are truer than all our wisdom!"
+
+Maltravers made no answer, and the curate saw him gliding rapidly away by
+the starlit graves towards the village.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+  THINK you I can a resolution fetch
+  From flowery tenderness?--_Measure for Measure_.
+
+THEY were on the road to Dover.  Maltravers leaned back in the corner of
+the carriage with his hat over his brows, though the morning was yet too
+dark for the curate to perceive more than the outline of his features.
+Milestone after milestone glided by the wheels, and neither of the
+travellers broke the silence.  It was a cold, raw morning, and the mists
+rose sullenly from the dank hedges and comfortless fields.
+
+Stern and self-accusing was the scrutiny of Maltravers into the recesses
+of his conscience, and the blotted pages of the Past.  That pale and
+solitary mother, mourning over the grave of her--of his own--child, rose
+again before his eyes, and seemed silently to ask him for an account of
+the heart he had made barren, and of the youth to which his love had
+brought the joylessness of age.  With the image of Alice,--afar, alone,
+whether in her wanderings, a beggar and an outcast, or in that hollow
+prosperity, in which the very ease of the frame allowed more leisure to
+the pinings of the heart,--with that image, pure, sorrowing, and faithful
+from first to last, he compared his own wild and wasted youth, his resort
+to fancy and to passion for excitement.  He contrasted with her patient
+resignation his own arrogant rebellion against the trials, the bitterness
+of which his proud spirit had exaggerated; his contempt for the pursuits
+and aims of others; the imperious indolence of his later life, and his
+forgetfulness of the duties which Providence had fitted him to discharge.
+His mind, once so rudely hurled from that complacent pedestal, from which
+it had so long looked down on men, and said, "I am wiser and better than
+you," became even too acutely sensitive to its own infirmities; and that
+desire for Virtue, which he had ever deeply entertained, made itself more
+distinctly and loudly heard amidst the ruins and the silence of his
+pride.
+
+From the contemplation of the Past, he roused himself to face the Future.
+Alice had refused his hand, Alice herself had ratified and blessed his
+union with another!  Evelyn, so madly loved,--Evelyn might still be his!
+No law--from the violation of which, even in thought, Human Nature
+recoils appalled and horror-stricken--forbade him to reclaim her hand, to
+snatch her from the grasp of Vargrave, to woo again, and again to win
+her!  But did Maltravers welcome, did he embrace that thought?  Let us do
+him justice: he did not.  He felt that Alice's resolution, in the first
+hour of mortified affection, was not to be considered final; and even if
+it were so, he felt yet more deeply that her love--the love that had
+withstood so many trials--never could be subdued.  Was he to make her
+nobleness a curse?  Was he to say, "Thou hast passed away in thy
+generation, and I leave thee again to thy solitude for her whom thou hast
+cherished as a child?"  He started in dismay from the thought of this new
+and last blow upon the shattered spirit; and then fresh and equally
+sacred obstacles between Evelyn and himself broke slowly on his view.
+Could Templeton rise from his grave, with what resentment, with what just
+repugnance, would he have regarded in the betrayer of his wife (even
+though wife but in name) the suitor to his child!
+
+These thoughts came in fast and fearful force upon Maltravers, and served
+to strengthen his honour and his conscience.  He felt that though, in
+law, there was no shadow of connection between Evelyn and himself, yet
+his tie with Alice had been of a nature that ought to separate him from
+one who had regarded Alice as a mother.  The load of horror, the agony of
+shame, were indeed gone; but still a voice whispered as before, "Evelyn
+is lost to thee forever!"  But so shaken had already been her image in
+the late storms and convulsion of his soul, that this thought was
+preferable to the thought of sacrificing Alice.  If _that_ were all--but
+Evelyn might still love him; and justice to Alice might be misery to her!
+He started from his revery with a vehement gesture, and groaned audibly.
+
+The curate turned to address to him some words of inquiry and surprise;
+but the words were unheard, and he perceived, by the advancing daylight,
+that the countenance of Maltravers was that of a man utterly rapt and
+absorbed by some mastering and irresistible thought.  Wisely, therefore,
+he left his companion in peace, and returned to his own anxious and
+engrossing meditations.
+
+The travellers did not rest till they arrived at Dover.  The vessel
+started early the following morning, and Aubrey, who was much fatigued,
+retired to rest. Maltravers glanced at the clock upon the mantelpiece; it
+was the hour of nine.  For him there was no hope of sleep; and the
+prospect of the slow night was that of dreary suspense and torturing
+self-commune.
+
+As he turned restlessly in his seat, the waiter entered to say that there
+was a gentleman who had caught a glimpse of him below on his arrival, and
+who was anxious to speak with him.  Before Maltravers could answer, the
+gentleman himself entered, and Maltravers recognized Legard.
+
+"I beg your pardon," said the latter, in a tone of great agitation, "but
+I was most anxious to see you for a few moments.  I have just returned to
+England--all places alike hateful to me!  I read in the papers--an--an
+announcement--which--which occasions me the greatest--I know not what I
+would say,--but is it true?  Read this paragraph;" and Legard placed "The
+Courier" before Maltravers.
+
+The passage was as follows:
+
+
+"It is whispered that Lord Vargrave, who is now at Paris, is to be
+married in a few days to the beautiful and wealthy Miss Cameron, to whom
+he has been long engaged."
+
+
+"Is it possible?" exclaimed Legard, following the eyes of Maltravers, as
+he glanced over the paragraph.  "Were not _you_ the lover,--the accepted,
+the happy lover of Miss Cameron?  Speak, tell me, I implore you!--that it
+was for you, who saved my life and redeemed my honour, and not for that
+cold schemer, that I renounced all my hopes of earthly happiness, and
+surrendered the dream of winning the heart and hand of the only woman I
+ever loved!"
+
+A deep shade fell over the features of Maltravers.  He gazed earnestly
+and long upon the working countenance of Legard, and said, after a
+pause,--
+
+"You, too, loved her, then?  I never knew it,--never guessed it; or, if
+once I suspected, it was but for a moment; and--"
+
+"Yes," interrupted Legard, passionately, "Heaven is my witness how
+fervently and truly I did love--I do still love Evelyn Cameron!  But when
+you confessed to me your affection--your hopes--I felt all that I owed
+you; I felt that I never ought to become your rival.  I left Paris
+abruptly.  What I have suffered I will not say; but it was some comfort
+to think that I had acted as became one who owed you a debt never to be
+cancelled nor repaid.  I travelled from place to place, each equally
+hateful and wearisome; at last, I scarce know why, I returned to England.
+I have arrived this day; and now--but tell me, is it true?"
+
+"I believe it true," said Maltravers, in a hollow voice, "that Evelyn is
+at this moment engaged to Lord Vargrave.  I believe it equally true that
+that engagement, founded upon false impressions, never will be fulfilled.
+With that hope and that belief, I am on my road to Paris."
+
+"And she will be yours, still?" said Legard, turning away his face:
+"well, that I can bear.  May you be happy, sir!"
+
+"Stay, Legard," said Maltravers, in a voice of great feeling: "let us
+understand each other better; you have renounced your passion to your
+sense of honour."  Maltravers paused thoughtfully.  "It was noble in you,
+it was more than just to me; I thank you and respect you.  But, Legard,
+was there aught in the manner, the bearing of Evelyn Cameron, that could
+lead you to suppose that she would have returned your affection?  True,
+had we started on equal terms, I am not vain enough to be blind to your
+advantages of youth and person; but I believed that the affections of
+Evelyn were already mine, before we met at Paris."
+
+"It might be so," said Legard, gloomily; "nor is it for me to say that a
+heart so pure and generous as Evelyn's could deceive yourself or me.  Yet
+I _had_ fancied, I _had_ hoped, while you stood aloof, that the
+partiality with which she regarded you was that of admiration more than
+love; that you had dazzled her imagination rather than won her heart.  I
+had hoped that I should win, that I was winning, my way to her affection!
+But let this pass; I drop the subject forever--only, Maltravers, only do
+me justice.  You are a proud man, and your pride has often irritated and
+stung me, in spite of my gratitude.  Be more lenient to me than you have
+been; think that, though I have my errors and my follies, I am still
+capable of some conquests over myself.  And most sincerely do I now wish
+that Evelyn's love may be to you that blessing it would have been to me!"
+
+This was, indeed, a new triumph over the pride of Maltravers,--a new
+humiliation.  He had looked with a cold contempt on this man, because he
+affected not to be above the herd; and this man had preceded him in the
+very sacrifice he himself meditated.
+
+"Legard," said Maltravers, and a faint blush overspread his face, "you
+rebuke me justly.  I acknowledge my fault, and I ask you to forgive it.
+From this night, whatever happens, I shall hold it an honour to be
+admitted to your friendship; from this night, George Legard never shall
+find in me the offences of arrogance and harshness."
+
+Legard wrung the hand held out to him warmly, but made no answer; his
+heart was full, and he would not trust himself to speak.
+
+"You think, then," resumed Maltravers, in a more thoughtful tone,--"you
+think that Evelyn could have loved you, had my pretensions not crossed
+your own?  And you think, also--pardon me, dear Legard--that you could
+have acquired the steadiness of character, the firmness of purpose, which
+one so fair, so young, so inexperienced and susceptible, so surrounded by
+a thousand temptations, would need in a guardian and protector?"
+
+"Oh, do not judge of me by what I have been.  I feel that Evelyn could
+have reformed errors worse than mine; that her love would have elevated
+dispositions yet more light and commonplace.  You do not know what
+miracles love works!  But now, what is there left for me?  What matters
+it how frivolous and poor the occupations which can distract my thoughts,
+and bring me forgetfulness?  Forgive me; I have no right to obtrude all
+this egotism on you."
+
+"Do not despond, Legard," said Maltravers, kindly; "there may be better
+fortunes in store for you than you yet anticipate.  I cannot say more
+now; but will you remain at Dover a few days longer?  Within a week you
+shall hear from me. I will not raise hopes that it may not be mine to
+realize.  But if it be as you think it was, why little, indeed, would
+rest with me.  Nay, look not on me so wistfully," added Maltravers, with
+a mournful smile; "and let the subject close for the present.  You will
+stay at Dover?"
+
+"I will; but--"
+
+"No buts, Legard; it is so settled."
+
+
+
+BOOK XI.
+
+  "Man is born to be a doer of good."--MARCUS ANTONINUS, lib. iii.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+            His teeth he still did grind,
+  And grimly gnash, threatening revenge in vain.--SPENSER.
+
+IT is now time to return to Lord Vargrave.  His most sanguine hopes were
+realized; all things seemed to prosper.  The hand of Evelyn Cameron was
+pledged to him, the wedding-day was fixed.  In less than a week she was
+to confer upon the ruined peer a splendid dowry, that would smooth all
+obstacles in the ascent of his ambition.  From Mr. Douce he learned that
+the deeds, which were to transfer to himself the baronial possessions of
+the head of the house of Maltravers, were nearly completed; and on his
+wedding-day he hoped to be able to announce that the happy pair had set
+out for their princely mansion of Lisle Court.  In politics; though
+nothing could be finally settled till his return, letters from Lord
+Saxingham assured him that all was auspicious: the court and the heads of
+the aristocracy daily growing more alienated from the premier, and more
+prepared for a Cabinet revolution.  And Vargrave, perhaps, like most
+needy men, overrated the advantages he should derive from, and the
+servile opinions he should conciliate in, his new character of landed
+proprietor and wealthy peer.  He was not insensible to the silent anguish
+that Evelyn seemed to endure, nor to the bitter gloom that hung on the
+brow of Lady Doltimore. But these were clouds that foretold no
+storm,--light shadows that obscured not the serenity of the favouring
+sky.  He continued to seem unconscious to either; to take the coming
+event as a matter of course, and to Evelyn he evinced so gentle,
+unfamiliar, respectful, and delicate an attachment, that he left no
+opening, either for confidence or complaint.  Poor Evelyn! her gayety,
+her enchanting levity, her sweet and infantine playfulness of manner,
+were indeed vanished.  Pale, wan, passive, and smileless, she was the
+ghost of her former self!  But days rolled on, and the evil one drew
+near; she recoiled, but she never dreamed of resisting.  How many equal
+victims of her age and sex does the altar witness!
+
+One day, at early noon, Lord Vargrave took his way to Evelyn's.  He had
+been to pay a political visit in the Faubourg St. Germain, and he was now
+slowly crossing the more quiet and solitary part of the gardens of the
+Tuileries, his hands clasped behind him, after his old, unaltered habit,
+and his eyes downcast,--when suddenly a man, who was seated alone beneath
+one of the trees, and who had for some moments watched his steps with an
+anxious and wild aspect, rose and approached him.  Lord Vargrave was not
+conscious of the intrusion, till the man laid his hand on Vargrave's arm,
+and exclaimed,--
+
+"It is he! it is!  Lumley Ferrers, we meet again!"
+
+Lord Vargrave started and changed colour, as he gazed on the intruder.
+
+"Ferrers," continued Cesarini (for it was he), and he wound his arm
+firmly into Lord Vargrave's as he spoke, "you have not changed; your step
+is light, your cheek healthful; and yet I--you can scarcely recognize me.
+Oh, I have suffered so horribly since we parted!  Why is this?  Why have
+I been so heavily visited, and why have you gone free?  Heaven is not
+just!"
+
+Castruccio was in one of his lucid intervals; but there was that in his
+uncertain eye, and strange unnatural voice, which showed that a breath
+might dissolve the avalanche.  Lord Vargrave looked anxiously round; none
+were near: but he knew that the more public parts of the garden were
+thronged, and through the trees he saw many forms moving in the distance.
+He felt that the sound of his voice could summon assistance in an
+instant, and his assurance returned to him.
+
+"My poor friend," said he soothingly, as he quickened his pace, "it
+grieves me to the heart to see you look ill; do not think so much of what
+is past."
+
+"There is no past!" replied Cesarini, gloomily.  "The Past is my Present!
+And I have thought and thought, in darkness and in chains, over all that
+I have endured, and a light has broken on me in the hours when they told
+me I was mad!  Lumley Ferrers, it was not for my sake that you led me,
+devil as you are, into the lowest hell!  You had some object of your own
+to serve in separating _her_ from Maltravers.  You made me your
+instrument.  What was I to you that you should have sinned for _my_ sake?
+Answer me, and truly, if those lips can utter truth!"
+
+"Cesarini," returned Vargrave, in his blandest accents, "another time we
+will converse on what has been; believe me, my only object was your
+happiness, combined, it may be, with my hatred of your rival."
+
+"Liar!" shouted Cesarini, grasping Vargrave's arm with the strength of
+growing madness, while his burning eyes were fixed upon his tempter's
+changing countenance.  "You, too, loved Florence; you, too, sought her
+hand; _you_ were my real rival!"
+
+"Hush! my friend, hush!" said Vargrave, seeking to shake off the grip of
+the maniac, and becoming seriously alarmed; "we are approaching the
+crowded part of the gardens, we shall be observed."
+
+"And why are men made my foes?  Why is my own sister become my
+persecutor?  Why should she give me up to the torturer and the dungeon?
+Why are serpents and fiends my comrades?  Why is there fire in my brain
+and heart; and why do you go free and enjoy liberty and life?  Observed!
+What care _you_ for observation?  All men search for _me_!"
+
+"Then why so openly expose yourself to their notice; why--"
+
+"Hear me!" interrupted Cesarini.  "When I escaped from the horrible
+prison into which I was plunged; when I scented the fresh air, and
+bounded over the grass; when I was again free in limbs and spirit,--a
+sudden strain of music from a village came on my ear, and I stopped
+short, and crouched down, and held my breath to listen.  It ceased; and I
+thought I had been with Florence, and I wept bitterly!  When I recovered,
+memory came back to me distinct and clear; and I heard a voice say to me,
+'Avenge her and thyself!'  From that hour the voice has been heard again,
+morning and night!  Lumley Ferrers, I hear it now! it speaks to my heart,
+it warms my blood, it nerves my hand!  On whom should vengeance fall?
+Speak to me!"
+
+Lumley strode rapidly on.  They were now without the grove; a gay throng
+was before them.  "All is safe," thought the Englishman.  He turned
+abruptly and haughtily on Cesarini, and waved his hand; "Begone, madman!"
+said he, in a loud and stern voice,--"begone! vex me no more, or I give
+you into custody.  Begone, I say!"
+
+Cesarini halted, amazed and awed for the moment; and then, with a dark
+scowl and a low cry, threw himself on Vargrave.  The eye and hand of the
+latter were vigilant and prepared; he grasped the uplifted arm of the
+maniac, and shouted for help.  But the madman was now in his full fury;
+he hurled Vargrave to the ground with a force for which the peer was not
+prepared, and Lumley might never have risen a living man from that spot,
+if two soldiers, seated close by, had not hastened to his assistance.
+Cesarini was already kneeling on his breast, and his long bony fingers
+were fastening upon the throat of his intended victim.  Torn from his
+hold, he glared fiercely on his new assailants; and after a fierce but
+momentary struggle, wrested himself from their grip.  Then, turning round
+to Vargrave, who had with some effort risen from the ground, he shrieked
+out, "I shall have thee yet!" and fled through the trees and disappeared.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+  AH, who is nigh?  Come to me, friend or foe!
+  My parks, my walks, my manors that I had,
+  Ev'n now forsake me.--_HENRY VI_. Part iii.
+
+LORD VARGRAVE, bold as he was by nature, in vain endeavoured to banish
+from his mind the gloomy impression which the startling interview with
+Cesarini had bequeathed.  The face, the voice of the maniac, haunted him,
+as the shape of the warning wraith haunts the mountaineer.  He returned
+at once to his hotel, unable for some hours to collect himself
+sufficiently to pay his customary visit to Miss Cameron.  Inly resolving
+not to hazard a second meeting with the Italian during the rest of his
+sojourn at Paris by venturing in the streets on foot, he ordered his
+carriage towards evening; dined at the Cafe de Paris; and then re-entered
+his carriage to proceed to Lady Doltimore's house.
+
+"I beg your pardon, my lord," said his servant, as he closed the
+carriage-door, "but I forgot to say that, a short time after you returned
+this morning, a strange gentleman asked at the porter's lodge if Mr.
+Ferrers was not staying at the hotel.  The porter said there was no Mr.
+Ferrers, but the gentleman insisted upon it that he had seen Mr. Ferrers
+enter.  I was in the lodge at the moment, my lord, and I explained--"
+
+"That Mr. Ferrers and Lord Vargrave are one and the same?  What sort of
+looking person?"
+
+"Thin and dark, my lord,--evidently a foreigner.  When I said that you
+were now Lord Vargrave, he stared a moment, and said very abruptly that
+he recollected it perfectly, and then he laughed and walked away."
+
+"Did he not ask to see me?"
+
+"No, my lord; he said he should take another opportunity.  He was a
+strange-looking gentleman, and his clothes were threadbare."
+
+"Ah, some troublesome petitioner.  Perhaps a Pole in distress!  Remember
+I am never at home when he calls.  Shut the door.  To Lady Doltimore's."
+
+Lumley's heart beat as he threw himself back,--he again felt the grip of
+the madman at his throat.  He saw, at once, that Cesarini had dogged him;
+he resolved the next morning to change his hotel, and to apply to the
+police.  It was strange how sudden and keen a fear had entered the breast
+of this callous and resolute man!
+
+On arriving at Lady Doltimore's, he found Caroline alone in the
+drawing-room.  It was a _tete-a-tete_ that he by no means desired.
+
+"Lord Vargrave," said Caroline, coldly, "I wished a short conversation
+with you; and finding you did not come in the morning, I sent you a note
+an hour ago.  Did you receive it?"
+
+"No; I have been from home since six o'clock,--it is now nine."
+
+"Well, then, Vargrave," said Caroline, with a compressed and writhing
+lip, and turning very pale, "I tremble to tell you that I fear Doltimore
+suspects.  He looked at me sternly this morning, and said, 'You seem
+unhappy, madam; this marriage of Lord Vargrave's distresses you!'"
+
+"I warned you how it would be,--your own selfishness will betray and ruin
+you."
+
+"Do not reproach me, man!" said Lady Doltimore, with great vehemence.
+"From you at least I have a right to pity, to forbearance, to succour.  I
+will not bear reproach from _you_."
+
+"I reproach you for your own sake, for the faults you commit against
+yourself; and I must say, Caroline, that after I had generously conquered
+all selfish feeling, and assisted you to so desirable and even brilliant
+a position, it is neither just nor high-minded in you to evince so
+ungracious a reluctance to my taking the only step which can save me from
+actual ruin.  But what does Doltimore suspect?  What ground has he for
+suspicion, beyond that want of command of countenance which it is easy to
+explain,--and which it is yet easier for a woman and a great lady [here
+Lumley sneered] to acquire?"
+
+"I know not; it has been put into his head.  Paris is so full of slander.
+But, Vargrave--Lumley--I tremble, I shudder with terror, if ever
+Doltimore should discover--"
+
+"Pooh! pooh!  Our conduct at Paris has been most guarded, most discreet.
+Doltimore is Self-conceit personified,--and Self-conceit is horn-eyed.  I
+am about to leave Paris,--about to marry, from under your own roof; a
+little prudence, a little self-control, a smiling face, when you wish us
+happiness, and so forth, and all is safe.  Tush! think of it no more!
+Fate has cut and shuffled the cards for you; the game is yours, unless
+you revoke.  Pardon my metaphor; it is a favourite one,--I have worn it
+threadbare; but human life _is_ so like a rubber at whist.  Where is
+Evelyn?"
+
+"In her own room.  Have you no pity for her?"
+
+"She will be very happy when she is Lady Vargrave; and for the rest, I
+shall neither be a stern nor a jealous husband.  She might not have given
+the same character to the magnificent Maltravers."
+
+Here Evelyn entered; and Vargrave hastened to press her hand, to whisper
+tender salutations and compliments, to draw the easy-chair to the fire,
+to place the footstool,--to lavish the _petits soins_ that are so
+agreeable, when they are the small moralities of love.
+
+Evelyn was more than usually pale,--more than usually abstracted.  There
+was no lustre in her eye, no life in her step; she seemed unconscious of
+the crisis to which she approached.  As the myrrh and hyssop which
+drugged the malefactors of old into forgetfulness of their doom, so there
+are griefs which stupefy before their last and crowning consummation!
+
+Vargrave conversed lightly on the weather, the news, the last book.
+Evelyn answered but in monosyllables; and Caroline, with a hand-screen
+before her face, preserved an unbroken silence.  Thus gloomy and joyless
+were two of the party, thus gay and animated the third, when the clock on
+the mantelpiece struck ten; and as the last stroke died, and Evelyn
+sighed heavily,--for it was an hour nearer to the fatal day,--the door
+was suddenly thrown open, and pushing aside the servant, two gentlemen
+entered the room.
+
+Caroline, the first to perceive them, started from her seat with a faint
+exclamation of surprise.  Vargrave turned abruptly, and saw before him
+the stern countenance of Maltravers.
+
+"My child! my Evelyn!" exclaimed a familiar voice; and Evelyn had already
+flown into the arms of Aubrey.
+
+The sight of the curate in company with Maltravers explained all at once
+to Vargrave.  He saw that the mask was torn from his face, the prize
+snatched from his grasp, his falsehood known, his plot counterworked, his
+villany baffled!  He struggled in vain for self-composure; all his
+resources of courage and craft seemed drained and exhausted.  Livid,
+speechless, almost trembling, he cowered beneath the eyes of Maltravers.
+
+Evelyn, not as yet aware of the presence of her former lover, was the
+first to break the silence.  She lifted her face in alarm from the bosom
+of the good curate.  "My mother--she is well--she lives--what brings you
+hither?"
+
+"Your mother is well, my child.  I have come hither at her earnest
+request to save you from a marriage with that unworthy man!"
+
+Lord Vargrave smiled a ghastly smile, but made no answer.
+
+"Lord Vargrave," said Maltravers, "you will feel at once that you have no
+further business under this roof.  Let us withdraw,--I have much to thank
+you for."
+
+"I will not stir!" exclaimed Vargrave, passionately, and stamping on the
+floor.  "Miss Cameron, the guest of Lady Doltimore, whose house and
+presence you thus rudely profane, is my affianced bride,--affianced with
+her own consent.  Evelyn, beloved Evelyn! mine you are yet; you alone can
+cancel the bond.  Sir, I know not what you have to say, what mystery in
+your immaculate life to disclose; but unless Lady Doltimore, whom your
+violence appalls and terrifies, orders me to quit her roof, it is not
+I,--it is yourself, who are the intruder!  Lady Doltimore, with your
+permission, I will direct your servants to conduct this gentleman to his
+carriage!"
+
+"Lady Doltimore, pardon me," said Maltravers, coldly; "I will not be
+urged to any failure of respect to you.  My lord, if the most abject
+cowardice be not added to your other vices, you will not make this room
+the theatre for our altercation.  I invite you, in those terms which no
+gentleman ever yet refused, to withdraw with me."
+
+The tone and manner of Maltravers exercised a strange control over
+Vargrave; he endeavoured in vain to keep alive the passion into which he
+had sought to work himself; his voice faltered, his head sank upon his
+breast.  Between these two personages, none interfered; around them, all
+present grouped in breathless silence,--Caroline, turning her eyes from
+one to the other in wonder and dismay; Evelyn, believing all a dream, yet
+alive only to the thought that, by some merciful interposition of
+Providence, she should escape the consequences of her own rashness,
+clinging to Aubrey, with her gaze riveted on Maltravers; and Aubrey,
+whose gentle character was borne down and silenced by the powerful and
+tempestuous passions that now met in collision and conflict, withheld by
+his abhorrence of Vargrave's treachery from his natural desire to
+propitiate, and yet appalled by the apprehension of bloodshed, that for
+the first time crossed him.
+
+There was a moment of dead silence, in which Vargrave seemed to be
+nerving and collecting himself for such course as might be best to
+pursue, when again the door opened, and the name of Mr. Howard was
+announced.
+
+Hurried and agitated, the young secretary, scarcely noticing the rest of
+the party, rushed to Lord Vargrave.
+
+"My lord! a thousand pardons for interrupting you,--business of such
+importance!  I am so fortunate to find you!"
+
+"What is the matter, sir?"
+
+"These letters, my lord; I have so much to say!"
+
+Any interruption, even an earthquake, at that moment must have been
+welcome to Vargrave.  He bent his head, with a polite smile, linked his
+arm into his secretary's, and withdrew to the recess of the farthest
+window.  Not a minute elapsed before he turned away with a look of
+scornful exultation.  "Mr. Howard," said he, "go and refresh yourself,
+and come to me at twelve o'clock to-night; I shall be at home then."  The
+secretary bowed, and withdrew.
+
+"Now, sir," said Vargrave, to Maltravers, "I am willing to leave you in
+possession of the field.  Miss Cameron, it will be, I fear, impossible
+for me to entertain any longer the bright hopes I had once formed; my
+cruel fate compels me to seek wealth in any matrimonial engagement.  I
+regret to inform you that you are no longer the great heiress; the whole
+of your capital was placed in the hands of Mr. Douce for the completion
+of the purchase of Lisle Court.  Mr. Douce is a bankrupt; he has fled to
+America.  This letter is an express from my lawyer; the house has closed
+its payments!  Perhaps we may hope to obtain sixpence in the pound.  I am
+a loser also; the forfeit money bequeathed to me is gone.  I know not
+whether, as your trustee, I am not accountable for the loss of your
+fortune (drawn out on my responsibility); probably so.  But as I have not
+now a shilling in the world, I doubt whether Mr. Maltravers will advise
+you to institute proceedings against me.  Mr. Maltravers, to-morrow, at
+nine o'clock, I will listen to what you have to say.  I wish you all
+good-night."  He bowed, seized his hat, and vanished.
+
+"Evelyn," said Aubrey, "can you require to learn more; do you not already
+feel you are released from union with a man without heart and honour?"
+
+"Yes, yes!  I am so happy!" cried Evelyn, bursting into tears.  "This
+hated wealth,--I feel not its loss; I am released from all duty to my
+benefactor.  I am free!"
+
+The last tie that had yet united the guilty Caroline to Vargrave was
+broken,--a woman forgives sin in her lover, but never meanness.  The
+degrading, the abject position in which she had seen one whom she had
+served as a slave (though, as yet, all his worst villanies were unknown
+to her), filled her with shame, horror, and disgust.  She rose abruptly,
+and quitted the room.  They did not miss her.
+
+Maltravers approached Evelyn; he took her hand, and pressed it to his
+lips and heart.
+
+"Evelyn," said he, mournfully, "you require an explanation,--to-morrow I
+will give and seek it.  To-night we are both too unnerved for such
+communications.  I can only now feel joy at your escape, and hope that I
+may still minister to your future happiness."
+
+"But," said Aubrey, "can we believe this new and astounding statement?
+Can this loss be so irremediable; may we not yet take precaution, and
+save, at least, some wrecks of this noble fortune?"
+
+"I thank you for recalling me to the world," said Maltravers, eagerly.
+"I will see to it this instant; and tomorrow, Evelyn, after my interview
+with you, I will hasten to London, and act in that capacity still left to
+me,--your guardian, your friend."
+
+He turned away his face, and hurried to the door.
+
+Evelyn clung more closely to Aubrey.  "But you will not leave me
+to-night?  You can stay?  We can find you accommodation; do not leave
+me."
+
+"Leave you, my child! no; we have a thousand things to say to each other.
+I will not," he added in a whisper, turning to Maltravers, "forestall
+your communications."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+  ALACK, 'tis he.  Why, he was met even now
+  As mad as the vexed sea.--_Lear_.
+
+IN the Rue de la Paix there resided an English lawyer of eminence, with
+whom Maltravers had had previous dealings; to this gentleman he now
+drove.  He acquainted him with the news he had just heard, respecting the
+bankruptcy of Mr. Douce; and commissioned him to leave Paris, the first
+moment he could obtain a passport, and to proceed to London.
+
+At all events, he would arrive there some hours before Maltravers; and
+those hours were something gained.  This done, he drove to the nearest
+hotel, which chanced to be the Hotel de M-----, where, though he knew it
+not, it so happened that Lord Vargrave himself lodged.  As his carriage
+stopped without, while the porter unclosed the gates, a man, who had been
+loitering under the lamps, darted forward, and prying into the
+carriage-window, regarded Maltravers earnestly.  The latter, pre-occupied
+and absorbed, did not notice him; but when the carriage drove into the
+courtyard it was followed by the stranger, who was muffled in a worn and
+tattered cloak, and whose movements were unheeded amidst the bustle of
+the arrival.  The porter's wife led the way to a second-floor, just left
+vacant, and the waiter began to arrange the fire.  Maltravers threw
+himself abstractedly upon the sofa, insensible to all around him, when,
+lifting his eyes, he saw before him the countenance of Cesarini!  The
+Italian (supposed, perhaps, by the persons of the hotel to be one of the
+newcomers) was leaning over the back of a chair, supporting his face with
+his hand, and fixing his eyes with an earnest and sorrowful expression
+upon the features of his ancient rival.  When he perceived that he was
+recognized, he approached Maltravers, and said in Italian, and in a low
+voice, "You are the man of all others, whom, save one, I most desired to
+see.  I have much to say to you, and my time is short.  Spare me a few
+minutes."
+
+The tone and manner of Cesarini were so calm and rational that they
+changed the first impulse of Maltravers, which was that of securing a
+maniac; while the Italian's emaciated countenance, his squalid garments,
+the air of penury and want diffused over his whole appearance,
+irresistibly invited compassion.  With all the more anxious and pressing
+thoughts that weighed upon him, Maltravers could not refuse the
+conference thus demanded.  He dismissed the attendants, and motioned
+Cesarini to be seated.
+
+The Italian drew near to the fire, which now blazed brightly and
+cheerily, and, spreading his thin hands to the flame, seemed to enjoy the
+physical luxury of the warmth.  "Cold, cold," he said piteously, as to
+himself; "Nature is a very bitter protector.  But frost and famine are,
+at least, more merciful than slavery and darkness."
+
+At this moment Ernest's servant entered to know if his master would not
+take refreshments, for he had scarcely touched food upon the road.  And
+as he spoke, Cesarini turned keenly and wistfully round.  There was no
+mistaking the appeal.  Wine and cold meat were ordered: and when the
+servant vanished, Cesarini turned to Maltravers with a strange smile, and
+said, "You see what the love of liberty brings men to!  They found me
+plenty in the jail!  But I have read of men who feasted merrily before
+execution--have not you?--and my hour is at hand.  All this day I have
+felt chained by an irresistible destiny to this house.  But it was not
+you I sought; no matter, in the crisis of our doom all its agents meet
+together.  It is the last act of a dreary play!"
+
+The Italian turned again to the fire, and bent over it, muttering to
+himself.
+
+Maltravers remained silent and thoughtful.  Now was the moment once more
+to place the maniac under the kindly vigilance of his family, to snatch
+him from the horrors, perhaps, of starvation itself, to which his escape
+condemned him: if he could detain Cesarini till De Montaigne could
+arrive!
+
+Agreeably to this thought, he quietly drew towards him the portfolio
+which had been laid on the table, and, Cesarini's back still turned to
+him, wrote a hasty line to De Montaigne.  When his servant re-entered
+with the wine and viands, Maltravers followed him out of the room, and
+bade him see the note sent immediately.  On returning, he found Cesarini
+devouring the food before him with all the voracity of famine.  It was a
+dreadful sight!--the intellect ruined, the mind darkened, the wild,
+fierce animal alone left!
+
+When Cesarini had appeased his hunger, he drew near to Maltravers, and
+thus accosted him,--
+
+"I must lead you back to the past.  I sinned against you and the dead;
+but Heaven has avenged you, and me you can pity and forgive.  Maltravers,
+there is another more guilty than I,--but proud, prosperous, and great.
+_His_ crime Heaven has left to the revenge of man!  I bound myself by an
+oath not to reveal his villany.  I cancel the oath now, for the knowledge
+of it should survive his life and mine.  And, mad though they deem me,
+the mad are prophets, and a solemn conviction, a voice not of earth,
+tells me that he and I are already in the Shadow of Death."
+
+Here Cesarini, with a calm and precise accuracy of self-possession,--a
+minuteness of circumstance and detail, that, coming from one whose very
+eyes betrayed his terrible disease, was infinitely thrilling in its
+effect,--related the counsels, the persuasions, the stratagems of Lumley.
+Slowly and distinctly he forced into the heart of Maltravers that
+sickening record of cold fraud calculating on vehement passion as its
+tool; and thus he concluded his narration,--
+
+"Now wonder no longer why I have lived till this hour; why I have clung
+to freedom, through want and hunger, amidst beggars, felons, and
+outcasts!  In that freedom was my last hope,--the hope of revenge!"
+
+Maltravers returned no answer for some moments.  At length he said
+calmly, "Cesarini, there are injuries so great that they defy revenge.
+Let us alike, since we are alike injured, trust our cause to Him who
+reads all hearts, and, better than we can do, measures both crime and its
+excuses.  You think that our enemy has not suffered,--that he has gone
+free.  We know not his internal history; prosperity and power are no
+signs of happiness, they bring no exemption from care.  Be soothed and be
+ruled, Cesarini.  Let the stone once more close over the solemn grave.
+Turn with me to the future; and let us rather seek to be the judges of
+ourselves, than the executioners of another."
+
+Cesarini listened gloomily, and was about to answer, when--
+
+But here we must return to Lord Vargrave.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+            MY noble lord,
+  Your worthy friends do lack you.--_Macbeth_.
+
+            He is about it;
+  The doors are open.--_Ibid._
+
+ON quitting Lady Doltimore's house, Lumley drove to his hotel.  His
+secretary had been the bearer of other communications, with the nature of
+which he had not yet acquainted himself; but he saw by the
+superscriptions that they were of great importance.  Still, however, even
+in the solitude and privacy of his own chamber, it was not on the instant
+that he could divert his thoughts from the ruin of his fortunes: the loss
+not only of Evelyn's property, but his own claims upon it (for the whole
+capital had been placed in Douce's hands), the total wreck of his grand
+scheme, the triumph he had afforded to Maltravers!  He ground his teeth
+in impotent rage, and groaned aloud, as he traversed his room with hasty
+and uneven strides.  At last he paused and muttered: "Well, the spider
+toils on even when its very power of weaving fresh webs is exhausted; it
+lies in wait,--it forces itself into the webs of others.  Brave insect,
+thou art my model!  While I have breath in my body, the world and all its
+crosses, Fortune and all her malignity, shall not prevail against me!
+What man ever yet failed until he himself grew craven, and sold his soul
+to the arch fiend, Despair!  'Tis but a girl and a fortune lost,--they
+were gallantly fought for, that is some comfort.  Now to what is yet left
+to me!"
+
+The first letter Lumley opened was from Lord Saxingham.  It filled him
+with dismay.  The question at issue had been formally, but abruptly,
+decided in the Cabinet against Vargrave and his manoeuvres.  Some hasty
+expressions of Lord Saxingham had been instantly caught at by the
+premier, and a resignation, rather hinted at than declared, had been
+peremptorily accepted.  Lord Saxingham and Lumley's adherents in the
+Government were to a man dismissed; and at the time Lord Saxingham wrote
+the premier was with the king.
+
+"Curse their folly!--the puppets! the dolts!" exclaimed Lumley, crushing
+the letter in his hand.  "The moment I leave them, they run their heads
+against the wall.  Curse them! curse myself! curse the man who weaves
+ropes with sand!  Nothing--nothing left for me but exile or suicide!
+Stay, what is this?"  His eye fell on the well-known hand writing of the
+premier.  He tore the envelope, impatient to know the worst.  His eyes
+sparkled as he proceeded.  The letter was most courteous, most
+complimentary, most wooing.  The minister was a man consummately versed
+in the arts that increase, as well as those which purge, a party.
+Saxingham and his friends were imbeciles, incapables, mostly men who had
+outlived their day.  But Lord Vargrave, in the prime of life--versatile,
+accomplished, vigorous, bitter, unscrupulous--Vargrave was of another
+mould, Vargrave was to be dreaded; and therefore, if possible, to be
+retained.  His powers of mischief were unquestionably increased by the
+universal talk of London that he was about soon to wed so wealthy a lady.
+The minister knew his man.  In terms of affected regret, he alluded to
+the loss the Government would sustain in the services of Lord Saxingham,
+etc.; he rejoiced that Lord Vargrave's absence from London had prevented
+his being prematurely mixed up, by false scruples of honour, in
+secessions which his judgment must condemn.  He treated of the question
+in dispute with the most delicate address,--confessed the reasonableness
+of Lord Vargrave's former opposition to it; but contended that it was
+now, if not wise, inevitable.  He said nothing of the _justice_ of the
+measure he proposed to adopt, but much on the _expediency_.  He concluded
+by offering to Vargrave, in the most cordial and flattering terms, the
+very seat in the Cabinet which Lord Saxingham had vacated, with an
+apology for its inadequacy to his lordship's merits, and a distinct and
+definite promise of the refusal of the gorgeous viceroyalty of India,
+which would be vacant next year by the return of the present
+governor-general.
+
+Unprincipled as Vargrave was, it is not, perhaps, judging him too mildly
+to say that, had he succeeded in obtaining Evelyn's hand and fortune, he
+would have shrunk from the baseness he now meditated.  To step coldly
+into the very post of which he, and he alone, had been the cause of
+depriving his earliest patron and nearest relative; to profit by the
+betrayal of his own party; to damn himself eternally in the eyes of his
+ancient friends; to pass down the stream of history as a mercenary
+apostate,--from all this Vargrave must have shrunk, had he seen one spot
+of honest ground on which to maintain his footing.  But now the waters of
+the abyss were closing over his head; he would have caught at a straw;
+how much more consent to be picked up by the vessel of an enemy!  All
+objection, all scruple, vanished at once.  And the "barbaric gold" "of
+Ormus and of Ind" glittered before the greedy eyes of the penniless
+adventurer!  Not a day was now to be lost.  How fortunate that a written
+proposition, from which it was impossible to recede, had been made to him
+before the failure of his matrimonial projects had become known!  Too
+happy to quit Paris, he would set off on the morrow, and conclude in
+person the negotiation.  Vargrave glanced towards the clock; it was
+scarcely past eleven.  What revolutions are worked in moments!  Within an
+hour he had lost a wife, a noble fortune, changed the politics of his
+whole life, stepped into a Cabinet office, and was already calculating
+how much a governor-general of India could lay by in five years!  But it
+was only eleven o'clock.  He had put off Mr. Howard's visit till twelve;
+he wished so much to see him, and learn all the London gossip connected
+with the recent events.  Poor Mr. Douce!  Vargrave had already forgotten
+_his_ existence!--he rang his bell hastily.  It was some time before his
+servant answered.
+
+Promptitude and readiness were virtues that Lord Vargrave peremptorily
+demanded in a servant; and as he paid the best price for the
+articles--less in wages than in plunder--he was generally sure to obtain
+them.
+
+"Where the deuce have you been?  This is the third time I have rung! you
+ought to be in the anteroom!"
+
+"I beg your lordship's pardon; but I was helping Mr. Maltravers's valet
+to find a key which he dropped in the courtyard."
+
+"Mr. Maltravers!  Is he at this hotel?"
+
+"Yes, my lord; his rooms are just overhead."
+
+"Humph!  Has Mr. Howard engaged a lodging here?"
+
+"No, my lord.  He left word that he was gone to his aunt, Lady Jane."
+
+"Ah, Lady Jane--lives at Paris--so she does; Rue Chaussee d'Antin--you
+know the House?  Go immediately--go yourself; don't trust to a
+messenger--and beg Mr. Howard to return with you.  I want to see him
+instantly."
+
+"Yes, my lord."
+
+The servant went.  Lumley was in a mood in which solitude was
+intolerable.  He was greatly excited; and some natural compunctions at
+the course on which he had decided made him long to escape from thought.
+So Maltravers was under the same roof!  He had promised to give him an
+interview next day; but next day he wished to be on the road to London.
+Why not have it over to-night?  But could Maltravers meditate any hostile
+proceedings?  Impossible!  Whatever his causes of complaint, they were of
+too delicate and secret a nature for seconds, bullets, and newspaper
+paragraphs!  Vargrave might feel secure that he should not be delayed by
+any Bois de Boulogne assignation; but it was necessary to _his honour_
+(!) that he should not seem to shun the man he had deceived and wronged.
+He would go up to him at once,--a new excitement would distract his
+thoughts.  Agreeably to this resolution, Lord Vargrave quitted his room,
+and was about to close the outer door, when he recollected that perhaps
+his servant might not meet with Howard; that the secretary might probably
+arrive before the time fixed,--it would be as well to leave his door
+open.  He accordingly stopped, and writing upon a piece of paper, "Dear
+Howard, send up for me the moment you arrive: I shall be with Mr.
+Maltravers _au second_"--Vargrave wafered the _affiche_ to the door,
+which he then left ajar, and the lamp in the landing-place fell clear and
+full on the paper.
+
+It was the voice of Vargrave, in the little stone-paved antechamber
+without, inquiring of the servant if Mr. Maltravers was at home, which
+had startled and interrupted Cesarini as he was about to reply to Ernest.
+Each recognized that sharp clear voice; each glanced at the other.
+
+"I will not see him," said Maltravers, hastily moving towards the door;
+"you are not fit to--"
+
+"Meet him? no!" said Cesarini, with a furtive and sinister glance, which
+a man versed in his disease would have understood, but which Maltravers
+did not even observe; "I will retire into your bedroom; my eyes are
+heavy.  I could sleep."
+
+He opened the inner door as he spoke, and had scarcely reclosed it before
+Vargrave entered.
+
+"Your servant said you were engaged; but I thought you might see an old
+friend:" and Vargrave coolly seated himself.
+
+Maltravers drew the bolt across the door that separated them from
+Cesarini; and the two men, whose characters and lives were so strongly
+contrasted, were now alone.
+
+"You wished an interview,--an explanation," said Lumley; "I shrink from
+neither.  Let me forestall inquiry and complaint.  I deceived you
+knowingly and deliberately, it is quite true,--all stratagems are fair in
+love and war.  The prize was vast!  I believed my career depended on it:
+I could not resist the temptation.  I knew that before long you would
+learn that Evelyn was not your daughter; that the first communication
+between yourself and Lady Vargrave would betray me; but it was worth
+trying a _coup de main_.  You have foiled me, and conquered: be it so; I
+congratulate you.  You are tolerably rich, and the loss of Evelyn's
+fortune will not vex you as it would have done me."
+
+"Lord Vargrave, it is but poor affectation to treat thus lightly the dark
+falsehood you conceived, the awful curse you inflicted upon me.  Your
+sight is now so painful to me, it so stirs the passions that I would seek
+to suppress, that the sooner our interview is terminated the better.  I
+have to charge you, also, with a crime,--not, perhaps, baser than the one
+you so calmly own, but the consequences of which were more fatal: you
+understand me?"
+
+"I do not."
+
+"Do not tempt me! do not lie!" said Maltravers, still in a calm voice,
+though his passions, naturally so strong, shook his whole frame.  "To
+your arts I owe the exile of years that should have been better spent; to
+those arts Cesarini owes the wreck of his reason, and Florence Lascelles
+her early grave!  Ah, you are pale now; your tongue cleaves to your
+mouth!  And think you these crimes will go forever unrequited; think you
+that there is no justice in the thunderbolts of God?"
+
+"Sir," said Vargrave, starting to his feet, "I know not what you suspect,
+I care not what you believe!  But I am accountable to man, and that
+account I am willing to render.  You threatened me in the presence of my
+ward; you spoke of cowardice, and hinted at danger.  Whatever my faults,
+want of courage is not one.  Stand by your threats,--I am ready to brave
+them!"
+
+"A year, perhaps a short month, ago," replied Maltravers, and I would
+have arrogated justice to my own mortal hand; nay, this very night, had
+the hazard of either of our lives been necessary to save Evelyn from your
+persecution, I would have incurred all things for her sake!  But that is
+past; from me you have nothing to fear.  The proofs of your earlier
+guilt, with its dreadful results, would alone suffice to warn me from the
+solemn responsibility of human vengeance.  Great Heaven! what hand could
+dare to send a criminal so long hardened, so black with crime, unatoning,
+unrepentant, and unprepared, before the judgment-seat of the ALL JUST?
+Go, unhappy man! may life long be spared to you!  Awake! awake from this
+world, before your feet pass the irrevocable boundary of the next!"
+
+"I came not here to listen to homilies, and the cant of the conventicle,"
+said Vargrave, vainly struggling for a haughtiness of mien that his
+conscience-stricken aspect terribly belied; "not I; but this wrong world
+is to be blamed, if deeds that strict morality may not justify, but the
+effects of which I, no prophet, could not foresee, were necessary for
+success in life.  I have been but as all other men have been who struggle
+against fortune to be rich and great: ambition must make use of foul
+ladders."
+
+"Oh," said Maltravers, earnestly, touched involuntarily, and in spite of
+his abhorrence of the criminal, by the relenting that this miserable
+attempt at self-justification seemed to denote,--"oh, be warned, while it
+is yet time; wrap not yourself in these paltry sophistries; look back to
+your past career; see to what heights you might have climbed, if with
+those rare gifts and energies, with that subtle sagacity and indomitable
+courage--your ambition had but chosen the straight, not the crooked,
+path.  Pause! many years may yet, in the course of nature, afford you
+time to retrace your steps, to atone to thousands the injuries you have
+inflicted on the few.  I know not why I thus address you: but something
+diviner than indignation urges me; something tells me that you are
+already on the brink of the abyss!"
+
+Lord Vargrave changed colour, nor did he speak for some moments; then
+raising his head, with a faint smile, he said, "Maltravers, you are a
+false soothsayer.  At this moment my paths, crooked though they be, have
+led me far towards the summit of my proudest hopes; the straight path
+would have left me at the foot of the mountain.  You yourself are a
+beacon against the course you advise.  Let us contrast each other.  You
+took the straight path, I the crooked.  You, my superior in fortune; you,
+infinitely above me in genius; you, born to command and never to crouch:
+how do we stand now, each in the prime of life?  You, with a barren and
+profitless reputation; without rank, without power, almost without the
+hope of power.  I--but you know not my new dignity--I, in the Cabinet of
+England's ministry, vast fortunes opening to my gaze, the proudest
+station not too high for my reasonable ambition!  You, wedding yourself
+to some grand chimera of an object, aimless when it eludes your grasp.
+I, swinging, squirrel-like, from scheme to scheme; no matter if one
+breaks, another is at hand!  Some men would have cut their throats in
+despair, an hour ago, in losing the object of a seven years'
+chase,--Beauty and Wealth, both!  I open a letter, and find success in
+one quarter to counterbalance failure in another.  Bah! bah! each to his
+_metier_, Maltravers!  For you, honour, melancholy, and, if it please
+you, repentance also!  For me, the onward, rushing life, never looking
+back to the Past, never balancing the stepping-stones to the Future.  Let
+us not envy each other; if you were not Diogenes, you would be Alexander.
+Adieu! our interview is over.  Will you forget and forgive, and shake
+hands once more?  You draw back, you frown! well, perhaps you are right.
+If we meet again--"
+
+"It will be as strangers."
+
+"No rash vows! you may return to politics, you may want office.  I am of
+your way of thinking now: and--ha! ha!--poor Lumley Ferrers could make
+you a Lord of the Treasury; smooth travelling and cheap turnpikes on
+crooked paths, believe me.  Farewell!"
+
+
+
+On entering the room into which Cesarini had retired, Maltravers found
+him flown.  His servant said that the gentleman had gone away shortly
+after Lord Vargrave's arrival.  Ernest reproached himself bitterly for
+neglecting to secure the door that conducted to the ante-chamber; but
+still it was probable that Cesarini would return in the morning.
+
+The messenger who had taken the letter to De Montaigne brought back word
+that the latter was at his villa, but expected at Paris early the next
+day.  Maltravers hoped to see him before his departure; meanwhile he
+threw himself on his bed, and despite all the anxieties that yet
+oppressed him, the fatigues and excitements he had undergone exhausted
+even the endurance of that iron frame, and he fell into a profound
+slumber.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+            BY eight to-morrow
+  Thou shalt be made immortal.
+                 _Measure for Measure_.
+
+LORD VARGRAVE returned to his apartment to find Mr. Howard, who had but
+just that instant arrived, warming his white and well-ringed hands by the
+fire.  He conversed with him for half an hour on all the topics on which
+the secretary could give him information, and then dismissed him once
+more to the roof of Lady Jane.
+
+As he slowly undressed himself, he saw on his writing-table the note
+which Lady Doltimore had referred to, and which he had not yet opened.
+He lazily broke the seal, ran his eye carelessly over its few blotted
+words of remorse and alarm, and threw it down again with a contemptuous
+"pshaw!"  Thus unequally are the sorrows of a guilty tie felt by the man
+of the world and the woman of society!
+
+As his servant placed before him his wine and water, Vargrave told him to
+see early to the preparations for departure, and to call him at nine
+o'clock.
+
+"Shall I shut that door, my lord?" said the valet, pointing to one that
+communicated with one of those large closets, or _armoires_, that are
+common appendages to French bedrooms, and in which wood and sundry other
+matters are kept.
+
+"No," said Lord Vargrave, petulantly; "you servants are so fond of
+excluding every breath of air.  I should never have a window open, if I
+did not open it myself.  Leave the door as it is, and do not be later
+than nine to-morrow."
+
+The servant, who slept in a kind of kennel that communicated with the
+anteroom, did as he was bid; and Vargrave put out his candle, betook
+himself to bed, and, after drowsily gazing some minutes on the dying
+embers of the fire, which threw a dim ghastly light over the chamber,
+fell fast asleep.  The clock struck the first hour of morning, and in
+that house all seemed still.
+
+The next morning, Maltravers was disturbed from his slumber by De
+Montaigne, who, arriving, as was often his wont, at an early hour from
+his villa, had found Ernest's note of the previous evening.
+
+Maltravers rose and dressed himself; and while De Montaigne was yet
+listening to the account which his friend gave of his adventure with
+Cesarini, and the unhappy man's accusation of his accomplice, Ernest's
+servant entered the room very abruptly.
+
+"Sir," said he, "I thought you might like to know.  What is to be done?
+The whole hotel is in confusion, Mr. Howard has been sent for, and Lord
+Doltimore.  So very strange, so sudden!"
+
+"What is the matter?  Speak plain."
+
+"Lord Vargrave, sir,--poor Lord Vargrave--"
+
+"Lord Vargrave!"
+
+"Yes, sir; the master of the hotel, hearing you knew his lordship, would
+be so glad if you would come down.  Lord Vargrave, sir, is dead,--found
+dead in his bed!"
+
+Maltravers was rooted to the spot with amaze and horror.  Dead! and but
+last night so full of life and schemes and hope and ambition.
+
+As soon as he recovered himself, he hurried to the spot, and De Montaigne
+followed.  The latter, as they descended the stairs, laid his hand on
+Ernest's arm and detained him.
+
+"Did you say that Castruccio left the apartment while Vargrave was with
+you, and almost immediately after his narrative of Vargrave's instigation
+to his crime?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+The eyes of the friends met; a terrible suspicion possessed both.  "No;
+it is impossible!" exclaimed Maltravers.  "How could he obtain entrance,
+how pass Lord Vargrave's servants?  No, no; think of it not!"
+
+They hurried down the stairs; they reached the other door of Vargrave's
+apartment.  The notice to Howard, with the name of Vargrave underscored,
+was still on the panels.  De Montaigne saw and shuddered.
+
+They were in the room by the bedside.  A group were collected round; they
+gave way as the Englishman and his friend approached; and the eyes of
+Maltravers suddenly rested on the face of Lord Vargrave, which was
+locked, rigid, and convulsed.
+
+There was a buzz of voices which had ceased at the entrance of
+Maltravers; it was now renewed.  A surgeon had been summoned--the nearest
+surgeon,--a young Englishman of no great repute or name.  He was making
+inquiries as he bent over the corpse.
+
+"Yes, sir," said Lord Vargrave's servant, "his lordship told me to call
+him at nine o'clock.  I came in at that hour, but his lordship did not
+move nor answer me.  I then looked to see if he were very sound asleep,
+and I saw that the pillows had got somehow over his face, and his head
+seemed to lie very low; so I moved the pillows, and I saw that his
+lordship was dead."
+
+"Sir," said the surgeon, turning to Maltravers, "you were a friend of his
+lordship, I hear.  I have already sent for Mr. Howard and Lord Doltimore.
+Shall I speak with you a minute?"
+
+Maltravers nodded assent.  The surgeon cleared the room of all but
+himself, De Montaigne, and Maltravers.
+
+"Has that servant lived long with Lord Vargrave?" asked the surgeon.
+
+"I believe so,--yes; I recollect his face.  Why?"
+
+"And you think him safe and honest?"
+
+"I don't know; I know nothing of him."
+
+"Look here, sir,"--and the surgeon pointed to a slight discoloration on
+one side the throat of the dead man.  "This may be accidental--purely
+natural; his lordship may have died in a fit; there are no certain marks
+of outward violence, but murder by suffocation might still--"
+
+"But who besides the servant could gain admission?  Was the outer door
+closed?"
+
+"The servant can take oath that he shut the door before going to bed, and
+that no one was with his lordship, or in the rooms, when Lord Vargrave
+retired to rest.  Entrance from the windows is impossible.  Mind, sir, I
+do not think I have any right to suspect any one.  His lordship had been
+in very ill health a short time before; had had, I hear, a rush of blood
+to the head.  Certainly, if the servant be innocent, we can suspect no
+one else.  You had better send for more experienced practitioners."
+
+De Montaigne, who had hitherto said nothing, now looked with a hurried
+glance around the room: he perceived the closet-door, which was ajar, and
+rushed to it, as by an involuntary impulse.  The closet was large, but a
+considerable pile of wood, and some lumber of odd chairs and tables, took
+up a great part of the space.  De Montaigne searched behind and amidst
+this litter with trembling haste,--no trace of secreted murder was
+visible.  He returned to the bedroom with a satisfied and relieved
+expression of countenance.  He then compelled himself to approach the
+body, from which he had hitherto recoiled.
+
+"Sir," said he, almost harshly, as he turned to the surgeon, "what idle
+doubts are these?  Cannot men die in their beds, of sudden death, no
+blood to stain their pillows, no loop-hole for crime to pass through, but
+we must have science itself startling us with silly terrors?  As for the
+servant, I will answer for his innocence; his manner, his voice attest
+it."  The surgeon drew back, abashed and humbled, and began to apologize,
+to qualify, when Lord Doltimore abruptly entered.
+
+"Good heavens!" said he, "what is this?  What do I hear?  Is it possible?
+Dead!  So suddenly!"  He cast a hurried glance at the body, shivered, and
+sickened, and threw himself into a chair, as if to recover the shock.
+When again he removed his hand from his face, he saw lying before him on
+the table an open note.  The character was familiar; his own name struck
+his eye,--it was the note which Caroline had sent the day before.  As no
+one heeded him, Lord Doltimore read on, and possessed himself of the
+proof of his wife's guilt unseen.
+
+The surgeon, now turning from De Montaigne, who had been rating him
+soundly for the last few moments, addressed himself to Lord Doltimore.
+"Your lordship," said he, "was, I hear, Lord Vargrave's most intimate
+friend at Paris."
+
+"I _his_ intimate friend?" said Doltimore, colouring highly, and in a
+disdainful accent.  "Sir, you are misinformed."
+
+"Have you no orders to give, then, my lord?"
+
+"None, sir.  My presence here is quite useless.  Good-day to you,
+gentlemen."
+
+"With whom, then, do the last duties rest?" said the surgeon, turning to
+Maltravers and De Montaigne.  "With the late lord's secretary?--I expect
+him every moment; and here he is, I suppose,"--as Mr. Howard, pale, and
+evidently overcome by his agitation, entered the apartment.  Perhaps, of
+all the human beings whom the ambitious spirit of that senseless clay had
+drawn around it by the webs of interest, affection, or intrigue, that
+young man, whom it had never been a temptation to Vargrave to deceive or
+injure, and who missed only the gracious and familiar patron, mourned
+most his memory, and defended most his character.  The grief of the poor
+secretary was now indeed overmastering.  He sobbed and wept like a child.
+
+When Maltravers retired from the chamber of death, De Montaigne
+accompanied him; but soon quitting him again, as Ernest bent his way to
+Evelyn, he quietly rejoined Mr. Howard, who readily grasped at his offers
+of aid in the last melancholy duties and directions.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+  IF we do meet again, why, we shall smile.--_Julius Caesar_.
+
+THE interview with Evelyn was long and painful.  It was reserved for
+Maltravers to break to her the news of the sudden death of Lord Vargrave,
+which shocked her unspeakably; and this, which made their first topic,
+removed much constraint and deadened much excitement in those which
+followed.
+
+Vargrave's death served also to relieve Maltravers from a most anxious
+embarrassment.  He need no longer fear that Alice would be degraded in
+the eyes of Evelyn.  Henceforth the secret that identified the erring
+Alice Darvil with the spotless Lady Vargrave was safe, known only to Mrs.
+Leslie and to Aubrey.  In the course of nature, all chance of its
+disclosure must soon die with them; and should Alice at last become his
+wife, and should Cleveland suspect (which was not probable) that
+Maltravers had returned to his first love, he knew that he might depend
+on the inviolable secrecy of his earliest friend.
+
+The tale that Vargrave had told to Evelyn of his early--but, according to
+that tale, guiltless--passion for Alice, he tacitly confirmed; and he
+allowed that the recollection of her virtues, and the intelligence of her
+sorrows and unextinguishable affection, had made him recoil from a
+marriage with her supposed daughter.  He then proceeded to amaze his
+young listener with the account of the mode in which he had discovered
+her real parentage, of which the banker had left it to Alice's discretion
+to inform her, after she had attained the age of eighteen.  And then,
+simply, but with manly and ill-controlled emotion, he touched upon the
+joy of Alice at beholding him again, upon the endurance and fervour of
+her love, upon her revulsion of feeling at learning that, in her
+unforgotten lover, she beheld the recent suitor of her adopted child.
+
+"And now," said Maltravers, in conclusion, "the path to both of us
+remains the same.  To Alice is our first duty.  The discovery I have made
+of your real parentage does not diminish the claims which Alice has on
+me, does not lessen the grateful affection that is due to her from
+yourself.  Yes, Evelyn, we are not the less separated forever.  But when
+I learned the wilful falsehood which the unhappy man, now hurried to his
+last account, to whom your birth was known, had imposed upon me,--namely,
+that you were the child of Alice,--and when I learned also that you had
+been hurried into accepting his hand, I trembled at your union with one
+so false and base.  I came hither resolved to frustrate his schemes and
+to save you from an alliance, the motives of which I foresaw, and to
+which my own letter, my own desertion, had perhaps urged you.  New
+villanies on the part of this most perverted man came to my ear: but he
+is dead; let us spare his memory.  For you--oh, still let me deem myself
+your friend,--your more than brother; let me hope now that I have planted
+no thorn in that breast, and that your affection does not shrink from the
+cold word of friendship."
+
+"Of all the wonders that you have told me," answered Evelyn, as soon as
+she could recover the power of words, "my most poignant sorrow is, that I
+have no rightful claim to give a daughter's love to her whom I shall ever
+idolize as my mother.  Oh, now I see why I thought her affection measured
+and lukewarm.  And have I--I destroyed her joy at seeing you again?  But
+you--you will hasten to console, to reassure her!  She loves you
+still,--she will be happy at last; and that--that thought--oh, that
+thought compensates for all!"
+
+There was so much warmth and simplicity in Evelyn's artless manner, it
+was so evident that her love for him had not been of that ardent nature
+which would at first have superseded every other thought in the anguish
+of losing him forever, that the scale fell from the eyes of Maltravers,
+and he saw at once that his own love had blinded him to the true
+character of hers.  He was human; and a sharp pang shot across his
+breast.  He remained silent for some moments; and then resumed,
+compelling himself as he spoke to fix his eyes steadfastly on hers.
+
+"And now, Evelyn--still may I so call you?--I have a duty to discharge to
+another.  You are loved"--and he smiled, but the smile was sad--"by a
+younger and more suitable lover than I am.  From noble and generous
+motives he suppressed that love,--he left you to a rival; the rival
+removed, dare he venture to explain to you his own conduct, and plead his
+own motives?  George Legard--"  Maltravers paused.  The cheek on which he
+gazed was tinged with a soft blush, Evelyn's eyes were downcast, there
+was a slight heaving beneath the robe.
+
+Maltravers suppressed a sigh and continued.  He narrated his interview
+with Legard at Dover; and, passing lightly over what had chanced at
+Venice, dwelt with generous eloquence on the magnanimity with which his
+rival's gratitude had been displayed.  Evelyn's eyes sparkled, and the
+smile just visited the rosy lips and vanished again.  The worst because
+it was the least selfish fear of Maltravers was gone, and no vain doubt
+of Evelyn's too keen regret remained to chill his conscience in obeying
+its earliest and strongest duties.
+
+"Farewell!" he said, as he rose to depart; "I will at once return to
+London, and assist in the effort to save your fortune from this general
+wreck: LIFE calls us back to its cares and business--farewell, Evelyn!
+Aubrey will, I trust, remain with you still."
+
+"Remain!  Can I not return then to my--to her--yes, let me call her
+_mother_ still?"
+
+"Evelyn," said Maltravers, in a very low voice, "spare me, spare her that
+pain!  Are we yet fit to--" He paused; Evelyn comprehended him, and
+hiding her face with her hands, burst into tears.
+
+When Maltravers left the room, he was met by Aubrey, who, drawing him
+aside, told him that Lord Doltimore had just informed him that it was not
+his intention to remain at Paris, and had more than delicately hinted at
+a wish for the departure of Miss Cameron.  In this emergency, Maltravers
+bethought himself of Madame de Ventadour.
+
+No house in Paris was a more eligible refuge, no friend more zealous; no
+protector would be more kind, no adviser more sincere.  To her then he
+hastened.  He briefly informed her of Vargrave's sudden death; and
+suggested that for Evelyn to return at once to a sequestered village in
+England might be a severe trial to spirits already broken; and declared
+truly, that though his marriage with Evelyn was broken off, her welfare
+was no less dear to him than heretofore.  At his first hint, Valerie, who
+took a cordial interest in Evelyn for her own sake, ordered her carriage,
+and drove at once to Lady Doltimore's.  His lordship was out, her
+ladyship was ill, in her own room, could see no one, not even her guest.
+Evelyn in vain sent up to request an interview; and at last, contenting
+herself with an affectionate note of farewell, accompanied Aubrey to the
+home of her new hostess.
+
+Gratified at least to know her with one who would be sure to win her
+affection and soothe her spirits, Maltravers set out on his solitary
+return to England.
+
+Whatever suspicious circumstances might or might not have attended the
+death of Lord Vargrave, certain it is that no evidence confirmed and no
+popular rumour circulated them.  His late illness, added to the supposed
+shock of the loss of the fortune he had anticipated with Miss Cameron,
+aided by the simultaneous intelligence of the defeat of the party with
+whom it was believed he had indissolubly entwined his ambition, sufficed
+to account satisfactorily enough for the melancholy event.  De Montaigne,
+who had been long, though not intimately, acquainted with the deceased,
+took upon himself all the necessary arrangements, and superintended the
+funeral; after which ceremony, Howard returned to London; and in Paris,
+as in the grave, all things are forgotten!  But still in De Montaigne's
+breast there dwelt a horrible fear.  As soon as he had learned from
+Maltravers the charge the maniac brought against Vargrave, there came
+upon him the recollection of that day when Cesarini had attempted De
+Montaigne's life, evidently mistaking him in his delirium for
+another,--and the sullen, cunning, and ferocious character which the
+insanity had ever afterwards assumed.  He had learned from Howard that
+the outer door had been left ajar when Lord Vargrave was with Maltravers.
+The writing on the panel, the name of Vargrave, would have struck
+Castruccio's eye as he descended the stairs; the servant was from home,
+the apartments deserted; he might have won his way into the bedchamber,
+concealed himself in the _armoire_, and in the dead of the night, and in
+the deep and helpless sleep of his victim, have done the deed.  What need
+of weapons--the suffocating pillows would stop speech and life.  What so
+easy as escape,--to pass into the anteroom; to unbolt the door; to
+descend into the courtyard; to give the signal to the porter in his
+lodge, who, without seeing him, would pull the _cordon_, and give him
+egress unobserved?
+
+All this was so possible, so probable.
+
+De Montaigne now withdrew all inquiry for the unfortunate; he trembled at
+the thought of discovering him, of verifying his awful suspicions, of
+beholding a murderer in the brother of his wife!  But he was not doomed
+long to entertain fear for Cesarini; he was not fated ever to change
+suspicion into certainty.  A few days after Lord Vargrave's burial, a
+corpse was drawn from the Seine.  Some tablets in the pockets, scrawled
+over with wild, incoherent verses, gave a clew to the discovery of the
+dead man's friends: and, exposed at the Morgue, in that bleached and
+altered clay, De Montaigne recognized the remains of Castruccio Cesarini.
+"He died and made no sign!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+  SINGULA quaeque locum teneant sortita.*--HORACE: _Ars Poetica_.
+
+  * "To each lot its appropriate place."
+
+MALTRAVERS and the lawyers were enabled to save from the insolvent bank
+but a very scanty portion of that wealth in which Richard Templeton had
+rested so much of pride.  The title extinct, the fortune gone--so does
+Fate laugh at our posthumous ambition!  Meanwhile Mr. Douce, with
+considerable plunder, had made his way to America: the bank owed nearly
+half a million; the purchase money for Lisle Court, which Mr. Douce had
+been so anxious to get into his clutches, had not sufficed to stave off
+the ruin,--but a great part of it sufficed to procure competence for
+himself.  How inferior in wit, in acuteness, in stratagem, was Douce to
+Vargrave; and yet Douce had gulled him like a child!  Well said the
+shrewd small philosopher of France--"On peut etre plus fin qu'un autre,
+mais pas plus fin que tous les autres."*
+
+  * One may be more sharp than one's neighbour, but one can't be
+    sharper than all one's neighbours.--ROCHEFOUCAULD.
+
+To Legard, whom Maltravers had again encountered at Dover, the latter
+related the downfall of Evelyn's fortunes; and Maltravers loved him when
+he saw that, far from changing his affection, the loss of wealth seemed
+rather to raise his hopes.  They parted; and Legard set out for Paris.
+
+But was Maltravers all the while forgetful of Alice?  He had not been
+twelve hours in London before he committed to a long and truthful letter
+all his thoughts, his hopes, his admiring and profound gratitude.  Again,
+and with solemn earnestness, he implored her to accept his hand, and to
+confirm at the altar the tale which had been told to Evelyn.  Truly he
+said that the shock which his first belief in Vargrave's falsehood had
+occasioned, his passionate determination to subdue all trace of a love
+then associated with crime and horror, followed so close by his discovery
+of Alice's enduring faith and affection, had removed the image of Evelyn
+from the throne it had hitherto held in his desires and thoughts; truly
+he said that he was now convinced that Evelyn would soon be consoled for
+his loss by another, with whom she would be happier than with him; truly
+and solemnly he declared that if Alice rejected him still, if even Alice
+were no more, his suit to Evelyn never could be renewed, and Alice's
+memory would usurp the place of all living love!
+
+Her answer came: it pierced him to the heart.  It was so humble, so
+grateful, so tender still.  Unknown to herself, love yet coloured every
+word; but it was love pained, galled, crushed, and trampled on; it was
+love, proud from its very depth and purity.  His offer was refused.
+
+Months passed away.  Maltravers yet trusted to time.  The curate had
+returned to Brook-Green, and his letters fed Ernest's hopes and assured
+his doubts.  The more leisure there was left him for reflection, the
+fainter became those dazzling and rainbow hues in which Evelyn had been
+robed and surrounded, and the brighter the halo that surrounded his
+earliest love.  The more he pondered on Alice's past history, and the
+singular beauty of her faithful attachment, the more he was impressed
+with wonder and admiration, the more anxious to secure to his side one to
+whom Nature had been so bountiful in all the gifts that make woman the
+angel and star of life.
+
+Months passed.  From Paris the news that Maltravers received confirmed
+all his expectations,--the suit of Legard had replaced his own.  It was
+then that Maltravers began to consider how far the fortune of Evelyn and
+her destined husband was such as to preclude all anxiety for their future
+lot.  Fortune is so indeterminate in its gauge and measurement.  Money,
+the most elastic of materials, falls short or exceeds, according to the
+extent of our wants and desires.  With all Legard's good qualities he was
+constitutionally careless and extravagant; and Evelyn was too
+inexperienced, and too gentle, perhaps, to correct his tendencies.
+Maltravers learned that Legard's income was one that required an economy
+which he feared that, in spite of all his reformation, Legard might not
+have the self-denial to enforce.  After some consideration, he resolved
+to add secretly to the remains of Evelyn's fortune such a sum as might,
+being properly secured to herself and children, lessen whatever danger
+could arise from the possible improvidence of her husband, and guard
+against the chance of those embarrassments which are among the worst
+disturbers of domestic peace.  He was enabled to effect this generosity
+unknown to both of them, as if the sum bestowed were collected from the
+wrecks of Evelyn's own wealth and the profits of the sale of the houses
+in C-----, which of course had not been involved in Douce's bankruptcy.
+And then if Alice were ever his, her jointure, which had been secured on
+the property appertaining to the villa at Fulham, would devolve upon
+Evelyn.  Maltravers could never accept what Alice owed to another.  Poor
+Alice!  No! not that modest wealth which you had looked upon complacently
+as one day or other to be his.
+
+Lord Doltimore is travelling in the East,--Lady Doltimore, less
+adventurous, has fixed her residence in Rome.  She has grown thin, and
+taken to antiquities and rouge.  Her spirits are remarkably high--not an
+uncommon effect of laudanum.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THE LAST.
+
+            ARRIVED at last
+  Unto the wished haven.--SHAKSPEARE.
+
+IN the August of that eventful year a bridal party were assembled at the
+cottage of Lady Vargrave.  The ceremony had just been performed, and
+Ernest Maltravers had bestowed upon George Legard the hand of Evelyn
+Templeton.
+
+If upon the countenance of him who thus officiated as a father to her he
+had once wooed as a bride an observant eye might have noted the trace of
+mental struggles, it was the trace of struggles past; and the calm had
+once more settled over the silent deeps.  He saw from the casement the
+carriage that was to bear away the bride to the home of another,--the gay
+faces of the village group, whose intrusion was not forbidden, and to
+whom that solemn ceremonial was but a joyous pageant; and when he turned
+once more to those within the chamber, he felt his hand clasped in
+Legard's.
+
+"You have been the preserver of my life, you have been the dispenser of
+my earthly happiness; all now left to me to wish for is, that you may
+receive from Heaven the blessings you have given to others!"
+
+"Legard, never let her know a sorrow that you can guard her from; and
+believe that the husband of Evelyn will be dear to me as a brother!"
+
+And as a brother blesses some younger and orphan sister bequeathed and
+intrusted to a care that should replace a father's, so Maltravers laid
+his hand lightly on Evelyn's golden tresses, and his lips moved in
+prayer.  He ceased; he pressed his last kiss upon her forehead, and
+placed her hand in that of her young husband.  There was silence; and
+when to the ear of Maltravers it was broken, it was by the wheels of the
+carriage that bore away the wife of George Legard!
+
+The spell was dissolved forever.  And there stood before the lonely man
+the idol of his early youth, Alice,--still, perhaps, as fair, and once
+young and passionate, as Evelyn; pale, changed, but lovelier than of old,
+if heavenly patience and holy thought, and the trials that purify and
+exalt, can shed over human features something more beautiful than bloom.
+
+The good curate alone was present, besides these two survivors of the
+error and the love that make the rapture and the misery of so many of our
+kind; and the old man, after contemplating them a moment, stole
+unperceived away.
+
+"Alice," said Maltravers, and his voice trembled, "hitherto, from motives
+too pure and too noble for the practical affections and ties of life, you
+have rejected the hand of the lover of your youth.  Here again I implore
+you to be mine!  Give to my conscience the balm of believing that I can
+repair to you the evils and the sorrows I have brought upon you.  Nay,
+weep not; turn not away.  Each of us stands alone; each of us needs the
+other.  In your heart is locked up all my fondest associations, my
+brightest memories.  In you I see the mirror of what I was when the world
+was new, ere I had found how Pleasure palls upon us, and Ambition
+deceives!  And me, Alice--ah, you love me still!  Time and absence have
+but strengthened the chain that binds us.  By the memory of our early
+love, by the grave of our lost child that, had it lived, would have
+united its parents, I implore you to be mine!"
+
+"Too generous!" said Alice, almost sinking beneath the emotions that
+shook that gentle spirit and fragile form, "how can I suffer your
+_compassion_--for it is but compassion--to deceive yourself?  You are of
+another station than I believed you.  How can you raise the child of
+destitution and guilt to your own rank?  And shall I--I--who, Heaven
+knows! would save you from all regret--bring to you now, when years have
+so changed and broken the little charm I could ever have possessed, this
+blighted heart and weary spirit?  Oh, no, no!" and Alice paused abruptly,
+and the tears rolled down her cheeks.
+
+"Be it as you will," said Maltravers, mournfully; "but, at least, ground
+your refusal upon better motives.  Say that now, independent in fortune,
+and attached to the habits you have formed, you would not hazard your
+happiness in my keeping,--perhaps you are right.  To _my_ happiness you
+would indeed contribute; your sweet voice might charm away many a memory
+and many a thought of the baffled years that have intervened since we
+parted; your image might dissipate the solitude which is closing round
+the Future of a disappointed and anxious life.  With you, and with you
+alone, I might yet find a home, a comforter, a charitable and soothing
+friend.  This you could give to me; and with a heart and a form alike
+faithful to a love that deserved not so enduring a devotion.  But I--what
+can I bestow on you?  Your station is equal to my own; your fortune
+satisfies your simple wants.  'Tis true the exchange is not equal, Alice.
+Adieu!"
+
+"Cruel!" said Alice, approaching him with timid steps.  "If I could--I,
+so untutored, so unworthy--if I could comfort you in a single care!"
+
+She said no more, but she had said enough; and Maltravers, clasping her
+to his bosom, felt once more that heart which never, even in thought, had
+swerved from its early worship, beating against his own!
+
+He drew her gently into the open air.  The ripe and mellow noonday of the
+last month of summer glowed upon the odorous flowers, and the broad sea,
+that stretched beyond and afar, wore upon its solemn waves a golden and
+happy smile.
+
+"And ah," murmured Alice, softly, as she looked up from his breast, "I
+ask not if you have loved others since we parted--man's faith is so
+different from ours--I only ask if you love me now?"
+
+"More! oh, immeasurably more, than in our youngest days!" cried
+Maltravers, with fervent passion.  "More fondly, more reverently, more
+trustfully, than I ever loved living being!--even her, in whose youth and
+innocence I adored the memory of thee!  Here have I found that which
+shames and bankrupts the Ideal!  Here have I found a virtue, that, coming
+at once from God and Nature, has been wiser than all my false philosophy
+and firmer than all my pride!  You, cradled by misfortune,--your
+childhood reared amidst scenes of fear and vice, which, while they seared
+back the intellect, had no pollution for the soul,--your very parent your
+tempter and your foe; you, only not a miracle and an angel by the stain
+of one soft and unconscious error,--you, alike through the equal trials
+of poverty and wealth, have been destined to rise above all triumphant;
+the example of the sublime moral that teaches us with what mysterious
+beauty and immortal holiness the Creator has endowed our human nature
+when hallowed by our human affections!  You alone suffice to shatter into
+dust the haughty creeds of the Misanthrope and Pharisee!  And your
+fidelity to my erring self has taught me ever to love, to serve, to
+compassionate, to respect the community of God's creatures to
+which--noble and elevated though you are--you yet belong!"
+
+He ceased, overpowered with the rush of his own thoughts.  And Alice was
+too blessed for words.  But in the murmur of the sunlit leaves, in the
+breath of the summer air, in the song of the exulting birds, and the deep
+and distant music of the heaven-surrounded seas, there went a melodious
+voice that seemed as if Nature echoed to his words, and blest the reunion
+of her children.
+
+Maltravers once more entered upon the career so long suspended.  He
+entered with an energy more practical and steadfast than the fitful
+enthusiasm of former years; and it was noticeable amongst those who knew
+him well, that while the firmness of his mind was not impaired, the
+haughtiness of his temper was subdued.  No longer despising Man as he is,
+and no longer exacting from all things the ideal of a visionary standard,
+he was more fitted to mix in the living World, and to minister usefully
+to the great objects that refine and elevate our race.  His sentiments
+were, perhaps, less lofty, but his actions were infinitely more
+excellent, and his theories infinitely more wise.
+
+Stage after stage we have proceeded with him through the MYSTERIES OF
+LIFE.  The Eleusinia are closed, and the crowning libation poured.
+
+And Alice!--Will the world blame us if you are left happy at the last?
+We are daily banishing from our law-books the statutes that disproportion
+punishment to crime.  Daily we preach the doctrine that we demoralize
+wherever we strain justice into cruelty.  It is time that we should apply
+to the Social Code the Wisdom we recognize in Legislation!  It is time
+that we should do away with the punishment of death for inadequate
+offences, even in books; it is time that we should allow the morality of
+atonement, and permit to Error the right to hope, as the reward of
+submission to its suffering.  Nor let it be thought that the close to
+Alice's career can offer temptation to the offence of its commencement.
+Eighteen years of sadness, a youth consumed in silent sorrow over the
+grave of Joy, have images that throw over these pages a dark and warning
+shadow that will haunt the young long after they turn from the tale that
+is about to close!  If Alice had died of a broken heart, if her
+punishment had been more than she could bear, _then_, as in real life,
+you would have justly condemned my moral; and the human heart, in its
+pity for the victim, would have lost all recollection of the error.--My
+tale is done.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete
+by Edward Bulwer Lytton
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ALICE, OR THE MYSTERIES, COMPLETE ***
+
+***** This file should be named 9774.txt or 9774.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.net/9/7/7/9774/
+
+Produced by Dagny, and David Widger
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.net/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.net),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.net
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
diff --git a/old/b214w10.txt b/old/b214w10.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..973ba62
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/b214w10.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,16948 @@
+Project Gutenberg EBook, Alice, or The Mysteries, by Lytton, Complete
+#214 in our series by Edward Bulwer Lytton
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
+copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing
+this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.
+
+This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project
+Gutenberg file.  Please do not remove it.  Do not change or edit the
+header without written permission.
+
+Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the
+eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file.  Included is
+important information about your specific rights and restrictions in
+how the file may be used.  You can also find out about how to make a
+donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved.
+
+
+**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
+
+**EBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
+
+*****These EBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers*****
+
+
+
+Title: Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete
+
+Author: Edward Bulwer Lytton
+
+Release Date: January 2006  [EBook #9774]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on October 15, 2003]
+
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+
+
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, ALICE, BY LYTTON ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Dagny, dagnypg@yahoo.com
+and David Widger, widger@cecomet.net
+
+
+
+
+
+                               ALICE;
+
+                                 OR,
+
+                            THE MYSTERIES
+
+
+                                 BY
+
+                        EDWARD BULWER LYTTON
+                            (LORD LYTTON)
+
+
+                              COMPLETE
+
+
+
+
+BOOK I.
+
+  "Thee, hid the bowering vales amidst, I call."
+  --EURIPIDES: _Hel._ I. 1116.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+  Who art thou, fair one, who usurp'st the place
+  Of Blanch, the lady of the matchless grace?--LAMB.
+
+IT was towards the evening of a day in early April that two ladies were
+seated by the open windows of a cottage in Devonshire.  The lawn before
+them was gay with evergreens, relieved by the first few flowers and fresh
+turf of the reviving spring; and at a distance, through an opening
+amongst the trees, the sea, blue and tranquil, bounded the view, and
+contrasted the more confined and home-like features of the scene.  It was
+a spot remote, sequestered, shut out from the business and pleasures of
+the world; as such it suited the tastes and character of the owner.
+
+That owner was the younger of the ladies seated by the window.  You would
+scarcely have guessed, from her appearance, that she was more than seven
+or eight and twenty, though she exceeded by four or five years that
+critical boundary in the life of beauty.  Her form was slight and
+delicate in its proportions, nor was her countenance the less lovely
+because, from its gentleness and repose (not unmixed with a certain
+sadness) the coarse and the gay might have thought it wanting in
+expression.  For there is a stillness in the aspect of those who have
+felt deeply, which deceives the common eye,--as rivers are often alike
+tranquil and profound, in proportion as they are remote from the springs
+which agitated and swelled the commencement of their course, and by which
+their waters are still, though invisibly, supplied.
+
+The elder lady, the guest of her companion, was past seventy; her gray
+hair was drawn back from the forehead, and gathered under a stiff cap of
+quaker-like simplicity; while her dress, rich but plain, and of no very
+modern fashion, served to increase the venerable appearance of one who
+seemed not ashamed of years.
+
+"My dear Mrs. Leslie," said the lady of the house, after a thoughtful
+pause in the conversation that had been carried on for the last hour, "it
+is very true; perhaps I was to blame in coming to this place; I ought not
+to have been so selfish."
+
+"No, my dear friend," returned Mrs. Leslie, gently; "selfish is a word
+that can never be applied to you; you acted as became you,--agreeably to
+your own instinctive sense of what is best when at your age,--independent
+in fortune and rank, and still so lovely,--you resigned all that would
+have attracted others, and devoted yourself, in retirement, to a life of
+quiet and unknown benevolence.  You are in your sphere in this
+village,--humble though it be,--consoling, relieving, healing the
+wretched, the destitute, the infirm; and teaching your Evelyn insensibly
+to imitate your modest and Christian virtues."  The good old lady spoke
+warmly, and with tears in her eyes; her companion placed her hand in Mrs.
+Leslie's.
+
+"You cannot make me vain," said she, with a sweet and melancholy smile.
+"I remember what I was when you first gave shelter to the poor, desolate
+wanderer and her fatherless child; and I, who was then so poor and
+destitute, what should I be, if I was deaf to the poverty and sorrows of
+others,--others, too, who are better than I am.  But now Evelyn, as you
+say, is growing up; the time approaches when she must decide on accepting
+or rejecting Lord Vargrave.  And yet in this village how can she compare
+him with others; how can she form a choice?  What you say is very true;
+and yet I did not think of it sufficiently.  What shall I do?  I am only
+anxious, dear girl, to act so as may be best for her own happiness."
+
+"Of that I am sure," returned Mrs. Leslie; "and yet I know not how to
+advise.  On one hand, so much is due to the wishes of your late husband,
+in every point of view, that if Lord Vargrave be worthy of Evelyn's
+esteem and affection, it would be most desirable that she should prefer
+him to all others.  But if he be what I hear he is considered in the
+world,--an artful, scheming, almost heartless man, of ambitious and hard
+pursuits,--I tremble to think how completely the happiness of Evelyn's
+whole life may be thrown away.  She certainly is not in love with him,
+and yet I fear she is one whose nature is but too susceptible of
+affection.  She ought now to see others,--to know her own mind, and not
+to be hurried, blindfold and inexperienced, into a step that decides
+existence.  This is a duty we owe to her,--nay, even to the late Lord
+Vargrave, anxious as he was for the marriage.  His aim was surely her
+happiness, and he would not have insisted upon means that time and
+circumstances might show to be contrary to the end he had in view."
+
+"You are right," replied Lady Vargrave.  "When my poor husband lay on his
+bed of death, just before he summoned his nephew to receive his last
+blessing, he said to me, 'Providence can counteract all our schemes.  If
+ever it should be for Evelyn's real happiness that my wish for her
+marriage with Lumley Ferrers should not be fulfilled, to you I must leave
+the right to decide on what I cannot foresee.  All I ask is that no
+obstacle shall be thrown in the way of my wish; and that the child shall
+be trained up to consider Lumley as her future husband.'  Among his
+papers was a letter addressed to me to the same effect; and, indeed, in
+other respects that letter left more to my judgment than I had any right
+to expect.  Oh, I am often unhappy to think that he did not marry one who
+would have deserved his affection!  and--but regret is useless now."
+
+"I wish you could really feel so," said Mrs. Leslie; "for regret of
+another kind still seems to haunt you; and I do not think you have yet
+forgotten your early sorrows."
+
+"Ah, how can I?" said Lady Vargrave, with a quivering lip.
+
+At that instant, a light shadow darkened the sunny lawn in front of the
+casements, and a sweet, gay young voice was heard singing at a little
+distance; a moment more, and a beautiful girl, in the first bloom of
+youth, bounded lightly along the grass, and halted opposite the friends.
+
+It was a remarkable contrast,--the repose and quiet of the two persons we
+have described, the age and gray hairs of one, the resigned and
+melancholy gentleness written on the features of the other--with the
+springing step and laughing eyes and radiant bloom of the new comer!  As
+she stood with the setting sun glowing full upon her rich fair hair, her
+happy countenance and elastic form, it was a vision almost too bright for
+this weary earth,--a thing of light and bliss, that the joyous Greek
+might have placed among the forms of Heaven, and worshipped as an Aurora
+or a Hebe.
+
+"Oh, how can you stay indoors this beautiful evening?  Come, dearest Mrs.
+Leslie; come, Mother, dear Mother, you know you promised you would,--you
+said I was to call you; see, it will rain no more, and the shower has
+left the myrtles and the violet-bank so fresh."
+
+"My dear Evelyn," said Mrs. Leslie, with a smile, "I am not so young as
+you."
+
+"No; but you are just as gay when you are in good spirits--and who can be
+out of spirits in such weather?  Let me call for your chair; let me wheel
+you--I am sure I can.  Down, Sultan; so you have found me out, have you,
+sir?  Be quiet, sir, down!"
+
+This last exhortation was addressed to a splendid dog of the Newfoundland
+breed, who now contrived wholly to occupy Evelyn's attention.
+
+The two friends looked at this beautiful girl, as with all the grace of
+youth she shared while she rebuked the exuberant hilarity of her huge
+playmate; and the elder of the two seemed the most to sympathize with her
+mirth.  Both gazed with fond affection upon an object dear to both.  But
+some memory or association touched Lady Vargrave, and she sighed as she
+gazed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+  Is stormy life preferred to this serene?---YOUNG: _Satires_.
+
+AND the windows were closed in, and night had succeeded to evening, and
+the little party at the cottage were grouped together.  Mrs. Leslie was
+quietly seated at her tambour-frame; Lady Vargrave, leaning her cheek on
+her hand, seemed absorbed in a volume before her, but her eyes were not
+on the page; Evelyn was busily employed in turning over the contents of a
+parcel of books and music which had just been brought from the lodge
+where the London coach had deposited it.
+
+"Oh, dear Mamma!" cried Evelyn, "I am so glad; there is something you
+will like,--some of the poetry that touched you so much set to music."
+
+Evelyn brought the songs to her mother, who roused herself from her
+revery, and looked at them with interest.
+
+"It is very strange," said she, "that I should be so affected by all that
+is written by this person: I, too" (she added, tenderly stroking down
+Evelyn's luxuriant tresses), "who am not so fond of reading as you are!"
+
+"You are reading one of his books now," said Evelyn, glancing over the
+open page on the table.  "Ah, that beautiful passage upon 'Our First
+Impressions.'  Yet I do not like you, dear Mother, to read his books;
+they always seem to make you sad."
+
+"There is a charm to me in their thoughts, their manner of expression,"
+said Lady Vargrave, "which sets me thinking, which reminds me of--of an
+early friend, whom I could fancy I hear talking while I read.  It was so
+from the first time I opened by accident a book of his years ago."
+
+"Who is this author that pleases you so much?" asked Mrs. Leslie, with
+some surprise; for Lady Vargrave had usually little pleasure in reading
+even the greatest and most popular masterpieces of modern genius.
+
+"Maltravers," answered Evelyn; "and I think I almost share my mother's
+enthusiasm."
+
+"Maltravers!" repeated Mrs. Leslie.  "He is, perhaps, a dangerous writer
+for one so young.  At your age, dear girl, you have naturally romance and
+feeling enough of your own without seeking them in books."
+
+"But, dear madam," said Evelyn, standing up for her favourite, "his
+writings do not consist of romance and feeling only; they are not
+exaggerated, they are so simple, so truthful."
+
+"Did you ever meet him?" asked Lady Vargrave.
+
+"Yes," returned Mrs. Leslie, "once, when he was a gay, fair-haired boy.
+His father resided in the next county, and we met at a country-house.
+Mr. Maltravers himself has an estate near my daughter in B-----shire, but
+he does not live on it; he has been some years abroad,--a strange
+character!"
+
+"Why does he write no more?" said Evelyn; "I have read his works so
+often, and know his poetry so well by heart, that I should look forward
+to something new from him as an event."
+
+"I have heard, my dear, that he has withdrawn much from the world and its
+objects,--that he has lived greatly in the East.  The death of a lady to
+whom he was to have been married is said to have unsettled and changed
+his character.  Since that event he has not returned to England.  Lord
+Vargrave can tell you more of him than I."
+
+"Lord Vargrave thinks of nothing that is not always before the world,"
+said Evelyn.
+
+"I am sure you wrong him," said Mrs. Leslie, looking up and fixing her
+eyes on Evelyn's countenance; "for _you_ are not before the world."
+
+Evelyn slightly--very slightly--pouted her pretty lip, but made no
+answer.  She took up the music, and seating herself at the piano,
+practised the airs.  Lady Vargrave listened with emotion; and as Evelyn
+in a voice exquisitely sweet, though not powerful, sang the words, her
+mother turned away her face, and half unconsciously, a few tears stole
+silently down her cheek.
+
+When Evelyn ceased, herself affected,--for the lines were impressed with
+a wild and melancholy depth of feeling,--she came again to her mother's
+side, and seeing her emotion, kissed away the tears from the pensive
+eyes.  Her own gayety left her; she drew a stool to her mother's feet,
+and nestling to her, and clasping her hand, did not leave that place till
+they retired to rest.
+
+And the lady blessed Evelyn, and felt that, if bereaved, she was not
+alone.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+  BUT come, thou Goddess, fair and free,
+  In heaven yclept Euphrosyne!
+
+    .  .  .  .  .  .
+
+  To hear the lark begin his flight,
+  And, singing, startle the dull night.--_L'Allegro_.
+
+  But come, thou Goddess, sage and holy,
+  Come, divinest Melancholy!
+
+    .  .  .  .  .  .
+
+  There held in holy passion still,
+  Forget thyself to marble.--_Il Penseroso_.
+
+THE early morn of early spring--what associations of freshness and hope
+in that single sentence!  And there a little after sunrise--there was
+Evelyn, fresh and hopeful as the morning itself, bounding with the light
+step of a light heart over the lawn.  Alone, alone!  no governess, with a
+pinched nose and a sharp voice, to curb her graceful movements, and tell
+her how young ladies ought to walk.  How silently morning stole over the
+earth!  It was as if youth had the day and the world to itself.  The
+shutters of the cottage were still closed, and Evelyn cast a glance
+upward, to assure herself that her mother, who also rose betimes, was not
+yet stirring.  So she tripped along, singing from very glee, to secure a
+companion, and let out Sultan; and a few moments afterwards, they were
+scouring over the grass, and descending the rude steps that wound down
+the cliff to the smooth sea sands.  Evelyn was still a child at heart,
+yet somewhat more than a child in mind.  In the majesty of--
+
+  "That hollow, sounding, and mysterious main,"--
+
+in the silence broken but by the murmur of the billows, in the solitude
+relieved but by the boats of the early fishermen, she felt those deep and
+tranquillizing influences which belong to the Religion of Nature.
+Unconsciously to herself, her sweet face grew more thoughtful, and her
+step more slow.  What a complex thing is education!  How many
+circumstances, that have no connection with books and tutors, contribute
+to the rearing of the human mind!  The earth and the sky and the ocean
+were among the teachers of Evelyn Cameron; and beneath her simplicity of
+thought was daily filled, from the turns of invisible spirits, the
+fountain of the poetry of feeling.
+
+This was the hour when Evelyn most sensibly felt how little our real life
+is chronicled by external events,--how much we live a second and a higher
+life in our meditations and dreams.  Brought up, not more by precept than
+example, in the faith which unites creature and Creator, this was the
+hour in which thought itself had something of the holiness of prayer; and
+if (turning from dreams divine to earlier visions) this also was the hour
+in which the heart painted and peopled its own fairyland below, of the
+two ideal worlds that stretch beyond the inch of time on which we stand,
+Imagination is perhaps holier than Memory.
+
+So now, as the day crept on, Evelyn returned in a more sober mood, and
+then she joined her mother and Mrs. Leslie at breakfast; and then the
+household cares--such as they were--devolved upon her, heiress though she
+was; and, that duty done, once more the straw hat and Sultan were in
+requisition; and opening a little gate at the back of the cottage, she
+took the path along the village churchyard that led to the house of the
+old curate.  The burial-ground itself was surrounded and shut in with a
+belt of trees.  Save the small time-discoloured church and the roofs of
+the cottage and the minister's house, no building--not even a cotter's
+hut--was visible there.  Beneath a dark and single yew-tree in the centre
+of the ground was placed a rude seat; opposite to this seat was a grave,
+distinguished from the rest by a slight palisade.  As the young Evelyn
+passed slowly by this spot, a glove on the long damp grass beside the
+yew-tree caught her eye.  She took it up and sighed,--it was her
+mother's.  She sighed, for she thought of the soft melancholy on that
+mother's face which her caresses and her mirth never could wholly chase
+away.  She wondered why that melancholy was so fixed a habit, for the
+young ever wonder why the experienced should be sad.
+
+And now Evelyn had passed the churchyard, and was on the green turf
+before the minister's quaint, old-fashioned house.  The old man himself
+was at work in his garden; but he threw down his hoe as he saw Evelyn,
+and came cheerfully up to greet her.
+
+It was easy to see how dear she was to him.
+
+"So you are come for your daily lesson, my young pupil?"
+
+"Yes; but Tasso can wait if the--"
+
+"If the tutor wants to play truant; no, my child; and, indeed, the lesson
+must be longer than usual to-day, for I fear I shall have to leave you
+to-morrow for some days."
+
+"Leave us! why?--leave Brook-Green--impossible!"
+
+"Not at all impossible; for we have now a new vicar, and I must turn
+courtier in my old age, and ask him to leave me with my flock.  He is at
+Weymouth, and has written to me to visit him there.  So, Miss Evelyn, I
+must give you a holiday task to learn while I am away."
+
+Evelyn brushed the tears from her eyes--for when the heart is full of
+affection the eyes easily run over--and clung mournfully to the old man,
+as she gave utterance to all her half-childish, half-womanly grief at the
+thought of parting so soon with him.  And what, too, could her mother do
+without him; and why could he not write to the vicar instead of going to
+him?
+
+The curate, who was childless and a bachelor, was not insensible to the
+fondness of his beautiful pupil, and perhaps he himself was a little more
+_distrait_ than usual that morning, or else Evelyn was peculiarly
+inattentive; for certain it is that she reaped very little benefit from
+the lesson.
+
+Yet he was an admirable teacher, that old man!  Aware of Evelyn's quick,
+susceptible, and rather fanciful character of mind, he had sought less to
+curb than to refine and elevate her imagination.  Himself of no ordinary
+abilities, which leisure had allowed him to cultivate, his piety was too
+large and cheerful to exclude literature--Heaven's best gift--from the
+pale of religion.  And under his care Evelyn's mind had been duly stored
+with the treasures of modern genius, and her judgment strengthened by the
+criticisms of a graceful and generous taste.
+
+In that sequestered hamlet, the young heiress had been trained to adorn
+her future station; to appreciate the arts and elegances that distinguish
+(no matter what the rank) the refined from the low, better than if she
+had been brought up under the hundred-handed Briareus of fashionable
+education.  Lady Vargrave, indeed, like most persons of modest
+pretensions and imperfect cultivation, was rather inclined to overrate
+the advantages to be derived from book-knowledge; and she was never
+better pleased than when she saw Evelyn opening the monthly parcel from
+London, and delightedly poring over volumes which Lady Vargrave
+innocently believed to be reservoirs of inexhaustible wisdom.
+
+But this day Evelyn would not read, and the golden verses of Tasso lost
+their music to her ear.  So the curate gave up the lecture, and placed a
+little programme of studies to be conned during his absence in her
+reluctant hand; and Sultan, who had been wistfully licking his paws for
+the last half-hour, sprang up and caracoled once more into the garden;
+and the old priest and the young woman left the works of man for those of
+Nature.
+
+"Do not fear, I will take such care of your garden while you are away,"
+said Evelyn; "and you must write and let us know what day you are to come
+back."
+
+"My dear Evelyn, you are born to spoil every one--from Sultan to Aubrey."
+
+"And to be spoilt too, don't forget that," cried Evelyn, laughingly
+shaking back her ringlets.  "And now, before you go, will you tell me, as
+you are so wise, what I can do to make--to make--my mother love me?"
+
+Evelyn's voice faltered as she spoke the last words, and Aubrey looked
+surprised and moved.
+
+"Your mother love you, my dear Evelyn!  What do you mean,--does she not
+love you?"
+
+"Ah, not as I love her.  She is kind and gentle, I know, for she is so to
+all; but she does not confide in me, she does not trust me; she has some
+sorrow at heart which I am never allowed to learn and soothe.  Why does
+she avoid all mention of her early days?  She never talks to me as if
+she, too, had once a mother!  Why am I never to speak of her first
+marriage, of my father?  Why does she look reproachfully at me, and shun
+me--yes, shun me, for days together--if--if I attempt to draw her to the
+past?  Is there a secret?  If so, am I not old enough to know it?"
+
+Evelyn spoke quickly and nervously, and with quivering lips.  Aubrey took
+her hand, and pressing it, said, after a little pause,--
+
+"Evelyn, this is the first time you have ever thus spoken to me.  Has
+anything chanced to arouse your--shall I call it curiosity, or shall I
+call it the mortified pride of affection?"
+
+"And you, too, aye harsh; you blame me!  No, it is true that I have not
+thus spoken to you before; but I have long, long thought with grief that
+I was insufficient to my mother's happiness,--I who love her so dearly.
+And now, since Mrs. Leslie has been here, I find her conversing with this
+comparative stranger so much more confidentially than with me.  When I
+come in unexpectedly, they cease their conference, as if I were not
+worthy to share it; and--and oh, if I could but make you understand that
+all I desire is that my mother should love me and know me and trust me--"
+
+"Evelyn," said the curate, coldly, "you love your mother, and justly; a
+kinder and a gentler heart than hers does not beat in a human breast.
+Her first wish in life is for your happiness and welfare.  You ask for
+confidence, but why not confide in her; why not believe her actuated by
+the best and the tenderest motives; why not leave it to her discretion to
+reveal to you any secret grief, if such there be, that preys upon her;
+why add to that grief by any selfish indulgence of over-susceptibility in
+yourself?  My dear pupil, you are yet almost a child; and they who have
+sorrowed may well be reluctant to sadden with a melancholy confidence
+those to whom sorrow is yet unknown.  This much, at least, I may tell
+you,--for this much she does not seek to conceal,--that Lady Vargrave was
+early inured to trials from which you, more happy, have been saved.  She
+speaks not to you of her relations, for she has none left on earth.  And
+after her marriage with your benefactor, Evelyn, perhaps it seemed to her
+a matter of principle to banish all vain regret, all remembrance if
+possible, of an earlier tie."
+
+"My poor, poor mother!  Oh, yes, you are right; forgive me.  She yet
+mourns, perhaps, my father, whom I never saw, whom I feel, as it were,
+tacitly forbid to name,--you did not know him?"
+
+"Him!--whom?"
+
+"My father, my mother's first husband."
+
+"No."
+
+"But I am sure I could not have loved him so well as my benefactor, my
+real and second father, who is now dead and gone.  Oh, how well I
+remember him,--how fondly!"  Here Evelyn stopped and burst into tears.
+
+"You do right to remember him thus; to love and revere his memory,--a
+father indeed he was to you.  But now, Evelyn, my own dear child, hear
+me.  Respect the silent heart of your mother; let her not think that her
+misfortunes, whatever they may be, can cast a shadow over you,--you, her
+last hope and blessing.  Rather than seek to open the old wounds, suffer
+them to heal, as they must, beneath the influences of religion and time;
+and wait the hour when without, perhaps, too keen a grief, your mother
+can go back with you into the past."
+
+"I will, I will!  Oh, how wicked, how ungracious I have been!  It was but
+an excess of love, believe it, dear Mr. Aubrey, believe it."
+
+"I do believe it, my poor Evelyn; and now I know that I may trust in you.
+Come, dry those bright eyes, or they will think I have been a hard
+taskmaster, and let us go to the cottage."
+
+They walked slowly and silently across the humble garden into the
+churchyard, and there, by the old yew-tree, they saw Lady Vargrave.
+Evelyn, fearful that the traces of her tears were yet visible, drew back;
+and Aubrey, aware of what passed within her, said,--
+
+"Shall I join your mother, and tell her of my approaching departure?  And
+perhaps in the meanwhile you will call at our poor pensioner's in the
+village,--Dame Newman is so anxious to see you; we will join you there
+soon."
+
+Evelyn smiled her thanks, and kissing her hand to her mother with seeming
+gayety, turned back and passed through the glebe into the little village.
+Aubrey joined Lady Vargrave, and drew her arm in his.
+
+Meanwhile Evelyn thoughtfully pursued her way.  Her heart was full, and
+of self-reproach.  Her mother had, then, known cause for sorrow; and
+perhaps her reserve was but occasioned by her reluctance to pain her
+child.  Oh, how doubly anxious would Evelyn be hereafter to soothe, to
+comfort, to wean that dear mother from the past!  Though in this girl's
+character there was something of the impetuosity and thoughtlessness of
+her years, it was noble as well as soft; and now the woman's trustfulness
+conquered all the woman's curiosity.
+
+She entered the cottage of the old bedridden crone whom Aubrey had
+referred to.  It was as a gleam of sunshine,--that sweet comforting face;
+and here, seated by the old woman's side, with the Book of the Poor upon
+her lap, Evelyn was found by Lady Vargrave.  It was curious to observe
+the different impressions upon the cottagers made by the mother and
+daughter.  Both were beloved with almost equal enthusiasm; but with the
+first the poor felt more at home.  They could talk to her more at ease:
+she understood them so much more quickly; they had no need to beat about
+the bush to tell the little peevish complaints that they were
+half-ashamed to utter to Evelyn.  What seemed so light to the young,
+cheerful beauty, the mother listened to with so grave and sweet a
+patience.  When all went right, they rejoiced to see Evelyn; but in their
+little difficulties and sorrows nobody was like "my good Lady!"
+
+So Dame Newman, the moment she saw the pale countenance and graceful
+shape of Lady Vargrave at the threshold, uttered an exclamation of
+delight.  Now she could let out all that she did not like to trouble the
+young lady with; now she could complain of east winds, and rheumatiz, and
+the parish officers, and the bad tea they sold poor people at Mr. Hart's
+shop, and the ungrateful grandson who was so well to do and who forgot he
+had a grandmother alive!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+  TOWARDS the end of the week we received a card from the town
+  ladies.  _Vicar of Wakefield_.
+
+THE curate was gone, and the lessons suspended; otherwise--as like each
+to each as sunshine or cloud permitted--day followed day in the calm
+retreat of Brook-Green,--when, one morning, Mrs. Leslie, with a letter in
+her hand, sought Lady Vargrave, who was busied in tending the flowers of
+a small conservatory which she had added to the cottage, when, from
+various motives, and one in especial powerful and mysterious, she
+exchanged for so sequestered a home the luxurious villa bequeathed to her
+by her husband.
+
+To flowers--those charming children of Nature, in which our age can take
+the same tranquil pleasure as our youth--Lady Vargrave devoted much of
+her monotonous and unchequered time.  She seemed to love them almost as
+living things; and her memory associated them with hours as bright and as
+fleeting as themselves.
+
+"My dear friend," said Mrs. Leslie, "I have news for you.  My daughter,
+Mrs. Merton, who has been in Cornwall on a visit to her husband's mother,
+writes me word that she will visit us on her road home to the Rectory in
+B-----shire.  She will not put you much out of the way," added Mrs.
+Leslie, smiling, "for Mr. Merton will not accompany her; she only brings
+her daughter Caroline, a lively, handsome, intelligent girl, who will be
+enchanted with Evelyn.  All you will regret is, that she comes to
+terminate my visit, and take me away with her.  If you can forgive that
+offence, you will have nothing else to pardon."
+
+Lady Vargrave replied with her usual simple kindness; but she was
+evidently nervous at the visit of a stranger (for she had never yet seen
+Mrs. Merton), and still more distressed at the thought of losing Mrs.
+Leslie a week or two sooner than had been anticipated.  However, Mrs.
+Leslie hastened to reassure her.  Mrs. Merton was so quiet and
+good-natured, the wife of a country clergyman with simple tastes; and
+after all, Mrs. Leslie's visit might last as long, if Lady Vargrave would
+be contented to extend her hospitality to Mrs. Merton and Caroline.
+
+When the visit was announced to Evelyn, her young heart was susceptible
+only of pleasure and curiosity.  She had no friend of her own age; she
+was sure she should like the grandchild of her dear Mrs. Leslie.
+
+Evelyn, who had learned betimes, from the affectionate solicitude of her
+nature, to relieve her mother of such few domestic cares as a home so
+quiet, with an establishment so regular, could afford, gayly busied
+herself in a thousand little preparations.  She filled the rooms of the
+visitors with flowers (not dreaming that any one could fancy them
+unwholesome), and spread the tables with her own favourite books, and had
+the little cottage piano in her own dressing-room removed into
+Caroline's--Caroline must be fond of music.  She had some doubts of
+transferring a cage with two canaries into Caroline's room also; but when
+she approached the cage with that intention, the birds chirped so
+merrily, and seemed so glad to see her, and so expectant of sugar, that
+her heart smote her for her meditated desertion and ingratitude.  No, she
+could not give up the canaries; but the glass bowl with the goldfish--oh,
+that would look so pretty on its stand just by the casement; and the
+fish--dull things!--would not miss her.
+
+The morning, the noon, the probable hour of the important arrival came at
+last; and after having three times within the last half-hour visited the
+rooms, and settled and unsettled and settled again everything before
+arranged, Evelyn retired to her own room to consult her wardrobe, and
+Margaret,--once her nurse, now her abigail.  Alas! the wardrobe of the
+destined Lady Vargrave--the betrothed of a rising statesman, a new and
+now an ostentatious peer; the heiress of the wealthy Templeton--was one
+that many a tradesman's daughter would have disdained.  Evelyn visited so
+little; the clergyman of the place, and two old maids who lived most
+respectably on a hundred and eighty pounds a year, in a cottage, with one
+maidservant, two cats, and a footboy, bounded the circle of her
+acquaintance.  Her mother was so indifferent to dress; she herself had
+found so many other ways of spending money!--but Evelyn was not now more
+philosophical than others of her age.  She turned from muslin to
+muslin--from the coloured to the white, from the white to the
+coloured--with pretty anxiety and sorrowful suspense.  At last she
+decided on the newest, and when it was on, and the single rose set in the
+lustrous and beautiful hair, Carson herself could not have added a charm.
+Happy age!  Who wants the arts of the milliner at seventeen?
+
+"And here, miss; here's the fine necklace Lord Vargrave brought down when
+my lord came last; it will look so grand!"
+
+The emeralds glittered in their case; Evelyn looked at them irresolutely;
+then, as she looked, a shade came over her forehead, and she sighed, and
+closed the lid.
+
+"No, Margaret, I do not want it; take it away."
+
+"Oh, dear, miss! what would my lord say if he were down!  And they are so
+beautiful! they will look so fine!  Deary me, how they sparkle!  But you
+will wear much finer when you are my lady."
+
+"I hear Mamma's bell; go, Margaret, she wants you."
+
+Left alone, the young beauty sank down abstractedly, and though the
+looking-glass was opposite, it did not arrest her eye; she forgot her
+wardrobe, her muslin dress, her fears, and her guests.
+
+"Ah," she thought, "what a weight of dread I feel here when I think of
+Lord Vargrave and this fatal engagement; and every day I feel it more and
+more.  To leave my dear, dear mother, the dear cottage--oh!  I never can.
+I used to like him when I was a child; now I shudder at his name.  Why is
+this?  He is kind; he condescends to seek to please.  It was the wish of
+my poor father,--for father he really was to me; and yet--oh that he had
+left me poor and free!"
+
+At this part of Evelyn's meditation the unusual sound of wheels was heard
+on the gravel; she started up, wiped the tears from her eyes, and hurried
+down to welcome the expected guests.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+  TELL me, Sophy, my dear, what do you think of our new visitors?
+  _Vicar of Wakefield_.
+
+MRS. MERTON and her daughter were already in the middle drawing-room,
+seated on either side of Mrs. Leslie,--the former a woman of quiet and
+pleasing exterior, her face still handsome, and if not intelligent, at
+least expressive of sober good-nature and habitual content; the latter a
+fine dark-eyed girl, of decided countenance, and what is termed a showy
+style of beauty,--tall, self-possessed, and dressed plainly indeed, but
+after the approved fashion.  The rich bonnet of the large shape then
+worn; the Chantilly veil; the gay French _Cachemire_; the full sleeves,
+at that time the unnatural rage; the expensive yet unassuming _robe de
+soie_; the perfect _chaussure_; the air of society, the easy manner, the
+tranquil but scrutinizing gaze,--all startled, discomposed, and
+half-frightened Evelyn.
+
+Miss Merton herself, if more at her ease, was equally surprised by the
+beauty and unconscious grace of the young fairy before her, and rose to
+greet her with a well-bred cordiality, which at once made a conquest of
+Evelyn's heart.
+
+Mrs. Merton kissed her cheek, and smiled kindly on her, but said little.
+It was easy to see that she was a less conversable and more homely person
+than Caroline.
+
+When Evelyn conducted them to their rooms, the mother and daughter
+detected at a glance the care that had provided for their comforts; and
+something eager and expectant in Evelyn's eyes taught the good-nature of
+the one and the good breeding of the other to reward their young hostess
+by various little exclamations of pleasure and satisfaction.
+
+"Dear, how nice!  What a pretty writing-desk!" said one--"And the pretty
+goldfish!" said the other--"And the piano, too, so well placed;" and
+Caroline's fair fingers ran rapidly over the keys.  Evelyn retired,
+covered with smiles and blushes.  And then Mrs. Merton permitted herself
+to say to the well-dressed abigail,--
+
+"Do take away those flowers, they make me quite faint."
+
+"And how low the room is,--so confined!" said Caroline, when the lady's
+lady withdrew with the condemned flowers.  "And I see no Pysche.
+However, the poor people have done their best."
+
+"Sweet person, Lady Vargrave!" said Mrs. Merton,--"so interesting, so
+beautiful; and how youthful in appearance!"
+
+"No _tournure_--not much the manner of the world," said Caroline.
+
+"No; but something better."
+
+"Hem!" said Caroline.  "The girl is very pretty, though too small."
+
+"Such a smile, such eyes,--she is irresistible! and what a fortune!  She
+will be a charming friend for you, Caroline."
+
+"Yes, she maybe useful, if she marry Lord Vargrave; or, indeed, if she
+make any brilliant match.  What sort of a man is Lord Vargrave?"
+
+"I never saw him; they say, most fascinating."
+
+"Well, she is very happy," said Caroline, with a sigh.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+  TWO lovely damsels cheer my lonely walk.--LAMB: _Album Verses_.
+
+AFTER dinner there was still light enough for the young people to stroll
+through the garden.  Mrs. Merton, who was afraid of the damp, preferred
+staying within; and she was so quiet, and made herself so much at home,
+that Lady Vargrave, to use Mrs. Leslie's phrase, was not the least "put
+out" by her.  Besides, she talked of Evelyn, and that was a theme very
+dear to Lady Vargrave, who was both fond and proud of Evelyn.
+
+"This is very pretty indeed,--the view of the sea quite lovely!" said
+Caroline.  "You draw?"
+
+"Yes, a little."
+
+"From Nature?"
+
+"Oh, yes."
+
+"What, in Indian ink?"
+
+"Yes; and water-colours."
+
+"Oh!  Why, who could have taught you in this little village; or, indeed,
+in this most primitive county?"
+
+"We did not come to Brook-Green till I was nearly fifteen.  My dear
+mother, though very anxious to leave our villa at Fulham, would not do so
+on my account, while masters could be of service to me; and as I knew she
+had set her heart on this place, I worked doubly hard."
+
+"Then she knew this place before?"
+
+"Yes; she had been here many years ago, and took the place after my poor
+father's death,--I always call the late Lord Vargrave my father.  She
+used to come here regularly once a year without me; and when she
+returned, I thought her even more melancholy than before."
+
+"What makes the charm of the place to Lady Vargrave?" asked Caroline,
+with some interest.
+
+"I don't know; unless it be its extreme quiet, or some early
+association."
+
+"And who is your nearest neighbour?"
+
+"Mr. Aubrey, the curate.  It is so unlucky, he is gone from home for a
+short time.  You can't think how kind and pleasant he is,--the most
+amiable old man in the world; just such a man as Bernardin St. Pierre
+would have loved to describe."
+
+"Agreeable, no doubt, but dull--good curates generally are."
+
+"Dull? not the least; cheerful even to playfulness, and full of
+information.  He has been so good to me about books; indeed, I have
+learned a great deal from him."
+
+"I dare say he is an admirable judge of sermons."
+
+"But Mr. Aubrey is not severe," persisted Evelyn, earnestly; "he is very
+fond of Italian literature, for instance; we are reading Tasso together."
+
+"Oh! pity he is old--I think you said he was old.  Perhaps there is a
+son, the image of the sire?"
+
+"Oh, no," said Evelyn, laughing innocently; "Mr. Aubrey never married."
+
+"And where does the old gentleman live?"
+
+"Come a little this way; there, you can just see the roof of his house,
+close by the church."
+
+"I see; it is _tant soit peu triste_ to have the church so near you."
+
+"_Do_ you think so?  Ah, but you have not seen it; it is the prettiest
+church in the county; and the little burial-ground--so quiet, so shut in;
+I feel better every time I pass it.  Some places breathe of religion."
+
+"You are poetical, my dear little friend."
+
+Evelyn, who _had_ poetry in her nature, and therefore sometimes it broke
+out in her simple language, coloured and felt half-ashamed.
+
+"It is a favourite walk with my mother," said she, apologetically; "she
+often spends hours there alone: and so, perhaps, I think it a prettier
+spot than others may.  It does not seem to me to have anything of gloom
+in it; when I die, I should like to be buried there."
+
+Caroline laughed slightly.  "That is a strange wish; but perhaps you have
+been crossed in love?"
+
+"I!--oh, you are laughing at me!"
+
+"You do not remember Mr. Cameron, your real father, I suppose?"
+
+"No; I believe he died before I was born."
+
+"Cameron is a Scotch name: to what tribe of Camerons do you belong?"
+
+"I don't know," said Evelyn, rather embarrassed; "indeed I know nothing
+of my father's or mother's family.  It is very odd, but I don't think we
+have any relations.  You know when I am of age that I am to take the name
+of Templeton."
+
+"Ah, the name goes with the fortune; I understand.  Dear Evelyn, how rich
+you will be!  I do so wish I were rich!"
+
+"And I that I were poor," said Evelyn, with an altered tone and
+expression of countenance.
+
+"Strange girl! what can you mean?"
+
+Evelyn said nothing, and Caroline examined her curiously.
+
+"These notions come from living so much out of the world, my dear Evelyn.
+How you must long to see more of life!"
+
+"I! not in the least.  I should never like to leave this place,--I could
+live and die here."
+
+"You will think otherwise when you are Lady Vargrave.  Why do you look so
+grave?  Do you not love Lord Vargrave?"
+
+"What a question!" said Evelyn, turning away her head, and forcing a
+laugh.
+
+"It is no matter whether you do or not: it is a brilliant position.  He
+has rank, reputation, high office; all he wants is money, and that you
+will give him.  Alas! I have no prospect so bright.  I have no fortune,
+and I fear my face will never buy a title, an opera-box, and a house in
+Grosvenor Square.  I wish I were the future Lady Vargrave."
+
+"I am sure I wish you were," said Evelyn, with great _naivete_; "you
+would suit Lord Vargrave better than I should."
+
+Caroline laughed.
+
+"Why do you think so?"
+
+"Oh, his way of thinking is like yours; he never says anything I can
+sympathize with."
+
+"A pretty compliment to me!  Depend upon it, my dear, you will sympathize
+with me when you have seen as much of the world.  But Lord Vargrave--is
+he too old?"
+
+"No, I don't think of his age; and indeed he looks younger than he is."
+
+"Is he handsome?"
+
+"He is what may be called handsome,--you would think so."
+
+"Well, if he comes here, I will do my best to win him from you; so look
+to yourself."
+
+"Oh, I should be so grateful; I should like him so much, if he would fall
+in love with you!"
+
+"I fear there is no chance of that."
+
+"But how," said Evelyn, hesitatingly, after a pause,--"how is it that you
+have seen so much more of the world than I have?  I thought Mr. Merton
+lived a great deal in the country."
+
+"Yes, but my uncle, Sir John Merton, is member for the county; my
+grandmother on my father's side--Lady Elizabeth, who has Tregony Castle
+(which we have just left) for her jointure-house--goes to town almost
+every season, and I have spent three seasons with her.  She is a charming
+old woman,--quite the _grand dame_.  I am sorry to say she remains in
+Cornwall this year.  She has not been very well; the physicians forbid
+late hours and London; but even in the country we are very gay.  My uncle
+lives near us, and though a widower, has his house full when down at
+Merton Park; and Papa, too, is rich, very hospitable and popular, and
+will, I hope, be a bishop one of these days--not at all like a mere
+country parson; and so, somehow or other, I have learned to be
+ambitious,--we are an ambitious family on Papa's side.  But, alas! I have
+not your cards to play.  Young, beautiful, and an heiress!  Ah, what
+prospects!  You should make your mamma take you to town."
+
+"To town! she would be wretched at the very idea.  Oh, you don't know
+us."
+
+"I can't help fancying, Miss Evelyn," said Caroline, archly, "that you
+are not so blind to Lord Vargrave's perfections and so indifferent to
+London, only from the pretty innocent way of thinking, that so prettily
+and innocently you express.  I dare say, if the truth were known, there
+is some handsome young rector, besides the old curate, who plays the
+flute, and preaches sentimental sermons in white kid gloves."
+
+Evelyn laughed merrily,--so merrily that Caroline's suspicions vanished.
+They continued to walk and talk thus till the night came on, and then
+they went in; and Evelyn showed Caroline her drawings, which astonished
+that young lady, who was a good judge of accomplishments.  Evelyn's
+performance on the piano astonished her yet more; but Caroline consoled
+herself on this point, for her voice was more powerful, and she sang
+French songs with much more spirit.  Caroline showed talent in all she
+undertook; but Evelyn, despite her simplicity, had genius, though as yet
+scarcely developed, for she had quickness, emotion, susceptibility,
+imagination.  And the difference between talent and genius lies rather in
+the heart than the head.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+       DOST thou feel
+  The solemn whispering influence of the scene
+  Oppressing thy young heart, that thou dost draw
+  More closely to my side?--F. HEMANS: _Wood Walk and Hymn_.
+
+CAROLINE and Evelyn, as was natural, became great friends.  They were not
+kindred to each other in disposition; but they were thrown together, and
+friendship thus forced upon both.  Unsuspecting and sanguine, it was
+natural to Evelyn to admire; and Caroline was, to her inexperience, a
+brilliant and imposing novelty.  Sometimes Miss Merton's worldliness of
+thought shocked Evelyn; but then Caroline had a way with her as if she
+were not in earnest,--as if she were merely indulging an inclination
+towards irony; nor was she without a certain vein of sentiment that
+persons a little hackneyed in the world and young ladies a little
+disappointed that they are not wives instead of maids, easily acquire.
+Trite as this vein of sentiment was, poor Evelyn thought it beautiful and
+most feeling.  Then, Caroline was clever, entertaining, cordial, with all
+that superficial superiority that a girl of twenty-three who knows London
+readily exercises over a country girl of seventeen.  On the other hand,
+Caroline was kind and affectionate towards her.  The clergyman's daughter
+felt that she could not be always superior, even in fashion, to the
+wealthy heiress.
+
+One evening, as Mrs. Leslie and Mrs. Merton sat under the veranda of the
+cottage, without their hostess, who had gone alone into the village, and
+the young ladies were confidentially conversing on the lawn, Mrs. Leslie
+said rather abruptly, "Is not Evelyn a delightful creature?  How
+unconscious of her beauty; how simple, and yet so naturally gifted!"
+
+"I have never seen one who interested me more," said Mrs. Merton,
+settling her _pelerine_; "she is extremely pretty."
+
+"I am so anxious about her," resumed Mrs. Leslie, thoughtfully.  "You
+know the wish of the late Lord Vargrave that she should marry his nephew,
+the present lord, when she reaches the age of eighteen.  She only wants
+nine or ten months of that time; she has seen nothing of the world: she
+is not fit to decide for herself; and Lady Vargrave, the best of human
+creatures, is still herself almost too inexperienced in the world to be a
+guide for one so young placed in such peculiar circumstances, and of
+prospects so brilliant.  Lady Vargrave at heart is a child still, and
+will be so even when as old as I am."
+
+"It is very true," said Mrs. Merton.  "Don't you fear that the girls will
+catch cold?  The dew is falling, and the grass must be wet."
+
+"I have thought," continued Mrs. Leslie, without heeding the latter part
+of Mrs. Merton's speech, "that it would be a kind thing to invite Evelyn
+to stay with you a few months at the Rectory.  To be sure, it is not like
+London; but you see a great deal of the world.  The society at your house
+is well selected, and at times even brilliant; she will meet young people
+of her own age, and young people fashion and form each other."
+
+"I was thinking myself that I should like to invite her," said Mrs.
+Merton; "I will consult Caroline."
+
+"Caroline, I am sure, would be delighted; the difficulty lies rather in
+Evelyn herself."
+
+"You surprise me! she must be moped to death here."
+
+"But will she leave her mother?"
+
+"Why, Caroline often leaves me," said Mrs. Merton.
+
+Mrs. Leslie was silent, and Evelyn and her new friend now joined the
+mother and daughter.
+
+"I have been trying to persuade Evelyn to pay us a little visit," said
+Caroline; "she could accompany us so nicely; and if she is still strange
+with us, dear grandmamma goes too,--I am sure we can make her at home."
+
+"How odd!" said Mrs. Merton; "we were just saying the same thing.  My
+dear Miss Cameron, we should be so happy to have you."
+
+"And I should be so happy to go, if Mamma would but go too."
+
+As she spoke, the moon, just risen, showed the form of Lady Vargrave
+slowly approaching the house.  By the light, her features seemed more
+pale than usual; and her slight and delicate form, with its gliding
+motion and noiseless step, had in it something almost ethereal and
+unearthly.
+
+Evelyn turned and saw her, and her heart smote her.  Her mother, so
+wedded to the dear cottage--and had this gay stranger rendered that dear
+cottage less attractive,--she who had said she could live and die in its
+humble precincts?  Abruptly she left her new friend, hastened to her
+mother, and threw her arms fondly round her.
+
+"You are pale; you have over-fatigued yourself.  Where have you been?
+Why did you not take me with you?"
+
+Lady Vargrave pressed Evelyn's hand affectionately.
+
+"You care for me too much," said she.  "I am but a dull companion for
+you; I was so glad to see you happy with one better suited to your gay
+spirits.  What can we do when she leaves us?"
+
+"Ah, I want no companion but my own, own mother.  And have I not Sultan,
+too?" added Evelyn, smiling away the tear that had started to her eyes.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+  FRIEND after friend departs;
+    Who hath not lost a friend?
+  There is no union here of hearts
+    That finds not here an end.--J. MONTGOMERY.
+
+THAT night Mrs. Leslie sought Lady Vargrave in her own room.  As she
+entered gently she observed that, late as the hour was, Lady Vargrave was
+stationed by the open window, and seemed intently gazing on the scene
+below.  Mrs. Leslie reached her side unperceived.  The moonlight was
+exceedingly bright; and just beyond the garden, from which it was
+separated but by a slight fence, lay the solitary churchyard of the
+hamlet, with the slender spire of the holy edifice rising high and
+tapering into the shining air.  It was a calm and tranquillizing scene;
+and so intent was Lady Vargrave's abstracted gaze, that Mrs. Leslie was
+unwilling to disturb her revery.
+
+At length Lady Vargrave turned; and there was that patient and pathetic
+resignation written in her countenance which belongs to those whom the
+world can deceive no more, and who have fixed their hearts in the life
+beyond.
+
+Mrs. Leslie, whatever she thought or felt, said nothing, except in kindly
+remonstrance on the indiscretion of braving the night air.  The window
+was closed; they sat down to confer.
+
+Mrs. Leslie repeated the invitation given to Evelyn, and urged the
+advisability of accepting it.  "It is cruel to separate you," said she;
+"I feel it acutely.  Why not, then, come with Evelyn?  You shake your
+head: why always avoid society?  So young, yet you give yourself too much
+to the past!"
+
+Lady Vargrave rose, and walked to a cabinet at the end of the room; she
+unlocked it, and beckoned to Mrs. Leslie to approach.  In a drawer lay
+carefully folded articles of female dress,--rude, homely, ragged,--the
+dress of a peasant girl.
+
+"Do these remind you of your first charity to me?" she said touchingly:
+"they tell me that I have nothing to do with the world in which you and
+yours, and Evelyn herself, should move."
+
+"Too tender conscience!--your errors were but those of circumstances, of
+youth;--how have they been redeemed! none even suspect them.  Your past
+history is known but to the good old Aubrey and myself.  No breath, even
+of rumour, tarnishes the name of Lady Vargrave."
+
+"Mrs. Leslie," said Lady Vargrave, reclosing the cabinet, and again
+seating herself, "my world lies around me; I cannot quit it.  If I were
+of use to Evelyn, then indeed I would sacrifice, brave all; but I only
+cloud her spirits.  I have no advice to give her, no instruction to
+bestow.  When she was a child I could watch over her; when she was sick,
+I could nurse her; but now she requires an adviser, a guide; and I feel
+too sensibly that this task is beyond my powers.  I, a guide to youth and
+innocence,--_I_!  No, I have nothing to offer her, dear child! but my
+love and my prayers.  Let your daughter take her, then,--watch over her,
+guide, advise her.  For me--unkind, ungrateful as it may seem--were she
+but happy, I could well bear to be alone!"
+
+"But she--how will she, who loves you so, submit to this separation?"
+
+"It will not be long; and," added Lady Vargrave, with a serious, yet
+sweet smile, "she had better be prepared for that separation which must
+come at last.  As year by year I outlive my last hope,--that of once more
+beholding _him_,--I feel that life becomes feebler and feebler, and I
+look more on that quiet churchyard as a home to which I am soon
+returning.  At all events, Evelyn will be called upon to form new ties
+that must estrange her from me; let her wean herself from one so useless
+to her, to all the world,--now, and by degrees."
+
+"Speak not thus," said Mrs. Leslie, strongly affected; "you have many
+years of happiness yet in store for you.  The more you recede from youth,
+the fairer life will become to you."
+
+"God is good to me," said the lady, raising her meek eyes; "and I have
+already found it so.  I am contented."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+  THE greater part of them seemed to be charmed with his presence.
+  MACKENZIE: _The Man of the World_.
+
+IT was with the greatest difficulty that Evelyn could at last be
+persuaded to consent to the separation from her mother; she wept bitterly
+at the thought.  But Lady Vargrave, though touched, was firm, and her
+firmness was of that soft, imploring character which Evelyn never could
+resist.  The visit was to last some months, it is true, but she would
+return to the cottage; she would escape, too--and this, perhaps,
+unconsciously reconciled her more than aught else--the periodical visit
+of Lord Vargrave.  At the end of July, when the parliamentary session at
+that unreformed era usually expired, he always came to Brook-Green for a
+month.  His last visits had been most unwelcome to Evelyn, and this next
+visit she dreaded more than she had any of the former ones.  It is
+strange,--the repugnance with which she regarded the suit of her
+affianced!--she, whose heart was yet virgin; who had never seen any one
+who, in form, manner, and powers to please, could be compared to the gay
+Lord Vargrave.  And yet a sense of honour, of what was due to her dead
+benefactor, her more than father,--all combated that repugnance, and left
+her uncertain what course to pursue, uncalculating as to the future.  In
+the happy elasticity of her spirits, and with a carelessness almost
+approaching to levity, which, to say truth, was natural to her, she did
+not often recall the solemn engagement that must soon be ratified or
+annulled; but when that thought did occur, it saddened her for hours, and
+left her listless and despondent.  The visit to Mrs. Merton was, then,
+finally arranged, the day of departure fixed, when, one morning, came the
+following letter from Lord Vargrave himself:--
+
+
+To the LADY VARGRAVE, etc.
+
+MY DEAR FRIEND,--I find that we have a week's holiday in our do-nothing
+Chamber, and the weather is so delightful, that I long to share its
+enjoyment with those I love best.  You will, therefore, see me almost as
+soon as you receive this; that is, I shall be with you at dinner on the
+same day.  What can I say to Evelyn?  Will you, dearest Lady Vargrave,
+make her accept all the homage which, when uttered by me, she seems half
+inclined to reject?
+
+          In haste, most affectionately yours,
+
+                                   VARGRAVE.
+
+     HAMILTON PLACE, April 30, 18--.
+
+
+This letter was by no means welcome, either to Mrs. Leslie or to Evelyn.
+The former feared that Lord Vargrave would disapprove of a visit, the
+real objects of which could scarcely be owned to him; the latter was
+reminded of all she desired to forget.  But Lady Vargrave herself rather
+rejoiced at the thought of Lumley's arrival.  Hitherto, in the spirit of
+her passive and gentle character, she had taken the engagement between
+Evelyn and Lord Vargrave almost as a matter of course.  The will and wish
+of her late husband operated most powerfully on her mind; and while
+Evelyn was yet in childhood, Lumley's visits had ever been acceptable,
+and the playful girl liked the gay and good-humoured lord, who brought
+her all sorts of presents, and appeared as fond of dogs as herself.  But
+Evelyn's recent change of manner, her frequent fits of dejection and
+thought, once pointed out to Lady Vargrave by Mrs. Leslie, aroused all
+the affectionate and maternal anxiety of the former.  She was resolved to
+watch, to examine, to scrutinize, not only Evelyn's reception of
+Vargrave, but, as far as she could, the manner and disposition of
+Vargrave himself.  She felt how solemn a trust was the happiness of a
+whole life; and she had that romance of heart, learned from Nature, not
+in books, which made her believe that there could be no happiness in a
+marriage without love.
+
+The whole family party were on the lawn, when, an hour earlier than he
+was expected, the travelling carriage of Lord Vargrave was whirled along
+the narrow sweep that conducted from the lodge to the house.  Vargrave,
+as he saw the party, kissed his hand from the window; and leaping from
+the carriage, when it stopped at the porch, hastened to meet his hostess.
+
+"My dear Lady Vargrave, I am so glad to see you!  You are looking
+charmingly; and Evelyn?--oh, there she is; the dear coquette, how lovely
+she is! how she has improved!  But who [sinking his voice], who are those
+ladies?"
+
+"Guests of ours,--Mrs. Leslie, whom you have often heard us speak of, but
+never met--"
+
+"Yes; and the others?"
+
+"Her daughter and grandchild."
+
+"I shall be delighted to know them."
+
+A more popular manner than Lord Vargrave's it is impossible to conceive.
+Frank and prepossessing, even when the poor and reckless Mr. Ferrers,
+without rank or reputation, his smile, the tone of his voice, his
+familiar courtesy,--apparently so inartificial and approaching almost to
+a boyish bluntness of good-humour,--were irresistible in the rising
+statesman and favoured courtier.
+
+Mrs. Merton was enchanted with him; Caroline thought him, at the first
+glance, the most fascinating person she had ever seen; even Mrs. Leslie,
+more grave, cautious, and penetrating, was almost equally pleased with
+the first impression; and it was not till, in his occasional silence, his
+features settled into their natural expression that she fancied she
+detected in the quick suspicious eye and the close compression of the
+lips the tokens of that wily, astute, and worldly character, which, in
+proportion as he had risen in his career, even his own party reluctantly
+and mysteriously assigned to one of their most prominent leaders.
+
+When Vargrave took Evelyn's hand, and raised it with meaning gallantry to
+his lips, the girl first blushed deeply, and then turned pale as death;
+nor did the colour thus chased away soon return to the transparent cheek.
+Not noticing signs which might bear a twofold interpretation, Lumley, who
+seemed in high spirits, rattled away on a thousand matters,--praising the
+view, the weather, the journey, throwing out a joke here and a compliment
+there, and completing his conquest over Mrs. Merton and Caroline.
+
+"You have left London in the very height of its gayety, Lord Vargrave,"
+said Caroline, as they sat conversing after dinner.
+
+"True, Miss Merton; but the country is in the height of its gayety too."
+
+"Are you so fond of the country, then?"
+
+"By fits and starts; my passion for it comes in with the early
+strawberries, and goes out with the hautboys.  I lead so artificial a
+life; but then I hope it is a useful one.  I want nothing but a home to
+make it a happy one."
+
+"What is the latest news?--dear London!  I am so sorry Grandmamma, Lady
+Elizabeth, is not going there this year, so I am compelled to rusticate.
+Is Lady Jane D----- to be married at last?"
+
+"Commend me to a young lady's idea of news,--always marriage!  Lady Jane
+D-----! yes, she is to be married, as you say--_at last_!  While she was
+a beauty, our cold sex was shy of her; but she has now faded into
+plainness,--the proper colour for a wife."
+
+"Complimentary!"
+
+"Indeed it is--for you beautiful women we love too much for our own
+happiness--heigho!--and a prudent marriage means friendly indifference,
+not rapture and despair.  But give me beauty and love; I never was
+prudent: it is not my weakness."
+
+Though Caroline was his sole supporter in this dialogue, Lord Vargrave's
+eyes attempted to converse with Evelyn, who was unusually silent and
+abstracted.  Suddenly Lord Vargrave seemed aware that he was scarcely
+general enough in his talk for his hearers.  He addressed himself to Mrs.
+Leslie, and glided back, as it were, into a former generation.  He spoke
+of persons gone and things forgotten; he made the subject interesting
+even to the young, by a succession of various and sparkling anecdotes.
+No one could be more agreeable; even Evelyn now listened to him with
+pleasure, for to all women wit and intellect have their charm.  But still
+there was a cold and sharp levity in the tone of the man of the world
+that prevented the charm sinking below the surface.  To Mrs. Leslie he
+seemed unconsciously to betray a laxity of principle; to Evelyn, a want
+of sentiment and heart.  Lady Vargrave, who did not understand a
+character of this description, listened attentively, and said to herself,
+"Evelyn may admire, but I fear she cannot love him."  Still, time passed
+quickly in Lumley's presence, and Caroline thought she had never spent so
+pleasant an evening.
+
+When Lord Vargrave retired to his room, he threw himself in his chair,
+and yawned with exceeding fervour.  His servant arranged his
+dressing-robe, and placed his portfolios and letter-boxes on the table.
+
+"What o'clock is it?" said Lumley.
+
+"Very early, my lord; only eleven."
+
+"The devil!  The country air is wonderfully exhausting.  I am very
+sleepy; you may go."
+
+"This little girl," said Lumley, stretching himself, "is preternaturally
+shy.  I must neglect her no longer--yet it is surely all safe?  She has
+grown monstrous pretty; but the other girl is more amusing, more to my
+taste, and a much easier conquest, I fancy.  Her great dark eyes seem
+full of admiration for my lordship.  Sensible young woman! she may be
+useful in piquing Evelyn."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+  _Julio_.  Wilt thou have him?--_The Maid in the Mill_.
+
+LORD VARGRAVE heard the next morning, with secret distaste and
+displeasure, of Evelyn's intended visit to the Mertons.  He could
+scarcely make any open objection to it; but he did not refrain from many
+insinuations as to its impropriety.
+
+"My dear friend," said he to Lady Vargrave, "it is scarcely right in you
+(pardon me for saying it) to commit Evelyn to the care of comparative
+strangers.  Mrs. Leslie, indeed, you know; but Mrs. Merton, you allow,
+you have now seen for the first time.  A most respectable person
+doubtless; but still, recollect how young Evelyn is, how rich; what a
+prize to any younger sons in the Merton family (if such there be).  Miss
+Merton herself is a shrewd, worldly girl; and if she were of our sex
+would make a capital fortune-hunter.  Don't think my fear is selfish; I
+do not speak for myself.  If I were Evelyn's brother, I should be yet
+more earnest in my remonstrance."
+
+"But, Lord Vargrave, poor Evelyn is dull here; my spirits infect hers.
+She ought to mix more with those of her own age, to see more of the world
+before--before--"
+
+"Before her marriage with me?  Forgive me, but is not that my affair?  If
+I am contented, nay, charmed with her innocence, if I prefer it to all
+the arts which society could teach her, surely you would be acquitted for
+leaving her in the beautiful simplicity that makes her chief fascination?
+She will see enough of the world as Lady Vargrave."
+
+"But if she should resolve never to be Lady Vargrave--?"
+
+Lumley started, bit his lip, and frowned.  Lady Vargrave had never before
+seen on his countenance the dark expression it now wore.  He recollected
+and recovered himself, as he observed her eye fixed upon him, and said,
+with a constrained smile,--
+
+"Can you anticipate an event so fatal to my happiness, so unforeseen, so
+opposed to all my poor uncle's wishes, as Evelyn's rejection of a suit
+pursued for years, and so solemnly sanctioned in her very childhood?"
+
+"She must decide for herself," said Lady Vargrave.  "Your uncle carefully
+distinguished between a wish and a command.  Her heart is as yet
+untouched.  If she can love you, may you deserve her affection."
+
+"It shall be my study to do so.  But why this departure from your roof
+just when we ought to see most of each other?  It cannot be that you
+would separate us?"
+
+"I fear, Lord Vargrave, that if Evelyn were to remain here, she would
+decide against you.  I fear if you press her now, such now may be her
+premature decision.  Perhaps this arises from too fond an attachment for
+her home; perhaps even a short absence from her home--from me--may more
+reconcile her to a permanent separation."
+
+Vargrave could say no more, for here they were joined by Caroline and
+Mrs. Merton; but his manner was changed, nor could he recover the gayety
+of the previous night.
+
+When, however, he found time for meditation, he contrived to reconcile
+himself to the intended visit.  He felt that it was easy to secure the
+friendship of the whole of the Merton family; and that friendship might
+be more useful to him than the neutral part adopted by Lady Vargrave.  He
+should, of course, be invited to the rectory; it was much nearer London
+than Lady Vargrave's cottage, he could more often escape from public
+cares to superintend his private interest.  A country neighbourhood,
+particularly at that season of the year, was not likely to abound in very
+dangerous rivals.  Evelyn would, he saw, be surrounded by a _worldly_
+family, and he thought that an advantage; it might serve to dissipate
+Evelyn's romantic tendencies, and make her sensible of the pleasures of
+the London life, the official rank, the gay society that her union with
+him would offer as an equivalent for her fortune.  In short, as was his
+wont, he strove to make the best of the new turn affairs had taken.
+Though guardian to Miss Cameron, and one of the trustees for the fortune
+she was to receive on attaining her majority, he had not the right to
+dictate as to her residence.  The late lord's will had expressly and
+pointedly corroborated the natural and lawful authority of Lady Vargrave
+in all matters connected with Evelyn's education and home.  It may be as
+well, in this place, to add, that to Vargrave and the co-trustee, Mr.
+Gustavus Douce, a banker of repute and eminence, the testator left large
+discretionary powers as to the investment of the fortune.  He had stated
+it as his wish that from one hundred and twenty to one hundred and thirty
+thousand pounds should be invested in the purchase of a landed estate;
+but he had left it to the discretion of the trustees to increase that
+sum, even to the amount of the whole capital, should an estate of
+adequate importance be in the market, while the selection of time and
+purchase was unreservedly confided to the trustees.  Vargrave had
+hitherto objected to every purchase in the market,--not that he was
+insensible to the importance and consideration of landed property, but
+because, till he himself became the legal receiver of the income, he
+thought it less trouble to suffer the money to lie in the Funds, than to
+be pestered with all the onerous details in the management of an estate
+that might never be his.  He, however, with no less ardour than his
+deceased relative, looked forward to the time when the title of Vargrave
+should be based upon the venerable foundation of feudal manors and
+seignorial acres.
+
+"Why did you not tell me Lord Vargrave was so charming?" said Caroline to
+Evelyn, as the two girls were sauntering, in familiar _tete-a-tete_,
+along the gardens.  "You will be very happy with such a companion."
+
+Evelyn made no answer for a few moments, and then, turning abruptly round
+to Caroline, and stopping short, she said, with a kind of tearful
+eagerness, "Dear Caroline, you are so wise, so kind too; advise me, tell
+me what is best.  I am very unhappy."
+
+Miss Merton was moved and surprised by Evelyn's earnestness.
+
+"But what is it, my poor Evelyn," said she; "why are you unhappy?--you
+whose fate seems to me so enviable."
+
+"I cannot love Lord Vargrave; I recoil from the idea of marrying him.
+Ought I not fairly to tell him so?  Ought I not to say that I cannot
+fulfil the wish that--oh, there's the thought which leaves me so
+irresolute!--His uncle bequeathed to me--me who have no claim of
+relationship--the fortune that should have been Lord Vargrave's, in the
+belief that my hand would restore it to him.  It is almost a fraud to
+refuse him.  Am I not to be pitied?"
+
+"But why can you not love Lord Vargrave?  If past the _premiere
+jeunesse_, he is still handsome.  He is more than handsome,--he has the
+air of rank, an eye that fascinates, a smile that wins, the manners that
+please, the abilities that command, the world!  Handsome, clever,
+admired, distinguished--what can woman desire more in her lover, her
+husband?  Have you ever formed some fancy, some ideal of the one you
+could love, and how does Lord Vargrave fall short of the vision?"
+
+"Have I ever formed an ideal?--oh, yes!" said Evelyn, with a beautiful
+enthusiasm that lighted up her eyes, blushed in her cheek, and heaved her
+bosom beneath its robe; "something that in loving I could also revere,--a
+mind that would elevate my own; a heart that could sympathize with my
+weakness, my follies, my romance, if you will; and in which I could
+treasure my whole soul."
+
+"You paint a schoolmaster, not a lover!" said Caroline.  "You do not
+care, then, whether this hero be handsome or young?"
+
+"Oh, yes, he should be both," said Evelyn, innocently; "and yet," she
+added, after a pause, and with an infantine playfulness of manner and
+countenance, "I know you will laugh at me, but I think I could be in love
+with more than one at the same time!"
+
+"A common case, but a rare confession!"
+
+"Yes; for if I might ask for the youth and outward advantages that please
+the eye, I could also love with a yet deeper love that which would speak
+to my imagination,--Intellect, Genius, Fame!  Ah, these have an immortal
+youth and imperishable beauty of their own!"
+
+"You are a very strange girl."
+
+"But we are on a very strange  subject--it is all an enigma!" said
+Evelyn, shaking her wise little head with a pretty gravity, half mock,
+half real.  "Ah, if Lord Vargrave should love you--and you--oh, you
+_would_ love him, and then I should be free, and so happy!"
+
+They were then on the lawn in sight of the cottage windows, and Lumley,
+lifting his eyes from the newspaper, which had just arrived and been
+seized with all a politician's avidity, saw them in the distance.  He
+threw down the paper, mused a moment or two, then took up his hat and
+joined them; but before he did so, he surveyed himself in the glass.  "I
+think I look young enough still," thought he.
+
+"Two cherries on one stalk," said Lumley, gayly: "by the by, it is not a
+complimentary simile.  What young lady would be like a cherry?--such an
+uninteresting, common, charity-boy sort of fruit.  For my part, I always
+associate cherries with the image of a young gentleman in corduroys and a
+skeleton jacket, with one pocket full of marbles, and the other full of
+worms for fishing, with three-halfpence in the left paw, and two cherries
+on one stalk (Helena and Hermia) in the right."
+
+"How droll you are!" said Caroline, laughing.
+
+"Much obliged to you, and don't envy your discrimination, 'Melancholy
+marks me for its own.' You ladies,--ah, yours is the life for gay spirits
+and light hearts; to us are left business and politics, law, physic, and
+murder, by way of professions; abuse, nicknamed fame; and the privilege
+of seeing how universal a thing, among the great and the wealthy, is that
+pleasant vice, beggary,--which privilege is proudly entitled 'patronage
+and power.' Are we the things to be gay,--'droll,' as you say?  Oh, no,
+all our spirits are forced, believe me.  Miss Cameron, did you ever know
+that wretched species of hysterical affection called 'forced spirits'?
+Never, I am sure; your ingenuous smile, your laughing eyes, are the index
+to a happy and a sanguine heart."
+
+"And what of me?" asked Caroline, quickly, and with a slight blush.
+
+"You, Miss Merton?  Ah, I have not yet read your character,--a fair page,
+but an unknown letter.  You, however, have seen the world, and know that
+we must occasionally wear a mask."  Lord Vargrave sighed as he spoke, and
+relapsed into sudden silence; then looking up, his eyes encountered
+Caroline's, which were fixed upon him.  Their gaze flattered him;
+Caroline turned away, and busied herself with a rose-bush.  Lumley
+gathered one of the flowers, and presented it to her.  Evelyn was a few
+steps in advance.
+
+"There is no thorn in this rose," said he; "may the offering be an omen.
+You are now Evelyn's friend, oh, be mine; she is to be your guest.  Do
+not scorn to plead for me."
+
+"Can _you_ want a pleader?" said Caroline, with a slight tremor in her
+voice.
+
+"Charming Miss Merton, love is diffident and fearful; but it must now
+find a voice, to which may Evelyn benignly listen.  What I leave
+unsaid--would that my new friend's eloquence could supply."
+
+He bowed slightly, and joined Evelyn.  Caroline understood the hint, and
+returned alone and thoughtfully to the house.
+
+"Miss Cameron--Evelyn--ah, still let me call you so, as in the happy and
+more familiar days of your childhood, I wish you could read my heart at
+this moment.  You are about to leave your home; new scenes will surround,
+new faces smile on you; dare I hope that I may still be remembered?"
+
+He attempted to take her hand as he spoke; Evelyn withdrew it gently.
+
+"Ah, my lord," said she, in a very low voice, "if remembrance were all
+that you asked of me--"
+
+"It is all,--favourable remembrance, remembrance of the love of the past,
+remembrance of the bond to come."
+
+Evelyn shivered.  "It is better to speak openly," said she.
+
+"Let me throw myself on your generosity.  I am not insensible to your
+brilliant qualities, to the honour of your attachment; but--but--as the
+time approaches in which you will call for my decision, let me now say,
+that I cannot feel for you--those--those sentiments, without which you
+could not desire our union,--without which it were but a wrong to both of
+us to form it.  Nay, listen to me.  I grieve bitterly at the tenor of
+your too generous uncle's will; can I not atone to you?  Willingly would
+I sacrifice the fortune that, indeed, ought to be yours; accept it, and
+remain my friend."
+
+"Cruel Evelyn! and can you suppose that it is your fortune I seek?  It is
+yourself.  Heaven is my witness, that, had you no dowry but your hand and
+heart, it were treasure enough to me.  You think you cannot love me.
+Evelyn, you do not yet know yourself.  Alas! your retirement in this
+distant village, my own unceasing avocations, which chain me, like a
+slave, to the galley-oar of politics and power, have kept us separate.
+You do not know me.  I am willing to hazard the experiment of that
+knowledge.  To devote my life to you, to make you partaker of my
+ambition, my career, to raise you to the highest eminence in the
+matronage of England, to transfer pride from myself to you, to love and
+to honour and to prize you,--all this will be my boast; and all this will
+win love for me at last.  Fear not, Evelyn,--fear not for your happiness;
+with me you shall know no sorrow.  Affection at home, splendour abroad,
+await you.  I have passed the rough and arduous part of my career;
+sunshine lies on the summit to which I climb.  No station in England is
+too high for me to aspire to,--prospects, how bright with you, how dark
+without you!  Ah, Evelyn! be this hand mine--the heart shall follow!"
+
+Vargrave's words were artful and eloquent; the words were calculated to
+win their way, but the manner, the tone of voice, wanted earnestness and
+truth.  This was his defect; this characterized all his attempts to
+seduce or to lead others, in public or in private life.  He had no heart,
+no deep passion, in what he undertook.  He could impress you with the
+conviction of his ability, and leave the conviction imperfect, because he
+could not convince you that he was sincere.  That best gift of mental
+power--_earnestness_--was wanting to him; and Lord Vargrave's deficiency
+of heart was the true cause why he was not a great man.  Still, Evelyn
+was affected by his words; she suffered the hand he now once more took to
+remain passively in his, and said timidly, "Why, with sentiments so
+generous and confiding, why do you love me, who cannot return your
+affection worthily?  No, Lord Vargrave; there are many who must see you
+with juster eyes than mine,--many fairer, and even wealthier.  Indeed,
+indeed, it cannot be.  Do not be offended, but think that the fortune
+left to me was on one condition I cannot, ought not to fulfil.  Failing
+that condition, in equity and honour it reverts to you."
+
+"Talk not thus, I implore you, Evelyn; do not imagine me the worldly
+calculator that my enemies deem me.  But, to remove at once from your
+mind the possibility of such a compromise between your honour and
+repugnance--repugnance! have I lived to say that word?--know that your
+fortune is not at your own disposal.  Save the small forfeit that awaits
+your non-compliance with my uncle's dying prayer, the whole is settled
+peremptorily on yourself and your children; it is entailed,--you cannot
+alienate it.  Thus, then, your generosity can never be evinced but to him
+on whom you bestow your hand.  Ah, let me recall that melancholy scene.
+Your benefactor on his death-bed, your mother kneeling by his side, your
+hand clasped in mine, and those lips, with their latest breath, uttering
+at once a blessing and a command."
+
+"Ah, cease, cease, my lord!" said Evelyn, sobbing.
+
+"No; bid me not cease before you tell me you will be mine.  Beloved
+Evelyn, I may hope,--you will not resolve against me?"
+
+"No," said Evelyn, raising her eyes and struggling for composure; "I feel
+too well what should be my duty; I will endeavor to perform it.  Ask me
+no more now.  I will struggle to answer you as you wish hereafter."
+
+Lord Vargrave, resolved to push to the utmost the advantage he had
+gained, was about to reply when he heard a step behind him; and turning
+round, quickly and discomposed, beheld a venerable form approaching them.
+The occasion was lost: Evelyn also turned; and seeing who was the
+intruder, sprang towards him almost with a cry of joy.
+
+The new comer was a man who had passed his seventieth year; but his old
+age was green, his step light, and on his healthful and benignant
+countenance time had left but few furrows.  He was clothed in black; and
+his locks, which were white as snow, escaped from the broad hat, and
+almost touched his shoulders.
+
+The old man smiled upon Evelyn, and kissed her forehead fondly.  He then
+turned to Lord Vargrave, who, recovering his customary self-possession,
+advanced to meet him with extended hand.
+
+"My dear Mr. Aubrey, this is a welcome surprise.  I heard you were not at
+the vicarage, or I would have called on you."
+
+"Your lordship honours me," replied the curate.  "For the first time for
+thirty years I have been thus long absent from my cure; but I am now
+returned, I hope, to end my days among my flock."
+
+"And what," asked Vargrave,--"what--if the question be not
+presumptuous--occasioned your unwilling absence?"
+
+"My lord," replied the old man, with a gentle smile, "a new vicar has
+been appointed.  I went to him, to proffer an humble prayer that I might
+remain amongst those whom I regarded as my children.  I have buried one
+generation, I have married another, I have baptized a third."
+
+"You should have had the vicarage itself; you should be better provided
+for, my dear Mr. Aubrey; I will speak to the Lord Chancellor."
+
+Five times before had Lord Vargrave uttered the same promise, and the
+curate smiled to hear the familiar words.
+
+"The vicarage, my lord, is a family living, and is now vested in a young
+man who requires wealth more than I do.  He has been kind to me, and
+re-established me among my flock; I would not leave them for a bishopric.
+My child," continued the curate, addressing Evelyn with great affection,
+"you are surely unwell,--you are paler than when I left you."
+
+Evelyn clung fondly to his arm, and smiled--her old gay smile--as she
+replied to him.  They took the way towards the house.
+
+The curate remained with them for an hour.  There was a mingled sweetness
+and dignity in his manner which had in it something of the primitive
+character we poetically ascribe to the pastors of the Church.  Lady
+Vargrave seemed to vie with Evelyn which should love him the most.  When
+he retired to his home, which was not many yards distant from the
+cottage, Evelyn, pleading a headache, sought her chamber, and Lumley, to
+soothe his mortification, turned to Caroline, who had seated herself by
+his side.  Her conversation amused him, and her evident admiration
+flattered.  While Lady Vargrave absented herself, in motherly anxiety, to
+attend on Evelyn, while Mrs. Leslie was occupied at her frame, and Mrs.
+Merton looked on, and talked indolently to the old lady of rheumatism and
+sermons, of children's complaints and servants' misdemeanours,--the
+conversation between Lord Vargrave and Caroline, at first gay and
+animated, grew gradually more sentimental and subdued; their voices took
+a lower tone, and Caroline sometimes turned away her head and blushed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+  THERE stands the Messenger of Truth--there stands
+  The Legate of the skies.--COWPER.
+
+FROM that night Lumley found no opportunity for private conversation with
+Evelyn; she evidently shunned to meet with him alone.  She was ever with
+her mother or Mrs. Leslie or the good curate, who spent much of his time
+at the cottage; for the old man had neither wife nor children, he was
+alone at home, he had learned to make his home with the widow and her
+daughter.  With them he was an object of the tenderest affection, of the
+deepest veneration.  Their love delighted him, and he returned it with
+the fondness of a parent and the benevolence of a pastor.  He was a rare
+character, that village priest!
+
+Born of humble parentage, Edward Aubrey had early displayed abilities
+which attracted the notice of a wealthy proprietor, who was not
+displeased to affect the patron.  Young Aubrey was sent to school, and
+thence to college as a sizar: he obtained several prizes, and took a high
+degree.  Aubrey was not without the ambition and the passions of youth:
+he went into the world, ardent, inexperienced, and without a guide.  He
+drew back before errors grew into crimes, or folly became a habit.  It
+was nature and affection that reclaimed and saved him from either
+alternative,--fame or ruin.  His widowed mother was suddenly stricken
+with disease.  Blind and bedridden, her whole dependence was on her only
+son.  This affliction called forth a new character in Edward Aubrey.
+This mother had stripped herself of so many comforts to provide for
+him,--he devoted his youth to her in return.  She was now old and
+imbecile.  With the mingled selfishness and sentiment of age, she would
+not come to London,--she would not move from the village where her
+husband lay buried, where her youth had been spent.  In this village the
+able and ambitious young man buried his hopes and his talents; by degrees
+the quiet and tranquillity of the country life became dear to him.  As
+steps in a ladder, so piety leads to piety, and religion grew to him a
+habit.  He took orders and entered the Church.  A disappointment in love
+ensued; it left on his mind and heart a sober and resigned melancholy,
+which at length mellowed into content.  His profession and its sweet
+duties became more and more dear to him; in the hopes of the next world
+he forgot the ambition of the present.  He did not seek to shine,--
+
+  "More skilled to raise the wretched than to rise."
+
+His own birth made the poor his brothers, and their dispositions and
+wants familiar to him.  His own early errors made him tolerant to the
+faults of others,--few men are charitable who remember not that they have
+sinned.  In our faults lie the germs of virtues.  Thus gradually and
+serenely had worn away his life--obscure but useful, calm but active,--a
+man whom "the great prizes" of the Church might have rendered an
+ambitious schemer, to whom a modest confidence gave the true pastoral
+power,--to conquer the world within himself, and to sympathize with the
+wants of others.  Yes, he was a rare character, that village priest!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+  TOUT notre raisonnement se reduit a ceder au sentiment.*--PASCAL.
+
+  *  "All our reasoning reduces itself to yielding to sentiment."
+
+LORD VARGRAVE, who had no desire to remain alone with the widow when the
+guests were gone, arranged his departure for the same day as that fixed
+for Mrs. Merton's; and as their road lay together for several miles, it
+was settled that they should all dine at-----, whence Lord Vargrave would
+proceed to London.  Failing to procure a second chance-interview with
+Evelyn, and afraid to demand a formal one--for he felt the insecurity of
+the ground he stood on--Lord Vargrave, irritated and somewhat mortified,
+sought, as was his habit, whatever amusement was in his reach.  In the
+conversation of Caroline Merton--shrewd, worldly, and ambitious--he found
+the sort of plaything that he desired.  They were thrown much together;
+but to Vargrave, at least, there appeared no danger in the intercourse;
+and perhaps his chief object was to pique Evelyn, as well as to gratify
+his own spleen.
+
+It was the evening before Evelyn's departure; the little party had been
+for the last hour dispersed; Mrs. Merton was in her own room, making to
+herself gratuitous and unnecessary occupation in seeing her woman _pack
+up_.  It was just the kind of task that delighted her.  To sit in a large
+chair and see somebody else at work--to say languidly, "Don't crumple
+that scarf, Jane; and where shall we put Miss Caroline's blue
+bonnet?"--gave her a very comfortable notion of her own importance and
+habits of business,--a sort of title to be the superintendent of a family
+and the wife of a rector.  Caroline had disappeared, so had Lord
+Vargrave; but the first was supposed to be with Evelyn, the second,
+employed in writing letters,--at least, it was so when they had been last
+observed.  Mrs. Leslie was alone in the drawing-room, and absorbed in
+anxious and benevolent thoughts on the critical situation of her young
+favourite, about to enter an age and a world the perils of which Mrs.
+Leslie had not forgotten.
+
+It was at this time that Evelyn, forgetful of Lord Vargrave and his suit,
+of every one, of everything but the grief of the approaching departure,
+found herself alone in a little arbour that had been built upon the cliff
+to command the view of the sea below.  That day she had been restless,
+perturbed; she had visited every spot consecrated by youthful
+recollections; she had clung with fond regret to every place in which she
+had held sweet converse with her mother.  Of a disposition singularly
+warm and affectionate, she had often, in her secret heart, pined for a
+more yearning and enthusiastic love than it seemed in the subdued nature
+of Lady Vargrave to bestow. In the affection of the latter, gentle and
+never fluctuating as it was, there seemed to her a something wanting,
+which she could not define.  She had watched that beloved face all the
+morning.  She had hoped to see the tender eyes fixed upon her, and hear
+the meek voice exclaim, "I cannot part with my child!"  All the gay
+pictures which the light-hearted Caroline drew of the scenes she was to
+enter had vanished away--now that the hour approached when her mother was
+to be left alone.  Why was she to go?  It seemed to her an unnecessary
+cruelty.
+
+As she thus sat, she did not observe that Mr. Aubrey, who had seen her at
+a distance, was now bending his way to her; and not till he had entered
+the arbour, and taken her hand, did she waken from those reveries in
+which youth, the Dreamer and the Desirer, so morbidly indulges.
+
+"Tears, my child?" said the curate.  "Nay, be not ashamed of them; they
+become you in this hour.  How we shall miss you! and you, too, will not
+forget us?"
+
+"Forget you!  Ah, no, indeed!  But why should I leave you?  Why will you
+not speak to my mother, implore her to let me remain?  We were so happy
+till these strangers came.  We did not think there was any other
+world,--_here_ there is world enough for me!"
+
+"My poor Evelyn," said Mr. Aubrey, gently, "I have spoken to your mother
+and to Mrs. Leslie; they have confided to me all the reasons for your
+departure, and I cannot but subscribe to their justice.  You do not want
+many months of the age when you will be called upon to decide whether
+Lord Vargrave shall be your husband.  Your mother shrinks from the
+responsibility of influencing your decision; and here, my child,
+inexperienced, and having seen so little of others, how can you know your
+own heart?"
+
+"But, oh, Mr. Aubrey," said Evelyn, with an earnestness that overcame
+embarrassment, "have I a choice left to me?  Can I be ungrateful,
+disobedient to him who was a father to me?  Ought I not to sacrifice my
+own happiness?  And how willingly would I do so, if my mother would smile
+on me approvingly!"
+
+"My child," said the curate, gravely, "an old man is a bad judge of the
+affairs of youth; yet in this matter, I think your duty plain.  Do not
+resolutely set yourself against Lord Vargrave's claim; do not persuade
+yourself that you must be unhappy in a union with him.  Compose your
+mind, think seriously upon the choice before you, refuse all decision at
+the present moment; wait until the appointed time arrives, or, at least,
+more nearly approaches.  Meanwhile, I understand that Lord Vargrave is to
+be a frequent visitor at Mrs. Merton's; there you will see him with
+others, his character will show itself.  Study his principles, his
+disposition; examine whether he is one whom you can esteem and render
+happy: there may be a love without enthusiasm, and yet sufficient for
+domestic felicity, and for the employment of the affections.  You will
+insensibly, too, learn from other parts of his character which he does
+not exhibit to us.  If the result of time and examination be that you can
+cheerfully obey the late lord's dying wish, unquestionably it will be the
+happier decision.  If not, if you still shrink from vows at which your
+heart now rebels, as unquestionably you may, with an acquitted
+conscience, become free.  The best of us are imperfect judges of the
+happiness of others.  In the woe or weal of a whole life, we must decide
+for ourselves.  Your benefactor could not mean you to be wretched; and if
+he now, with eyes purified from all worldly mists, look down upon you,
+his spirit will approve your choice; for when we quit the world, all
+worldly ambition dies with us.  What now to the immortal soul can be the
+title and the rank which on earth, with the desires of earth, your
+benefactor hoped to secure to his adopted child? This is my advice.  Look
+on the bright side of things, and wait calmly for the hour when Lord
+Vargrave can demand your decision."
+
+The words of the priest, which well defined her duty, inexpressibly
+soothed and comforted Evelyn; and the advice upon other and higher
+matters, which the good man pressed upon a mind so softened at that hour
+to receive religious impressions, was received with gratitude and
+respect.  Subsequently their conversation fell upon Lady Vargrave,--a
+theme dear to both of them.  The old man was greatly touched by the poor
+girl's unselfish anxiety for her mother's comfort, by her fears that she
+might be missed, in those little attentions which filial love alone can
+render; he was almost yet more touched when, with a less disinterested
+feeling, Evelyn added mournfully,--
+
+"Yet why, after all, should I fancy she will so miss me?  Ah, though I
+will not _dare_ complain of it, I feel still that she does not love me as
+I love her."
+
+"Evelyn," said the curate, with mild reproach, "have I not said that your
+mother has known sorrow?  And though sorrow does not annihilate
+affection, it subdues its expression, and moderates its outward signs."
+
+Evelyn sighed, and said no more.
+
+As the good old man and his young friend returned to the cottage, Lord
+Vargrave and Caroline approached them, emerging from an opposite part of
+the grounds.  The former hastened to Evelyn with his usual gayety and
+frank address; and there was so much charm in the manner of a man, whom
+_apparently_ the world and its cares had never rendered artificial or
+reserved, that the curate himself was impressed by it.  He thought that
+Evelyn might be happy with one amiable enough for a companion and wise
+enough for a guide.  But old as he was, he had loved, and he knew that
+there are instincts in the heart which defy all our calculations.
+
+While Lumley was conversing, the little gate that made the communication
+between the gardens and the neighbouring churchyard, through which was
+the nearest access to the village, creaked on its hinges, and the quiet
+and solitary figure of Lady Vargrave threw its shadow over the grass.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+  AND I can listen to thee yet,
+    Can lie upon the plain;
+  And listen till I do beget
+    That golden time again.--WORDSWORTH.
+
+IT was past midnight--hostess and guests had retired to repose--when Lady
+Vargrave's door opened gently.  The lady herself was kneeling at the foot
+of the bed; the moonlight came through the half-drawn curtains of the
+casement, and by its ray her pale, calm features looked paler, and yet
+more hushed.
+
+Evelyn, for she was the intruder, paused at the threshold till her mother
+rose from her devotions, and then she threw herself on Lady Vargrave's
+breast, sobbing as if her heart would break.  Hers were the wild,
+generous, irresistible emotions of youth.  Lady Vargrave, perhaps, had
+known them once; at least, she could sympathize with them now.
+
+She strained her child to her bosom; she stroked back her hair, and
+kissed her fondly, and spoke to her soothingly.
+
+"Mother," sobbed Evelyn, "I could not sleep, I could not rest.  Bless me
+again, kiss me again; tell me that you love me--you cannot love me as I
+do you; but tell me that I am dear to you; tell me you will regret me,
+but not too much; tell me--"  Here Evelyn paused, and could say no more.
+
+"My best, my kindest Evelyn," said Lady Vargrave, "there is nothing on
+earth I love like you.  Do not fancy I am ungrateful."
+
+"Why do you say ungrateful?--your own child,--your only child!"  And
+Evelyn covered her mother's face and hands with passionate tears and
+kisses.
+
+At that moment, certain it is that Lady Vargrave's heart reproached her
+with not having, indeed, loved this sweet girl as she deserved.  True, no
+mother was more mild, more attentive, more fostering, more anxious for a
+daughter's welfare; but Evelyn was right.  The gushing fondness, the
+mysterious entering into every subtle thought and feeling, which should
+have characterized the love of such a mother to such a child, had been to
+outward appearance wanting.  Even in this present parting there had been
+a prudence, an exercise of reasoning, that savoured more of duty than
+love.  Lady Vargrave felt all this with remorse; she gave way to emotions
+new to her,--at least to exhibit; she wept with Evelyn, and returned her
+caresses with almost equal fervour.  Perhaps, too, she thought at that
+moment of what love that warm nature was susceptible; and she trembled
+for her future fate.  It was as a full reconciliation--that mournful
+hour--between feelings on either side, which something mysterious seemed
+to have checked before; and that last night the mother and the child did
+not separate,--the same couch contained them: and when, worn out with
+some emotions which she could not reveal, Lady Vargrave fell into the
+sleep of exhaustion, Evelyn's arm was round her, and Evelyn's eyes
+watched her with pious and anxious love as the gray morning dawned.
+
+She left her mother still sleeping, when the sun rose, and went silently
+down into the dear room below, and again busied herself in a thousand
+little provident cares, which she wondered she had forgot before.
+
+The carriages were at the door before the party had assembled at the
+melancholy breakfast-table.  Lord Vargrave was the last to appear.
+
+"I have been like all cowards," said he, seating himself,--"anxious to
+defer an evil as long as possible; a bad policy, for it increases the
+worst of all pains,--that of suspense."
+
+Mrs. Merton had undertaken the duties that appertain to the "hissing
+urn."  "You prefer coffee, Lord Vargrave?  Caroline, my dear--"
+
+Caroline passed the cup to Lord Vargrave, who looked at her hand as he
+took it--there was a ring on one of those slender fingers never observed
+there before.  Their eyes met, and Caroline coloured.  Lord Vargrave
+turned to Evelyn, who, pale as death, but tearless and speechless, sat
+beside her mother; he attempted in vain to draw her into conversation.
+Evelyn, who desired to restrain her feelings, would not trust herself to
+speak.
+
+Mrs. Merton, ever undisturbed and placid, continued to talk on: to offer
+congratulations on the weather,--it was such a lovely day; and they
+should be off so early; it would be so well arranged,--they should be in
+such good time to dine at-----, and then go three stages after dinner;
+the moon would be up.
+
+"But," said Lord Vargrave, "as I am to go with you as far as-----, where
+our roads separate, I hope I am not condemned to go alone, with my red
+box, two old newspapers, and the blue devils.  Have pity on me."
+
+"Perhaps you will take Grandmamma, then?" whispered Caroline, archly.
+
+Lumley shrugged his shoulders, and replied in the same tone,--
+
+"Yes,--provided you keep to the proverb, 'Les extremes se touchent,' and
+the lovely grandchild accompany the venerable grandmamma."
+
+"What would Evelyn say?" retorted Caroline.
+
+Lumley sighed, and made no answer.
+
+Mrs. Merton, who had hung fire while her daughter was carrying on this
+"aside," now put in,--
+
+"Suppose I and Caroline take your _britzka_, and you go in our old coach
+with Evelyn and Mrs. Leslie?"
+
+Lumley looked delightedly at the speaker, and then glanced at Evelyn; but
+Mrs. Leslie said very gravely, "No, _we_ shall feel too much in leaving
+this dear place to be gay companions for Lord Vargrave.  We shall all
+meet at dinner; or," she added, after a pause, "if this be uncourteous to
+Lord Vargrave, suppose Evelyn and myself take his carriage and, he
+accompanies you?"
+
+"Agreed," said Mrs. Merton, quietly; "and now I will just go and see
+about the strawberry-plants and slips--it was so kind in you, dear Lady
+Vargrave, to think of them."
+
+An hour had elapsed, and Evelyn was gone!  She had left her maiden home,
+she had wept her last farewell on her mother's bosom, the sound of the
+carriage-wheels had died away; but still Lady Vargrave lingered on the
+threshold, still she gazed on the spot where the last glimpse of Evelyn
+had been caught.  A sense of dreariness and solitude passed into her
+soul: the very sunlight, the spring, the songs of the birds, made
+loneliness more desolate.
+
+Mechanically, at last, she moved away, and with slow steps and downcast
+eyes passed through the favourite walk that led into the quiet
+burial-ground.  The gate closed upon her, and now the lawn, the gardens,
+the haunts of Evelyn, were solitary as the desert itself; but the daisy
+opened to the sun, and the bee murmured along the blossoms, not the less
+blithely for the absence of all human life.  In the bosom of Nature there
+beats no heart for man!
+
+
+
+BOOK II.
+
+  "The hour arrived--years having rolled away
+  When his return the Gods no more delay.
+  Lo! Ithaca the Fates award; and there
+  New trials meet the Wanderer."
+  HOMER: _Od._ lib. i, 16.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+  THERE is continual spring and harvest here--
+    Continual, both meeting at one time;
+  For both the boughs do laughing blossoms bear,
+    And with fresh colours deck the wanton prime;
+  And eke at once the heavy trees they climb,
+    Which seem to labour under their fruit's load.
+
+  SPENSER: _The Garden of Adonis_.
+
+                    Vis boni
+  In ipsa inesset forma.*--TERENCE.
+
+  * "Even in beauty there exists the power of virtue."
+
+BEAUTY, thou art twice blessed; thou blessest the gazer and the
+possessor; often at once the effect and the cause of goodness!  A sweet
+disposition, a lovely soul, an affectionate nature, will speak in the
+eyes, the lips, the brow, and become the cause of beauty.  On the other
+hand, they who have a gift that commands love, a key that opens all
+hearts, are ordinarily inclined to look with happy eyes upon the
+world,--to be cheerful and serene, to hope and to confide.  There is more
+wisdom than the vulgar dream of in our admiration of a fair face.
+
+Evelyn Cameron was beautiful,--a beauty that came from the heart, and
+went to the heart; a beauty, the very spirit of which was love!  Love
+smiled on her dimpled lips, it reposed on her open brow, it played in the
+profuse and careless ringlets of darkest yet sunniest auburn, which a
+breeze could lift from her delicate and virgin cheek; Love, in all its
+tenderness, in all its kindness, its unsuspecting truth,--Love coloured
+every thought, murmured in her low melodious voice, in all its symmetry
+and glorious womanhood.  Love swelled the swan-like neck, and moulded the
+rounded limb.
+
+She was just the kind of person that takes the judgment by storm: whether
+gay or grave, there was so charming and irresistible a grace about her.
+She seemed born, not only to captivate the giddy, but to turn the heads
+of the sage.  Roxalana was nothing to her.  How, in the obscure hamlet of
+Brook-Green, she had learned all the arts of pleasing it is impossible to
+say.  In her arch smile, the pretty toss of her head, the half shyness,
+half freedom, of her winning ways, it was as if Nature had made her to
+delight one heart, and torment all others.
+
+Without being learned, the mind of Evelyn was cultivated and well
+informed.  Her heart, perhaps, helped to instruct her understanding; for
+by a kind of intuition she could appreciate all that was beautiful and
+elevated.  Her unvitiated and guileless taste had a logic of its own: no
+schoolman had ever a quicker penetration into truth, no critic ever more
+readily detected the meretricious and the false.  The book that Evelyn
+could admire was sure to be stamped with the impress of the noble, the
+lovely, or the true!
+
+But Evelyn had faults,--the faults of her age; or, rather, she had
+tendencies that might conduce to error.  She was of so generous a nature
+that the very thought of sacrificing her self for another had a charm.
+She ever acted from impulse,--impulses pure and good, but often rash and
+imprudent.  She was yielding to weakness, persuaded into anything, so
+sensitive, that even a cold look from one moderately liked cut her to the
+heart; and by the sympathy that accompanies sensitiveness, no pain to her
+was so great as the thought of giving pain to another.  Hence it was that
+Vargrave might form reasonable hopes of his ultimate success.  It was a
+dangerous constitution for happiness!  How many chances must combine to
+preserve to the mid-day of characters like this the sunshine of their
+dawn!  The butterfly that seems the child of the summer and the
+flowers--what wind will not chill its mirth, what touch will not brush
+away its hues?
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+  THESE, on a general survey, are the modes
+  Of pulpit oratory which agree
+  With no unlettered audience.--POLWHELE.
+
+MRS. LESLIE had returned from her visit to the rectory to her own home,
+and Evelyn had now been some weeks at Mrs. Merton's.  As was natural, she
+had grown in some measure reconciled and resigned to her change of abode.
+In fact, no sooner did she pass Mrs. Merton's threshold, than, for the
+first time, she was made aware of her consequence in life.
+
+The Rev. Mr. Merton was a man of the nicest perception in all things
+appertaining to worldly consideration.  The second son of a very wealthy
+baronet (who was the first commoner of his county) and of the daughter of
+a rich and highly-descended peer, Mr. Merton had been brought near enough
+to rank and power to appreciate all their advantages.  In early life he
+had been something of a "tuft-hunter;" but as his understanding was good
+and his passions not very strong, he had soon perceived that that vessel
+of clay, a young man with a moderate fortune, cannot long sail down the
+same stream with the metal vessels of rich earls and extravagant dandies.
+Besides, he was destined for the Church--because there was one of the
+finest livings in England in the family.  He therefore took orders at six
+and twenty; married Mrs. Leslie's daughter, who had thirty thousand
+pounds: and settled at the rectory of Merton, within a mile of the family
+seat.  He became a very respectable and extremely popular man.  He was
+singularly hospitable, and built a new wing--containing a large
+dining-room and six capital bed-rooms--to the rectory, which had now much
+more the appearance of a country villa than a country parsonage.  His
+brother, succeeding to the estates, and residing chiefly in the
+neighbourhood, became, like his father before him, member for the county,
+and was one of the country gentlemen most looked up to in the House of
+Commons.  A sensible and frequent, though uncommonly prosy speaker,
+singularly independent (for he had a clear fourteen thousand pounds a
+year, and did not desire office), and valuing himself on not being a
+party man, so that his vote on critical questions was often a matter of
+great doubt, and, therefore, of great moment, Sir John Merton gave
+considerable importance to the Rev. Charles Merton.  The latter kept up
+all the more select of his old London acquaintances; and few country
+houses, at certain seasons of the year, were filled more aristocratically
+than the pleasant rectory-house.  Mr. Merton, indeed, contrived to make
+the Hall a reservoir for the parsonage, and periodically drafted off the
+_elite_ of the visitors at the former to spend a few days at the latter.
+This was the more easily done, as his brother was a widower, and his
+conversation was all of one sort,--the state of the nation and the
+agricultural interest.  Mr. Merton was upon very friendly terms with his
+brother, looked after the property in the absence of Sir John, kept up
+the family interest, was an excellent electioneerer, a good speaker at a
+pinch, an able magistrate,--a man, in short, most useful in the county;
+on the whole, he was more popular than his brother, and almost as much
+looked up to--perhaps, because he was much less ostentatious.  He had
+very good taste, had the Rev. Charles Merton!--his table plentiful, but
+plain--his manners affable to the low, though agreeably sycophantic to
+the high; and there was nothing about him that ever wounded self-love.
+To add to the attractions of his house, his wife, simple and
+good-tempered, could talk with anybody, take off the bores, and leave
+people to be comfortable in their own way: while he had a large family of
+fine children of all ages, that had long given easy and constant excuse
+under the name of "little children's parties," for getting up an
+impromptu dance or a gypsy dinner,--enlivening the neighbourhood, in
+short.  Caroline was the eldest; then came a son, attached to a foreign
+ministry, and another, who, though only nineteen, was a private secretary
+to one of our Indian satraps.  The acquaintance of these young gentlemen,
+thus engaged, it was therefore Evelyn's misfortune to lose the advantage
+of cultivating,--a loss which both Mr. and Mrs. Merton assured her was
+very much to be regretted.  But to make up to her for such a privation
+there were two lovely little girls, one ten, and the other seven years
+old, who fell in love with Evelyn at first sight.  Caroline was one of
+the beauties of the county, clever and conversable, "drew young men," and
+set the fashion to young ladies, especially when she returned from
+spending the season with Lady Elizabeth.
+
+It was a delightful family!
+
+In person, Mr. Merton was of the middle height; fair, and inclined to
+stoutness, with small features, beautiful teeth, and great suavity of
+address.  Mindful still of the time when he had been "about town," he was
+very particular in his dress: his black coat, neatly relieved in the
+evening by a white underwaistcoat, and a shirt-front admirably plaited,
+with plain studs of dark enamel, his well-cut trousers, and elaborately
+polished shoes--he was good-humouredly vain of his feet and hands--won
+for him the common praise of the dandies (who occasionally honoured him
+with a visit to shoot his game, and flirt with his daughter), "That old
+Merton was a most gentlemanlike fellow--so d-----d neat for a parson!"
+
+Such, mentally, morally, and physically, was the Rev. Charles Merton,
+rector of Merton, brother of Sir John, and possessor of an income that,
+what with his rich living, his wife's fortune, and his own, which was not
+inconsiderable, amounted to between four and five thousand pounds a year,
+which income, managed with judgment as well as liberality, could not fail
+to secure to him all the good things of this world,--the respect of his
+friends amongst the rest.  Caroline was right when she told Evelyn that
+her papa was very different from a mere country parson.
+
+Now this gentleman could not fail to see all the claims that Evelyn might
+fairly advance upon the esteem, nay, the veneration of himself and
+family: a young beauty, with a fortune of about a quarter of a million,
+was a phenomenon that might fairly be called celestial.  Her pretensions
+were enhanced by her engagement to Lord Vargrave,--an engagement which
+might be broken; so that, as he interpreted it, the _worst_ that could
+happen to the young lady was to marry an able and rising Minister of
+State,--a peer of the realm; but she was perfectly free to marry a still
+greater man, if she could find him; and who knows but what perhaps the
+_attache_, if he could get leave of absence?  Mr. Merton was too sensible
+to pursue that thought further for the present.
+
+The good man was greatly shocked at the too familiar manner in which Mrs.
+Merton spoke to this high-fated heiress, at Evelyn's travelling so far
+without her own maid, at her very primitive wardrobe--poor, ill-used
+child!  Mr. Merton was a connoisseur in ladies' dress.  It was quite
+painful to see that the unfortunate girl had been so neglected.  Lady
+Vargrave must be a very strange person.  He inquired compassionately
+whether she was allowed any pocket money; and finding, to his relief,
+that in that respect Miss Cameron was munificently supplied, he suggested
+that a proper abigail should be immediately engaged; that proper orders
+to Madame Devy should be immediately transmitted to London, with one of
+Evelyn's dresses, as a pattern for nothing but length and breadth.  He
+almost stamped with vexation when he heard that Evelyn had been placed in
+one of the neat little rooms generally appropriated to young lady
+visitors.
+
+"She is quite contented, my dear Mr. Merton; she is so simple; she has
+not been brought up in the style you think for."
+
+"Mrs. Merton," said the rector, with great solemnity, "Miss Cameron may
+know no better now; but what will she think of us hereafter?  It is my
+maxim to recollect what people will be, and show them that respect which
+may leave pleasing impressions when they have it in their power to show
+us civility in return."
+
+With many apologies, which quite overwhelmed poor Evelyn, she was
+transferred from the little chamber, with its French bed and
+bamboo-coloured washhand-stand, to an apartment with a buhl wardrobe and
+a four-post bed with green silk curtains, usually appropriated to the
+regular Christmas visitant, the Dowager Countess of Chipperton.  A pretty
+morning room communicated with the sleeping apartment, and thence a
+private staircase conducted into the gardens.  The whole family were duly
+impressed and re-impressed with her importance.  No queen could be made
+more of.  Evelyn mistook it all for pure kindness, and returned the
+hospitality with an affection that extended to the whole family, but
+particularly to the two little girls, and a beautiful black spaniel.  Her
+dresses came down from London; her abigail arrived; the buhl wardrobe was
+duly filled,--and Evelyn at last learned that it is a fine thing to be
+rich.  An account of all these proceedings was forwarded to Lady
+Vargrave, in a long and most complacent letter, by the rector himself.
+The answer was short, but it contented the excellent clergyman; for it
+approved of all he had done, and begged that Miss Cameron might have
+everything that seemed proper to her station.
+
+By the same post came two letters to Evelyn herself,--one from Lady
+Vargrave, one from the curate.  They transported her from the fine room
+and the buhl wardrobe to the cottage and the lawn; and the fine abigail,
+when she came to dress her young lady's hair, found her weeping.
+
+It was a matter of great regret to the rector that it was that time of
+year when--precisely because the country is most beautiful--every one
+worth knowing is in town.  Still, however, some stray guests found their
+way to the rectory for a day or two, and still there were some
+aristocratic old families in the neighbourhood, who never went up to
+London: so that two days in the week the rector's wine flowed, the
+whist-tables were set out, and the piano called into requisition.
+
+Evelyn--the object of universal attention and admiration--was put at her
+ease by her station itself; for good manners come like an instinct to
+those on whom the world smiles.  Insensibly she acquired self-possession
+and the smoothness of society; and if her child-like playfulness broke
+out from all conventional restraint, it only made more charming and
+brilliant the great heiress, whose delicate and fairy cast of beauty so
+well became her graceful _abandon_ of manner, and who looked so
+unequivocally ladylike to the eyes that rested on Madame Devy's blondes
+and satins.
+
+Caroline was not so gay as she had been at the cottage.  Something seemed
+to weigh upon her spirits: she was often moody and thoughtful.  She was
+the only one in the family not good-tempered; and her peevish replies to
+her parents, when no visitor imposed a check on the family circle,
+inconceivably pained Evelyn, and greatly contrasted the flow of spirits
+which distinguished her when she found somebody worth listening to.
+Still Evelyn--who, where she once liked, found it difficult to withdraw
+regard--sought to overlook Caroline's blemishes, and to persuade herself
+of a thousand good qualities below the surface; and her generous nature
+found constant opportunity of venting itself in costly gifts, selected
+from the London parcels, with which the officious Mr. Merton relieved the
+monotony of the rectory.  These gifts Caroline could not refuse without
+paining her young friend.  She took them reluctantly, for, to do her
+justice, Caroline, though ambitious, was not mean.
+
+Thus time passed in the rectory, in gay variety and constant
+entertainment; and all things combined to spoil the heiress, if, indeed,
+goodness ever is spoiled by kindness and prosperity.  Is it to the frost
+or to the sunshine that the flower opens its petals, or the fruit ripens
+from the blossom?
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+  _Rod_.    How sweet these solitary places are!
+
+    .  .  .  .  .  .
+
+  _Ped_.    What strange musick
+            Was that we heard afar off?
+
+  _Curio_.  We've told you what he is, what time we've sought him,
+            His nature and his name.
+
+  BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.  _The Pilgrim_.
+
+ONE day, as the ladies were seated in Mrs. Merton's morning-room, Evelyn,
+who had been stationed by the window hearing the little Cecilia go
+through the French verbs, and had just finished that agreeable task,
+exclaimed,--
+
+"Do tell me to whom that old house belongs, with the picturesque
+gable-end and Gothic turrets, there, just peeping through the trees,--I
+have always forgot to ask you."
+
+"Oh, my dear Miss Cameron," said Mrs. Merton, "that is Burleigh; have you
+not been there?  How stupid in Caroline not to show it to you!  It is one
+of the lions of the place.  It belongs to a man you have often heard
+of,--Mr. Maltravers."
+
+"Indeed!" cried Evelyn; and she gazed with new interest on the gray
+melancholy pile, as the sunshine brought it into strong contrast with the
+dark pines around it.  "And Mr. Maltravers himself--?"
+
+"Is still abroad, I believe; though I did hear the other day that he was
+shortly expected at Burleigh.  It is a curious old place, though much
+neglected.  I believe, indeed, it has not been furnished since the time
+of Charles the First.  (Cissy, my love, don't stoop so.)  Very gloomy, in
+my opinion; and not any fine room in the house, except the library, which
+was once a chapel.  However, people come miles to see it."
+
+"Will you go there to-day?" said Caroline, languidly; "it is a very
+pleasant walk through the glebe-land and the wood,--not above half a mile
+by the foot-path."
+
+"I should like it so much."
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Merton, "and you had better go before he returns,--he is
+so strange.  He does not allow it to be seen when he is down.  But,
+indeed, he has only been once at the old place since he was of age.
+(Sophy, you will tear Miss Cameron's scarf to pieces; do be quiet,
+child.) That was before he was a great man; he was then very odd, saw no
+society, only dined once with us, though Mr. Merton paid him every
+attention.  They show the room in which he wrote his books."
+
+"I remember him very well, though I was then but a child," said
+Caroline,--"a handsome, thoughtful face."
+
+"Did you think so, my dear?  Fine eyes and teeth, certainly, and a
+commanding figure, but nothing more."
+
+"Well," said Caroline, "if you like to go, Evelyn, I am at your service."
+
+"And--I--Evy, dear--I--may go," said Cecilia, clinging to Evelyn.
+
+"And me, too," lisped Sophia, the youngest hope,--"there's such a pretty
+peacock."
+
+"Oh, yes, they may go, Mrs. Merton, we'll take such care of them."
+
+"Very well, my dear; Miss Cameron quite spoils you."
+
+Evelyn tripped away to put on her bonnet, and the children ran after her,
+clapping their hands,--they could not bear to lose sight of her for a
+moment.
+
+"Caroline," said Mrs. Merton, affectionately, "are you not well?  You
+have seemed pale lately, and not in your usual spirits."
+
+"Oh, yes, I'm well enough," answered Caroline, rather peevishly; "but
+this place is so dull now; very provoking that Lady Elizabeth does not go
+to London this year."
+
+"My dear, it will be gayer, I hope, in July, when the races at Knaresdean
+begin; and Lord Vargrave has promised to come."
+
+"Has Lord Vargrave written to you lately?"
+
+"No, my dear."
+
+"Very odd."
+
+"Does Evelyn ever talk of him?"
+
+"Not much," said Caroline, rising and quitting the room.
+
+It was a most cheerful exhilarating day,--the close of sweet May; the
+hedges were white with blossoms; a light breeze rustled the young leaves;
+the butterflies had ventured forth, and the children chased them over the
+grass, as Evelyn and Caroline, who walked much too slow for her companion
+(Evelyn longed to run), followed them soberly towards Burleigh.
+
+They passed the glebe-fields; and a little bridge, thrown over a brawling
+rivulet, conducted them into a wood.
+
+"This stream," said Caroline, "forms the boundary between my uncle's
+estates and those of Mr. Maltravers.  It must be very unpleasant to so
+proud a man as Mr. Maltravers is said to be, to have the land of another
+proprietor so near his house.  He could hear my uncle's gun from his very
+drawing-room.  However, Sir John takes care not to molest him.  On the
+other side, the Burleigh estates extend for some miles; indeed, Mr.
+Maltravers is the next great proprietor to my uncle in this part of the
+county.  Very strange that he does not marry!  There, now you can see the
+house."
+
+The mansion lay somewhat low, with hanging woods in the rear: and the
+old-fashioned fish-ponds gleaming in the sunshine and overshadowed by
+gigantic trees increased the venerable stillness of its aspect.  Ivy and
+innumerable creepers covered one side of the house; and long weeds
+cumbered the deserted road.
+
+"It is sadly neglected," said Caroline; "and was so, even in the last
+owner's life.  Mr. Maltravers inherits the place from his mother's uncle.
+We may as well enter the house by the private way.  The front entrance is
+kept locked up."
+
+Winding by a path that conducted into a flower-garden, divided from the
+park by a ha-ha, over which a plank and a small gate, rusting off its
+hinges, were placed, Caroline led the way towards the building.  At this
+point of view it presented a large bay window that by a flight of four
+steps led into the garden.  On one side rose a square, narrow turret,
+surmounted by a gilt dome and quaint weathercock, below the architrave of
+which was a sun-dial, set in the stonework; and another dial stood in the
+garden, with the common and beautiful motto,--
+
+  "Non numero horas, nisi serenas!"*
+
+  * "I number not the hours, unless sunny."
+
+On the other side of the bay window a huge buttress cast its mass of
+shadow.  There was something in the appearance of the whole place that
+invited to contemplation and repose,--something almost monastic.  The
+gayety of the teeming spring-time could not divest the spot of a certain
+sadness, not displeasing, however, whether to the young, to whom there is
+a luxury in the vague sentiment of melancholy, or to those who, having
+known real griefs, seek for an anodyne in meditation and memory.  The low
+lead-coloured door, set deep in the turret, was locked, and the bell
+beside it broken.  Caroline turned impatiently away.  "We must go round
+to the other side," said she, "and try to make the deaf old man hear us."
+
+"Oh, Carry!" cried Cecilia, "the great window is open;" and she ran up
+the steps.
+
+"That is lucky," said Caroline; and the rest followed Cecilia.
+
+Evelyn now stood within the library of which Mrs. Merton had spoken.  It
+was a large room, about fifty feet in length, and proportionably wide;
+somewhat dark, for the light came only from the one large window through
+which they entered; and though the window rose to the cornice of the
+ceiling, and took up one side of the apartment, the daylight was subdued
+by the heaviness of the stonework in which the narrow panes were set, and
+by the glass stained with armorial bearings in the upper part of the
+casement.  The bookcases, too, were of the dark oak which so much absorbs
+the light; and the gilding, formerly meant to relieve them, was
+discoloured by time.
+
+The room was almost disproportionably lofty; the ceiling, elaborately
+coved, and richly carved with grotesque masks, preserved the Gothic
+character of the age in which it had been devoted to a religious purpose.
+Two fireplaces, with high chimney-pieces of oak, in which were inserted
+two portraits, broke the symmetry of the tall bookcases.  In one of these
+fireplaces were half-burnt logs; and a huge armchair, with a small
+reading-desk beside it, seemed to bespeak the recent occupation of the
+room.  On the fourth side, opposite the window, the wall was covered with
+faded tapestry, representing the meeting of Solomon and the Queen of
+Sheba; the arras was nailed over doors on either hand,--the chinks
+between the door and the wall serving, in one instance, to cut off in the
+middle his wise majesty, who was making a low bow; while in the other it
+took the ground from under the wanton queen, just as she was descending
+from her chariot.
+
+Near the window stood a grand piano, the only modern article in the room,
+save one of the portraits, presently to be described.  On all this Evelyn
+gazed silently and devoutly: she had naturally that reverence for genius
+which is common to the enthusiastic and young; and there is, even to the
+dullest, a certain interest in the homes of those who have implanted
+within us a new thought.  But here there was, she imagined, a rare and
+singular harmony between the place and the mental characteristics of the
+owner.  She fancied she now better understood the shadowy and
+metaphysical repose of thought that had distinguished the earlier
+writings of Maltravers,--the writings composed or planned in this still
+retreat.
+
+But what particularly caught her attention was one of the two portraits
+that adorned the mantelpieces.  The further one was attired in the rich
+and fanciful armour of the time of Elizabeth; the head bare, the helmet
+on a table on which the hand rested.  It was a handsome and striking
+countenance; and an inscription announced it to be a Digby, an ancestor
+of Maltravers.
+
+But the other was a beautiful girl of about eighteen, in the now almost
+antiquated dress of forty years ago.  The features were delicate, but the
+colours somewhat faded, and there was something mournful in the
+expression.  A silk curtain, drawn on one side, seemed to denote how
+carefully it was prized by the possessor.
+
+Evelyn turned for explanation to her cicerone.
+
+"This is the second time I have seen that picture," said Caroline; "for
+it is only by great entreaty and as a mysterious favour that the old
+housekeeper draws aside the veil.  Some touch of sentiment in Maltravers
+makes him regard it as sacred.  It is the picture of his mother before
+she married; she died in giving him birth."
+
+Evelyn sighed; how well she understood the sentiment which seemed to
+Caroline so eccentric!  The countenance fascinated her; the eye seemed to
+follow her as she turned.
+
+"As a proper pendant to this picture," said Caroline, "he ought to have
+dismissed the effigies of yon warlike gentleman, and replaced it by one
+of poor Lady Florence Lascelles, for whose loss he is said to have
+quitted his country: but, perhaps, it was the loss of her fortune."
+
+"How can you say so?--fie!" cried Evelyn, with a burst of generous
+indignation.
+
+"Ah, my dear, you heiresses have a fellow-feeling with each other!
+Nevertheless, clever men are less sentimental than we deem them.  Heigho!
+this quiet room gives me the spleen, I fancy."
+
+"Dearest Evy," whispered Cecilia, "I think you have a look of that pretty
+picture, only you are much prettier.  Do take off your bonnet; your hair
+just falls down like hers."
+
+Evelyn shook her head gravely; but the spoiled child hastily untied the
+ribbons and snatched away the hat, and Evelyn's sunny ringlets fell down
+in beautiful disorder.  There was no resemblance between Evelyn and the
+portrait, except in the colour of the hair, and the careless fashion it
+now by chance assumed.  Yet Evelyn was pleased to think that a likeness
+did exist, though Caroline declared it was a most unflattering
+compliment.
+
+"I don't wonder," said the latter, changing the theme,--"I don't wonder
+Mr. Maltravers lives so little in this 'Castle Dull;' yet it might be
+much improved.  French windows and plate-glass, for instance; and if
+those lumbering bookshelves and horrid old chimney-pieces were removed
+and the ceiling painted white and gold like that in my uncle's saloon,
+and a rich, lively paper, instead of the tapestry, it would really make a
+very fine ballroom."
+
+"Let us have a dance here now," cried Cecilia.  "Come, stand up, Sophy;"
+and the children began to practise a waltz step, tumbling over each
+other, and laughing in full glee.
+
+"Hush, hush!" said Evelyn, softly.  She had never before checked the
+children's mirth, and she could not tell why she did so now.
+
+"I suppose the old butler has been entertaining the bailiff here," said
+Caroline, pointing to the remains of the fire.
+
+"And is this the room he chiefly inhabited,--the room that you say they
+show as his?"
+
+"No; that tapestry door to the right leads into a little study where he
+wrote."  So saying, Caroline tried to open the door, but it was locked
+from within.  She then opened the other door, which showed a long
+wainscoted passage, hung with rusty pikes, and a few breastplates of the
+time of the Parliamentary Wars.  "This leads to the main body of the
+House," said Caroline, "from which the room we are now in and the little
+study are completely detached, having, as you know, been the chapel in
+popish times.  I have heard that Sir Kenelm Digby, an ancestral
+connection of the present owner, first converted them into their present
+use, and, in return, built the village church on the other side of the
+park."
+
+Sir Kenelm Digby, the old cavalier philosopher!---a new name of interest
+to consecrate the place!  Evelyn could have lingered all day in the room;
+and perhaps as an excuse for a longer sojourn, hastened to the piano--it
+was open--she ran her fairy fingers over the keys, and the sound from the
+untuned and neglected instrument thrilled wild and spiritlike through the
+melancholy chamber.
+
+"Oh, do sing us something, Evy," cried Cecilia, running up to, and
+drawing a chair to, the instrument.
+
+"Do, Evelyn," said Caroline, languidly; "it will serve to bring one of
+the servants to us, and save us a journey to the offices."
+
+It was just what Evelyn wished.  Some verses, which her mother especially
+loved, verses written by Maltravers upon returning after absence to his
+own home, had rushed into her mind as she had touched the keys.  They
+were appropriate to the place, and had been beautifully set to music.  So
+the children hushed themselves, and nestled at her feet; and after a
+little prelude, keeping the accompaniment under, that the spoiled
+instrument might not mar the sweet words and sweeter voice, she began the
+song.
+
+Meanwhile in the adjoining room, the little study which Caroline had
+spoken of, sat the owner of the house!  He had returned suddenly and
+unexpectedly the previous night.  The old steward was in attendance at
+the moment, full of apologies, congratulations, and gossip; and
+Maltravers, grown a stern and haughty man, was already impatiently
+turning away, when he heard the sudden sound of the children's laughter
+and loud voices in the room beyond.  Maltravers frowned.
+
+"What impertinence is this?" said he in a tone that, though very calm,
+made the steward quake in his shoes.
+
+"I don't know, really, your honour; there be so many grand folks come to
+see the house in the fine weather, that--"
+
+"And you permit your master's house to be a raree-show?  You do well,
+sir."
+
+"If your honour were more amongst us, there might be more discipline
+like," said the steward, stoutly; "but no one in my time has cared so
+little for the old place as those it belongs to."
+
+"Fewer words with me, sir," said Maltravers, haughtily; "and now go and
+inform those people that I am returned, and wish for no guests but those
+I invite myself."
+
+"Sir!"
+
+"Do you not hear me?  Say that if it so please them, these old ruins are
+my property, and are not to be jobbed out to the insolence of public
+curiosity.  Go, sir."
+
+"But--I beg pardon, your honour--if they be great folks?"
+
+"Great folks!--great!  Ay, there it is.  Why, if they be great folks,
+they have great houses of their own, Mr. Justis."
+
+The steward stared.  "Perhaps, your honour," he put in, deprecatingly,
+"they be Mr. Merton's family: they come very often when the London
+gentlemen are with them."
+
+"Merton!--oh, the cringing parson.  Harkye! one word more with me, sir,
+and you quit my service to-morrow."
+
+Mr. Justis lifted his eyes and hands to heaven; but there was something
+in his master's voice and look which checked reply, and he turned slowly
+to the door--when a voice of such heavenly sweetness was heard without
+that it arrested his own step and made the stern Maltravers start in his
+seat.  He held up his hand to the steward to delay his errand, and
+listened, charmed and spell-bound.  His own words came on his ear,--words
+long unfamiliar to him, and at first but imperfectly remembered; words
+connected with the early and virgin years of poetry and aspiration; words
+that were as the ghosts of thoughts now far too gentle for his altered
+soul.  He bowed down his head, and the dark shade left his brow.
+
+The song ceased.  Maltravers moved with a sigh, and his eyes rested on
+the form of the steward with his hand on the door.
+
+"Shall I give your honour's message?" said Mr. Justis, gravely.
+
+"No; take care for the future; leave me now."
+
+Mr. Justis made one leg, and then, well pleased, took to both.
+
+"Well," thought he, as he departed, "how foreign parts do spoil a
+gentleman! so mild as he was once!  I must botch up the accounts, I
+see,--the squire has grown sharp."
+
+As Evelyn concluded her song, she--whose charm in singing was that she
+sang from the heart--was so touched by the melancholy music of the air
+and words, that her voice faltered, and the last line died inaudibly on
+her lips.
+
+The children sprang up and kissed her.
+
+"Oh," cried Cecilia, "there is the beautiful peacock!"  And there,
+indeed, on the steps without--perhaps attracted by the music--stood the
+picturesque bird.  The children ran out to greet their old favourite, who
+was extremely tame; and presently Cecilia returned.
+
+"Oh, Carry! do see what beautiful horses are coming up the park!"
+
+Caroline, who was a good rider, and fond of horses, and whose curiosity
+was always aroused by things connected with show and station, suffered
+the little girl to draw her into the garden.  Two grooms, each mounted on
+a horse of the pure Arabian breed, and each leading another, swathed and
+bandaged, were riding slowly up the road; and Caroline was so attracted
+by the novel appearance of the animals in a place so deserted that she
+followed the children towards them, to learn who could possibly be their
+enviable owner.  Evelyn, forgotten for the moment, remained alone.  She
+was pleased at being so, and once more turned to the picture which had so
+attracted her before.  The mild eyes fixed on her, with an expression
+that recalled to her mind her own mother.
+
+"And," thought she, as she gazed, "this fair creature did not live to
+know the fame of her son, to rejoice in his success, or to soothe his
+grief.  And he, that son, a disappointed and solitary exile in distant
+lands, while strangers stand within his deserted hall!"
+
+The images she had conjured up moved and absorbed her; and she continued
+to stand before the picture, gazing upward with moistened eyes.  It was a
+beautiful vision as she thus stood, with her delicate bloom, her
+luxuriant hair (for the hat was not yet replaced), her elastic form, so
+full of youth and health and hope,--the living form beside the faded
+canvas of the dead, once youthful, tender, lovely as herself!  Evelyn
+turned away with a sigh; the sigh was re-echoed yet more deeply.  She
+started: the door that led to the study was opened, and in the aperture
+was the figure of a man in the prime of life.  His hair, still luxuriant
+as in his earliest youth, though darkened by the suns of the East, curled
+over a forehead of majestic expanse.  The high and proud features, that
+well became a stature above the ordinary standard; the pale but bronzed
+complexion; the large eyes of deepest blue, shaded by dark brows and
+lashes; and more than all, that expression at once of passion and repose
+which characterizes the old Italian portraits, and seems to denote the
+inscrutable power that experience imparts to intellect, constituted an
+_ensemble_ which, if not faultlessly handsome, was eminently striking,
+and formed at once to interest and command.  It was a face, once seen,
+never to be forgotten; it was a face that had long, half unconsciously,
+haunted Evelyn's young dreams; it was a face she had seen before, though,
+then younger and milder and fairer, it wore a different aspect.
+
+Evelyn stood rooted to the spot, feeling herself blush to her very
+temples,--an enchanting picture of bashful confusion and innocent alarm.
+
+"Do not let me regret my return," said the stranger, approaching after a
+short pause, and with much gentleness in his voice and smile; "and think
+that the owner is doomed to scare away the fair spirits that haunted the
+spot in his absence."
+
+"The owner!" repeated Evelyn, almost inaudibly, and in increased
+embarrassment; "are you then the--the--"
+
+"Yes," courteously interrupted the stranger, seeing her confusion, "my
+name is Maltravers; and I am to blame for not having informed you of my
+sudden return, or for now trespassing on your presence.  But you see my
+excuse;" and he pointed to the instrument.  "You have the magic that
+draws even the serpent from his hole.  But you are not alone?"
+
+"Oh, no! no, indeed!  Miss Merton is with me.  I know not where she is
+gone.  I will seek her."
+
+"Miss Merton!  You are not then one of that family?"
+
+"No, only a guest.  I will find her; she must apologize for us.  We were
+not aware that you were here,--indeed we were not."
+
+"That is a cruel excuse," said Maltravers, smiling at her eagerness: and
+the smile and the look reminded her yet more forcibly of the time when he
+had carried her in his arms and soothed her suffering and praised her
+courage and pressed the kiss almost of a lover on her hand.  At that
+thought she blushed yet more deeply, and yet more eagerly turned to
+escape.
+
+Maltravers did not seek to detain her, but silently followed her steps.
+She had scarcely gained the window, before little Cecilia scampered in,
+crying,--
+
+"Only think!  Mr. Maltravers has come back, and brought such beautiful
+horses!"
+
+Cecilia stopped abruptly, as she caught sight of the stranger; and the
+next moment Caroline herself appeared.  Her worldly experience and quick
+sense saw immediately what had chanced; and she hastened to apologize to
+Maltravers, and congratulate him on his return, with an ease that
+astonished poor Evelyn, and by no means seemed appreciated by Maltravers
+himself.  He replied with brief and haughty courtesy.
+
+"My father," continued Caroline, "will be so glad to hear you are come
+back.  He will hasten to pay you his respects, and apologize for his
+truants.  But I have not formally introduced you to my fellow-offender.
+My dear, let me present to you one whom Fame has already made known to
+you; Mr. Maltravers, Miss Cameron, step-daughter," she added in a lower
+voice, "to the late Lord Vargrave."
+
+At the first part of this introduction Maltravers frowned; at the last he
+forgot all displeasure.
+
+"Is it possible?  I _thought_ I had seen you before, but in a dream.  Ah,
+then we are not quite strangers!"
+
+Evelyn's eye met his, and though she coloured and strove to look grave, a
+half smile brought out the dimples that played round her arch lips.
+
+"But you do not remember me?" added Maltravers.
+
+"Oh, yes!" exclaimed Evelyn, with a sudden impulse; and then checked
+herself.
+
+Caroline came to her friend's relief.
+
+"What is this?  You surprise me; where did you ever see Mr. Maltravers
+before?"
+
+"I can answer that question, Miss Merton.  When Miss Cameron was but a
+child, as high as my little friend here, an accident on the road procured
+me her acquaintance; and the sweetness and fortitude she then displayed
+left an impression on me not worn out even to this day.  And thus we meet
+again," added Maltravers, in a muttered voice, as to himself.  "How
+strange a thing life is!"
+
+"Well," said Miss Merton, "we must intrude on you no more,--you have so
+much to do.  I am so sorry Sir John is not down to welcome you; but I
+hope we shall be good neighbours.  _Au revoir_!"
+
+And, fancying herself most charming, Caroline bowed, smiled, and walked
+off with her train.  Maltravers paused irresolute.  If Evelyn had looked
+back, he would have accompanied them home; but Evelyn did not look
+back,--and he stayed.
+
+Miss Merton rallied her young friend unmercifully, as they walked
+homeward, and she extracted a very brief and imperfect history of the
+adventure that had formed the first acquaintance, and of the interview by
+which it had been renewed.  But Evelyn did not heed her; and the moment
+they arrived at the rectory, she hastened to shut herself in her room,
+and write the account of her adventure to her mother.  How often, in her
+girlish reveries, had she thought of that incident, that stranger!  And
+now, by such a chance, and after so many years, to meet the Unknown by
+his own hearth! and that Unknown to be Maltravers!  It was as if a dream
+had come true.  While she was yet musing--and the letter not yet
+begun--she heard the sound of joy-bells in the distance.  At once she
+divined the cause; it was the welcome of the wanderer to his solitary
+home!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+  MAIS en connaissant votre condition naturelle, usez des moyens
+  qui lui sont propres, et ne pretendez pas regner par une autre
+  voie que par celle qui vous fait roi.*--PASCAL.
+
+  * "But in understanding your natural condition, use the means
+    which are proper to it; and pretend not to govern by any other
+    way than by that which constitutes you governor."
+
+IN the heart as in the ocean, the great tides ebb and flow.  The waves
+which had once urged on the spirit of Ernest Maltravers to the rocks and
+shoals of active life had long since receded back upon the calm depths,
+and left the strand bare.  With a melancholy and disappointed mind, he
+had quitted the land of his birth; and new scenes, strange and wild, had
+risen before his wandering gaze.  Wearied with civilization, and sated
+with many of the triumphs for which civilized men drudge and toil, and
+disquiet themselves in vain, he had plunged amongst hordes, scarce
+redeemed from primeval barbarism.  The adventures through which he had
+passed, and in which life itself could only be preserved by wary
+vigilance and ready energies, had forced him, for a while, from the
+indulgence of morbid contemplations.  His heart, indeed, had been left
+inactive; but his intellect and his physical powers had been kept in
+hourly exercise.  He returned to the world of his equals with a mind
+laden with the treasures of a various and vast experience, and with much
+of the same gloomy moral as that which, on emerging from the Catacombs,
+assured the restless speculations of Rasselas of the vanity of human life
+and the folly of moral aspirations.
+
+Ernest Maltravers, never a faultless or completed character, falling
+short in practice of his own capacities, moral and intellectual, from his
+very desire to overpass the limits of the Great and Good, was seemingly
+as far as heretofore from the grand secret of life.  It was not so in
+reality; his mind had acquired what before it wanted,--_hardness_; and we
+are nearer to true virtue and true happiness when we demand too little
+from men than when we exact too much.
+
+Nevertheless, partly from the strange life that had thrown him amongst
+men whom safety itself made it necessary to command despotically, partly
+from the habit of power and disdain of the world, his nature was
+incrusted with a stern imperiousness of manner, often approaching to the
+harsh and morose, though beneath it lurked generosity and benevolence.
+
+Many of his younger feelings, more amiable and complex, had settled into
+one predominant quality, which more or less had always characterized
+him,--Pride!  Self-esteem made inactive, and Ambition made discontented,
+usually engender haughtiness.  In Maltravers this quality, which,
+properly controlled and duly softened, is the essence and life of honour,
+was carried to a vice.  He was perfectly conscious of its excess, but he
+cherished it as a virtue.  Pride had served to console him in sorrow, and
+therefore it was a friend; it had supported him when disgusted with
+fraud, or in resistance to violence, and therefore it was a champion and
+a fortress.  It was a pride of a peculiar sort: it attached itself to no
+one point in especial,--not to talent, knowledge, mental gifts, still
+less to the vulgar commonplaces of birth and fortune; it rather resulted
+from a supreme and wholesale contempt of all other men, and all their
+objects,--of ambition, of glory, of the hard business of life.  His
+favourite virtue was fortitude; it was on this that he now mainly valued
+himself.  He was proud of his struggles against others, prouder still of
+conquests over his own passions.  He looked upon FATE as the arch enemy
+against whose attacks we should ever prepare.  He fancied that against
+fate he had thoroughly schooled himself.  In the arrogance of his heart
+he said, "I can defy the future."  He believed in the boast of the vain
+old sage,--"I am a world to myself!"  In the wild career through which
+his later manhood had passed, it is true that he had not carried his
+philosophy into a rejection of the ordinary world.  The shock occasioned
+by the death of Florence yielded gradually to time and change; and he had
+passed from the deserts of Africa and the East to the brilliant cities of
+Europe.  But neither his heart nor his reason had ever again been
+enslaved by his passions.  Never again had he known the softness of
+affection.  Had he done so, the ice had been thawed, and the fountain had
+flowed once more into the great deeps.  He had returned to England,--he
+scarce knew wherefore, or with what intent, certainly not with any idea
+of entering again upon the occupations of active life; it was, perhaps,
+only the weariness of foreign scenes and unfamiliar tongues, and the
+vague, unsettled desire of change, that brought him back to the
+fatherland.  But he did not allow so unphilosophical a cause to himself:
+and, what was strange, he would not allow one much more amiable, and
+which was, perhaps, the truer cause,--the increasing age and infirmities
+of his old guardian, Cleveland, who prayed him affectionately to return.
+Maltravers did not like to believe that his heart was still so kind.
+Singular form of pride!  No, he rather sought to persuade himself that he
+intended to sell Burleigh, to arrange his affairs finally, and then quit
+forever his native land.  To prove to himself that this was the case, he
+had intended at Dover to hurry at once to Burleigh, and merely write to
+Cleveland that he was returned to England.  But his heart would not
+suffer him to enjoy this cruel luxury of self-mortification, and his
+horses' heads were turned to Richmond when within a stage of London.  He
+had spent two days with the good old man, and those two days had so
+warmed and softened his feelings that he was quite appalled at his own
+dereliction from fixed principles!  However, he went before Cleveland had
+time to discover that he was changed; and the old man had promised to
+visit him shortly.
+
+This, then, was the state of Ernest Maltravers at the age of
+thirty-six,--an age in which frame and mind are in their fullest
+perfection; an age in which men begin most keenly to feel that they are
+citizens.  With all his energies braced and strengthened; with his mind
+stored with profusest gifts; in the vigour of a constitution to which a
+hardy life had imparted a second and fresher youth; so trained by stern
+experience as to redeem with an easy effort all the deficiencies and
+faults which had once resulted from too sensitive an imagination and too
+high a standard for human actions; formed to render to his race the most
+brilliant and durable service, and to secure to himself the happiness
+which results from sobered fancy, a generous heart, and an approving
+conscience,--here was Ernest Maltravers, backed, too, by the appliances
+and gifts of birth and fortune, perversely shutting up genius, life, and
+soul in their own thorny leaves, and refusing to serve the fools and
+rascals who were formed from the same clay, and gifted by the same God.
+Morbid and morose philosophy, begot by a proud spirit on a lonely heart!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+  LET such amongst us as are willing to be children again, if it be
+  only for an hour, resign ourselves to the sweet enchantment that
+  steals upon the spirit when it indulges in the memory of early
+  and innocent enjoyment.
+  D. L. RICHARDSON.
+
+AT dinner, Caroline's lively recital of their adventures was received
+with much interest, not only by the Merton family, but by some of the
+neighbouring gentry who shared the rector's hospitality.  The sudden
+return of any proprietor to his old hereditary seat after a prolonged
+absence makes some sensation in a provincial neighbourhood.  In this
+case, where the proprietor was still young, unmarried, celebrated, and
+handsome, the sensation was of course proportionably increased.  Caroline
+and Evelyn were beset by questions, to which the former alone gave any
+distinct reply.  Caroline's account was, on the whole, gracious and
+favourable, and seemed complimentary to all but Evelyn, who thought that
+Caroline was a very indifferent portrait-painter.
+
+It seldom happens that a man is a prophet in his own neighbourhood; but
+Maltravers had been so little in the county, and in his former visit his
+life had been so secluded, that he was regarded as a stranger.  He had
+neither outshone the establishments nor interfered with the sporting of
+his fellow-squires; and on the whole, they made just allowance for his
+habits of distant reserve.  Time, and his retirement from the busy scene,
+long enough to cause him to be missed, not long enough for new favourites
+to supply his place, had greatly served to mellow and consolidate his
+reputation, and his country was proud to claim him.  Thus (though
+Maltravers would not have believed it had an angel told him) he was not
+spoken ill of behind his back: a thousand little anecdotes of his
+personal habits, of his generosity, independence of spirit, and
+eccentricity were told.  Evelyn listened in rapt delight to all; she had
+never passed so pleasant an evening; and she smiled almost gratefully on
+the rector, who was a man that always followed the stream, when he said
+with benign affability, "We must really show our distinguished neighbour
+every attention,--we must be indulgent to his little oddities.  His
+politics are not mine, to be sure; but a man who has a stake in the
+country has a right to his own opinion, that was always my maxim,--thank
+Heaven, I am a very moderate man.  We must draw him amongst us; it will
+be our own fault, I am sure, if he is not quite domesticated at the
+rectory."
+
+"With such attraction,--yes," said the thin curate, timidly bowing to the
+ladies.
+
+"It would be a nice match for Miss Caroline," whispered an old lady;
+Caroline overheard, and pouted her pretty lip.  The whist-tables were now
+set out, the music began, and Maltravers was left in peace.
+
+The next day Mr. Merton rode his pony over to Burleigh.  Maltravers was
+not at home.  He left his card, and a note of friendly respect, begging
+Mr. Maltravers to waive ceremony, and dine with them the next day.
+Somewhat to the surprise of the rector, he found that the active spirit
+of Maltravers was already at work.  The long-deserted grounds were filled
+with labourers; the carpenters were busy at the fences; the house looked
+alive and stirring; the grooms were exercising the horses in the
+park,--all betokened the return of the absentee.  This seemed to denote
+that Maltravers had come to reside; and the rector thought of Caroline,
+and was pleased at the notion.
+
+The next day was Cecilia's birthday,--and birthdays were kept at Merton
+Rectory; the neighbouring children were invited.  They were to dine on
+the lawn, in a large marquee, and to dance in the evening.  The hothouses
+yielded their early strawberries, and the cows, decorated with blue
+ribbons, were to give syllabubs.  The polite Caroline was not greatly
+fascinated by pleasure of this kind; she graciously appeared at dinner,
+kissed the prettiest of the children, helped them to soup, and then,
+having done her duty, retired to her room to write letters.  The children
+were not sorry, for they were a little afraid of the grand Caroline; and
+they laughed much more loudly, and made much more noise, when she was
+gone--and the cake and strawberries appeared.
+
+Evelyn was in her element; she had, as a child, mixed so little with
+children, she had so often yearned for playmates, she was still so
+childlike.  Besides, she was so fond of Cecilia, she had looked forward
+with innocent delight to the day; and a week before had taken the
+carriage to the neighbouring town to return with a carefully concealed
+basket of toys,--dolls, sashes, and picture-books.  But somehow or other,
+she did not feel so childlike as usual that morning; her heart was away
+from the pleasure before her, and her smile was at first languid.  But in
+children's mirth there is something so contagious to those who love
+children; and now, as the party scattered themselves on the grass, and
+Evelyn opened the basket, and bade them with much gravity keep quiet, and
+be good children, she was the happiest of the whole group.  But she knew
+how to give pleasure: and the basket was presented to Cecilia, that the
+little queen of the day might enjoy the luxury of being generous; and to
+prevent jealousy, the notable expedient of a lottery was suggested.
+
+"Then Evy shall be Fortune!" cried Cecilia; "nobody will be sorry to get
+anything from Evy,--and if any one is discontented Evy sha'n't kiss her."
+
+Mrs. Merton, whose motherly heart was completely won by Evelyn's kindness
+to the children, forgot all her husband's lectures, and willingly
+ticketed the prizes, and wrote the numbers of the lots on slips of paper
+carefully folded.  A large old Indian jar was dragged from the
+drawing-room and constituted the fated urn; the tickets were deposited
+therein, and Cecilia was tying the handkerchief round Evelyn's
+eyes,--while Fortune struggled archly not to be as blind as she ought to
+be,--and the children, seated in a circle, were in full joy and
+expectation when there was a sudden pause.  The laughter stopped; so did
+Cissy's little hands.  What could it be?  Evelyn slipped the bandage, and
+her eyes rested on Maltravers!
+
+"Well, really, my dear Miss Cameron," said the rector, who was by the
+side of the intruder, and who, indeed, had just brought him to the spot,
+"I don't know what these little folks will do to you next."
+
+"I ought rather to be their victim," said Maltravers, good-humouredly;
+"the fairies always punish us grown-up mortals for trespassing on their
+revels."
+
+While he spoke, his eyes--those eyes, the most eloquent in the
+world--dwelt on Evelyn (as, to cover her blushes, she took Cecilia in her
+arms, and appeared to attend to nothing else) with a look of such
+admiration and delight as a mortal might well be supposed to cast on some
+beautiful fairy.
+
+Sophy, a very bold child, ran up to him.  "How do, sir?" she lisped,
+putting up her face to be kissed; "how's the pretty peacock?"
+
+This opportune audacity served at once to renew the charm that had been
+broken,--to unite the stranger with the children.  Here was acquaintance
+claimed and allowed in an instant.  The next moment Maltravers was one of
+the circle, on the turf with the rest, as gay, and almost as noisy,--that
+hard, proud man, so disdainful of the trifles of the world!
+
+"But the gentleman must have a prize, too," said Sophy, proud of her tall
+new friend.  "What's your other name; why do you have such a long, hard
+name?"
+
+"Call me Ernest," said Maltravers.
+
+"Why don't we begin?" cried the children.
+
+"Evy, come, be a good child, miss," said Sophy, as Evelyn, vexed and
+ashamed, and half ready to cry, resisted the bandage.
+
+Mr. Merton interposed his authority; but the children clamoured, and
+Evelyn hastily yielded.  It was Fortune's duty to draw the tickets from
+the urn, and give them to each claimant whose name was called; when it
+came to the turn of Maltravers, the bandage did not conceal the blush and
+smile of the enchanting goddess, and the hand of the aspirant thrilled as
+it touched hers.
+
+The children burst into screams of laughter when Cecilia gravely awarded
+to Maltravers the worst prize in the lot,--a blue ribbon,--which Sophy,
+however, greedily insisted on having; but Maltravers would not yield it.
+
+Maltravers remained all day at the rectory, and shared in the ball,--yes,
+he danced with Evelyn--he, Maltravers, who had never been known to dance
+since he was twenty-two!  The ice was fairly broken,--Maltravers was at
+home with the Mertons.  And when he took his solitary walk to his
+solitary house--over the little bridge, and through the shadowy
+wood--astonished, perhaps, with himself, every one of the guests, from
+the oldest to the youngest, pronounced him delightful.  Caroline,
+perhaps, might have been piqued some months ago that he did not dance
+with _her_; but now, her heart--such as it was--felt preoccupied.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+  L'ESPRIT de l'homme est plus penetrant que consequent, et embrasse
+  plus qu'il ne peat lier.*--VAUVENARGUES.
+
+  * "The spirit of man is more penetrating than logical, and
+    gathers more than it can garner."
+
+AND now Maltravers was constantly with the Merton family; there was no
+need of excuse for familiarity on his part.  Mr. Merton, charmed to find
+his advances not rejected, thrust intimacy upon him.
+
+One day they spent the afternoon at Burleigh, and Evelyn and Caroline
+finished their survey of the house,--tapestry, and armour, pictures and
+all.  This led to a visit to the Arabian horses.  Caroline observed that
+she was very fond of riding, and went into ecstasies with one of the
+animals,--the one, of course, with the longest tail.  The next day the
+horse was in the stables at the rectory, and a gallant epistle apologized
+for the costly gift.
+
+Mr. Merton demurred, but Caroline always had her own way; and so the
+horse remained (no doubt, in much amazement and disdain) with the
+parson's pony, and the brown carriage horses.  The gift naturally
+conduced to parties on horseback--it was cruel entirely to separate the
+Arab from his friends--and how was Evelyn to be left behind?--Evelyn, who
+had never yet ridden anything more spirited than an old pony!  A
+beautiful little horse belonging to an elderly lady, now growing too
+stout to ride, was to be sold hard by.  Maltravers discovered the
+treasure, and apprised Mr. Merton of it--he was too delicate to affect
+liberality to the rich heiress.  The horse was bought; nothing could go
+quieter; Evelyn was not at all afraid.  They made two or three little
+excursions.  Sometimes only Mr. Merton and Maltravers accompanied the
+young ladies, sometimes the party was more numerous.  Maltravers appeared
+to pay equal attention to Caroline and her friend; still Evelyn's
+inexperience in equestrian matters was an excuse for his being ever by
+her side.  They had a thousand opportunities to converse; and Evelyn now
+felt more at home with him; her gentle gayety, her fanciful yet chastened
+intellect, found a voice.  Maltravers was not slow to discover that
+beneath her simplicity there lurked sense, judgment, and imagination.
+Insensibly his own conversation took a higher flight.  With the freedom
+which his mature years and reputation gave him, he mingled eloquent
+instruction with lighter and more trifling subjects; be directed her
+earnest and docile mind, not only to new fields of written knowledge, but
+to many of the secrets of Nature, subtle or sublime.  He had a wide range
+of scientific as well as literary lore; the stars, the flowers, the
+phenomena of the physical world, afforded themes on which he descanted
+with the fervent love of a poet and the easy knowledge of a sage.
+
+Mr. Merton, observing that little or nothing of sentiment mingled with
+their familiar intercourse, felt perfectly at ease; and knowing that
+Maltravers had been intimate with Lumley, he naturally concluded that he
+was aware of the engagement between Evelyn and his friend.  Meanwhile
+Maltravers appeared unconscious that such a being as Lord Vargrave
+existed.
+
+It is not to be wondered at that the daily presence, the delicate
+flattery of attention from a man like Maltravers, should strongly impress
+the imagination, if not the heart, of a susceptible girl.  Already
+prepossessed in his favour, and wholly unaccustomed to a society which
+combined so many attractions, Evelyn regarded him with unspeakable
+veneration; to the darker shades in his character she was blind,--to her,
+indeed, they did not appear.  True that once or twice in mixed society
+his disdainful and imperious temper broke hastily and harshly forth.  To
+folly, to pretension, to presumption, he showed but slight forbearance.
+The impatient smile, the biting sarcasm, the cold repulse, that might
+gall, yet could scarce be openly resented, betrayed that he was one who
+affected to free himself from the polished restraints of social
+intercourse.  He had once been too scrupulous in not wounding vanity; he
+was now too indifferent to it.  But if sometimes this unamiable trait of
+character, as displayed to others, chilled or startled Evelyn, the
+contrast of his manner towards herself was a flattery too delicious not
+to efface all other recollections.  To her ear his voice always softened
+its tone; to her capacity of mind ever bent as by sympathy, not
+condescension; to her--the young, the timid, the half-informed--to her
+alone he did not disdain to exhibit all the stores of his knowledge, all
+the best and brightest colours of his mind.  She modestly wondered at so
+strange a preference.  Perhaps a sudden and blunt compliment which
+Maltravers once addressed to her may explain it.  One day, when she had
+conversed more freely and more fully than usual, he broke in upon her
+with this abrupt exclamation,--
+
+"Miss Cameron, you must have associated from your childhood with
+beautiful minds.  I see already that from the world, vile as it is, you
+have nothing of contagion to fear.  I have heard you talk on the most
+various matters, on many of which your knowledge is imperfect; but you
+have never uttered one mean idea, or one false sentiment.  Truth seems
+intuitive to you."
+
+It was indeed this singular purity of heart which made to the
+world-wearied man the chief charm in Evelyn Cameron. From this purity
+came, as from the heart of a poet, a thousand new and heaven-taught
+thoughts which had in them a wisdom of their own,--thoughts that often
+brought the stern listener back to youth, and reconciled him with life.
+The wise Maltravers learned more from Evelyn than Evelyn did from
+Maltravers.
+
+There was, however, another trait--deeper than that of temper--in
+Maltravers, and which was, unlike the latter, more manifest to her than
+to others,--his contempt for all the things her young and fresh
+enthusiasm had been taught to prize, the fame that endeared and hallowed
+him to her eyes, the excitement of ambition, and its rewards.  He spoke
+with such bitter disdain of great names and great deeds.  "Children of a
+larger growth they were," said he, one day, in answer to her defence of
+the luminaries of their kind, "allured by baubles as poor as the rattle
+and the doll's house.  How many have been made great, as the word is, by
+their vices!  Paltry craft won command to Themistocles; to escape his
+duns, the profligate Caesar heads an army, and achieves his laurels;
+Brutus, the aristocrat, stabs his patron, that patricians might again
+trample on plebeians, and that posterity might talk of _him_.  The love
+of posthumous fame--what is it but as puerile a passion for notoriety as
+that which made a Frenchman I once knew lay out two thousand pounds in
+sugar-plums?  To be talked of--how poor a desire!  Does it matter whether
+it be by the gossips of this age or the next?  Some men are urged on to
+fame by poverty--that is an excuse for their trouble; but there is no
+more nobleness in the motive than in that which makes yon poor ploughman
+sweat in the eye of Phoebus.  In fact, the larger part of eminent men,
+instead of being inspired by any lofty desire to benefit their species or
+enrich the human mind, have acted or composed, without any definite
+object beyond the satisfying a restless appetite for excitement, or
+indulging the dreams of a selfish glory.  And when nobler aspirations
+have fired them, it has too often been but to wild fanaticism and
+sanguinary crime.  What dupes of glory ever were animated by a deeper
+faith, a higher ambition, than the frantic followers of Mahomet,--taught
+to believe that it was virtue to ravage the earth, and that they sprang
+from the battle-field into paradise?  Religion and liberty, love of
+country, what splendid motives to action!  Lo, the results, when the
+motives are keen, the action once commenced!  Behold the Inquisition, the
+Days of Terror, the Council of Ten, and the Dungeons of Venice!"
+
+Evelyn was scarcely fit to wrestle with these melancholy fallacies; but
+her instinct of truth suggested an answer.
+
+"What would society be if all men thought as you do, and acted up to the
+theory?  No literature, no art, no glory, no patriotism, no virtue, no
+civilization!  You analyze men's motives--how can you be sure you judge
+rightly?  Look to the results,--our benefit, our enlightenment!  If the
+results be great, Ambition is a virtue, no matter what motive awakened
+it.  Is it not so?"
+
+Evelyn spoke blushingly and timidly.  Maltravers, despite his own tenets,
+was delighted with her reply.
+
+"You reason well," said he, with a smile.  "But how are we sure that the
+results are such as you depict them?  Civilization, enlightenment,--they
+are vague terms, hollow sounds. Never fear that the world will reason as
+I do.  Action will never be stagnant while there are such things as gold
+and power.  The vessel will move on--let the galley-slaves have it to
+themselves.  What I have seen of life convinces me that progress is not
+always improvement.  Civilization has evils unknown to the savage state;
+and _vice versa_.  Men in all states seem to have much the same
+proportion of happiness.  We judge others with eyes accustomed to dwell
+on our own circumstances.  I have seen the slave, whom we commiserate,
+enjoy his holiday with a rapture unknown to the grave freeman.  I have
+seen that slave made free, and enriched by the benevolence of his master;
+and he has been gay no more. The masses of men in all countries are much
+the same.  If there are greater comforts in the hardy North, Providence
+bestows a fertile earth and a glorious heaven, and a mind susceptible to
+enjoyment as flowers to light, on the voluptuous indulgence of the
+Italian, or the contented apathy of the Hindoo.  In the mighty
+organization of good and evil, what can we vain individuals effect?  They
+who labour most, how doubtful is their reputation!  Who shall say whether
+Voltaire or Napoleon, Cromwell or Caesar, Walpole or Pitt, has done most
+good or most evil?  It is a question casuists may dispute on.  Some of us
+think that poets have been the delight and the lights of men; another
+school of philosophy has treated them as the corrupters of the
+species,--panderers to the false glory of war, to the effeminacies of
+taste, to the pampering of the passions above the reason.  Nay, even
+those who have effected inventions that change the face of the earth--the
+printing-press, gunpowder, the steam-engine,--men hailed as benefactors
+by the unthinking herd, or the would-be sages,--have introduced ills
+unknown before, adulterating and often counterbalancing the good.  Each
+new improvement in machinery deprives hundreds of food.  Civilization is
+the eternal sacrifice of one generation to the next.  An awful sense of
+the impotence of human agencies has crushed down the sublime aspirations
+for mankind which I once indulged.  For myself, I float on the great
+waters, without pilot or rudder, and trust passively to the winds, that
+are the breath of God."
+
+This conversation left a deep impression upon Evelyn; it inspired her
+with a new interest in one in whom so many noble qualities lay dulled and
+torpid, by the indulgence of a self-sophistry, which, girl as she was,
+she felt wholly unworthy of his powers.  And it was this error in
+Maltravers that, levelling his superiority, brought him nearer to her
+heart.  Ah, if she could restore him to his race!  It was a dangerous
+desire, but it intoxicated and absorbed her.
+
+Oh, how sweetly were those fair evenings spent,--the evenings of happy
+June!  And then, as Maltravers suffered the children to tease him into
+talk about the wonders he had seen in the regions far away, how did the
+soft and social hues of his character unfold themselves!  There is in all
+real genius so much latent playfulness of nature it almost seems as if
+genius never could grow old.  The inscriptions that youth writes upon the
+tablets of an imaginative mind are, indeed, never wholly
+obliterated,--they are as an invisible writing, which gradually becomes
+clear in the light and warmth.  Bring genius familiarly with the young,
+and it is as young as they are.  Evelyn did not yet, therefore, observe
+the disparity of _years_ between herself and Maltravers.  But the
+disparity of knowledge and power served for the present to interdict to
+her that sweet feeling of equality in commune, without which love is
+rarely a very intense affection in women.  It is not so with men.  But by
+degrees she grew more and more familiar with her stern friend; and in
+that familiarity there was perilous fascination to Maltravers.  She could
+laugh him at any moment out of his most moody reveries; contradict with a
+pretty wilfulness his most favourite dogmas; nay, even scold him, with
+bewitching gravity, if he was not always at the command of her wishes--or
+caprice.  At this time it seemed certain that Maltravers would fall in
+love with Evelyn; but it rested on more doubtful probabilities whether
+Evelyn would fall in love with him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+                    CONTRAHE vela,
+  Et te littoribus cymba propinqua vehat.*--SENECA.
+
+  * "Furl your sails, and let the next boat carry you to the shore."
+
+"HAS not Miss Cameron a beautiful countenance?" said Mr. Merton to
+Maltravers, as Evelyn, unconscious of the compliment, sat at a little
+distance, bending down her eyes to Sophy, who was weaving daisy-chains on
+a stool at her knee, and whom she was telling not to talk loud,--for
+Merton had been giving Maltravers some useful information respecting the
+management of his estate; and Evelyn was already interested in all that
+could interest her friend.  She had one excellent thing in woman, had
+Evelyn Cameron: despite her sunny cheerfulness of temper she was _quiet_;
+and she had insensibly acquired, under the roof of her musing and silent
+mother, the habit of never disturbing others.  What a blessed secret is
+that in the intercourse of domestic life!
+
+"Has not Miss Cameron a beautiful countenance?"
+
+Maltravers started at the question,--it was a literal translation of his
+own thought at that moment.  He checked the enthusiasm that rose to his
+lip, and calmly re-echoed the word,--
+
+"Beautiful indeed!"
+
+"And so sweet-tempered and unaffected; she has been admirably brought up.
+I believe Lady Vargrave is a most exemplary woman.  Miss Cameron will,
+indeed, be a treasure to her betrothed husband.  He is to be envied."
+
+"Her betrothed husband!" said Maltravers, turning very pale.
+
+"Yes; Lord Vargrave.  Did you not know that she was engaged to him from
+her childhood?  It was the wish, nay, command, of the late lord, who
+bequeathed her his vast fortune, if not on that condition, at least on
+that understanding.  Did you never hear of this before?"
+
+While Mr. Merton spoke, a sudden recollection returned to Maltravers.  He
+_had_ heard Lumley himself refer to the engagement, but it had been in
+the sick chamber of Florence,--little heeded at the time, and swept from
+his mind by a thousand after-thoughts and scenes.  Mr. Merton
+continued,--
+
+"We expect Lord Vargrave down soon.  He is an ardent lover, I conclude;
+but public life chains him so much to London.  He made an admirable
+speech in the Lords last night; at least, our party appear to think so.
+They are to be married when Miss Cameron attains the age of eighteen."
+
+Accustomed to endurance, and skilled in the proud art of concealing
+emotion, Maltravers betrayed to the eye of Mr. Merton no symptom of
+surprise or dismay at this intelligence.  If the rector had conceived any
+previous suspicion that Maltravers was touched beyond mere admiration for
+beauty, the suspicion would have vanished as he heard his guest coldly
+reply,--
+
+"I trust Lord Vargrave may deserve his happiness.  But, to return to Mr.
+Justis; you corroborate my own opinion of that smooth-spoken gentleman."
+
+The conversation flowed back to business.  At last, Maltravers rose to
+depart.
+
+"Will you not dine with us to-day?" said the hospitable rector.
+
+"Many thanks,--no; I have much business to attend to at home for some
+days to come."
+
+"Kiss Sophy, Mr. Ernest,--Sophy very good girl to-day.  Let the pretty
+butterfly go, because Evy said it was cruel to put it in a card-box; kiss
+Sophy."
+
+Maltravers took the child (whose heart he had completely won) in his
+arms, and kissed her tenderly; then advancing to Evelyn, he held out his
+hand, while his eyes were fixed upon her with an expression of deep and
+mournful interest, which she could not understand.
+
+"God bless you, Miss Cameron," he said, and his lip quivered.
+
+Days passed, and they saw no more of Maltravers.  He excused himself on
+pretence, now of business, now of other engagements, from all the
+invitations of the rector.  Mr. Merton unsuspectingly accepted the
+excuse; for he knew that Maltravers was necessarily much occupied.
+
+His arrival had now spread throughout the country; and such of his equals
+as were still in B-----shire hastened to offer congratulations, and press
+hospitality.  Perhaps it was the desire to make his excuses to Merton
+valid which prompted the master of Burleigh to yield to the other
+invitations that crowded on him.  But this was not all,--Maltravers
+acquired in the neighbourhood the reputation of a man of business.  Mr.
+Justis was abruptly dismissed; with the help of the bailiff Maltravers
+became his own steward.  His parting address to this personage was
+characteristic of the mingled harshness and justice of Maltravers.
+
+"Sir," said he, as they closed their accounts, "I discharge you because
+you are a rascal,--there can be no dispute about that; you have plundered
+your owner, yet you have ground his tenants, and neglected the poor.  My
+villages are filled with paupers, my rent-roll is reduced a fourth; and
+yet, while some of my tenants appear to pay nominal rents (why, you best
+know),--others are screwed up higher than any man's in the country.  You
+are a rogue, Mr. Justis,--your own account-books show it; and if I send
+them to a lawyer, you would have to refund a sum that I could apply very
+advantageously to the rectification of your blunders."
+
+"I hope, sir," said the steward, conscience-stricken and appalled,--"I
+hope you will not ruin me; indeed, indeed, if I was called upon to
+refund, I should go to jail."
+
+"Make yourself easy, sir.  It is just that I should suffer as well as
+you.  My neglect of my own duties tempted you to roguery.  You were
+honest under the vigilant eye of Mr. Cleveland.  Retire with your gains:
+if you are quite hardened, no punishment can touch you; if you are not,
+it is punishment enough to stand there gray-headed, with one foot in the
+grave, and hear yourself called a rogue, and know that you cannot defend
+yourself,--go!"
+
+Maltravers next occupied himself in all the affairs that a mismanaged
+estate brought upon him.  He got rid of some tenants, he made new
+arrangements with others; he called labour into requisition by a variety
+of improvements; he paid minute attention to the poor, not in the
+weakness of careless and indiscriminate charity, by which popularity is
+so cheaply purchased, and independence so easily degraded,--no, his main
+care was to stimulate industry and raise hope.  The ambition and
+emulation that he so vainly denied in himself, he found his most useful
+levers in the humble labourers whose characters he had studied, whose
+condition he sought to make themselves desire to elevate.  Unconsciously
+his whole practice began to refute his theories.  The abuses of the old
+Poor Laws were rife in his neighbourhood; his quick penetration, and
+perhaps his imperious habits of decision, suggested to him many of the
+best provisions of the law now called into operation; but he was too wise
+to be the Philosopher Square of a system.  He did not attempt too much;
+and he recognized one principle, which, as yet, the administrators of the
+new Poor-Laws have not sufficiently discovered.  One main object of the
+new code was, by curbing public charity, to task the activity of
+individual benevolence.  If the proprietor or the clergyman find under
+his own eye isolated instances of severity, oppression, or hardship in a
+general and salutary law, instead of railing against the law, he ought to
+attend to the individual instances; and private benevolence ought to keep
+the balance of the scales even, and be the makeweight wherever there is a
+just deficiency of national charity.* It was this which, in the modified
+and discreet regulations that he sought to establish on his estates,
+Maltravers especially and pointedly attended to.  Age, infirmity,
+temporary distress, unmerited destitution, found him a steady, watchful,
+indefatigable friend.  In these labours, commenced with extraordinary
+promptitude, and the energy of a single purpose and stern mind,
+Maltravers was necessarily brought into contact with the neighbouring
+magistrates and gentry.  He was combating evils and advancing objects in
+which all were interested; and his vigorous sense, and his past
+parliamentary reputation, joined with the respect which in provinces
+always attaches to ancient birth, won unexpected and general favour to
+his views.  At the rectory they heard of him constantly, not only through
+occasional visitors, but through Mr. Merton, who was ever thrown in his
+way; but he continued to keep himself aloof from the house.  Every one
+(Mr. Merton excepted) missed him,--even Caroline, whose able though
+worldly mind could appreciate his conversation; the children mourned for
+their playmate, who was so much more affable than their own
+stiff-neckclothed brothers; and Evelyn was at least more serious and
+thoughtful than she had ever been before, and the talk of others seemed
+to her wearisome, trite, and dull.
+
+  * The object of parochial reform is not that of economy alone;
+  not merely to reduce poor-rates.  The ratepayer ought to remember
+  that the more he wrests from the grip of the sturdy mendicant,
+  the more he ought to bestow on undeserved distress.  Without the
+  mitigations of private virtue, every law that benevolists could
+  make would be harsh.
+
+Was Maltravers happy in his new pursuits?  His state of mind at that time
+it is not easy to read.  His masculine spirit and haughty temper were
+wrestling hard against a feeling that had been fast ripening into
+passion; but at night, in his solitary and cheerless home, a vision, too
+exquisite to indulge, would force itself upon him, till he started from
+the revery, and said to his rebellious heart: "A few more years, and thou
+wilt be still.  What in this brief life is a pang more or less?  Better
+to have nothing to care for, so wilt thou defraud Fate, thy deceitful
+foe!  Be contented that thou art alone!"  Fortunate was it, then, for
+Maltravers, that he was in his native land, not in climes where
+excitement is in the pursuit of pleasure rather than in the exercise of
+duties.  In the hardy air of the liberal England, he was already, though
+unknown to himself, bracing and ennobling his dispositions and desires.
+It is the boast of this island that the slave whose foot touches the soil
+is free.  The boast may be enlarged.  Where so much is left to the
+people, where the life of civilization, not locked up in the tyranny of
+Central Despotism, spreads, vivifying, restless, ardent, through every
+vein of the healthful body, the most distant province, the obscurest
+village, has claims on our exertions, our duties, and forces us into
+energy and citizenship.  The spirit of liberty, that strikes the chain
+from the slave, binds the freeman to his brother.  This is the Religion
+of Freedom.  And hence it is that the stormy struggles of free States
+have been blessed with results of Virtue, of Wisdom, and of Genius by Him
+who bade us love one another,--not only that love in itself is excellent,
+but that from love, which in its widest sense is but the spiritual term
+for liberty, whatever is worthiest of our solemn nature has its birth.
+
+
+
+BOOK III.
+
+  Harsh things he mitigates, and pride subdues.
+  _Ex._ SOLON: _Eleg._
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+  YOU still are what you were, sir!
+    .  .  .  .  .  .
+  .  .  .  With most quick agility could turn
+  And return; make knots and undo them,
+  Give forked counsel.--_Volpone, or the Fox_.
+
+BEFORE a large table, covered with parliamentary papers, sat Lumley Lord
+Vargrave.  His complexion, though still healthy, had faded from the
+freshness of hue which distinguished him in youth.  His features, always
+sharp, had grown yet more angular: his brows seemed to project more
+broodingly over his eyes, which, though of undiminished brightness, were
+sunk deep in their sockets, and had lost much of their quick
+restlessness.  The character of his mind had begun to stamp itself on the
+physiognomy, especially on the mouth when in repose.  It was, a face
+striking for acute intelligence, for concentrated energy; but there was a
+something written in it which said, "BEWARE!"  It would have inspired any
+one who had mixed much amongst men with a vague suspicion and distrust.
+
+Lumley had been always careful, though plain, in dress; but there was now
+a more evident attention bestowed on his person than he had ever
+manifested in youth,--while there was something of the Roman's celebrated
+foppery in the skill with which his hair was arranged on his high
+forehead, so as either to conceal or relieve a partial baldness at the
+temples.  Perhaps, too, from the possession of high station, or the habit
+of living only amongst the great, there was a certain dignity insensibly
+diffused over his whole person that was not noticeable in his earlier
+years, when a certain _ton de garnison_ was blended with his ease of
+manners.  Yet, even now, dignity was not his prevalent characteristic;
+and in ordinary occasions, or mixed society, he still found a familiar
+frankness a more useful species of simulation.  At the time we now treat
+of, Lord Vargrave was leaning his cheek on one hand, while the other
+rested idly on the papers methodically arranged before him.  He appeared
+to have suspended his labours, and to be occupied in thought.  It was, in
+truth, a critical period in the career of Lord Vargrave.
+
+From the date of his accession to the peerage, the rise of Lumley Ferrers
+had been less rapid and progressive than he himself could have foreseen.
+At first, all was sunshine before him; he had contrived to make himself
+useful to his party; he had also made himself personally popular.  To the
+ease and cordiality of his happy address, he added the seemingly careless
+candour so often mistaken for honesty; while, as there was nothing showy
+or brilliant in his abilities or oratory--nothing that aspired far above
+the pretensions of others, and aroused envy by mortifying self-love--he
+created but little jealousy even amongst the rivals before whom he
+obtained precedence.  For some time, therefore, he went smoothly on,
+continuing to rise in the estimation of his party, and commanding a
+certain respect from the neutral public, by acknowledged and eminent
+talents in the details of business; for his quickness of penetration, and
+a logical habit of mind, enabled him to grapple with and generalize the
+minutiae of official labour or of legislative enactments with a masterly
+success.  But as the road became clearer to his steps, his ambition
+became more evident and daring.  Naturally dictatorial and presumptuous,
+his early suppleness to superiors was now exchanged for a self-willed
+pertinacity, which often displeased the more haughty leaders of his
+party, and often wounded the more vain.  His pretensions were scanned
+with eyes more jealous and less tolerant than at first.  Proud
+aristocrats began to recollect that a mushroom peerage was supported but
+by a scanty fortune; the men of more dazzling genius began to sneer at
+the red-tape minister as a mere official manager of details; he lost much
+of the personal popularity which had been one secret of his power.  But
+what principally injured him in the eyes of his party and the public were
+certain ambiguous and obscure circumstances connected with a short period
+when himself and his associates were thrown out of office.  At this time,
+it was noticeable that the journals of the Government that succeeded were
+peculiarly polite to Lord Vargrave, while they covered all his coadjutors
+with obloquy: and it was more than suspected that secret negotiations
+between himself and the new ministry were going on, when suddenly the
+latter broke up, and Lord Vargrave's proper party were reinstated.  The
+vague suspicions that attached to Vargrave were somewhat strengthened in
+the opinion of the public by the fact that he was at first left out of
+the restored administration; and when subsequently, after a speech which
+showed that he could be mischievous if not propitiated, he was
+readmitted, it was precisely to the same office he had held before,--an
+office which did not admit him into the Cabinet.  Lumley, burning with
+resentment, longed to decline the offer; but, alas! he was poor, and,
+what was worse, in debt; "his poverty, but not his will, consented."  He
+was reinstated; but though prodigiously improved as a debater, he felt
+that he had not advanced as a public man.  His ambition inflamed by his
+discontent, he had, since his return to office, strained every nerve to
+strengthen his position.  He met the sarcasms on his poverty by greatly
+increasing his expenditure, and by advertising everywhere his engagement
+to an heiress whose fortune, great as it was, he easily contrived to
+magnify.  As his old house in Great George Street--well fitted for the
+bustling commoner--was no longer suited to the official and fashionable
+peer, he had, on his accession to the title, exchanged that respectable
+residence for a large mansion in Hamilton Place; and his sober dinners
+were succeeded by splendid banquets.  Naturally, he had no taste for such
+things; his mind was too nervous, and his temper too hard, to take
+pleasure in luxury or ostentation.  But now, as ever he _acted upon a
+system_.  Living in a country governed by the mightiest and wealthiest
+aristocracy in the world, which, from the first class almost to the
+lowest, ostentation pervades,--the very backbone and marrow of
+society,--he felt that to fall far short of his rivals in display was to
+give them an advantage which he could not compensate either by the power
+of his connections or the surpassing loftiness of his character and
+genius.  Playing for a great game, and with his eyes open to all the
+consequences, he cared not for involving his private fortunes in a
+lottery in which a great prize might be drawn.  To do Vargrave justice,
+money with him had never been an object, but a means; he was grasping,
+but not avaricious.  If men much richer than Lord Vargrave find State
+distinctions very expensive, and often ruinous, it is not to be supposed
+that his salary, joined to so moderate a private fortune, could support
+the style in which he lived.  His income was already deeply mortgaged,
+and debt accumulated upon debt.  Nor had this man, so eminent for the
+management of public business, any of that talent which springs from
+_justice_, and makes its possessor a skilful manager of his own affairs.
+Perpetually absorbed in intrigues and schemes, he was too much engaged in
+cheating others on a large scale to have time to prevent being himself
+cheated on a small one.  He never looked into bills till he was compelled
+to pay them; and he never calculated the amount of an expense that seemed
+the least necessary to his purposes.  But still Lord Vargrave relied upon
+his marriage with the wealthy Evelyn to relieve him from all his
+embarrassments; and if a doubt of the realization of that vision ever
+occurred to him, still public life had splendid prizes.  Nay, should he
+fail with Miss Cameron, he even thought that, by good management, he
+might ultimately make it worth while to his colleagues to purchase his
+absence with the gorgeous bribe of the Governor-Generalship of India.
+
+As oratory is an art in which practice and the dignity of station produce
+marvellous improvement, so Lumley had of late made effects in the House
+of Lords of which he had once been judged incapable.  It is true that no
+practice and no station can give men qualities in which they are wholly
+deficient; but these advantages can bring out in the best light all the
+qualities they _do_ possess.  The glow of a generous imagination, the
+grasp of a profound statesmanship, the enthusiasm of a noble
+nature,--these no practice could educe from the eloquence of Lumley Lord
+Vargrave, for he had them not; but bold wit, fluent and vigorous
+sentences, effective arrangement of parliamentary logic, readiness of
+retort, plausibility of manner, aided by a delivery peculiar for
+self-possession and ease, a clear and ringing voice (to the only fault of
+which, shrillness without passion, the ear of the audience had grown
+accustomed), and a countenance impressive from its courageous
+intelligence,--all these had raised the promising speaker into the
+matured excellence of a nervous and formidable debater.  But precisely as
+he rose in the display of his talents, did he awaken envies and enmities
+hitherto dormant.  And it must be added that, with all his craft and
+coldness, Lord Vargrave was often a very dangerous and mischievous
+speaker for the interests of his party.  His colleagues had often cause
+to tremble when he rose: nay, even when the cheers of his own faction
+shook the old tapestried walls.  A man who has no sympathy with the
+public must commit many and fatal indiscretions when the public, as well
+as his audience, is to be his judge.  Lord Vargrave's utter incapacity to
+comprehend political morality, his contempt for all the objects of social
+benevolence, frequently led him into the avowal of doctrines, which, if
+they did not startle the men of the world whom he addressed (smoothed
+away, as such doctrines were, by speciousness of manner and delivery),
+created deep disgust in those even of his own politics who read their
+naked exposition in the daily papers.  Never did Lord Vargrave utter one
+of those generous sentiments which, no matter whether propounded by
+Radical or Tory, sink deep into the heart of the people, and do lasting
+service to the cause they adorn.  But no man defended an abuse, however
+glaring, with a more vigorous championship, or hurled defiance upon a
+popular demand with a more courageous scorn.  In some times, when the
+anti-popular principle is strong; such a leader may be useful; but at the
+moment of which we treat he was a most equivocal auxiliary.  A
+considerable proportion of the ministers, headed by the premier himself,
+a man of wise views and unimpeachable honour, had learned to view Lord
+Vargrave with dislike and distrust.  They might have sought to get rid of
+him; but he was not one whom slight mortifications could induce to retire
+of his own accord, nor was the sarcastic and bold debater a person whose
+resentment and opposition could be despised.  Lord Vargrave, moreover,
+had secured a party of his own,--a party more formidable than himself.
+He went largely into society; he was the special favourite of the female
+diplomats, whose voices at that time were powerful suffrages, and with
+whom, by a thousand links of gallantry and intrigue, the agreeable and
+courteous minister formed a close alliance. All that _salons_ could do
+for him was done.  Added to this, he was personally liked by his royal
+master; and the Court gave him their golden opinions; while the poorer,
+the corrupter, and the more bigoted portion of the ministry regarded him
+with avowed admiration.
+
+In the House of Commons, too, and in the bureaucracy, he had no
+inconsiderable strength; for Lumley never contracted the habits of
+personal abruptness and discourtesy common to men in power who wish to
+keep applicants aloof.  He was bland and conciliating to all men of
+ranks; his intellect and self-complacency raised him far above the petty
+jealousies that great men feel for rising men.  Did any tyro earn the
+smallest distinction in parliament, no man sought his acquaintance so
+eagerly as Lord Vargrave; no man complimented, encouraged, "brought on"
+the new aspirants of his party with so hearty a good will.
+
+Such a minister could not fail of having devoted followers among the
+able, the ambitious, and the vain.  It must also be confessed that Lord
+Vargrave neglected no baser and less justifiable means to cement his
+power by placing it on the sure rock of self-interest.  No jobbing was
+too gross for him.  He was shamefully corrupt in the disposition of his
+patronage; and no rebuffs, no taunts from his official brethren, could
+restrain him from urging the claims of any of his creatures upon the
+public purse.  His followers regarded this charitable selfishness as the
+stanchness and zeal of friendship; and the ambition of hundreds was wound
+up in the ambition of the unprincipled minister.
+
+But besides the notoriety of his public corruption, Lord Vargrave was
+secretly suspected by some of personal dishonesty,--suspected of selling
+his State information to stock-jobbers, of having pecuniary interests in
+some of the claims he urged with so obstinate a pertinacity.  And though
+there was not the smallest evidence of such utter abandonment of honour,
+though it was probably but a calumnious whisper, yet the mere suspicion
+of such practices served to sharpen the aversion of his enemies, and
+justify the disgust of his rivals.
+
+In this position now stood Lord Vargrave: supported by interested, but
+able and powerful partisans; hated in the country, feared by some of
+those with whom he served, despised by others, looked up to by the rest.
+It was a situation that less daunted than delighted him; for it seemed to
+render necessary and excuse the habits of scheming and manoeuvre which
+were so genial to his crafty and plotting temper.  Like an ancient Greek,
+his spirit loved intrigue for intrigue's sake.  Had it led to no end, it
+would still have been sweet to him as a means.  He rejoiced to surround
+himself with the most complicated webs and meshes; to sit in the centre
+of a million plots.  He cared not how rash and wild some of them were.
+He relied on his own ingenuity, promptitude, and habitual good fortune to
+make every spring he handled conducive to the purpose of the
+machine--SELF.
+
+His last visit to Lady Vargrave, and his conversation with Evelyn, had
+left on his mind much dissatisfaction and fear.  In the earlier years of
+his intercourse with Evelyn, his good humour, gallantry, and presents had
+not failed to attach the child to the agreeable and liberal visitor she
+had been taught to regard as a relation.  It was only as she grew up to
+womanhood, and learned to comprehend the nature of the tie between them,
+that she shrank from his familiarity; and then only had he learned to
+doubt of the fulfilment of his uncle's wish.  The last visit had
+increased this doubt to a painful apprehension.  He saw that he was not
+loved; he saw that it required great address, and the absence of happier
+rivals, to secure to him the hand of Evelyn; and he cursed the duties and
+the schemes which necessarily kept him from her side.  He had thought of
+persuading Lady Vargrave to let her come to London, where he could be
+ever at hand; and as the season was now set in, his representations on
+this head would appear sensible and just.  But then again this was to
+incur greater dangers than those he would avoid.  London!--a beauty and
+an heiress, in her first _debut_ in London!  What formidable admirers
+would flock around her!  Vargrave shuddered to think of the gay,
+handsome, well-dressed, seductive young _elegans_, who might seem, to a
+girl of seventeen, suitors far more fascinating than the middle-aged
+politician.  This was perilous; nor was this all: Lord Vargrave knew that
+in London--gaudy, babbling, and remorseless London--all that he could
+most wish to conceal from the young lady would be dragged to day.  He had
+been the lover, not of one, but of a dozen women, for whom he did not
+care three straws, but whose favour had served to strengthen him in
+society, or whose influence made up for his own want of hereditary
+political connections.  The manner in which he contrived to shake off
+these various Ariadnes, whenever it was advisable, was not the least
+striking proof of his diplomatic abilities.  He never left them enemies.
+According to his own solution of the mystery, he took care never to play
+the gallant with Dulcineas under a certain age.  "Middle-aged women," he
+was wont to say, "are very little different from middle-aged men; they
+see things sensibly, and take things coolly."  Now Evelyn could not be
+three weeks, perhaps three days, in London, without learning of one or
+the other of these _liaisons_.  What an excuse, if she sought one, to
+break with him!  Altogether, Lord Vargrave was sorely perplexed, but not
+despondent.  Evelyn's fortune was more than ever necessary to him, and
+Evelyn he was resolved to obtain since to that fortune she was an
+indispensable appendage.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+  YOU shall be Horace, and Tibullus I.--POPE.
+
+LORD VARGRAVE was disturbed from his revery by the entrance of the Earl
+of Saxingham.
+
+"You are welcome!" said Lumley, "welcome!--the very man I wished to see."
+
+Lord Saxingham, who was scarcely altered since we met with him in the
+last series of this work, except that he had grown somewhat paler and
+thinner, and that his hair had changed from iron-gray to snow-white,
+threw himself in the armchair beside Lumley, and replied,--
+
+"Vargrave, it is really unpleasant, our finding ourselves always thus
+controlled by our own partisans.  I do not understand this new-fangled
+policy, this squaring of measures to please the Opposition, and throwing
+sops to that many-headed monster called Public Opinion.  I am sure it
+will end most mischievously."
+
+"I am satisfied of it," returned Lord Vargrave.  "All vigour and union
+seem to have left us; and if they carry the ----- question against us, I
+know not what is to be done."
+
+"For my part, I shall resign," said Lord Saxingham, doggedly; "it is the
+only alternative left to men of honour."
+
+"You are wrong; I know another alternative."
+
+"What is that?"
+
+"Make a Cabinet of our own.  Look ye, my dear lord; you been ill-used;
+your high character, your long experience, are treated with contempt.  It
+is an affront to you--the situation you hold.  You, Privy Seal!--you
+ought to be Premier; ay, and, if you are ruled by me, Premier you shall
+be yet."
+
+Lord Saxingham coloured, and breathed hard.
+
+"You have often hinted at this before, Lumley; but you are so partial, so
+friendly."
+
+"Not at all.  You saw the leading article in the ----- to-day?  That will
+be followed up by two evening papers within five hours of this time.  We
+have strength with the Press, with the Commons, with the Court,--only let
+us hold fast together.  This ----- question, by which they hope to get
+rid of us, shall destroy them.  You shall be Prime Minister before the
+year is over--by Heaven, you shall!--and then, I suppose, I too may be
+admitted to the Cabinet!"
+
+"But how?--how, Lumley?  You are too rash, too daring."
+
+It has not been my fault hitherto,--but boldness is caution in our
+circumstances.  If they throw us out now, I see the inevitable march of
+events,--we shall be out for years, perhaps for life.  The Cabinet will
+recede more and more from our principles, our party.  Now is the time for
+a determined stand; now can we make or mar ourselves.  I will not resign;
+the king is with us; our strength shall be known.  These haughty
+imbeciles shall fall into the trap they have dug for us."
+
+Lumley spoke warmly, and with the confidence of a mind firmly assured of
+success.  Lord Saxingham was moved; bright visions flashed across
+him,--the premiership, a dukedom.  Yet he was old and childless, and his
+honours would die with the last lord of Saxingham!
+
+"See," continued Lumley, "I have calculated our resources as accurately
+as an electioneering agent would cast up the list of voters.  In the
+Press, I have secured ----- and -----, and in the Commons we have the
+subtle -----, and the vigour of -----, and the popular name of -----, and
+all the boroughs of -----; in the Cabinet we have -----, and at Court you
+know our strength.  Let us choose our moment; a sudden _coup_, an
+interview with the king, statement of our conscientious scruples to this
+atrocious measure.  I know the vain, stiff mind of the premier; _he_ will
+lose temper, he will tender his resignation; to his astonishment, it will
+be accepted.  You will be sent for; we will dissolve parliament; we will
+strain every nerve in the elections; we shall succeed, I know we shall.
+But be silent in the meanwhile, be cautious: let not a word escape you,
+let them think us beaten; lull suspicion asleep; let us lament our
+weakness, and hint, only hint at our resignation, but with assurances of
+continued support.  I know how to blind them, if you leave it to me."
+
+The weak mind of the old earl was as a puppet in the hands of his bold
+kinsman.  He feared one moment, hoped another; now his ambition was
+flattered, now his sense of honour was alarmed.  There was something in
+Lumley's intrigue to oust the government with which he served that had an
+appearance of cunning and baseness, of which Lord Saxingham, whose
+personal character was high, by no means approved.  But Vargrave talked
+him over with consummate address, and when they parted, the earl carried
+his head two inches higher,--he was preparing himself for his rise in
+life.
+
+"That is well! that is well!" said Lumley, rubbing his hands when he was
+left alone: "the old driveller will be my _locum tenens_, till years and
+renown enable me to become his successor.  Meanwhile, I shall be really
+what he will be in name."
+
+Here Lord Vargrave's well-fed servant, now advanced to the dignity of own
+gentleman and house-steward, entered the room with a letter; it had a
+portentous look; it was wafered, the paper was blue, the hand clerklike,
+there was no envelope; it bore its infernal origin on the face of it,--IT
+WAS A DUN'S.
+
+Lumley opened the epistle with an impatient pshaw!  The man, a
+silversmith (Lumley's plate was much admired!) had applied for years in
+vain; the amount was large, and execution was threatened!  An
+execution!--it is a trifle to a rich man; but no trifle to one suspected
+of being poor, one straining at that very moment at so high an object,
+one to whom public opinion was so necessary, one who knew that nothing
+but his title, and scarcely that, saved him from the reputation of an
+adventurer!  He must again have recourse to the money-lenders,--his small
+estate was long since too deeply mortgaged to afford new security.
+Usury, usury, again!--he knew its price, and he sighed--but what was to
+be done?
+
+"It is but for a few months, a few months, and Evelyn must be mine.
+Saxingham has already lent me what he can; but he is embarrassed.  This
+d-----d office, what a tax it is! and the rascals say we are too well
+paid!  I, too, who could live happy in a garret, if this purse-proud
+England would but allow one to exist within one's income.  My
+fellow-trustee, the banker, my uncle's old correspondent--all, well
+thought of!  He knows the conditions of the will; he knows that, at the
+worst, I must have thirty thousand pounds, if I live a few months longer.
+I will go to him."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+  ANIMUM nunc hoc celerem, nunc dividit illuc.*--VIRGIL.
+
+  * "Now this, now that, distracts the active mind."
+
+THE late Mr. Templeton had been a banker in a provincial town, which was
+the centre of great commercial and agricultural activity and enterprise.
+He had made the bulk of his fortune in the happy days of paper currency
+and war.  Besides his country bank he had a considerable share in a
+metropolitan one of some eminence.  At the time of his marriage with the
+present Lady Vargrave he retired altogether from business, and never
+returned to the place in which his wealth had been amassed.  He had still
+kept up a familiar acquaintance with the principal and senior partner of
+the metropolitan bank I have referred to; for he was a man who always
+loved to talk about money matters with those who understood them.  This
+gentleman, Mr. Gustavus Douce, had been named, with Lumley, joint trustee
+to Evelyn's fortune.  They had full powers to invest it in whatever stock
+seemed most safe or advantageous.  The trustees appeared well chosen, as
+one, being destined to share the fortune, would have the deepest interest
+in its security; and the other, from his habits and profession, would be
+a most excellent adviser.
+
+Of Mr. Douce, Lord Vargrave had seen but little; they were not thrown
+together.  But Lord Vargrave, who thought every rich man might, some time
+or other, become a desirable acquaintance, regularly asked him once every
+year to dinner; and twice in return he had dined with Mr. Douce, in one
+of the most splendid villas, and off some of the most splendid plate it
+had ever been his fortune to witness and to envy!--so that the little
+favour he was about to ask was but a slight return for Lord Vargrave's
+condescension.
+
+He found the banker in his private sanctum, his carriage at the door; for
+it was just four o'clock, an hour in which Mr. Douce regularly departed
+to Caserta, as his aforesaid villa was somewhat affectedly styled.
+
+Mr. Douce was a small man, a nervous man; he did not seem quite master of
+his own limbs: when he bowed he seemed to be making you a present of his
+legs; when he sat down, he twitched first on one side, then on the other,
+thrust his hands into his pockets, then took them out, and looked at
+them, as if in astonishment, then seized upon a pen, by which they were
+luckily provided with incessant occupation.  Meanwhile, there was what
+might fairly be called a constant play of countenance: first he smiled,
+then looked grave; now raised his eyebrows, till they rose like rainbows,
+to the horizon of his pale, straw-coloured hair; and next darted them
+down, like an avalanche, over the twinkling, restless, fluttering, little
+blue eyes, which then became almost invisible.  Mr. Douce had, in fact,
+all the appearance of a painfully shy man, which was the more strange, as
+he had the reputation of enterprise, and even audacity, in the business
+of his profession, and was fond of the society of the great.
+
+"I have called on you, my dear sir," said Lord Vargrave, after the
+preliminary salutations, "to ask a little favour, which, if the least
+inconvenient, have no hesitation in refusing.  You know how I am situated
+with regard to my ward, Miss Cameron; in a few months I hope she will be
+Lady Vargrave."
+
+Mr. Douce showed three small teeth, which were all that, in the front of
+his mouth, fate had left him; and then, as if alarmed at the indelicacy
+of a smile upon such a subject, pushed back his chair, and twitched up
+his blotting-paper-coloured trousers.
+
+"Yes, in a few months I hope she will be Lady Vargrave; and you know
+then, Mr. Douce, that I shall be in no want of money."
+
+"I hope--that is to say, I am sure,--that--I trust that never will be the
+ca-ca-case with your lordship," put in Mr. Douce, with timid hesitation.
+Mr. Douce, in addition to his other good qualities, stammered much in the
+delivery of his sentences.
+
+"You are very kind, but it is the case just at present; I have great need
+of a few thousand pounds upon my personal security.  My estate is already
+a little mortgaged, and I don't wish to encumber it more; besides, the
+loan would be merely temporary.  You know that if at the age of eighteen
+Miss Cameron refuses me (a supposition out of the question, but in
+business we must calculate on improbabilities), I claim the forfeit she
+incurs,--thirty thousand pounds; you remember."
+
+"Oh, yes--that--is--upon my word--I--I don't exactly--but--your
+lord--l-l-l-lord-lordship knows best--I have been so--so busy--I forget
+the exact--hem--hem!"
+
+"If you just turn to the will you will see it is as I say.  Now, could
+you conveniently place a few thousands to my account, just for a short
+time?  But I see you don't like it.  Never mind, I can get it elsewhere;
+only, as you were my poor uncle's friend--"
+
+"Your lord--l-l-l-lordship is quite mistaken," said Mr. Douce, with
+trembling agitation; "upon my word, yes, a few thou-thou-thousands--to be
+sure--to be sure.  Your lordship's banker is--is--"
+
+"Drummond--disagreeable people--by no means obliging.  I shall certainly
+change to your house when my accounts are better worth keeping."
+
+"You do me great--great honour; I will just--step--step--step out for a
+moment--and--and speak to Mr. Dobs;--not but what you may depend
+on.--Excuse me!  'Morning Chron-chron-Chronicle,' my lord!"
+
+Mr. Douce rose, as if by galvanism, and ran out of the room, spinning
+round as he ran, to declare, again and again, that he would not be gone a
+moment.
+
+"Good little fellow, that--very like an electrified frog!" murmured
+Vargrave, as he took up the "Morning Chronicle," so especially pointed
+out to his notice; and turning to the leading article, read a very
+eloquent attack on himself.  Lumley was thick-skinned on such matters; he
+liked to be attacked,--it showed that he was up in the world.
+
+Presently Mr. Douce returned.  To Lord Vargrave's amazement and delight,
+he was informed that 10,000 pounds would be immediately lodged with
+Messrs. Drummond.  His bill of promise to pay in three months--five per
+cent interest--was quite sufficient.  Three months was a short date; but
+the bill could be renewed on the same terms, from quarter to quarter,
+till quite convenient to his lordship to pay.  "Would Lord Vargrave do
+him the honour to dine with him at Caserta next Monday?"
+
+Lord Vargrave tried to affect apathy at his sudden accession of ready
+money, but really it almost turned his head; he griped both Mr. Douce's
+thin, little shivering hands, and was speechless with gratitude and
+ecstasy.  The sum, which doubled the utmost he expected, would relieve
+him from all his immediate embarrassments.  When he recovered his voice,
+he thanked his dear Mr. Douce with a warmth that seemed to make the
+little man shrink into a nutshell; and assured him that he would dine
+with him every Monday in the year--if he was asked!  He then longed to
+depart; but he thought, justly, that to go as soon as he had got what he
+wanted would look selfish.  Accordingly, he reseated himself, and so did
+Mr. Douce, and the conversation turned upon politics and news; but Mr.
+Douce, who seemed to regard all things with a commercial eye, contrived,
+Vargrave hardly knew how, to veer round from the change in the French
+ministry to the state of the English money-market.
+
+"It really is, indeed, my lord--I say it, I am sure, with concern, a very
+bad ti-ti-ti-ti-time for men in business,--indeed, for all men; such poor
+interest in the English fu-fun-funds, and yet speculations are so
+unsound.  I recommended my friend Sir Giles Grimsby to--to invest some
+money in the American canals; a most rare res-res-respons-reponsibility,
+I may say, for me; I am cautious in--in recommending--but Sir Giles was
+an old friend,--con-con-connection, I may say; but most providentially,
+all turned out--that is--fell out--as I was sure it would,--thirty per
+cent,--and the value of the sh-sh-sh-shares doubled.  But such things are
+very rare,--quite godsends, I may say!"
+
+"Well, Mr. Douce, whenever I have money to lay out, I must come and
+consult you."
+
+"I shall be most happy at all times to--to advise your lordship; but it
+is not a thing I'm very fond of.  There's Miss Cameron's fortune quite
+l-l-locked up,--three per cents and exchequer bills; why, it might have
+been a mil-mil-million by this ti-ti-time, if the good old gentleman--I
+beg pardon--old--old nobleman, my poor dear friend, had been now alive!"
+
+"Indeed!" said Lumley, greedily, and pricking up his ears; "he was a good
+manager, my uncle!"
+
+"None better, none better.  I may say a genius for busi--hem-hem!  Miss
+Cameron a young woman of bus-bus-business, my lord?"
+
+"Not much of that, I fear.  A million, did you say?"
+
+"At least!--indeed, at least--money so scarce, speculation so sure in
+America; great people the Americans, rising people, gi-gi-giants
+--giants!"
+
+"I am wasting your whole morning,--too bad in me," said Vargrave, as the
+clock struck five; "the Lords meet this evening,--important business;
+once more a thousand thanks to you; good day."
+
+"A very good day to you, my lord; don't mention it; glad at any time to
+ser-ser-serve you," said Mr. Douce, fidgeting, curveting, and prancing
+round Lord Vargrave, as the latter walked through the outer office to the
+carriage.
+
+"Not a step more; you will catch cold.  Good-by--on Monday, then, seven
+o'clock.  The House of Lords."
+
+And Lumley threw himself back in his carriage in high spirits.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+  OUBLIE de Tullie, et brave du Senat.*
+  VOLTAIRE: _Brutus_, Act ii. sc. 1.
+
+  * "Forgotten by Tully and bullied by the Senate."
+
+IN the Lords that evening the discussion was animated and prolonged,--it
+was the last party debate of the session.  The astute Opposition did not
+neglect to bring prominently, though incidentally, forward the question
+on which it was whispered that there existed some growing difference in
+the Cabinet.  Lord Vargrave rose late.  His temper was excited by the
+good fortune of his day's negotiation; he felt himself of more importance
+than usual, as a needy man is apt to do when he has got a large sum at
+his banker's; moreover, he was exasperated by some personal allusions to
+himself, which had been delivered by a dignified old lord who dated his
+family from the ark, and was as rich as Croesus.  Accordingly, Vargrave
+spoke with more than his usual vigour.  His first sentences were welcomed
+with loud cheers; he warmed, he grew vehement, he uttered the most
+positive and unalterable sentiments upon the question alluded to, he
+greatly transgressed the discretion which the heads of his party were
+desirous to maintain,--instead of conciliating without compromising, he
+irritated, galled, _and_ compromised.  The angry cheers of the opposite
+party were loudly re-echoed by the cheers of the more hot-headed on his
+own side.  The premier and some of his colleagues observed, however, a
+moody silence.  The premier once took a note, and then reseated himself,
+and drew his hat more closely over his brows.  It was an ominous sign for
+Lumley; but he was looking the Opposition in the face, and did not
+observe it.  He sat down in triumph; he had made a most effective and a
+most mischievous speech,--a combination extremely common.  The leader of
+the Opposition replied to him with bitter calmness; and when citing some
+of his sharp sentences, he turned to the premier, and asked, "Are these
+opinions those also of the noble lord?  I call for a reply,--I have a
+right to demand a reply," Lumley was startled to hear the tone in which
+his chief uttered the comprehensive and significant "_Hear, hear_!"
+
+At midnight the premier wound up the debate; his speech was short, and
+characterized by moderation.  He came to the question put to him.  The
+House was hushed,--you might have heard a pin drop; the Commoners behind
+the throne pressed forward with anxiety and eagerness on their
+countenances.
+
+"I am called upon," said the minister, "to declare if those sentiments,
+uttered by my noble friend, are mine also, as the chief adviser of the
+Crown.  My lords, in the heat of debate every word is not to be
+scrupulously weighed, and rigidly interpreted."  ("Hear, hear,"
+ironically from the Opposition, approvingly from the Treasury benches.)
+"My noble friend will doubtless be anxious to explain what he intended to
+say.  I hope, nay, I doubt not, that his explanation will be satisfactory
+to the noble lord, to the House, and to the country; but since I am
+called upon for a distinct reply to a distinct interrogatory, I will say
+at once, that if those sentiments be rightly interpreted by the noble
+lord who spoke last, those sentiments are not mine, and will never
+animate the conduct of any cabinet of which I am a member."
+(Long-continued cheering from the Opposition.)  "At the same time, I am
+convinced that my noble friend's meaning has not been rightly construed;
+and till I hear from himself to the contrary, I will venture to state
+what I think he designed to convey to your lordships."  Here the premier,
+with a tact that nobody could be duped by, but every one could admire,
+stripped Lord Vargrave's unlucky sentences of every syllable that could
+give offence to any one; and left the pointed epigrams and vehement
+denunciations a most harmless arrangement of commonplace.
+
+The House was much excited; there was a call for Lord Vargrave, and Lord
+Vargrave promptly rose.  It was one of those dilemmas out of which Lumley
+was just the man to extricate himself with address.  There was so much
+manly frankness in his manner, there was so much crafty subtlety in his
+mind!  He complained, with proud and honest bitterness, of the
+construction that had been forced upon his words by the Opposition.
+"If," he added (and no man knew better the rhetorical effect of the _tu
+quoque form of argument),--"if every sentence uttered by the noble lord
+opposite in his zeal for liberty had, in days now gone by, been construed
+with equal rigour, or perverted with equal ingenuity, that noble lord had
+long since been prosecuted as an incendiary, perhaps executed as a
+traitor!"  Vehement cheers from the ministerial benches; cries of
+"Order!" from the Opposition.  A military lord rose to order, and
+appealed to the Woolsack.
+
+Lumley sat down as if chafed at the interruption; he had produced the
+effect he had desired,--he had changed the public question at issue into
+a private quarrel; a new excitement was created; dust was thrown into the
+eyes of the House.  Several speakers rose to accommodate matters; and
+after half-an-hour of public time had been properly wasted, the noble
+lord on the one side and the noble lord on the other duly explained, paid
+each other the highest possible compliments, and Lumley was left to
+conclude his vindication, which now seemed a comparatively flat matter
+after the late explosion.  He completed his task so as to satisfy,
+apparently, all parties--for all parties were now tired of the thing, and
+wanted to go to bed.  But the next morning there were whispers about the
+town, articles in the different papers, evidently by authority,
+rejoicings among the Opposition, and a general feeling that though the
+Government might keep together that session, its dissensions would break
+out before the next meeting of parliament.
+
+As Lumley was wrapping himself in his cloak after this stormy debate, the
+Marquess of Raby--a peer of large possessions, and one who entirely
+agreed with Lumley's views--came up to him, and proposed that they should
+go home together in Lord Raby's carriage.  Vargrave willingly consented,
+and dismissed his own servants.
+
+"You did that admirably, my dear Vargrave!" said Lord Raby, when they
+were seated in the carriage.  "I quite coincide in all your sentiments; I
+declare my blood boiled when I heard ----- [the premier] appear half
+inclined to throw you over.  Your hit upon ----- was first-rate,--he will
+not get over it for a month; and you extricated yourself well."
+
+"I am glad you approve my conduct,--it comforts me," said Vargrave,
+feelingly; "at the same time I see all the consequences; but I can brave
+all for the sake of character and conscience."
+
+"I feel just as you do!" replied Lord Raby, with some warmth; "and if I
+thought that ----- meant to yield to this question, I should certainly
+oppose his administration."
+
+Vargrave shook his head, and held his tongue, which gave Lord Raby a high
+idea of his discretion.
+
+After a few more observations on political matters, Lord Raby invited
+Lumley to pay him a visit at his country-seat.
+
+"I am going to Knaresdean next Monday; you know we have races in the
+park, and really they are sometimes good sport; at all events, it is a
+very pretty sight.  There will be nothing in the Lords now,--the recess
+is just at hand; and if you can spare the time, Lady Raby and myself will
+be delighted to see you."
+
+"You may be sure, my dear lord, I cannot refuse your invitation; indeed,
+I intended to visit your county next week.  You know, perhaps, a Mr.
+Merton."
+
+"Charles Merton?--to be sure; most respectable man, capital fellow, the
+best parson in the county,--no cant, but thoroughly orthodox; he
+certainly keeps in his brother, who, though a very active member, is what
+I call a waverer on certain questions.  Have you known Merton long?"
+
+"I don't know him at all as yet; my acquaintance is with his wife and
+daughter,--a very fine girl, by the by.  My ward, Miss Cameron, is
+staying with them."
+
+"Miss Cameron!  Cameron--ah, I understand.  I think I have heard that--
+But gossip does not always tell the truth!"
+
+Lumley smiled significantly, and the carriage now stopped at his door.
+
+"Perhaps you will take a seat in our carriage on Monday?" said Lord Raby.
+
+"Monday?  Unhappily I am engaged; but on Tuesday your lordship may expect
+me."
+
+"Very well; the races begin on Wednesday: we shall have a full house.
+Good-night."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+  HOMUNCULI quanti sunt, cum recogito.*--PLAUTUS.
+
+  * "When I reflect, how great your little men are in their own
+    consideration!"
+
+IT is obvious that for many reasons we must be brief upon the political
+intrigue in which the scheming spirit of Lord Vargrave was employed.  It
+would, indeed, be scarcely possible to preserve the necessary medium
+between too plain a revelation and too complex a disguise.  It suffices,
+therefore, very shortly to repeat what the reader has already gathered
+from what has gone before; namely, that the question at issue was one
+which has happened often enough in all governments,--one on which the
+Cabinet was divided, and in which the weaker party was endeavouring to
+out-trick the stronger.
+
+The malcontents, foreseeing that sooner or later the head of the
+gathering must break, were again divided among themselves whether to
+resign, or to stay in and strive to force a resignation on their
+dissentient colleagues.  The richer and the more honest were for the
+former course; the poorer and the more dependent for the latter.  We have
+seen that the latter policy was that espoused and recommended by
+Vargrave, who, though not in the Cabinet, always contrived somehow or
+other to worm out its secrets.  At the same time he by no means rejected
+the other string to his bow.  If it were possible so to arrange and to
+strengthen his faction, that, by the _coup d'etat_ of a sudden
+resignation in a formidable body, the whole Government might be broken
+up, and a new one formed from among the resignees, it would obviously be
+the best plan.  But then Lord Vargrave was doubtful of his own strength,
+and fearful to play into the hands of his colleagues, who might be able
+to stand even better without himself and his allies, and by conciliating
+the Opposition take a step onward in political movement,--which might
+leave Vargrave placeless and powerless for years to come.
+
+He repented his own rashness in the recent debate, which was, indeed, a
+premature boldness that had sprung out of momentary excitement--for the
+craftiest orator must be indiscreet sometimes.  He spent the next few
+days in alternately seeking to explain away to one party, and to sound,
+unite, and consolidate the other.  His attempts in the one quarter were
+received by the premier with the cold politeness of an offended but
+careful statesman, who believed just as much as he chose, and preferred
+taking his own opportunity for a breach with a subordinate to risking any
+imprudence by the gratification of resentment.  In the last quarter, the
+penetrating adventurer saw that his ground was more insecure than he had
+anticipated.  He perceived in dismay and secret rage that many of those
+most loud in his favour while he was with the Government would desert him
+the soonest if thrown out.  Liked as a subordinate minister, he was
+viewed with very different eyes the moment it was a question whether,
+instead of cheering his sentiments, men should trust themselves to his
+guidance.  Some did not wish to displease the Government; others did not
+seek to weaken but to correct them.  One of his stanchest allies in the
+Commons was a candidate for a peerage; another suddenly remembered that
+he was second cousin to the premier.  Some laughed at the idea of a
+puppet premier in Lord Saxingham; others insinuated to Vargrave that he
+himself was not precisely of that standing in the country which would
+command respect to a new party, of which, if not the head, he would be
+the mouthpiece.  For themselves they knew, admired, and trusted him; but
+those d-----d country gentlemen--and the dull public!
+
+Alarmed, wearied, and disgusted, the schemer saw himself reduced to
+submission, for the present at least; and more than ever he felt the
+necessity of Evelyn's fortune to fall back upon, if the chance of the
+cards should rob him of his salary.  He was glad to escape for a
+breathing-while from the vexations and harassments that beset him, and
+looked forward with the eager interest of a sanguine and elastic
+mind--always escaping from one scheme to another--to his excursion into
+B-----shire.
+
+At the villa of Mr. Douce, Lord Vargrave met a young nobleman who had
+just succeeded to a property not only large and unencumbered, but of a
+nature to give him importance in the eyes of politicians.  Situated in a
+very small county, the estates of Lord Doltimore secured to his
+nomination at least one of the representatives, while a little village at
+the back of his pleasure-grounds constituted a borough, and returned two
+members to parliament.  Lord Doltimore, just returned from the Continent,
+had not even taken his seat in the Lords; and though his family
+connections, such as they were--and they were not very high, and by no
+means in the fashion--were ministerial, his own opinions were as yet
+unrevealed.
+
+To this young nobleman Lord Vargrave was singularly attentive.  He was
+well formed to attract men younger than himself, and he eminently
+succeeded in his designs upon Lord Doltimore's affection.
+
+His lordship was a small, pale man, with a very limited share of
+understanding, supercilious in manner, elaborate in dress, not
+ill-natured _au fond_, and with much of the English gentleman in his
+disposition,--that is, he was honourable in his ideas and actions,
+whenever his natural dulness and neglected education enabled him clearly
+to perceive (through the midst of prejudices, the delusions of others,
+and the false lights of the dissipated society in which he had lived)
+what was right and what wrong.  But his leading characteristics were
+vanity and conceit.  He had lived much with younger sons, cleverer than
+himself, who borrowed his money, sold him their horses, and won from him
+at cards.  In return they gave him all that species of flattery which
+young men _can_ give with so hearty an appearance of cordial admiration.
+"You certainly have the best horses in Paris.  You are really a devilish
+good fellow, Doltimore.  Oh, do you know, Doltimore, what little Desire
+says of you?  You have certainly turned the girl's head."
+
+This sort of adulation from one sex was not corrected by any great
+acerbity from the other.  Lord Doltimore at the age of twenty-two was a
+very good _parti_; and, whatever his other deficiencies, he had sense
+enough to perceive that he received much greater attention--whether from
+opera-dancers in search of a friend, or virtuous young ladies in search
+of a husband--than any of the companions, good-looking though many of
+them were, with whom he had habitually lived.
+
+"You will not long remain in town now the season is over?" said Vargrave,
+as after dinner he found himself, by the departure of the ladies, next to
+Lord Doltimore.
+
+"No, indeed; even in the season I don't much like London.  Paris has
+rather spoiled me for any other place."
+
+"Paris is certainly very charming; the ease of French life has a
+fascination that our formal ostentation wants.  Nevertheless, to a man
+like you, London must have many attractions."
+
+"Why, I have a good many friends here; but still, after Ascot, it rather
+bores me."
+
+"Have you any horses on the turf?"
+
+"Not yet; but Legard (you know Legard, perhaps,--a very good fellow) is
+anxious that I should try my luck.  I was very fortunate in the races at
+Paris--you know we have established racing there.  The French take to it
+quite naturally."
+
+"Ah, indeed! It is so long since I have been in Paris--most exciting
+amusement!  _A propos_ of races, I am going down to Lord Raby's
+to-morrow; I think I saw in one of the morning papers that you had very
+largely backed a horse entered at Knaresdean."
+
+"Yes, Thunderer--I think of buying Thunderer.  Legard--Colonel Legard (he
+was in the Guards, but he sold out)--is a good judge, and recommends the
+purchase.  How very odd that you too should be going to Knaresdean!"
+
+"Odd, indeed, but most lucky!  We can go together, if you are not better
+engaged."
+
+Lord Doltimore coloured and hesitated.  On the one hand he was a little
+afraid of being alone with so clever a man; on the other hand, it was an
+honour,--it was something for him to talk of to Legard.  Nevertheless,
+the shyness got the better of the vanity.  He excused himself; he feared
+he was engaged to take down Legard.
+
+Lumley smiled, and changed the conversation; and so agreeable did he make
+himself, that when the party broke up, and Lumley had just shaken hands
+with his host, Doltimore came to him, and said in a little confusion,--
+
+"I think I can put off Legard--if--if you--"
+
+"That's delightful!  What time shall we start?--need not get down much
+before dinner--one o'clock?"
+
+"Oh, yes! not too long before dinner; one o'clock will be a little too
+early."
+
+"Two then.  Where are you staying?"
+
+"At Fenton's."
+
+"I will call for you.  Good-night!  I long to see Thunderer!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+  LA sante de l'ame n'est pas plus assuree que celle du corps;
+  et quoique l'on paraisse eloigne des passions, on n'est pas
+  moins en danger de s'y laisser emporter que de tomber malade
+  quand on se porte bien.*--LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.
+
+  * "The health of the soul is not more sure than that of the
+    body; and although we may appear free from passions, there
+    is not the less danger of their attack than of falling sick
+    at the moment we are well."
+
+IN spite of the efforts of Maltravers to shun all occasions of meeting
+Evelyn, they were necessarily sometimes thrown together in the round of
+provincial hospitalities; and certainly, if either Mr. Merton or Caroline
+(the shrewder observer of the two) had ever formed any suspicion that
+Evelyn had made a conquest of Maltravers, his manner at such times
+effectually removed it.
+
+Maltravers was a man to feel deeply, but no longer a boy to yield to
+every tempting impulse.  I have said that FORTITUDE was his favourite
+virtue, but fortitude is the virtue of great and rare occasions; there
+was another, equally hard-favoured and unshowy, which he took as the
+staple of active and every-day duties, and that virtue was JUSTICE.  Now,
+in earlier life, he had been enamoured of the conventional Florimel that
+we call HONOUR,--a shifting and shadowy phantom, that is but the reflex
+of the opinion of the time and clime.  But justice has in it something
+permanent and solid; and out of justice arises the real not the false
+honour.
+
+"Honour!" said Maltravers,--"honour is to justice as the flower to the
+plant,--its efflorescence, its bloom, its consummation!  But honour that
+does not spring from justice is but a piece of painted rag, an artificial
+rose, which the men-milliners of society would palm upon us as more
+natural than the true."
+
+This principle of justice Maltravers sought to carry out in all
+things--not, perhaps, with constant success; for what practice can always
+embody theory?--but still, at least his endeavour at success was
+constant.  This, perhaps, it was which had ever kept him from the
+excesses to which exuberant and liberal natures are prone, from the
+extravagances of pseudo-genius.
+
+"No man, for instance," he was wont to say, "can be embarrassed in his
+own circumstances, and not cause embarrassment to others.  Without
+economy, who can be just?  And what are charity, generosity, but the
+poetry and the beauty of justice?"
+
+No man ever asked Maltravers twice for a just debt; and no man ever once
+asked him to fulfil a promise.  You felt that, come what would, you might
+rely upon his word.  To him might have been applied the witty eulogium
+passed by Johnson upon a certain nobleman: "If he had promised you an
+acorn, and the acorn season failed in England, he would have sent to
+Norway for one!"
+
+It was not, therefore, the mere Norman and chivalrous spirit of honour,
+which he had worshipped in youth as a part of the Beautiful and the
+Becoming, but which in youth had yielded to temptation, as a _sentiment_
+ever must yield to a passion, but it was the more hard, stubborn, and
+reflective _principle_, which was the later growth of deeper and nobler
+wisdom, that regulated the conduct of Maltravers in this crisis of his
+life.  Certain it is, that he had never but once loved as he loved
+Evelyn; and yet that he never yielded so little to the passion.
+
+"If engaged to another," thought he, "that engagement it is not for a
+third person to attempt to dissolve.  I am the last to form a right
+judgment of the strength or weakness of the bonds which unite her to
+Vargrave, for my emotions would prejudice me despite myself.  I may fancy
+that her betrothed is not worthy of her,--but that is for her to decide.
+While the bond lasts, who can be justified in tempting her to break it?"
+
+Agreeably to these notions, which the world may, perhaps, consider
+overstrained, whenever Maltravers met Evelyn, he intrenched himself in a
+rigid and almost a chilling formality.  How difficult this was with one
+so simple and ingenuous!  Poor Evelyn! she thought she had offended him;
+she longed to ask him her offence,--perhaps, in her desire to rouse his
+genius into exertion, she had touched some secret sore, some latent wound
+of the memory?  She recalled all their conversations again and again.
+Ah, why could they not be renewed?  Upon her fancy and her thoughts
+Maltravers had made an impression not to be obliterated.  She wrote more
+frequently than ever to Lady Vargrave, and the name of Maltravers was
+found in every page of her correspondence.
+
+One evening, at the house of a neighbour, Miss Cameron (with the Mertons)
+entered the room almost in the same instant as Maltravers.  The party was
+small, and so few had yet arrived that it was impossible for Maltravers,
+without marked rudeness, to avoid his friends from the rectory; and Mrs.
+Merton, placing herself next to Evelyn, graciously motioned to Maltravers
+to occupy the third vacant seat on the sofa, of which she filled the
+centre.
+
+"We grudge all your improvements, Mr. Maltravers, since they cost us your
+society.  But we know that our dull circle must seem tame to one who has
+seen so much.  However, we expect to offer you an inducement soon in Lord
+Vargrave.  What a lively, agreeable person he is!"
+
+Maltravers raised his eyes to Evelyn, calmly and penetratingly, at the
+latter part of this speech.  He observed that she turned pale, and sighed
+involuntarily.
+
+"He had great spirits when I knew him," said he; "and he had then less
+cause to make him happy."
+
+Mrs. Merton smiled, and turned rather pointedly towards Evelyn.
+
+Maltravers continued, "I never met the late lord.  He had none of the
+vivacity of his nephew, I believe."
+
+"I have heard that he was very severe," said Mrs. Merton, lifting her
+glass towards a party that had just entered.
+
+"Severe!" exclaimed Evelyn.  "Ah, if you could have known him! the
+kindest, the most indulgent--no one ever loved me as he did."  She
+paused, for she felt her lip quiver.
+
+"I beg your pardon, my dear," said Mrs. Merton, coolly.  Mrs. Merton had
+no idea of the pain inflicted by _treading upon a feeling_.  Maltravers
+was touched, and Mrs. Merton went on.  "No wonder he was kind to you,
+Evelyn,--a brute would be that; but he was generally considered a stern
+man."
+
+"I never saw a stern look, I never heard a harsh word; nay, I do not
+remember that he ever even used the word 'command,'" said Evelyn, almost
+angrily.
+
+Mrs. Merton was about to reply, when suddenly seeing a lady whose little
+girl had been ill of the measles, her motherly thoughts flowed into a new
+channel, and she fluttered away in that sympathy which unites all the
+heads of a growing family.  Evelyn and Maltravers were left alone.
+
+"You do not remember your father, I believe?" said Maltravers.
+
+"No father but Lord Vargrave; while he lived, I never knew the loss of
+one."
+
+"Does your mother resemble you?"
+
+"Ah, I wish I could think so; it is the sweetest countenance!"
+
+"Have you no picture of her?"
+
+"None; she would never consent to sit."
+
+"Your father was a Cameron; I have known some of that name."
+
+"No relation of ours: my mother says we have none living."
+
+"And have we no chance of seeing Lady Vargrave in B-----shire?"
+
+"She never leaves home; but I hope to return soon to Brook-Green."
+
+Maltravers sighed, and the conversation took a new turn.
+
+"I have to thank you for the books you so kindly sent; I ought to have
+returned them ere this," said Evelyn.
+
+"I have no use for them.  Poetry has lost its charm for me,--especially
+that species of poetry which unites with the method and symmetry
+something of the coldness of Art.  How did you like Alfieri?"
+
+"His language is a kind of Spartan French," answered Evelyn, in one of
+those happy expressions which every now and then showed the quickness of
+her natural talent.
+
+"Yes," said Maltravers, smiling, "the criticism is acute.  Poor Alfieri!
+in his wild life and his stormy passions he threw out all the redundance
+of his genius; and his poetry is but the representative of his thoughts,
+not his emotions.  Happier the man of genius who lives upon his reason,
+and wastes feeling only on his verse!"
+
+"You do not think that we _waste_ feeling upon human beings?" said
+Evelyn, with a pretty laugh.
+
+"Ask me that question when you have reached my years, and can look upon
+fields on which you have lavished your warmest hopes, your noblest
+aspirations, your tenderest affections, and see the soil all profitless
+and barren. 'Set not your heart on the things of earth,' saith the
+Preacher."
+
+Evelyn was affected by the tone, the words, and the melancholy
+countenance of the speaker.  "You, of all men, ought not to think thus,"
+said she, with a sweet eagerness; "you who have done so much to awaken
+and to soften the heart in others; you--who--" she stopped short, and
+added, more gravely.  "Ah, Mr. Maltravers, I cannot reason with you, but
+I can hope you will refute your own philosophy."
+
+"Were your wish fulfilled," answered Maltravers, almost with sternness,
+and with an expression of great pain in his compressed lips, "I should
+have to thank you for much misery."  He rose abruptly, and turned away.
+
+"How have I offended him?" thought Evelyn, sorrowfully; "I never speak
+but to wound him.  What _have_ I done?"
+
+She could have wished, in her simple kindness, to follow him, and make
+peace; but he was now in a coterie of strangers; and shortly afterwards
+he left the room, and she did not see him again for weeks.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+  NIHIL est aliud magnum quam multa minuta.*--VETUS. AUCTOR.
+
+  * "There is nothing so great as the collection of the minute."
+
+AN anxious event disturbed the smooth current of cheerful life at Merton
+Rectory.  One morning when Evelyn came down, she missed little Sophy, who
+had contrived to establish for herself the undisputed privilege of a
+stool beside Miss Cameron at breakfast.  Mrs. Merton appeared with a
+graver face than usual.  Sophy was unwell, was feverish; the scarlet
+fever had been in the neighbourhood.  Mrs. Merton was very uneasy.
+
+"It is the more unlucky, Caroline," added the mother, turning to Miss
+Merton, "because to-morrow, you know, we were to have spent a few days at
+Knaresdean to see the races.  If poor Sophy does not get better, I fear
+you and Miss Cameron must go without me.  I can send to Mrs. Hare to be
+your chaperon; she would be delighted."
+
+"Poor Sophy!" said Caroline; "I am very sorry to hear she is unwell; but
+I think Taylor would take great care of her; you surely need not stay,
+unless she is much worse."
+
+Mrs. Merton, who, tame as she seemed, was a fond and attentive mother,
+shook her head and said nothing; but Sophy was much worse before noon.
+The doctor was sent for, and pronounced it to be the scarlet fever.
+
+It was now necessary to guard against the infection.  Caroline had had
+the complaint, and she willingly shared in her mother's watch of love for
+two or three hours.  Mrs. Merton gave up the party.  Mrs. Hare (the wife
+of a rich squire in the neighbourhood) was written to, and that lady
+willingly agreed to take charge of Caroline and her friend.
+
+Sophy had been left asleep.  When Mrs. Merton returned to her bed, she
+found Evelyn quietly stationed there.  This alarmed her, for Evelyn had
+never had the scarlet fever, and had been forbidden the sick-room.  But
+poor little Sophy had waked and querulously asked for her dear Evy; and
+Evy, who had been hovering round the room, heard the inquiry from the
+garrulous nurse, and come in she would; and the child gazed at her so
+beseechingly, when Mrs. Merton entered, and said so piteously, "Don't
+take Evy away," that Evelyn stoutly declared that she was not the least
+afraid of infection, and stay she must.  Nay, her share in the nursing
+would be the more necessary since Caroline was to go to Knaresdean the
+next day.
+
+"But you go too, my dear Miss Cameron?"
+
+"Indeed I could not.  I don't care for races, I never wished to go, I
+would much sooner have stayed; and I am sure Sophy will not get well
+without me,--will you, dear?"
+
+"Oh, yes, yes; if I'm to keep you from the nice races, I should be worse
+if I thought that."
+
+"But I don't like the nice races, Sophy, as your sister Carry does; she
+must go,--they can't do without her; but nobody knows me, so I shall not
+be missed."
+
+"I can't hear of such a thing," said Mrs. Merton, with tears in her eyes;
+and Evelyn said no more then.  But the next morning Sophy was still
+worse, and the mother was too anxious and too sad to think more of
+ceremony and politeness, so Evelyn stayed.
+
+A momentary pang shot across Evelyn's breast when all was settled; but
+she suppressed the sigh which accompanied the thought that she had lost
+the only opportunity she might have for weeks of seeing Maltravers.  To
+that chance she had indeed looked forward with interest and timid
+pleasure.  The chance was lost; but why should it vex her,--what was he
+to her?
+
+Caroline's heart smote her, as she came into the room in her lilac bonnet
+and new dress; and little Sophy, turning on her eyes which, though
+languid, still expressed a child's pleasure at the sight of finery,
+exclaimed, "How nice and pretty you look, Carry!  Do take Evy with
+you,--Evy looks pretty too!"
+
+Caroline kissed the child in silence, and paused irresolute; glanced at
+her dress, and then at Evelyn, who smiled on her without a thought of
+envy; and she had half a mind to stay too, when her mother entered with a
+letter from Lord Vargrave.  It was short: he should be at the Knaresdean
+races, hoped to meet them there, and accompany them home.  This
+information re-decided Caroline, while it rewarded Evelyn.  In a few
+minutes more, Mrs. Hare arrived; and Caroline, glad to escape, perhaps,
+her own compunction, hurried into the carriage, with a hasty "God bless
+you all!  Don't fret--I'm sure she will be well to-morrow; and mind,
+Evelyn, you don't catch the fever!"  Mr. Merton looked grave and sighed,
+as he handed her into the carriage; but when, seated there, she turned
+round and kissed her hand at him, she looked so handsome and
+distinguished, that a sentiment of paternal pride smoothed down his
+vexation at her want of feeling.  He himself gave up the visit; but a
+little time after, when Sophy fell into a tranquil sleep, he thought he
+might venture to canter across the country to the race-ground, and return
+to dinner.
+
+
+
+Days--nay, a whole week passed, the races were over, but Caroline had not
+returned.  Meanwhile, Sophy's fever left her; she could quit her bed, her
+room; she could come downstairs now, and the family was happy.  It is
+astonishing how the least ailment in those little things stops the wheels
+of domestic life!  Evelyn fortunately had not caught the fever: she was
+pale, and somewhat reduced by fatigue and confinement; but she was amply
+repaid by the mother's swimming look of quiet gratitude, the father's
+pressure of the hand, Sophy's recovery, and her own good heart.  They had
+heard twice from Caroline, putting off her return: Lady Raby was so kind,
+she could not get away till the party broke up; she was so glad to hear
+such an account of Sophy.
+
+Lord Vargrave had not yet arrived at the rectory to stay; but he had
+twice ridden over, and remained there some hours.  He exerted himself to
+the utmost to please Evelyn; and she--who, deceived by his manners, and
+influenced by the recollections of long and familiar acquaintance, was
+blinded to his real character--reproached herself more bitterly than ever
+for her repugnance to his suit and her ungrateful hesitation to obey the
+wishes of her stepfather.
+
+To the Mertons, Lumley spoke with good-natured praise of Caroline; she
+was so much admired; she was the beauty at Knaresdean.  A certain young
+friend of his, Lord Doltimore, was evidently smitten.  The parents
+thought much over the ideas conjured up by that last sentence.
+
+One morning, the garrulous Mrs. Hare, the gossip of the neighbourhood,
+called at the rectory; she had returned, two days before, from
+Knaresdean; and she, too, had her tale to tell of Caroline's conquests.
+
+"I assure you, my dear Mrs. Merton, if we had not all known that his
+heart was pre-occupied, we should have thought that Lord Vargrave was her
+warmest admirer.  Most charming man, Lord Vargrave! but as for Lord
+Doltimore, it was quite a flirtation.  Excuse _me_: no scandal, you know,
+ha, ha! a fine young man, but stiff and reserved,--not the fascination of
+Lord Vargrave."
+
+"Does Lord Raby return to town, or is he now at Knaresdean for the
+autumn?"
+
+"He goes on Friday, I believe: very few of the guests are left now.  Lady
+A. and Lord B., and Lord Vargrave and your daughter, and Mr. Legard and
+Lord Doltimore, and Mrs. and the Misses Cipher; all the rest went the
+same day I did."
+
+"Indeed!" said Mrs. Merton, in some surprise.
+
+"Ah, I read your thoughts: you wonder that Miss Caroline has not come
+back,--is not that it?  But perhaps Lord Doltimore--ha, ha!--no scandal
+now--do excuse _me_!"
+
+"Was Mr. Maltravers at Knaresdean?" asked Mrs. Merton, anxious to change
+the subject, and unprepared with any other question.  Evelyn was cutting
+out a paper horse for Sophy, who--all her high spirits flown--was lying
+on the sofa, and wistfully following her fairy fingers.  "Naughty Evy,
+you have cut off the horse's head!"
+
+"Mr. Maltravers?  No, I think not; no, he was not there.  Lord Raby asked
+him pointedly to come, and was, I know, much disappointed that he did
+not.  But _a propos_ of Mr. Maltravers: I met him not a quarter of an
+hour ago, this morning, as I was coming to you.  You know we have leave
+to come through his park, and as I was in the park at the time, I stopped
+the carriage to speak to him.  I told him that I was coming here, and
+that you had had the scarlet fever in the house, which was the reason you
+had not gone to the races; and he turned quite pale, and seemed so
+alarmed.  I said we were all afraid that Miss Cameron should catch it;
+and, excuse me--ah, ah!--no scandal, I hope--but--"
+
+"Mr. Maltravers," said the butler, throwing open the door.  Maltravers
+entered with a quick and even a hurried step.  He stopped short when he
+saw Evelyn; and his whole countenance was instantly lightened up by a
+joyous expression, which as suddenly died away.
+
+"This is kind, indeed," said Mrs. Merton; "it is so long since we have
+seen you."
+
+"I have been very much occupied," muttered Maltravers, almost inaudibly,
+and seated himself next Evelyn.  "I only just heard--that--that you had
+sickness in the house.  Miss Cameron, you look pale--you--you have not
+suffered, I hope?"
+
+"No, I am quite well," said Evelyn, with a smile; and she felt happy that
+her friend was kind to her once more.
+
+"It's only me, Mr. Ernest," said Sophy; "you have forgot me."
+
+Maltravers hastened to vindicate himself from the charge, and Sophy and
+he were soon made excellent friends again.  Mrs. Hare, whom surprise at
+this sudden meeting had hitherto silenced, and who longed to shape into
+elegant periphrasis the common adage, "Talk of," etc., now once more
+opened her budget.  She tattled on, first to one, then to the other, then
+to all, till she had tattled herself out of breath; and then the orthodox
+half-hour was expired, and the bell was rung, and the carriage ordered,
+and Mrs. Hare rose to depart.
+
+"Do just come to the door, Mrs. Merton," said she, "and look at my
+pony-phaeton, it is so pretty; Lady Raby admires it so much; you ought to
+have just such another."  As she spoke, she favoured Mrs. Merton with a
+significant glance, that said, as plainly as glance could say, "I have
+something to communicate."  Mrs. Merton took the hint, and followed the
+good lady out of the room.
+
+"Do you know, my dear Mrs. Merton," said Mrs. Hare, in a whisper, when
+they were safe in the billiard-room, that interposed between the
+apartment they had left and the hall; "do you know whether Lord Vargrave
+and Mr. Maltravers are very good friends?"
+
+"No, indeed; why do you ask?"
+
+"Oh, because when I was speaking to Lord Vargrave about him, he shook his
+head; and really I don't remember what his lordship said, but he seemed
+to speak as if there was a little soreness.  And then he inquired very
+anxiously if Mr. Maltravers was much at the rectory; and looked
+discomposed when he found you were such near neighbours.  You'll excuse
+me, you know--ha, ha! but we're such old friends!--and if Lord Vargrave
+is coming to stay here, it might be unpleasant to meet--you'll excuse
+_me_.  I took the liberty to tell him he need not be jealous of Mr.
+Maltravers--ha, ha!--not a marrying man at all.  But I did think Miss
+Caroline was the attraction--you'll excuse me--no scandal--ha, ha!  But,
+after all, Lord Doltimore must be the man.  Well, good morning, I thought
+I'd just give you this hint.  Is not the phaeton pretty?  Kind
+compliments to Mr. Merton."
+
+And the lady drove off.
+
+During this confabulation, Maltravers and Evelyn were left alone with
+Sophy.  Maltravers had continued to lean over the child, and appeared
+listening to her prattle; while Evelyn, having risen to shake hands with
+Mrs. Hare, did not reseat herself, but went to the window, and busied
+herself with a flower-stand in the recess.
+
+"Oh, very fine, Mr. Ernest," said Sophy (always pronouncing that proper
+name as if it ended in _th_), "you care very much for us to stay away so
+long,--don't he, Evy?  I've a great mind not to speak to you, sir, that I
+have!"
+
+"That would be too heavy a punishment, Miss Sophy, only, luckily, it
+would punish yourself; you could not live without talking--talk--talk
+--talk!"
+
+"But I might never have talked more, Mr. Ernest, if Mamma and pretty Evy
+had not been so kind to me;" and the child shook her head mournfully, as
+if she had _pitie de soi-meme_.  "But you won't stay away so long again,
+will you?  Sophy play to-morrow; come to-morrow, and swing Sophy; no nice
+swinging since you've been gone."
+
+While Sophy spoke Evelyn turned half round, as if to hear Maltravers
+answer; he hesitated, and Evelyn spoke.
+
+"You must not tease Mr. Maltravers so; Mr. Maltravers has too much to do
+to come to us."
+
+Now this was a very pettish speech in Evelyn, and her cheek glowed while
+she spoke; but an arch, provoking smile was on her lips.
+
+"It can be a privation only to me, Miss Cameron," said Maltravers,
+rising, and attempting in vain to resist the impulse that drew him
+towards the window.  The reproach in her tone and words at once pained
+and delighted him; and then this scene, the suffering child, brought back
+to him his first interview with Evelyn herself.  He forgot, for the
+moment, the lapse of time, the new ties she had formed, his own
+resolutions.
+
+"That is a bad compliment to us," answered Evelyn, ingenuously; "do you
+think we are so little worthy your society as not to value it?  But,
+perhaps" (she added, sinking her voice) "perhaps you have been
+offended--perhaps I--I--said--something that--that hurt you!"
+
+"You!" repeated Maltravers, with emotion.
+
+Sophy, who had been attentively listening, here put in, "Shake hands and
+make it up with Evy--you've been quarrelling, naughty Ernest!"
+
+Evelyn laughed, and tossed back her sunny ringlets.  "I think Sophy is
+right," said she, with enchanting simplicity; "let us make it up," and
+she held out her hand to Maltravers.
+
+Maltravers pressed the fair hand to his lips.  "Alas!" said he, affected
+with various feelings which gave a tremor to his deep voice, "your only
+fault is that your society makes me discontented with my solitary home;
+and as solitude must be my fate in life, I seek to inure myself to it
+betimes."
+
+Here--whether opportunely or not, it is for the reader to decide--Mrs.
+Merton returned to the room.
+
+She apologized for her absence, talked of Mrs. Hare and the little Master
+Hares,--fine boys, but noisy; and then she asked Maltravers if he had
+seen Lord Vargrave since his lordship had been in the county.  Maltravers
+replied, with coldness, that he had not had that honour: that Vargrave
+had called on him in his way from the rectory the other day, but that he
+was from home, and that he had not seen him for some years.
+
+"He is a person of most prepossessing manners," said Mrs. Merton.
+
+"Certainly,--most prepossessing."
+
+"And very clever."
+
+"He has great talents."
+
+"He seems most amiable."
+
+Maltravers bowed, and glanced towards Evelyn, whose face, however, was
+turned from him.
+
+The turn the conversation had taken was painful to the visitor, and he
+rose to depart.
+
+"Perhaps," said Mrs. Merton, "you will meet Lord Vargrave at dinner
+to-morrow; he will stay with us a few days,--as long as he can be
+spared."
+
+Maltravers meet Lord Vargrave! the happy Vargrave, the betrothed to
+Evelyn!  Maltravers witness the familiar rights, the enchanting
+privileges, accorded to another! and that other one whom he could not
+believe worthy of Evelyn!  He writhed at the picture the invitation
+conjured up.
+
+"You are very kind, my dear Mrs. Merton, but I expect a visitor at
+Burleigh,--an old and dear friend, Mr. Cleveland."
+
+"Mr. Cleveland!--we shall be delighted to see him too.  We knew him many
+years ago, during your minority, when he used to visit Burleigh two or
+three times a year."
+
+"He is changed since then; he is often an invalid.  I fear I cannot
+answer for him; but he will call as soon as he arrives, and apologize for
+himself."
+
+Maltravers then hastily took his departure.  He would not trust himself
+to do more than bow distantly to Evelyn; she looked at him reproachfully.
+So, then, it was really premeditated and resolved upon--his absence from
+the rectory; and why?  She was grieved, she was offended--but more
+grieved than offended,--perhaps because esteem, interest, admiration, are
+more tolerant and charitable than love.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+  _Arethusa_.  'Tis well, my lord, your courting of ladies.
+
+    .  .  .  .  .  .
+
+  _Claremont_.  Sure this lady has a good turn done her against
+   her will.
+
+  PHILASTER.
+
+In the breakfast-room at Knaresdean, the same day, and almost at the same
+hour, in which occurred the scene and conversation at the rectory
+recorded in our last chapter, sat Lord Vargrave and Caroline alone.  The
+party had dispersed, as was usual, at noon.  They heard at a distance the
+sounds of the billiard-balls.  Lord Doltimore was playing with Colonel
+Legard, one of the best players in Europe, but who, fortunately for
+Doltimore, had of late made it a rule never to play for money.  Mrs. and
+the Misses Cipher, and most of the guests, were in the billiard-room
+looking on.  Lady Raby was writing letters, and Lord Raby riding over his
+home farm.  Caroline and Lumley had been for some time in close and
+earnest conversation.  Miss Merton was seated in a large armchair, much
+moved, with her handkerchief to her eyes.  Lord Vargrave, with his back
+to the chimney-piece, was bending down and speaking in a very low voice,
+while his quick eye glanced, ever and anon, from the lady's countenance
+to the windows, to the doors, to be prepared against any interruption.
+
+"No, my dear friend," said he, "believe me that I am sincere.  My
+feelings for you are, indeed, such as no words can paint."
+
+"Then why--"
+
+"Why wish you wedded to another; why wed another myself?  Caroline, I
+have often before explained to you that we are in this the victims of an
+inevitable fate.  It is absolutely necessary that I should wed Miss
+Cameron.  I never deceived you from the first.  I should have loved
+her,--my heart would have accompanied my hand, but for your too seductive
+beauty, your superior mind!--yes, Caroline, your mind attracted me more
+than your beauty.  Your mind seemed kindred to my own,--inspired with the
+proper and wise ambition which regards the fools of the world as puppets,
+as counters, as chessmen.  For myself, a very angel from heaven could not
+make me give up the great game of life, yield to my enemies, slip from
+the ladder, unravel the web I have woven!  Share my heart, my friendship,
+my schemes! this is the true and dignified affection that should exist
+between minds like ours; all the rest is the prejudice of children."
+
+"Vargrave, I am ambitious, worldly: I own it; but I could give up all for
+you!"
+
+"You think so, for you do not know the sacrifice.  You see me now
+apparently rich, in power, courted; and this fate you are willing to
+share; and this fate you _should_ share, were it the real one I could
+bestow on you.  But reverse the medal.  Deprived of office, fortune gone,
+debts pressing, destitution notorious, the ridicule of embarrassments,
+the disrepute attached to poverty and defeated ambition, an exile in some
+foreign town on the poor pension to which alone I should be entitled, a
+mendicant on the public purse; and that, too, so eaten into by demands
+and debts, that there is not a grocer in the next market-town who would
+envy the income of the retired minister!  Retire, fallen, despised, in
+the prime of life, in the zenith of my hopes!  Suppose that I could bear
+this for myself, could I bear it for you?  _You_, born to be the ornament
+of courts!  And you could you see me thus--life embittered, career
+lost--and feel, generous as you are, that your love had entailed on me,
+on us both, on our children, this miserable lot! Impossible, Caroline! we
+are too wise for such romance.  It is not because we love too little, but
+because our love is worthy of each other, that we disdain to make love a
+curse!  We cannot wrestle against the world, but we may shake hands with
+it, and worm the miser out of its treasures.  My heart must be ever
+yours; my hand must be Miss Cameron's.  Money I must have,--my whole
+career depends on it.  It is literally with me the highwayman's
+choice,--money or life."  Vargrave paused, and took Caroline's hand.
+
+"I cannot reason with you," said she; "you know the strange empire you
+have obtained over me, and, certainly, in spite of all that has passed
+(and Caroline turned pale) I could bear anything rather than that you
+should hereafter reproach me for selfish disregard of your
+interests,--your just ambition."
+
+"My noble friend!  I do not say that I shall not feel a deep and sharp
+pang at seeing you wed another; but I shall be consoled by the thought
+that I have assisted to procure for you a station worthier of your merits
+than that which I can offer.  Lord Doltimore is rich,--you will teach him
+to employ his riches well; he is weak,--your intellect will govern him;
+he is in love,--your beauty will suffice to preserve his regard.  Ah, we
+shall be dear friends to the last!"
+
+More--but to the same effect--did this able and crafty villain continue
+to address to Caroline, whom he alternately soothed, irritated,
+flattered, and revolted.  Love him she certainly did, as far as love in
+her could extend; but perhaps his rank, his reputation, had served to win
+her affection; and; not knowing his embarrassments, she had encouraged a
+worldly hope that if Evelyn should reject his hand it might be offered to
+her.  Under this impression she had trifled, she had coquetted, she had
+played with the serpent till it had coiled around her; and she could not
+escape its fascination and its folds.  She was sincere,--she could have
+resigned much for Lord Vargrave; but his picture startled and appalled
+her.  For difficulties in a palace she might be prepared; perhaps even
+for some privations in a _cottage ornee_,--but certainly not for penury
+in a lodging-house!  She listened by degrees with more attention to
+Vargrave's description of the power and homage that would be hers if she
+could secure Lord Doltimore; she listened, and was in part consoled.  But
+the thought of Evelyn again crossed her; and perhaps with natural
+jealousy was mingled some compunction at the fate to which Lord Vargrave
+thus coldly appeared to condemn one so lovely and so innocent.
+
+"But do not, Vargrave," she said, "do not be too sanguine; Evelyn may
+reject you.  She does not see you with my eyes; it is only a sense of
+honour that, as yet, forbids her openly to refuse the fulfilment of an
+engagement from which I know that she shrinks; and if she does refuse,
+and you be free,--and I another's--"
+
+"Even in that case," interrupted Vargrave, "I must turn to the Golden
+Idol; my rank and name must buy me an heiress, if not so endowed as
+Evelyn, wealthy enough, at least, to take from my wheels the drag-chain
+of disreputable debt.  But Evelyn--I will not doubt of her! her heart is
+still unoccupied!"
+
+"True; as yet her affections are not engaged."
+
+"And this Maltravers--she is romantic, I fancy--did he seem captivated by
+her beauty or her fortune?"
+
+"No, indeed, I think not; he has been very little with us of late.  He
+talked to her more as to a child,--there is a disparity of years."
+
+"I am many years older than Maltravers," muttered Vargrave, moodily.
+
+"You--but your _manner_ is livelier, and, therefore, younger!"
+
+"Fair flatterer!  Maltravers does not love me: I fear his report of my
+character--"
+
+"I never heard him speak of you, Vargrave; and I will do Evelyn the
+justice to say, that precisely as she does not love she esteems and
+respects you."
+
+"Esteems! respects! these are the feelings for a prudent Hymen," said
+Vargrave, with a smile.  "But, hark! I don't hear the billiard-balls;
+they may find us here,--we had better separate."
+
+
+
+Lord Vargrave lounged into the billiard-room.  The young men had just
+finished playing, and were about to visit Thunderer, who had won the
+race, and was now the property of Lord Doltimore.
+
+Vargrave accompanied them to the stables; and after concealing his
+ignorance of horseflesh as well as he could, beneath a profusion of
+compliments on fore-hand, hind-quarters, breeding, bone, substance, and
+famous points, he contrived to draw Doltimore into the courtyard, while
+Colonel Legard remained in converse high with the head groom.
+
+"Doltimore, I leave Knaresdean to-morrow; you go to London, I suppose?
+Will you take a little packet for me to the Home Office?"
+
+"Certainly, when I go; but I think of staying a few days with Legard's
+uncle--the old admiral; he has a hunting-box in the neighbourhood, and
+has asked us both over."
+
+"Oh, I can detect the attraction; but certainly it is a fair one, the
+handsomest girl in the county; pity she has no money."
+
+"I don't care for money," said Lord Doltimore, colouring, and settling
+his chin in his neckcloth; "but you are mistaken; I have no thoughts that
+way.  Miss Merton is a very fine girl, but I doubt much if she cares for
+me.  I would never marry any woman who was not very much in love with
+me."  And Lord Doltimore laughed rather foolishly.
+
+"You are more modest than clear-sighted," said Vargrave, smiling; "but
+mark my words,--I predict that the beauty of next season will be a
+certain Caroline Lady Doltimore."
+
+The conversation dropped.
+
+
+
+"I think that will be settled well," said Vargrave to himself, as he was
+dressing for dinner.  "Caroline will manage Doltimore, and I shall manage
+one vote in the Lords and three in the Commons.  I have already talked
+him into proper politics; a trifle all this, to be sure: but I had
+nothing else to amuse me, and one must never lose an occasion.  Besides,
+Doltimore is rich, and rich friends are always useful.  I have Caroline,
+too, in my power, and she may be of service with respect to this Evelyn,
+who, instead of loving, I half hate: she has crossed my path, robbed me
+of wealth; and now, if she does refuse me--but no, I will not think of
+_that_!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+  OUT of our reach the gods have laid
+    Of time to come the event;
+  And laugh to see the fools afraid
+    Of what the knaves invent.--SEDLEY, _from Lycophron_.
+
+THE next day Caroline returned to the rectory in Lady Raby's carriage;
+and two hours after her arrival came Lord Vargrave.  Mr. Merton had
+secured the principal persons in the neighbourhood to meet a guest so
+distinguished, and Lord Vargrave, bent on shining in the eyes of Evelyn,
+charmed all with his affability and wit.  Evelyn, he thought, seemed pale
+and dispirited.  He pertinaciously devoted himself to her all the
+evening.  Her ripening understanding was better able than heretofore to
+appreciate his abilities; yet, inwardly, she drew comparisons between his
+conversation and that of Maltravers, not to the advantage of the former.
+There was much that amused but nothing that interested in Lord Vargrave's
+fluent ease.  When he attempted sentiment, the vein was hard and hollow;
+he was only at home on worldly topics.  Caroline's spirits were, as usual
+in society, high, but her laugh seemed forced, and her eye absent.
+
+The next day, after breakfast, Lord Vargrave walked alone to Burleigh.
+As he crossed the copse that bordered the park, a large Persian greyhound
+sprang towards him, barking loudly; and, lifting his eyes, he perceived
+the form of a man walking slowly along one of the paths that intersected
+the wood.  He recognized Maltravers.  They had not till then encountered
+since their meeting a few weeks before Florence's death; and a pang of
+conscience came across the schemer's cold heart.  Years rolled away from
+the past; he recalled the young, generous, ardent man, whom, ere the
+character or career of either had been developed, he had called his
+friend.  He remembered their wild adventures and gay follies, in climes
+where they had been all in all to each other; and the beardless boy,
+whose heart and purse were ever open to him, and to whose very errors of
+youth and inexperienced passion he, the elder and the wiser, had led and
+tempted, rose before him in contrast to the grave and melancholy air of
+the battled and solitary man, who now slowly approached him,--the man
+whose proud career he had served to thwart, whose heart his schemes had
+prematurely soured, whose best years had been consumed in exile,--a
+sacrifice to the grave which a selfish and dishonourable villany had
+prepared!  Cesarini, the inmate of a mad-house, Florence in her
+shroud,--such were the visions the sight of Maltravers conjured up.  And
+to the soul which the unwonted and momentary remorse awakened, a boding
+voice whispered, "And thinkest thou that thy schemes shall prosper, and
+thy aspirations succeed?"  For the first time in his life, perhaps, the
+unimaginative Vargrave felt the mystery of a presentiment of warning and
+of evil.
+
+The two men met, and with an emotion which seemed that of honest and real
+feeling, Lumley silently held out his hand, and half turned away his
+head.
+
+"Lord Vargrave!" said Maltravers, with an equal agitation, "it is long
+since we have encountered."
+
+"Long,--very long," answered Lumley, striving hard to regain his
+self-possession; "years have changed us both; but I trust it has still
+left in you, as it has in me, the remembrance of our old friendship."
+
+Maltravers was silent, and Lord Vargrave continued,--
+
+"You do not answer me, Maltravers.  Can political differences, opposite
+pursuits, or the mere lapse of time, have sufficed to create an
+irrevocable gulf between us?  Why may we not be friends again?"
+
+"Friends!" echoed Maltravers; "at our age that word is not so lightly
+spoken, that tie is not so unthinkingly formed, as when we were younger
+men."
+
+"But may not the old tie be renewed?"
+
+"Our ways in life are different; and were I to scan your motives and
+career with the scrutinizing eyes of friendship, it might only serve to
+separate us yet more.  I am sick of the great juggle of ambition, and I
+have no sympathy left for those who creep into the pint-bottle, or
+swallow the naked sword."
+
+"If you despise the exhibition, why, then, let us laugh at it together,
+for I am as cynical as yourself."
+
+"Ah," said Maltravers with a smile, half mournful, half bitter, "but are
+you not one of the Impostors?"
+
+"Who ought better to judge of the Eleusiniana than one of the Initiated?
+But seriously, why on earth should political differences part private
+friendship?  Thank Heaven! such has never been my maxim."
+
+"If the differences be the result of honest convictions on either
+side,--no; but are you honest, Lumley?"
+
+"Faith, I have got into the habit of thinking so; and habit's a second
+nature.  However, I dare say we shall yet meet in the arena, so I must
+not betray my weak points.  How is it, Maltravers, that they see so
+little of you at the rectory?  You are a great favourite there.  Have you
+any living that Charley Merton could hold with his own?  You shake your
+head.  And what think you of Miss Cameron, my intended?"
+
+"You speak lightly.  Perhaps you--"
+
+"Feel deeply,--you were going to say.  I do.  In the hand of my ward,
+Evelyn Cameron, I trust to obtain at once the domestic happiness to which
+I have as yet been a stranger, and the wealth necessary to my career."
+
+Lord Vargrave continued, after a short pause, "Though my avocations have
+separated us so much, I have no doubt of her steady affection,--and, I
+may add, of her sense of honour.  She alone can repair to me what else
+had been injustice in my uncle."  He then proceeded to repeat the moral
+obligations which the late lord had imposed on Evelyn,--obligations that
+he greatly magnified.  Maltravers listened attentively, and said little.
+
+"And these obligations being fairly considered," added Vargrave, with a
+smile, "I think, even had I rivals, that they could scarcely in honour
+attempt to break an existing engagement."
+
+"Not while the engagement lasted," answered Maltravers; "not till one or
+the other had declined to fulfil it, and therefore left both free: but I
+trust it will be an alliance in which all but affection will be
+forgotten; that of honour alone would be but a harsh tie."
+
+"Assuredly," said Vargrave; and, as if satisfied with what had passed, he
+turned the conversation,--praised Burleigh, spoke of county matters,
+resumed his habitual gayety, though it was somewhat subdued, and
+promising to call again soon, he at last took his leave.
+
+Maltravers pursued his solitary rambles, and his commune with himself was
+stern and searching.
+
+"And so," thought he, "this prize is reserved for Vargrave!  Why should I
+deem him unworthy of the treasure?  May he not be worthier, at all
+events, than this soured temper and erring heart?  And he is assured too
+of her affection!  Why this jealous pang?  Why can the fountain within
+never be exhausted?  Why, through so many scenes and sufferings, have I
+still retained the vain madness of my youth,--the haunting susceptibility
+to love?  This is my latest folly."
+
+
+
+BOOK IV.
+
+"A virtuous woman is man's greatest pride."--SIMONIDES.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+  ABROAD uneasy, nor content at home.
+    .  .  .  .  .  .
+  And Wisdom shows the ill without the cure.
+
+  HAMMOND: _Elegies_.
+
+TWO or three days after the interview between Lord Vargrave and
+Maltravers, the solitude of Burleigh was relieved by the arrival of Mr.
+Cleveland.  The good old gentleman, when free from attacks of the gout,
+which were now somewhat more frequent than formerly, was the same
+cheerful and intelligent person as ever.  Amiable, urbane, accomplished,
+and benevolent, there was just enough worldliness in Cleveland's nature
+to make his views sensible as far as they went, but to bound their scope.
+Everything he said was so rational; and yet, to an imaginative person,
+his conversation was unsatisfactory, and his philosophy somewhat
+chilling.
+
+"I cannot say how pleased and surprised I am at your care of the fine old
+place," said he to Maltravers, as, leaning on his cane and his
+_ci-devant_ pupil's arm, he loitered observantly through the grounds; "I
+see everywhere the presence of the Master."
+
+And certainly the praise was deserved.  The gardens were now in order,
+the dilapidated fences were repaired, the weeds no longer encumbered the
+walks.  Nature was just assisted and relieved by Art, without being
+oppressed by too officious a service from her handmaid.  In the house
+itself some suitable and appropriate repairs and decorations--with such
+articles of furniture as combined modern comfort with the ancient and
+picturesque shapes of a former fashion--had redeemed the mansion from all
+appearance of dreariness and neglect; while still was left to its quaint
+halls and chambers the character which belonged to their architecture and
+associations.  It was surprising how much a little exercise of simple
+taste had effected.
+
+"I am glad you approve what I have done," said Maltravers.  "I know not
+how it was, but the desolation of the place when I returned to it
+reproached me.  We contract friendship with places as with human beings,
+and fancy they have claims upon us; at least, that is my weakness."
+
+"And an amiable one it is, too,--I share it.  As for me, I look upon
+Temple Grove as a fond husband upon a fair wife.  I am always anxious to
+adorn it, and as proud of its beauty as if it could understand and thank
+me for my partial admiration.  When I leave you I intend going to Paris,
+for the purpose of attending a sale of the pictures and effects of M. de
+-----. These auctions are to me what a jeweller's shop is to a lover; but
+then, Ernest, I am an old bachelor."
+
+"And I, too, am an Arcadian," said Maltravers, with a smile.
+
+"Ah, but you are not too old for repentance.  Burleigh now requires
+nothing but a mistress."
+
+"Perhaps it may soon receive that addition.  I am yet undecided whether I
+shall sell it."
+
+"Sell it! sell Burleigh!--the last memorial of your mother's ancestry!
+the classic retreat of the graceful Digbys!  Sell Burleigh!"
+
+"I had almost resolved to do so when I came hither; then I forswore the
+intention: now again I sometimes sorrowfully return to the idea."
+
+"And in Heaven's name, why?"
+
+"My old restlessness returns.  Busy myself as I will here, I find the
+range of action monotonous and confined.  I began too soon to draw around
+me the large circumference of literature and action; and the small
+provincial sphere seems to me a sad going back in life.  Perhaps I should
+not feel this, were my home less lonely; but as it is--no, the wanderer's
+ban is on me, and I again turn towards the lands of excitement and
+adventure."
+
+"I understand this, Ernest; but why is your home so solitary?  You are
+still at the age in which wise and congenial unions are the most
+frequently formed; your temper is domestic; your easy fortune and sobered
+ambition allow you to choose without reference to worldly considerations.
+Look round the world, and mix with the world again, and give Burleigh the
+mistress it requires."
+
+Maltravers shook his head, and sighed.
+
+"I do not say," continued Cleveland, wrapped in the glowing interest of
+the theme, "that you should marry a mere girl, but an amiable woman, who,
+like yourself, has seen something of life, and knows how to reckon on its
+cares, and to be contented with its enjoyments."
+
+"You have said enough," said Maltravers, impatiently; "an experienced
+woman of the world, whose freshness of hope and heart is gone!  What a
+picture!  No, to me there is something inexpressibly beautiful in
+innocence and youth.  But you say justly,--my years are not those that
+would make a union with youth desirable or well suited."
+
+"I do _not_ say that," said Cleveland, taking a pinch of snuff; "but you
+should avoid great disparity of age,--not for the sake of that disparity
+itself, but because with it is involved discord of temper, pursuits.  A
+_very_ young woman, new to the world, will not be contented with home
+alone; you are at once too gentle to curb her wishes, and a little too
+stern and reserved--pardon me for saying so--to be quite congenial to
+very early and sanguine youth."
+
+"It is true," said Maltravers, with a tone of voice that showed he was
+struck with the remark; "but how have we fallen on this subject? let us
+change it.  I have no idea of marriage,--the gloomy reminiscence of
+Florence Lascelles chains me to the past."
+
+"Poor Florence, she might once have suited you; but now you are older,
+and would require a calmer and more malleable temper."
+
+"Peace, I implore you!"
+
+The conversation was changed; and at noon Mr. Merton, who had heard of
+Cleveland's arrival, called at Burleigh to renew an old acquaintance.  He
+invited them to pass the evening at the rectory; and Cleveland, hearing
+that whist was a regular amusement, accepted the invitation for his host
+and himself.  But when the evening came, Maltravers pleaded
+indisposition, and Cleveland was obliged to go alone.
+
+When the old gentleman returned about midnight, he found Maltravers
+awaiting him in the library; and Cleveland, having won fourteen points,
+was in a very gay, conversable humour.
+
+"You perverse hermit!" said he, "talk of solitude, indeed, with so
+pleasant a family a hundred yards distant!  You deserve to be
+solitary,--I have no patience with you.  They complain bitterly of your
+desertion, and say you were, at first, the _enfant de la maison_."
+
+"So you like the Mertons?  The clergyman is sensible, but commonplace."
+
+"A very agreeable man, despite your cynical definition, and plays a very
+fair rubber.  But Vargrave is a first-rate player."
+
+"Vargrave is there still?"
+
+"Yes, he breakfasts with us to-morrow,--he invited himself."
+
+"Humph!"
+
+"He played one rubber; the rest of the evening he devoted himself to the
+prettiest girl I ever saw,--Miss Cameron.  What a sweet face! so modest,
+yet so intelligent!  I talked with her a good deal during the deals in
+which I cut out.  I almost lost my heart to her."
+
+"So Lord Vargrave devoted himself to Miss Cameron?"
+
+"To be sure,--you know they are to be married soon.  Merton told me so.
+She is very rich.  He is the luckiest fellow imaginable, that Vargrave!
+But he is much too old for her: she seems to think so too.  I can't
+explain why I think it; but by her pretty reserved manner I saw that she
+tried to keep the gay minister at a distance: but it would not do.  Now,
+if you were ten years younger, or Miss Cameron ten years older, you might
+have had some chance of cutting out your old friend."
+
+"So you think I also am too old for a lover?"
+
+"For a lover of a girl of seventeen, certainly.  You seem touchy on the
+score of age, Ernest."
+
+"Not I;" and Maltravers laughed.
+
+"No?  There was a young gentleman present, who, I think, Vargrave might
+really find a dangerous rival,--a Colonel Legard,--one of the handsomest
+men I ever saw in my life; just the style to turn a romantic young lady's
+head; a mixture of the wild and the thoroughbred; black curls, superb
+eyes, and the softest manners in the world.  But, to be sure, he has
+lived all his life in the best society.  Not so his friend, Lord
+Doltimore, who has a little too much of the green-room lounge and French
+_cafe_ manner for my taste."
+
+"Doltimore, Legard, names new to me; I never met them at the rectory."
+
+"Possibly they are staying at Admiral Legard's, in the neighbourhood.
+Miss Merton made their acquaintance at Knaresdean.  A good old lady--the
+most perfect Mrs. Grundy one would wish to meet with--who owns the
+monosyllabic appellation of Hare (and who, being my partner, trumped my
+king!) assured me that Lord Doltimore was desperately in love with
+Caroline Merton.  By the way, now, there is a young lady of a proper age
+for you,--handsome and clever, too."
+
+"You talk of antidotes to matrimony; and so Miss Cameron--"
+
+"Oh, no more of Miss Cameron now, or I shall sit up all night; she has
+half turned my head.  I can't help pitying her,--married to one so
+careless and worldly as Lord Vargrave, thrown so young into the whirl of
+London.  Poor thing! she had better have fallen in love with
+Legard,--which I dare say she will do, after all.  Well, good-night!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+  PASSION, as frequently is seen,
+  Subsiding, settles into spleen;
+  Hence, as the plague of happy life,
+  I ran away from party strife.--MATTHEW GREEN.
+
+  Here nymphs from hollow oaks relate
+  The dark decrees and will of fate.--_Ibid._
+
+ACCORDING to his engagement, Vargrave breakfasted the next morning at
+Burleigh.  Maltravers at first struggled to return his familiar
+cordiality with equal graciousness.  Condemning himself for former and
+unfounded suspicions, he wrestled against feelings which he could not or
+would not analyze, but which made Lumley an unwelcome visitor, and
+connected him with painful associations, whether of the present or the
+past.  But there were points on which the penetration of Maltravers
+served to justify his prepossessions.
+
+The conversation, chiefly sustained by Cleveland and Vargrave, fell on
+public questions; and as one was opposed to the other, Vargrave's
+exposition of views and motives had in them so much of the self-seeking
+of the professional placeman, that they might well have offended any man
+tinged by the lofty mania of political Quixotism.  It was with a strange
+mixture of feelings that Maltravers listened: at one moment he proudly
+congratulated himself on having quitted a career where such opinions
+seemed so well to prosper: at another, his better and juster sentiments
+awoke the long-dormant combative faculty, and he almost longed for the
+turbulent but sublime arena, in which truths are vindicated and mankind
+advanced.
+
+The interview did not serve for that renewal of intimacy which Vargrave
+appeared to seek, and Maltravers rejoiced when the placeman took his
+departure.
+
+Lumley, who was about to pay a morning visit to Lord Doltimore, had
+borrowed Mr. Merton's stanhope, as being better adapted than any
+statelier vehicle to get rapidly through the cross-roads which led to
+Admiral Legard's house; and as he settled himself in the seat, with his
+servant by his side, he said laughingly, "I almost fancy myself naughty
+master Lumley again in this young-man-kind of two-wheeled cockle-boat:
+not dignified, but rapid, eh?"
+
+And Lumley's face, as he spoke, had in it so much of frank gayety, and
+his manner was so simple, that Maltravers could with difficulty fancy him
+the same man who, five minutes before, had been uttering sentiments that
+might have become the oldest-hearted intriguer whom the hot-bed of
+ambition ever reared.
+
+As soon as Lumley was gone, Maltravers left Cleveland alone to write
+letters (Cleveland was an exemplary and voluminous correspondent) and
+strolled with his dogs into the village.  The effect which the presence
+of Maltravers produced among his peasantry was one that seldom failed to
+refresh and soothe his more bitter and disturbed thoughts.  They had
+gradually (for the poor are quick-sighted) become sensible of his
+_justice_,--a finer quality than many that seem more amiable.  They felt
+that his real object was to make them better and happier; and they had
+learned to see that the means he adopted generally advanced the end.
+Besides, if sometimes stern, he was never capricious or unreasonable; and
+then, too, he would listen patiently and advise kindly.  They were a
+little in awe of him, but the awe only served to make them more
+industrious and orderly,--to stimulate the idle man, to reclaim the
+drunkard.  He was one of the favourers of the small-allotment
+system,--not, indeed, as panacea, but as one excellent stimulant to
+exertion and independence; and his chosen rewards for good conduct were
+in such comforts as served to awaken amongst those hitherto passive,
+dogged, and hopeless a desire to better and improve their condition.
+Somehow or other, without direct alms, the goodwife found that the little
+savings in the cracked teapot or the old stocking had greatly increased
+since the squire's return, while her husband came home from his moderate
+cups at the alehouse more sober and in better temper.  Having already
+saved something was a great reason why he should save more.  The new
+school, too, was so much better conducted than the old one; the children
+actually liked going there; and now and then there were little village
+feasts connected with the schoolroom; play and work were joint
+associations.
+
+And Maltravers looked into his cottages, and looked at the
+allotment-ground; and it was pleasant to him to say to himself, "I am not
+altogether without use in life."  But as he pursued his lonely walk, and
+the glow of self-approval died away with the scenes that called it forth,
+the cloud again settled on his brow; and again he felt that in solitude
+the passions feed upon the heart.  As he thus walked along the green
+lane, and the insect life of summer rustled audibly among the shadowy
+hedges and along the thick grass that sprang up on either side, he came
+suddenly upon a little group that arrested all his attention.
+
+It was a woman, clad in rags, bleeding, and seemingly insensible,
+supported by the overseer of the parish and a labourer.
+
+"What is the matter?" asked Maltravers.
+
+"A poor woman has been knocked down and run over by a gentleman in a gig,
+your honour," replied the overseer.  "He stopped, half an hour ago, at my
+house to tell me that she was lying on the road; and he has given me two
+sovereigns for her, your honour.  But, poor cretur! she was too heavy for
+me to carry her, and I was forced to leave her and call Tom to help me."
+
+"The gentleman might have stayed to see what were the consequences of his
+own act," muttered Maltravers, as be examined the wound in the temple,
+whence the blood flowed copiously.
+
+"He said he was in a great hurry, your honour," said the village
+official, overhearing Maltravers.  "I think it was one of the grand folks
+up at the parsonage; for I know it was Mr. Merton's bay horse,--he is a
+hot 'un!"
+
+"Does the poor woman live in the neighbourhood?  Do you know her?" asked
+Maltravers, turning from the contemplation of this new instance of
+Vargrave's selfishness of character.
+
+"No; the old body seems quite a stranger here,--a tramper, or beggar, I
+think, sir.  But it won't be a settlement if we take her in; and we can
+carry her to the Chequers, up the village, your honour."
+
+"What is the nearest house,--your own?"
+
+"Yes; but we be so busy now!"
+
+"She shall not go to your house, and be neglected; and as for the
+public-house, it is too noisy: we must move her to the Hall."
+
+"Your honour!" ejaculated the overseer, opening his eyes.
+
+"It is not very far; she is severely hurt.  Get a hurdle, lay a mattress
+on it.  Make haste, both of you; I will wait here till you return."
+
+The poor woman was carefully placed on the grass by the road-side, and
+Maltravers supported her head, while the men hastened to obey his orders.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+  ALSE from that forked hill, the boasted seat
+  Of studious Peace and mild Philosophy,
+  Indignant murmurs mote be heard to threat.--WEST.
+
+MR. CLEVELAND wanted to enrich one of his letters with a quotation from
+Ariosto, which he but imperfectly remembered.  He had seen the book he
+wished to refer to in the little study the day before; and he quitted the
+library to search for it.
+
+As he was tumbling over some volumes that lay piled on the writing-table,
+he felt a student's curiosity to discover what now constituted his host's
+favourite reading.  He was surprised to observe that the greater portion
+of the works that, by the doubled leaf and the pencilled reference,
+seemed most frequently consulted, were not of a literary nature,--they
+were chiefly scientific; and astronomy seemed the chosen science.  He
+then remembered that he had heard Maltravers speaking to a builder,
+employed on the recent repairs, on the subject of an observatory.  "This
+is very strange," thought Cleveland; "he gives up literature, the rewards
+of which are in his reach, and turns to science, at an age too late to
+discipline his mind to its austere training."
+
+Alas! Cleveland did not understand that there are times in life when
+imaginative minds seek to numb and to blunt imagination.  Still less did
+he feel that, when we perversely refuse to apply our active faculties to
+the catholic interests of the world, they turn morbidly into channels of
+research the least akin to their real genius.  By the collision of minds
+alone does each mind discover what is its proper product: left to
+ourselves, our talents become but intellectual eccentricities.
+
+Some scattered papers, in the handwriting of Maltravers, fell from one of
+the volumes.  Of these, a few were but algebraical calculations, or short
+scientific suggestions, the value of which Mr. Cleveland's studies did
+not enable him to ascertain; but in others they were wild snatches of
+mournful and impassioned verse, which showed that the old vein of poetry
+still flowed, though no longer to the daylight.  These verses Cleveland
+thought himself justified in glancing over; they seemed to portray a
+state of mind which deeply interested, and greatly saddened him.  They
+expressed, indeed, a firm determination to bear up against both the
+memory and the fear of ill; but mysterious and hinted allusions here and
+there served to denote some recent and yet existent struggle, revealed by
+the heart only to the genius.  In these partial and imperfect
+self-communings and confessions, there was the evidence of the pining
+affections, the wasted life, the desolate hearth of the lonely man.  Yet
+so calm was Maltravers himself, even to his early friend, that Cleveland
+knew not what to think of the reality of the feelings painted.  Had that
+fervid and romantic spirit been again awakened by a living object?  If
+so, where was the object found?  The dates affixed to the verses were
+most recent.  But whom had Maltravers seen?  Cleveland's thoughts turned
+to Caroline Merton, to Evelyn; but when he had spoken of both, nothing in
+the countenance, the manner, of Maltravers had betrayed emotion.  And
+once the heart of Maltravers had so readily betrayed itself!  Cleveland
+knew not how pride, years, and suffering school the features, and repress
+the outward signs of what pass within.  While thus engaged, the door of
+the study opened abruptly, and the servant announced Mr. Merton.
+
+"A thousand pardons," said the courteous rector.  "I fear we disturb you;
+but Admiral Legard and Lord Doltimore, who called on us this morning,
+were so anxious to see Burleigh, I thought I might take the liberty.  We
+have come over quite in a large party,--taken the place by storm.  Mr.
+Maltravers is out, I hear; but you will let us see the house.  My allies
+are already in the hall, examining the armour."
+
+Cleveland, ever sociable and urbane, answered suitably, and went with Mr.
+Merton into the hall, where Caroline, her little sisters, Evelyn, Lord
+Doltimore, Admiral Legard, and his nephew were assembled.
+
+"Very proud to be my host's representative and your guide," said
+Cleveland.  "Your visit, Lord Doltimore, is indeed an agreeable surprise.
+Lord Vargrave left us an hour or so since to call on you at Admiral
+Legard's: we buy our pleasure with his disappointment."
+
+"It is very unfortunate," said the admiral, a bluff, harsh-looking old
+gentleman; "but we were not aware, till we saw Mr. Merton, of the honour
+Lord Vargrave has done us.  I can't think how we missed him on the road."
+
+"My dear uncle," said Colonel Legard, in a peculiarly sweet and agreeable
+tone of voice, "you forget we came three miles round by the high road;
+and Mr. Merton says that Lord Vargrave took the short cut by Langley End.
+My uncle, Mr. Cleveland, never feels in safety upon land, unless the road
+is as wide as the British Channel, and the horses go before the wind at
+the rapid pace of two knots and a half an hour!"
+
+"I just wish I had you at sea, Mr. Jackanapes," said the admiral, looking
+grimly at his handsome nephew, while he shook his cane at him.
+
+The nephew smiled; and, falling back, conversed with Evelyn.
+
+The party were now shown over the house; and Lord Doltimore was loud in
+its praises.  It was like a chateau he had once hired in Normandy,--it
+had a French character; those old chairs were in excellent taste,--quite
+the style of Francis the First.
+
+"I know no man I respect more than Mr. Maltravers," quoth the admiral.
+"Since he has been amongst us this time, he has been a pattern to us
+country gentlemen.  He would make an excellent colleague for Sir John.
+We really must get him to stand against that young puppy who is member of
+the House of Commons only because his father is a peer, and never votes
+more than twice a session."
+
+Mr. Merton looked grave.
+
+"I wish to Heaven you could persuade him to stay amongst you," said
+Cleveland.  "He has half taken it into his head to part with Burleigh!"
+
+"Part with Burleigh!" exclaimed Evelyn, turning abruptly from the
+handsome colonel, in whose conversation she had hitherto seemed absorbed.
+
+"My very ejaculation when I heard him say so, my dear young lady."
+
+"I wish he would," said Lord Doltimore hastily, and glancing towards
+Caroline.  "I should much like to buy it.  What do you think would be the
+purchase-money?"
+
+"Don't talk so cold-bloodedly," said the admiral, letting the point of
+his cane fall with great emphasis on the floor.  "I can't bear to see old
+families deserting their old places,--quite wicked.  You buy Burleigh!
+have not you got a country seat of your own, my lord?  Go and live there,
+and take Mr. Maltravers for your model,--you could not have a better."
+
+Lord Doltimore sneered, coloured, settled his neckcloth, and turning
+round to Colonel Legard, whispered, "Legard, your good uncle is a bore."
+
+Legard looked a little offended, and made no reply.
+
+"But," said Caroline, coming to the relief of her admirer, "if Mr.
+Maltravers will sell the place, surely he could not have a better
+successor."
+
+"He sha'n't sell the place, ma'am, and that's poz!" cried the admiral.
+"The whole county shall sign a round-robin to tell him it's a shame; and
+if any one dares to buy it we'll send him to Coventry."
+
+Miss Merton laughed, but looked round the old wainscot walls with unusual
+interest; she thought it would be a fine thing to be Lady of Burleigh!
+
+"And what is that picture so carefully covered up?" said the admiral, as
+they now stood in the library.
+
+"The late Mrs. Maltravers, Ernest's mother," replied Cleveland, slowly.
+"He dislikes it to be shown--to strangers: the other is a Digby."
+
+Evelyn looked towards the veiled portrait, and thought of her first
+interview with Maltravers; but the soft voice of Colonel Legard murmured
+in her ear; and her revery was broken.
+
+Cleveland eyed the colonel, and muttered to himself, "Vargrave should
+keep a sharp look-out."
+
+They had now finished their round of the show-apartments--which indeed
+had little but their antiquity and old portraits to recommend them--and
+were in a lobby at the back of the house, communicating with a courtyard,
+two sides of which were occupied with the stables.  The sight of the
+stables reminded Caroline of the Arab horses; and at the word "horses"
+Lord Doltimore seized Legard's arm and carried him off to inspect the
+animals.  Caroline, her father, and the admiral followed.  Mr. Cleveland
+happened not to have on his walking-shoes; and the flagstones in the
+courtyard looked damp; and Mr. Cleveland, like most old bachelors, was
+prudently afraid of cold; so he excused himself, and stayed behind.  He
+was talking to Evelyn about the Digbys, and full of anecdotes about Sir
+Kenelm at the moment the rest departed so abruptly; and Evelyn was
+interested, so she insisted on keeping him company.
+
+The old gentleman was flattered; he thought it excellent breeding in Miss
+Cameron.  The children ran out to renew acquaintance with the peacock,
+who, perched on an old stirrup-stone, was sunning his gay plumage in the
+noon-day.
+
+"It is astonishing," said Cleveland, "how certain family features are
+transmitted from generation to generation!  Maltravers has still the
+forehead and eyebrows of the Digbys,--that peculiar, brooding, thoughtful
+forehead, which you observed in the picture of Sir Kenelm.  Once, too, he
+had much the same dreaming character of mind, but he has lost that, in
+some measure at least.  He has fine qualities, Miss Cameron,--I have
+known him since he was born.  I trust his career is not yet closed; could
+he but form ties that would bind him to England, I should indulge in
+higher expectations than I did even when the wild boy turned half the
+heads in Gottingen.
+
+"But we were talking of family portraits: there is one in the
+entrance-hall, which perhaps you have not observed; it is half
+obliterated by damp and time, yet it is of a remarkable personage,
+connected with Maltravers by ancestral intermarriages,--Lord Falkland,
+the Falkland of Clarendon; a man weak in character, but made most
+interesting by history,--utterly unfitted for the severe ordeal of those
+stormy times; sighing for peace when his whole soul should have been in
+war; and repentant alike whether with the Parliament or the king, but
+still a personage of elegant and endearing associations; a
+student-soldier, with a high heart and a gallant spirit.  Come and look
+at his features,--homely and worn, but with a characteristic air of
+refinement and melancholy thought."
+
+Thus running on, the agreeable old gentleman drew Evelyn into the outer
+hall.  Upon arriving there, through a small passage, which opened upon
+the hall, they were surprised to find the old housekeeper and another
+female servant standing by a rude kind of couch on which lay the form of
+the poor woman described in the last chapter.  Maltravers and two other
+men were also there; and Maltravers himself was giving orders to his
+servants, while he leaned over the sufferer, who was now conscious both
+of pain and the service rendered to her.  As Evelyn stopped abruptly, and
+in surprise, opposite and almost at the foot of the homely litter, the
+woman raised herself up on one arm, and gazed at her with a wild stare;
+then muttering some incoherent words which appeared to betoken delirium,
+she sank back, and was again insensible.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+  HENCE oft to win some stubborn maid,
+    Still does the wanton god assume
+  The martial air, the gay cockade,
+    The sword, the shoulder-knot, and plume.
+
+  MARRIOTT.
+
+THE hall was cleared, the sufferer had been removed, and Maltravers was
+left alone with Cleveland and Evelyn.
+
+He simply and shortly narrated the adventure of the morning; but he did
+not mention that Vargrave had been the cause of the injury his new guest
+had sustained.  Now this event had served to make a mutual and kindred
+impression on Evelyn and Maltravers.  The humanity of the latter, natural
+and commonplace as it was, was an endearing recollection to Evelyn,
+precisely as it showed that his cold theory of disdain towards the mass
+did not affect his actual conduct towards individuals.  On the other
+hand, Maltravers had perhaps been yet more impressed with the prompt and
+ingenuous sympathy which Evelyn had testified towards the sufferer: it
+had so evidently been her first gracious and womanly impulse to hasten to
+the side of this humble stranger.  In that impulse, Maltravers himself
+had been almost forgotten; and as the poor woman lay pale and lifeless,
+and the young Evelyn bent over her in beautiful compassion, Maltravers
+thought she had never seemed so lovely, so irresistible,--in fact, pity
+in woman is a great beautifier.
+
+As Maltravers finished his short tale, Evelyn's eyes were fixed upon him
+with such frank and yet such soft approval, that the look went straight
+to his heart.  He quickly turned away, and abruptly changed the
+conversation.
+
+"But how long have you been here, Miss Cameron,--and your companions?"
+
+"We are again intruders; but this time it was not my fault."
+
+"No," said Cleveland, "for a wonder it was male, and not lady-like
+curiosity that trespassed on Bluebeard's chamber.  But, however, to
+soften your resentment, know that Miss Cameron has brought you a
+purchaser for Burleigh.  Now, then, we can test the sincerity of your
+wish to part with it.  I assure you, meanwhile, that Miss Cameron was as
+much shocked at the idea as I was.  Were you not?"
+
+"But you surely have no intention of selling Burleigh?" said Evelyn,
+anxiously.
+
+"I fear I do not know my own mind."
+
+"Well," said Cleveland, "here comes your tempter.  Lord Doltimore, let me
+introduce Mr. Maltravers."
+
+Lord Doltimore bowed.
+
+"Been admiring your horses, Mr. Maltravers.  I never saw anything so
+perfect as the black one; may I ask where you bought him?"
+
+"It was a present to me," answered Maltravers.
+
+"A present?"
+
+"Yes, from one who would not have sold that horse for a king's
+ransom,--an old Arab chief, with whom I formed a kind of friendship in
+the desert.  A wound disabled him from riding, and he bestowed the horse
+on me, with as much solemn tenderness for the gift as if he had given me
+his daughter in marriage."
+
+"I think of travelling in the East," said Lord Doltimore, with much
+gravity: "I suppose nothing will induce you to sell the black horse?"
+
+"Lord Doltimore!" said Maltravers, in a tone of lofty surprise.
+
+"I do not care for the price," continued the young nobleman, a little
+disconcerted.
+
+"No; I never sell any horse that has once learned to know me.  I would as
+soon think of selling a friend.  In the desert, one's horse is one's
+friend.  I am almost an Arab myself in these matters."
+
+"But talking of sale and barter reminds me of Burleigh," said Cleveland,
+maliciously.  "Lord Doltimore is a universal buyer.  He covets all your
+goods: he will take the house, if he can't have the stables."
+
+"I only mean," said Lord Doltimore, rather peevishly, "that if you wish
+to part with Burleigh, I should like to have the option of purchase."
+
+"I will remember it, if I determine to sell the place," answered
+Maltravers, smiling gravely; "at present I am undecided."
+
+He turned away towards Evelyn as he spoke, and almost started to observe
+that she was joined by a stranger, whose approach he had not before
+noticed,--and that stranger a man of such remarkable personal advantages,
+that, had Maltravers been in Vargrave's position, he might reasonably
+have experienced a pang of jealous apprehension.  Slightly above the
+common height; slender, yet strongly formed; set off by every advantage
+of dress, of air, of the nameless tone and pervading refinement that
+sometimes, though not always, springs from early and habitual intercourse
+with the most polished female society,--Colonel Legard, at the age of
+eight and twenty, had acquired a reputation for beauty almost as popular
+and as well known as that which men usually acquire by mental
+qualifications.  Yet there was nothing effeminate in his countenance, the
+symmetrical features of which were made masculine and expressive by the
+rich olive of the complexion, and the close jetty curls of the
+Antinous-like hair.
+
+They seemed, as they there stood--Evelyn and Legard--so well suited to
+each other in personal advantages, their different styles so happily
+contrasted; and Legard, at the moment, was regarding her with such
+respectful admiration, and whispering compliment to her in so subdued a
+tone, that the dullest observer might have ventured a prophecy by no
+means agreeable to the hopes of Lumley Lord Vargrave.
+
+But a feeling or fear of this nature was not that which occurred to
+Maltravers, or dictated his startled exclamation of surprise.
+
+Legard looked up as he heard the exclamation, and saw Maltravers, whose
+back had hitherto been turned towards him.  He, too, was evidently
+surprised, and seemingly confused; the colour mounted to his cheek, and
+then left it pale.
+
+"Colonel Legard," said Cleveland, "a thousand apologies for my neglect: I
+really did not observe you enter,--you came round by the front door, I
+suppose.  Let me make you acquainted with Mr. Maltravers."
+
+Legard bowed low.
+
+"We have met before," said he, in embarrassed accents: "at Venice, I
+think!"
+
+Maltravers inclined his head rather stiffly at first, but then, as if
+moved by a second impulse, held out his hand cordially.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Ernest, here you are!" cried Sophy, bounding into the hall,
+followed by Mr. Merton, the old admiral, Caroline, and Cecilia.
+
+The interruption seemed welcome and opportune.  The admiral, with blunt
+cordiality, expressed his pleasure at being made known to Mr. Maltravers.
+
+The conversation grew general; refreshments were proffered and declined;
+the visit drew to its close.
+
+It so happened that as the guests departed, Evelyn, from whose side the
+constant colonel had insensibly melted away, lingered last,--save,
+indeed, the admiral, who was discussing with Cleveland a new specific for
+the gout.  And as Maltravers stood on the steps, Evelyn turned to him
+with all her beautiful _naivete_ of mingled timidity and kindness, and
+said,--
+
+"And are we really never to see you again; never to hear again your tales
+of Egypt and Arabia; never to talk over Tasso and Dante?  No books, no
+talk, no disputes, no quarrels?  What have we done?  I thought we had
+made it up,--and yet you are still unforgiving.  Give me a good scold,
+and be friends!"
+
+"Friends! you have no friend more anxious, more devoted than I am.
+Young, rich, fascinating as you are, you will carve no impression on
+human hearts deeper than that you have graven here!"
+
+Carried away by the charm of her childlike familiarity and enchanting
+sweetness, Maltravers had said more than he intended; yet his eyes, his
+emotion, said more than his words.
+
+Evelyn coloured deeply, and her whole manner changed.  However, she
+turned away, and saying, with a forced gayety, "Well, then, you will not
+desert us; we shall see you once more?" hurried down the steps to join
+her companions.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+  SEE how the skilful lover spreads his toils.--STILLINGFLEET.
+
+THE party had not long returned to the rectory, and the admiral's
+carriage was ordered, when Lord Vargrave made his appearance.  He
+descanted with gay good-humour on his long drive, the bad roads, and his
+disappointment at the _contretemps_ that awaited him; then, drawing aside
+Colonel Legard, who seemed unusually silent and abstracted, he said to
+him,--
+
+"My dear colonel, my visit this morning was rather to you than to
+Doltimore.  I confess that I should like to see your abilities enlisted
+on the side of the Government; and knowing that the post of Storekeeper
+to the Ordnance will be vacant in a day or two by the promotion of Mr.
+-----, I wrote to secure the refusal.  To-day's post brings me the
+answer.  I offer the place to you; and I trust, before long, to procure
+you also a seat in parliament.  But you must start for London
+immediately."
+
+A week ago, and Legard's utmost ambition would have been amply gratified
+by this post; he now hesitated.
+
+"My dear lord," said he, "I cannot say how grateful I feel for your
+kindness; but--but--"
+
+"Enough; no thanks, my dear Legard.  Can you go to town to-morrow?"
+
+"Indeed," said Legard, "I fear not; I must consult my uncle."
+
+"I can answer for him; I sounded him before I wrote.  Reflect!  You are
+not rich, my dear Legard; it is an excellent opening: a seat in
+parliament, too!  Why, what can be your reason for hesitation?"
+
+There was something meaning and inquisitive in the tone of voice in which
+this question was put that brought the colour to the colonel's cheek.  He
+knew not well what to reply; and he began, too, to think that he ought
+not to refuse the appointment.  Nay, would his uncle, on whom he was
+dependent, consent to such a refusal?  Lord Vargrave saw the
+irresolution, and proceeded.  He spent ten minutes in combating every
+scruple, every objection: he placed all the advantages of the post, real
+or imaginary, in every conceivable point of view before the colonel's
+eyes; he sought to flatter, to wheedle, to coax, to weary him into
+accepting it; and he at length partially succeeded.  The colonel
+petitioned for three days' consideration, which Vargrave reluctantly
+acceded to; and Legard then stepped into his uncle's carriage, with the
+air rather of a martyr than a maiden placeman.
+
+"Aha!" said Vargrave, chuckling to himself as he took a turn in the
+grounds, "I have got rid of that handsome knave; and now I shall have
+Evelyn all to myself!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+  I AM forfeited to eternal disgrace if you do not commiserate.
+    .  .  .  .  .  .
+  Go to, then, raise, recover.--BEN JONSON: _Poetaster_.
+
+THE next morning Admiral Legard and his nephew were conversing in the
+little cabin consecrated by the name of the admiral's "own room."
+
+"Yes," said the veteran, "it would be moonshine and madness not to accept
+Vargrave's offer; though one can see through such a millstone as that
+with half an eye.  His lordship is jealous of such a fine, handsome young
+fellow as you are,--and very justly.  But as long as he is under the same
+roof with Miss Cameron, you will have no opportunity to pay your court;
+when he goes, you can always manage to be in her neighbourhood; and then,
+you know--puppy that you are--her business will be very soon settled."
+And the admiral eyed the handsome colonel with grim fondness.
+
+Legard sighed.
+
+"Have you any commands at -----?" said he; "I am just going to canter
+over there before Doltimore is up."
+
+"Sad lazy dog, your friend."
+
+"I shall be back by twelve."
+
+"What are you going to ----- for?"
+
+"Brookes, the farrier, has a little spaniel,--King Charles's breed.  Miss
+Cameron is fond of dogs.  I can send it to her, with my compliments,--it
+will be a sort of leave-taking."
+
+"Sly rogue; ha, ha, ha! d-----d sly; ha, ha!" and the admiral punched the
+slender waist of his nephew, and laughed till the tears ran down his
+cheeks.
+
+"Good-by, sir."
+
+"Stop, George; I forgot to ask you a question; you never told me you knew
+Mr. Maltravers.  Why don't you cultivate his acquaintance?"
+
+"We met at Venice accidentally.  I did not know his name then; he left
+just as I arrived.  As you say, I ought to cultivate his acquaintance."
+
+"Fine character!"
+
+"Very!" said Legard, with energy, as he abruptly quitted the room.
+
+George Legard was an orphan.  His father--the admiral's elder
+brother--had been a spendthrift man of fashion, with a tolerably large
+unentailed estate.  He married a duke's daughter without a sixpence.
+Estates are troublesome,--Mr. Legard's was sold.  On the purchase-money
+the happy pair lived for some years in great comfort, when Mr. Legard
+died of a brain fever; and his disconsolate widow found herself alone in
+the world with a beautiful little curly-headed boy, and an annuity of one
+thousand a year, for which her settlement had been exchanged.  All the
+rest of the fortune was gone,--a discovery not made till Mr. Legard's
+death.  Lady Louisa did not long survive the loss of her husband and her
+station in society; her income of course died with herself.  Her only
+child was brought up in the house of his grandfather, the duke, till he
+was of age to hold the office of king's page; thence, as is customary, he
+was promoted to a commission in the Guards.  To the munificent emoluments
+of his pay, the ducal family liberally added an allowance of two hundred
+a year; upon which income Cornet Legard contrived to get very handsomely
+in debt.  The extraordinary beauty of his person, his connections, and
+his manners obtained him all the celebrity that fashion can bestow; but
+poverty is a bad thing.  Luckily, at this time, his uncle the admiral
+returned from sea, to settle for the rest of his life in England.
+
+Hitherto, the admiral had taken no notice of George.  He himself had
+married a merchant's daughter with a fair portion; and had been blessed
+with two children, who monopolized all his affection.  But there seemed
+some mortality in the Legard family; in one year after returning to
+England and settling in B-----shire, the admiral found himself wifeless
+and childless.  He then turned to his orphan nephew; and soon became
+fonder of him than he had ever been of his own children.  The admiral,
+though in easy circumstances, was not wealthy; nevertheless, he advanced
+the money requisite for George's rise in the army, and doubled the
+allowance bestowed by the duke.  His grace heard of this generosity, and
+discovered that he himself had a very large family growing up; that the
+marquess was going to be married, and required an increase of income;
+that he had already behaved most handsomely to his nephew; and the result
+of this discovery was that the duke withdrew the two hundred a year.
+Legard, however, who looked on his uncle as an exhaustless mine, went on
+breaking hearts and making debts--till one morning he woke in the Bench.
+The admiral was hastily summoned to London.  He arrived; paid off the
+duns--a kindness which seriously embarrassed him--swore, scolded, and
+cried; and finally insisted that Legard should give up that d-----d
+coxcomb regiment, in which he was now captain, retire on half-pay, and
+learn economy and a change of habits on the Continent.
+
+The admiral, a rough but good-natured man on the whole, had two or three
+little peculiarities.  In the first place, he piqued himself on a sort of
+John Bull independence; was a bit of a Radical (a strange anomaly in an
+admiral)--which was owing, perhaps, to two or three young lords having
+been put over his head in the earlier part of his career; and he made it
+a point with his nephew (of whose affection he was jealous) to break with
+those fine grand connections, who plunged him into a sea of extravagance,
+and then never threw him a rope to save him from drowning.
+
+In the second place, without being stingy, the admiral had a good deal of
+economy in his disposition.  He was not a man to allow his nephew to ruin
+him.  He had an extraordinarily old-fashioned horror of gambling,--a
+polite habit of George's; and he declared positively that his nephew
+must, while a bachelor, learn to live upon seven hundred a year.
+Thirdly, the admiral could be a very stern, stubborn, passionate old
+brute; and when he coolly told George, "Harkye, you young puppy, if you
+get into debt again--if you exceed the very handsome allowance I make
+you--I shall just cut you off with a shilling," George was fully aware
+that his uncle was one who would rigidly keep his word.
+
+However, it was something to be out of debt, and one of the handsomest
+men of his age; and George Legard, whose rank in the Guards made him a
+colonel in the line, left England tolerably contented with the state of
+affairs.
+
+Despite the foibles of his youth, George Legard had many high and
+generous qualities.  Society had done its best to spoil a fine and candid
+disposition, with abilities far above mediocrity; but society had only
+partially succeeded.  Still, unhappily, dissipation had grown a habit
+with him; all his talents were of a nature that brought a ready return.
+At his age, it was but natural that the praise of _salons_ should retain
+all its sweetness.
+
+In addition to those qualities which please the softer sex, Legard was a
+good whist player, superb at billiards, famous as a shot, unrivalled as a
+horseman,--in fact, an accomplished man, "who did everything so devilish
+well!" These accomplishments did not stand him in much stead in Italy;
+and, though with reluctance and remorse, he took again to gambling,--he
+really _had_ nothing else to do.
+
+In Venice there was, one year, established a society somewhat on the
+principle of the _salon_ at Paris.  Some rich Venetians belonged to it;
+but it was chiefly for the convenience of foreigners,--French, English,
+and Austrians.  Here there was select gaming in one room, while another
+apartment served the purposes of a club.  Many who never played belonged
+to this society; but still they were not the _habitues_.
+
+Legard played: he won at first, then he lost, then he won again; it was a
+pleasant excitement.  One night, after winning largely at _roulette_, he
+sat down to play _ecarte_ with a Frenchman of high rank.  Legard played
+well at this, as at all scientific games; he thought he should make a
+fortune out of the Frenchman.  The game excited much interest; the crowd
+gathered round the table; bets ran high; the vanity of Legard, as well as
+his interest, was implicated in the conflict.  It was soon evident that
+the Frenchman played as well as the Englishman.  The stakes, at first
+tolerably high, were doubled.  Legard betted freely.  Cards went against
+him; he lost much, lost all that he had, lost more than he had, lost
+several hundreds, which he promised to pay the next morning.  The table
+was broken up, the spectators separated.  Amongst the latter had been one
+Englishman, introduced into the club for the first time that night.  He
+had neither played nor betted, but had observed the game with a quiet and
+watchful interest.  This Englishman lodged at the same hotel as Legard.
+He was at Venice only for a day; the promised sight of a file of English
+newspapers had drawn him to the club; the general excitement around had
+attracted him to the table; and once there, the spectacle of human
+emotions exercised its customary charm.
+
+On ascending the stairs that conducted to his apartment, the Englishman
+heard a deep groan in a room the door of which was ajar.  He paused, the
+sound was repeated; he gently pushed open the door and saw Legard seated
+by a table, while a glass on the opposite wall reflected his working and
+convulsed countenance, with his hands trembling visibly, as they took a
+brace of pistols from the case.
+
+The Englishman recognized the loser at the club; and at once divined the
+act that his madness or his despair dictated.  Legard twice took up one
+of the pistols, and twice laid it down irresolute; the third time he rose
+with a start, raised the weapon to his head, and the next moment it was
+wrenched from his grasp.
+
+"Sit down, sir!" said the stranger, in a loud and commanding voice.
+
+Legard, astonished and abashed, sank once more into his seat, and stared
+sullenly and half-unconsciously at his countryman.
+
+"You have lost your money," said the Englishman, after calmly replacing
+the pistols in their case, which he locked, putting the key into his
+pocket; "and that is misfortune enough for one night.  If you had won,
+and ruined your opponent, you would be excessively happy, and go to bed,
+thinking Good Luck (which is the representative of Providence) watched
+over you.  For my part, I think you ought to be very thankful that you
+are not the winner."
+
+"Sir," said Legard, recovering from his surprise, and beginning to feel
+resentment, "I do not understand this intrusion in my apartments.  You
+have saved me, it is true, from death,--but life is a worse curse."
+
+"Young man, no! moments in life are agony, but life itself is a blessing.
+Life is a mystery that defies all calculation.  You can never say,
+'To-day is wretched, therefore to-morrow must be the same!'  And for the
+loss of a little gold you, in the full vigour of youth, with all the
+future before you, will dare to rush into the chances of eternity!  You,
+who have never, perhaps, thought what eternity is!  Yet," added the
+stranger, in a soft and melancholy voice, "you are young and
+beautiful,--perhaps the pride and hope of others!  Have you no tie, no
+affection, no kindred; are you lord of yourself?"
+
+Legard was moved by the tone of the stranger, as well as by the words.
+
+"It is not the loss of money," said he, gloomily,--"it is the loss of
+honour.  To-morrow I must go forth a shunned and despised man,--I, a
+gentleman and a soldier!  They may insult me--and I have no reply!"
+
+The Englishman seemed to muse, for his brow lowered, and he made no
+answer.  Legard threw himself back, overcome with his own excitement, and
+wept like a child.  The stranger, who imagined himself above the
+indulgence of emotion (vain man!), woke from his revery at this burst of
+passion.  He gazed at first (I grieve to write) with a curl of the
+haughty lip that had in it contempt; but it passed quickly away; and the
+hard man remembered that he too had been young and weak, and his own
+errors greater perhaps than those of the one he had ventured to despise.
+He walked to and fro the room, still without speaking.  At last he
+approached the gamester, and took his hand.
+
+"What is your debt?" he asked gently.
+
+"What matters it?--more than I can pay."
+
+"If life is a trust, so is wealth: _you_ have the first in charge for
+others, _I_ may have the last.  What is the debt?"
+
+Legard started; it was a strong struggle between shame and hope.  "If I
+could borrow it, I could repay it hereafter,--I know I could; I would not
+think of it otherwise."
+
+"Very well, so be it,--I will lend you the money on one condition.
+Solemnly promise me, on your faith as a soldier and a gentleman, that you
+will not, for ten years to come--even if you grow rich, and can ruin
+others--touch card or dice-box.  Promise me that you will shun all gaming
+for gain, under whatever disguise, whatever appellation.  I will take
+your word as my bond."
+
+Legard, overjoyed, and scarcely trusting his senses, gave the promise.
+
+"Sleep then, to-night, in hope and assurance of the morrow," said the
+Englishman: "let this event be an omen to you, that while there is a
+future there is no despair.  One word more,--I do not want your thanks!
+it is easy to be generous at the expense of justice.  Perhaps I have been
+so now.  This sum, which is to save your life--a life you so little
+value--might have blessed fifty human beings,--better men than either the
+giver or receiver.  What is given to error may perhaps be a wrong to
+virtue.  When you would ask others to support a career of blind and
+selfish extravagance, pause and think over the breadless lips this wasted
+gold would have fed! the joyless hearts it would have comforted!  You
+talk of repaying me: if the occasion offer, do so; if not--if we never
+meet again, and you have it in your power, pay it for me to the Poor!
+And now, farewell."
+
+"Stay,--give me the name of my preserver!  Mine is--"
+
+"Hush! what matter names?  This is a sacrifice we have both made to
+honour.  You will sooner recover your self-esteem (and without
+self-esteem there is neither faith nor honour), when you think that your
+family, your connections, are spared all association with your own error;
+that I may hear them spoken of, that I may mix with them without fancying
+that they owe me gratitude."
+
+"Your own name then?" said Legard, deeply penetrated with the delicate
+generosity of his benefactor.
+
+"Tush!" muttered the stranger impatiently as he closed the door.
+
+The next morning when he awoke Legard saw upon the table a small packet;
+it contained a sum that exceeded the debt named.
+
+On the envelope was written, "Remember the bond."
+
+The stranger had already quitted Venice.  He had not travelled through
+the Italian cities under his own name, for he had just returned from the
+solitudes of the East, and was not yet hardened to the publicity of the
+gossip which in towns haunted by his countrymen attended a well-known
+name; that given to Legard by the innkeeper, mutilated by Italian
+pronunciation, the young man had never heard before, and soon forgot.  He
+paid his debts, and he scrupulously kept his word.  The adventure of that
+night went far, indeed, to reform and ennoble the mind and habits of
+George Legard.  Time passed, and he never met his benefactor, till in the
+halls of Burleigh he recognized the stranger in Maltravers.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+  WHY value, then, that strength of mind they boast,
+  As often varying, and as often lost?
+
+  HAWKINS BROWNE (translated by SOAME JENYNS).
+
+MALTRAVERS was lying at length, with his dogs around him, under a
+beech-tree that threw its arms over one of the calm still pieces of water
+that relieved the groves of Burleigh, when Colonel Legard spied him from
+the bridle-road which led through the park to the house.  The colonel
+dismounted, threw the rein over his arm; and at the sound of the hoofs
+Maltravers turned, saw the visitor, and rose.  He held out his hand to
+Legard, and immediately began talking of indifferent matters.
+
+Legard was embarrassed; but his nature was not one to profit by the
+silence of a benefactor.  "Mr. Maltravers," said he, with graceful
+emotion, "though you have not yet allowed me an opportunity to allude to
+it, do not think I am ungrateful for the service you rendered me."
+
+Maltravers looked grave, but made no reply.  Legard resumed, with a
+heightened colour,--
+
+"I cannot say how I regret that it is not yet in my power to discharge my
+debt; but--"
+
+"When it is, you will do so.  Pray think no more of it.  Are you going to
+the rectory?"
+
+"No, not this morning; in fact, I leave B-----shire tomorrow.  Pleasant
+family, the Mertons."
+
+"And Miss Cameron--"
+
+"Is certainly beautiful,--and very rich.  How could she ever think of
+marrying Lord Vargrave, so much older,--she who could have so many
+admirers?"
+
+"Not, surely, while betrothed to another?"
+
+This was a refinement which Legard, though an honourable man as men go,
+did not quite understand.  "Oh," said he, "that was by some eccentric old
+relation,--her father-in-law, I think.  Do you think she is bound by such
+an engagement?"
+
+Maltravers made no reply, but amused himself by throwing a stick into the
+water, and sending one of his dogs after it.  Legard looked on, and his
+affectionate disposition yearned to make advances which something distant
+in the manner of Maltravers chilled and repelled.
+
+When Legard was gone, Maltravers followed him with his eyes.  "And this
+is the man whom Cleveland thinks Evelyn could love!  I could forgive her
+marrying Vargrave.  Independently of the conscientious feeling that may
+belong to the engagement, Vargrave has wit, talent, intellect; and this
+man has nothing but the skin of the panther.  Was I wrong to save him?
+No.  Every human life, I suppose, has its uses.  But Evelyn--I could
+despise her if her heart was the fool of the eye!"
+
+These comments were most unjust to Legard; but they were just of that
+kind of injustice which the man of talent often commits against the man
+of external advantages, and which the latter still more often retaliates
+on the man of talent.  As Maltravers thus soliloquized, he was accosted
+by Mr. Cleveland.
+
+"Come, Ernest, you must not cut these unfortunate Mertons any longer.  If
+you continue to do so, do you know what Mrs. Hare and the world will
+say?"
+
+"No--what?"
+
+"That you have been refused by Miss Merton."
+
+"That _would_ be a calumny!" said Ernest, smiling.
+
+"Or that you are hopelessly in love with Miss Cameron."
+
+Maltravers started; his proud heart swelled; he pulled his hat over his
+brows, and said, after a short pause,--
+
+"Well, Mrs. Hare and the world must not have it all their own way; and
+so, whenever you go to the rectory, take me with you."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+                 THE more he strove
+  To advance his suit, the farther from her love.
+
+                      DRYDEN: _Theodore and Honoria_.
+
+THE line of conduct which Vargrave now adopted with regard to Evelyn was
+craftily conceived and carefully pursued.  He did not hazard a single
+syllable which might draw on him a rejection of his claims; but at the
+same time no lover could be more constant, more devoted, in attentions.
+In the presence of others, there was an air of familiar intimacy that
+seemed to arrogate a right, which to her he scrupulously shunned to
+assert.  Nothing could be more respectful, nay, more timid, than his
+language, or more calmly confident than his manner.  Not having much
+vanity, nor any very acute self-conceit, he did not delude himself into
+the idea of winning Evelyn's affections; he rather sought to entangle her
+judgment, to weave around her web upon web,--not the less dangerous for
+being invisible.  He took the compact as a matter of course, as something
+not to be broken by any possible chance; her hand was to be his as a
+right: it was her heart that he so anxiously sought to gain.  But this
+distinction was so delicately drawn, and insisted upon so little in any
+tangible form, that, whatever Evelyn's wishes for an understanding, a
+much more experienced woman would have been at a loss to ripen one.
+
+Evelyn longed to confide in Caroline, to consult her; but Caroline,
+though still kind, had grown distant.  "I wish," said Evelyn, one night
+as she sat in Caroline's dressing-room,--"I wish that I knew what tone to
+take with Lord Vargrave. I feel more and more convinced that a union
+between us is impossible; and yet, precisely because he does not press
+it, am I unable to tell him so.  I wish you could undertake that task;
+you seem such friends with him."
+
+"I!" said Caroline, changing countenance.
+
+"Yes, you!  Nay, do not blush, or I shall think you envy me.  Could you
+not save us both from the pain that otherwise must come sooner or later?"
+
+"Lord Vargrave would not thank me for such an act of friendship.
+Besides, Evelyn, consider,--it is scarcely possible to break off this
+engagement _now_."
+
+"_Now_! and why now?" said Evelyn, astonished.
+
+"The world believes it so implicitly.  Observe, whoever sits next you
+rises if Lord Vargrave approaches; the neighbourhood talk of nothing else
+but your marriage; and your fate, Evelyn, is not pitied."
+
+"I will leave this place!  I will go back to the cottage!  I cannot bear
+this!" said Evelyn, passionately wringing her hands.
+
+"You do not love another, I am sure: not young Mr. Hare, with his green
+coat and straw-coloured whiskers; or Sir Henry Foxglove, with his
+how-d'ye-do like a view-halloo; perhaps, indeed, Colonel Legard,--he is
+handsome.  What! do you blush at his name?  No; you say 'not Legard:' who
+else is there?"
+
+"You are cruel; you trifle with me!" said Evelyn, in tearful reproach;
+and she rose to go to her own room.
+
+"My dear girl!" said Caroline, touched by her evident pain; "learn from
+me--if I may say so--that marriages are _not_ made in heaven!  Yours will
+be as fortunate as earth can bestow.  A love-match is usually the least
+happy of all.  Our foolish sex demand so much in love; and love, after
+all, is but one blessing among many.  Wealth and rank remain when love is
+but a heap of ashes.  For my part, I have chosen my destiny and my
+husband."
+
+"Your husband!"
+
+"Yes, you see him in Lord Doltimore.  I dare say we shall be as happy as
+any amorous Corydon and Phyllis."  But there was irony in Caroline's
+voice as she spoke; and she sighed heavily.  Evelyn did not believe her
+serious; and the friends parted for the night.
+
+"Mine is a strange fate!" said Caroline to herself; "I am asked by the
+man whom I love, and who professes to love me, to bestow myself on
+another, and to plead for him to a younger and fairer bride.  Well, I
+will obey him in the first; the last is a bitterer task, and I cannot
+perform it earnestly.  Yet Vargrave has a strange power over me; and when
+I look round the world, I see that he is right.  In these most
+commonplace artifices, there is yet a wild majesty that charms and
+fascinates me.  It is something to rule the world: and his and mine are
+natures formed to do so."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+  A SMOKE raised with the fume of sighs.
+
+                      _Romeo and Juliet_.
+
+IT is certain that Evelyn experienced for Maltravers sentiments which, if
+not love, might easily be mistaken for it.  But whether it were that
+master-passion, or merely its fanciful resemblance,--love in early youth
+and innocent natures, if of sudden growth, is long before it makes itself
+apparent.  Evelyn had been prepared to feel an interest in her solitary
+neighbour.  His mind, as developed in his works, had half-formed her own.
+Her childish adventure with the stranger had never been forgotten.  Her
+present knowledge of Maltravers was an union of dangerous and often
+opposite associations,--the Ideal and the Real.
+
+Love, in its first dim and imperfect shape, is but imagination
+concentrated on one object.  It is a genius of the heart, resembling that
+of the intellect; it appeals to, it stirs up, it evokes, the sentiments
+and sympathies that lie most latent in our nature.  Its sigh is the
+spirit that moves over the ocean, and arouses the Anadyomene into life.
+Therefore is it that MIND produces affections deeper than those of
+external form; therefore it is that women are worshippers of glory, which
+is the palpable and visible representative of a genius whose operations
+they cannot always comprehend.  Genius has so much in common with love,
+the imagination that animates one is so much the property of the other,
+that there is not a surer sign of the existence of genius than the love
+that it creates and bequeaths.  It penetrates deeper than the reason, it
+binds a nobler captive than the fancy.  As the sun upon the dial, it
+gives to the human heart both its shadow and its light.  Nations are its
+worshippers and wooers; and Posterity learns from its oracles to dream,
+to aspire, to adore!
+
+Had Maltravers declared the passion that consumed him, it is probable
+that it would soon have kindled a return.  But his frequent absence, his
+sustained distance of manner, had served to repress the feelings that in
+a young and virgin heart rarely flow with much force until they are
+invited and aroused.  _Le besoin d'aimer_ in girls, is, perhaps, in
+itself powerful; but is fed by another want, _le besoin d'etre aime_!
+_If_, therefore, Evelyn at present felt love for Maltravers, the love had
+certainly not passed into the core of life: the tree had not so far
+struck its roots but what it might have borne transplanting.  There was
+in her enough of the pride of sex to have recoiled from the thought of
+giving love to one who had not asked the treasure.  Capable of
+attachment, more trustful and therefore, if less vehement, more beautiful
+and durable than that which had animated the brief tragedy of Florence
+Lascelles, she could not have been the unknown correspondent, or revealed
+the soul, because the features wore a mask.
+
+It must also be allowed that, in some respects, Evelyn was too young and
+inexperienced thoroughly to appreciate all that was most truly lovable
+and attractive in Maltravers.  At four and twenty she would, perhaps,
+have felt no fear mingled with her respect for him; but seventeen and six
+and thirty is a wide interval!  She never felt that there was that
+difference in years until she had met Legard, and then at once she
+comprehended it.  With Legard she had moved on equal terms; he was not
+too wise, too high for her every-day thoughts.  He less excited her
+imagination, less attracted her reverence.  But, somehow or other, that
+voice which proclaimed her power, those eyes which never turned from
+hers, went nearer to her heart.  As Evelyn had once said to Caroline, "It
+was a great enigma!"--her own feelings were a mystery to her, and she
+reclined by the "Golden Waterfalls" without tracing her likeness in the
+glass of the pool below.
+
+Maltravers appeared again at the rectory.  He joined their parties by
+day, and his evenings were spent with them as of old.  In this I know not
+precisely what were his motives--perhaps he did not know them himself.
+It might be that his pride was roused; it might be that he could not
+endure the notion that Lord Vargrave should guess his secret by an
+absence almost otherwise unaccountable,--he could not patiently bear to
+give Vargrave that triumph; it might be that, in the sternness of his
+self-esteem, he imagined he had already conquered all save affectionate
+interest in Evelyn's fate, and trusted too vainly to his own strength;
+and it might be, also, that he could not resist the temptation of seeing
+if Evelyn were contented with her lot, and if Vargrave were worthy of the
+blessing that awaited him.  Whether one of these or all united made him
+resolve to brave his danger, or whether, after all, he yielded to a
+weakness, or consented to what--invited by Evelyn herself--was almost a
+social necessity, the reader and not the narrator shall decide.
+
+Legard was gone; but Doltimore remained in the neighbourhood, having
+hired a hunting-box not far from Sir John Merton's manors, over which he
+easily obtained permission to sport.  When he did not dine elsewhere,
+there was always a place for him at the parson's hospitable board,--and
+that place was generally next to Caroline.  Mr. and Mrs. Merton had given
+up all hope of Mr. Maltravers for their eldest daughter; and, very
+strangely, this conviction came upon their minds on the first day they
+made the acquaintance of the young lord.
+
+"My dear," said the rector, as he was winding up his watch, preparatory
+to entering the connubial couch,--"my dear, I don't think Mr. Maltravers
+is a marrying man."
+
+"I was just going to make the same remark," said Mrs. Merton, drawing the
+clothes over her.  "Lord Doltimore is a very fine young man, his estates
+unencumbered.  I like him vastly, my love.  He is evidently smitten with
+Caroline: so Lord Vargrave and Mrs. Hare said."
+
+"Sensible, shrewd woman, Mrs. Hare.  By the by, we'll send her a
+pineapple.  Caroline was made to be a woman of rank!"
+
+"Quite; so much self-possession!"
+
+"And if Mr. Maltravers would sell or let Burleigh--"
+
+"It would be so pleasant!"
+
+"Had you not better give Caroline a hint?"
+
+"My love, she is so sensible, let her go her own way."
+
+"You are right, my dear Betsy; I shall always say that no one has more
+common-sense than you; you have brought up your children admirably!"
+
+"Dear Charles!"
+
+"It is coldish to-night, love," said the rector; and he put out the
+candle.
+
+From that time, it was not the fault of Mr. and Mrs. Merton if Lord
+Doltimore did not find their house the pleasantest in the county.
+
+One evening the rectory party were assembled together in the cheerful
+drawing-room.  Cleveland, Mr. Merton, Sir John, and Lord Vargrave,
+reluctantly compelled to make up the fourth, were at the whist-table;
+Evelyn, Caroline, and Lord Doltimore were seated round the fire, and Mrs.
+Merton was working a footstool.  The fire burned clear, the curtains were
+down, the children in bed: it was a family picture of elegant comfort.
+
+Mr. Maltravers was announced.
+
+"I am glad you are come at last," said Caroline, holding out her fair
+hand.  "Mr. Cleveland could not answer for you.  We are all disputing as
+to which mode of life is the happiest."
+
+"And your opinion?" asked Maltravers, seating himself in the vacant
+chair,--it chanced to be next to Evelyn's.
+
+"My opinion is decidedly in favour of London.  A metropolitan life, with
+its perpetual and graceful excitements,--the best music, the best
+companions, the best things in short.  Provincial life is so dull, its
+pleasures so tiresome; to talk over the last year's news, and wear out
+one's last year's dresses, cultivate a conservatory, and play Pope Joan
+with a young party,--dreadful!"
+
+"I agree with Miss Merton," said Lord Doltimore, solemnly; not but what I
+like the country for three or four months in the year, with good shooting
+and hunting, and a large house properly filled, independent of one's own
+neighbourhood: but if I am condemned to choose one place to live in, give
+me Paris."
+
+"Ah, Paris; I never was in Paris.  I should so like to travel!" said
+Caroline.
+
+"But the inns abroad are so very bad," said Lord Doltimore; "how people
+can rave about Italy, I can't think.  I never suffered so much in my life
+as I did in Calabria; and at Venice I was bit to death by mosquitoes.
+Nothing like Paris, I assure you: don't you think so, Mr. Maltravers?"
+
+"Perhaps I shall be able to answer you better in a short time.  I think
+of accompanying Mr. Cleveland to Paris!"
+
+"Indeed!" said Caroline.  "Well, I envy you; but is it a sudden
+resolution?"
+
+"Not very."
+
+"Do you stay long?" asked Lord Doltimore.
+
+"My stay is uncertain."
+
+"And you won't let Burleigh in the meanwhile?"
+
+"_Let_ Burleigh?  No; if it once pass from my hands it will be forever!"
+
+Maltravers spoke gravely, and the subject was changed.  Lord Doltimore
+challenged Caroline to chess.
+
+They sat down, and Lord Doltimore arranged the pieces.
+
+"Sensible man, Mr. Maltravers," said the young lord; "but I don't hit it
+off with him: Vargrave is more agreeable.  Don't you think so?"
+
+"Y-e-s."
+
+"Lord Vargrave is very kind to me,--I never remember any one being more
+so; got Legard that appointment solely because it would please me,--very
+friendly fellow!  I mean to put myself under his wing next session!"
+
+"You could not do better, I'm sure," said Caroline; "he is so much looked
+up to; I dare say he will be prime minister one of these days."
+
+"I take the bishop:--do you think so really?--you are rather a
+politician?"
+
+"Oh, no; not much of that.  But my father and my uncle are stanch
+politicians; gentlemen know so much more than ladies.  We should always
+go by their opinions.  I think I will take the queen's pawn--your
+politics are the same as Lord Vargrave's?"
+
+"Yes, I fancy so: at least I shall leave my proxy with him.  Glad you
+don't like politics,--great bore."
+
+"Why, so young, so connected as you are--" Caroline stopped short, and
+made a wrong move.
+
+"I wish we were going to Paris together, we should enjoy it so;" and Lord
+Doltimore's knight checked the tower and queen.
+
+Caroline coughed, and stretched her hand quickly to move.
+
+"Pardon me, you will lose the game if you do so!" and Doltimore placed
+his hand on hers, their eyes met, Caroline turned away, and Lord
+Doltimore settled his right collar.
+
+
+
+"And is it true? are you really going to leave us?" said Evelyn, and she
+felt very sad.  But still the sadness might not be that of love,--she had
+felt sad after Legard had gone.
+
+"I do not think I shall long stay away," said Maltravers, trying to speak
+indifferently.  "Burleigh has become more dear to me than it was in
+earlier youth; perhaps because I have made myself duties there: and in
+other places I am but an isolated and useless unit in the great mass."
+
+"You! everywhere, you must have occupations and resources,--everywhere,
+you must find yourself not alone.  But you will not go yet?"
+
+"Not yet--no.  [Evelyn's spirits rose.]  Have you read the book I sent
+you?"  (It was one of De Stael's.)
+
+"Yes; but it disappoints me."
+
+"And why?  It is eloquent."
+
+"But is it true?  Is there so much melancholy in life?  Are the
+affections so full of bitterness?  For me, I am so happy when with those
+I love!  When I am with my mother, the air seems more fragrant, the skies
+more blue: it is surely not affection, but the absence of it, that makes
+us melancholy."
+
+"Perhaps so; but if we had never known affection, we might not miss it:
+and the brilliant Frenchwoman speaks from memory, while you speak from
+hope,--memory, which is the ghost of joy: yet surely, even in the
+indulgence of affection, there is at times a certain melancholy, a
+certain fear.  Have you never felt it, even with--with your mother?"
+
+"Ah, yes! when she suffered, or when I have thought she loved me less
+than I desired."
+
+"That must have been an idle and vain thought.  Your mother! does she
+resemble you?"
+
+"I wish I could think so.  Oh, if you knew her!  I have longed so often
+that you were acquainted with each other!  It was she who taught me to
+sing your songs."
+
+"My dear Mrs. Hare, we may as well throw up our cards," said the keen
+clear voice of Lord Vargrave: "you have played most admirably, and I know
+that your last card will be the ace of trumps; still the luck is against
+us."
+
+"No, no; pray play it out, my lord."
+
+"Quite useless, ma'am," said Sir John, showing two honours.  "We have
+only the trick to make."
+
+"Quite useless," echoed Lumley, tossing down his sovereigns, and rising
+with a careless yawn.
+
+"How d'ye do, Maltravers?"
+
+Maltravers rose; and Vargrave turned to Evelyn, and addressed her in a
+whisper.  The proud Maltravers walked away, and suppressed a sigh; a
+moment more, and he saw Lord Vargrave occupying the chair he had left
+vacant.  He laid his hand on Cleveland's shoulder.
+
+"The carriage is waiting,--are you ready?"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+  OBSCURIS vera involvens.*--VIRGIL.
+
+  * "Wrapping truth in obscurity."
+
+A DAY or two after the date of the last chapter, Evelyn and Caroline were
+riding out with Lord Vargrave and Mr. Merton, and on returning home they
+passed through the village of Burleigh.
+
+"Maltravers, I suppose, has an eye to the county one of these days," said
+Lord Vargrave, who honestly fancied that a man's eyes were always
+directed towards something for his own interest or advancement;
+"otherwise he could not surely take all this trouble about workhouses and
+paupers.  Who could ever have imagined my romantic friend would sink into
+a country squire?"
+
+"It is astonishing what talent and energy he throws into everything he
+attempts," said the parson.  "One could not, indeed, have supposed that a
+man of genius could make a man of business."
+
+"Flattering to your humble servant--whom all the world allow to be the
+last, and deny to be the first.  But your remark shows what a sad
+possession genius is: like the rest of the world, you fancy that it
+cannot be of the least possible use.  If a man is called a genius, it
+means that he is to be thrust out of all the good things in this life.
+He is not fit for anything but a garret!  Put a _genius_ into office!
+make a _genius_ a bishop! or a lord chancellor!--the world would be
+turned topsy-turvy!  You see that you are quite astonished that a genius
+can be even a county magistrate, and know the difference between a spade
+and a poker!  In fact, a genius is supposed to be the most ignorant,
+impracticable, good-for-nothing, do-nothing sort of thing that ever
+walked upon two legs.  Well, when I began life I took excellent care that
+nobody should take _me_ for a genius; and it is only within the last year
+or two that I ventured to emerge a little out of my shell.  I have not
+been the better for it; I was getting on faster while I was merely a
+plodder.  The world is so fond of that droll fable, the hare and the
+tortoise,--it really believes because (I suppose the fable to be true!) a
+tortoise _once_ beat a hare that all tortoises are much better runners
+than hares possibly can be.  Mediocre men have the monopoly of the loaves
+and fishes; and even when talent does rise in life, it is a talent which
+only differs from mediocrity by being more energetic and bustling."
+
+"You are bitter, Lord Vargrave," said Caroline, laughing; "yet surely you
+have had no reason to complain of the non-appreciation of talent?"
+
+"Humph! if I had had a grain more talent I should have been crushed by
+it.  There is a subtle allegory in the story of the lean poet, who put
+_lead_ in his pocket to prevent being blown away!  'Mais a nos
+moutons,'--to return to Maltravers.  Let us suppose that he was merely
+clever, had not had a particle of what is called genius, been merely a
+hardworking able gentleman, of good character and fortune, he might be
+half-way up the hill by this time; whereas now, what is he?  Less before
+the public than he was at twenty-eight,--a discontented anchorite, a
+meditative idler."
+
+"No, not that," said Evelyn, warmly, and then checked herself.
+
+Lord Vargrave looked at her sharply; but his knowledge of life told him
+that Legard was a much more dangerous rival than Maltravers.  Now and
+then, it is true, a suspicion to the contrary crossed him; but it did not
+take root and become a serious apprehension.  Still, be did not quite
+like the tone of voice in which Evelyn had put her abrupt negative, and
+said, with a slight sneer,--
+
+"If not that, what is he?"
+
+"One who purchased by the noblest exertions the right to be idle," said
+Evelyn with spirit; "and whom genius itself will not suffer to be idle
+long."
+
+"Besides," said Mr. Merton, "he has won a high reputation, which he
+cannot lose merely by not seeking to increase it."
+
+"Reputation!  Oh, yes! we give men like that--men of genius--a large
+property in the clouds, in order to justify ourselves in pushing them out
+of our way below.  But if they are contented with fame, why, they deserve
+their fate.  Hang fame,--give me power."
+
+"And is there no power in genius?" said Evelyn, with deepening fervour;
+"no power over the mind, and the heart, and the thought; no power over
+its own time, over posterity, over nations yet uncivilized, races yet
+unborn?"
+
+This burst from one so simple and young as Evelyn seemed to Vargrave so
+surprising that he stared on her without saying a word.
+
+"You will laugh at my championship," she added, with a blush and a smile;
+"but you provoked the encounter."
+
+"And you have won the battle," said Vargrave, with prompt gallantry.  "My
+charming ward, every day develops in you some new gift of nature!"
+
+Caroline, with a movement of impatience, put her horse into a canter.
+
+Just at this time, from a cross-road, emerged a horseman,--it was
+Maltravers.  The party halted, salutations were exchanged.
+
+"I suppose you have been enjoying the sweet business of squiredom," said
+Vargrave, gayly: "Atticus and his farm,--classical associations!
+Charming weather for the agriculturists, eh!  What news about corn and
+barley?  I suppose our English habit of talking on the weather arose when
+we were all a squirearchal farming, George-the-Third kind of people!
+Weather is really a serious matter to gentlemen who are interested in
+beans and vetches, wheat and hay.  You hang your happiness upon the
+changes of the moon!"
+
+"As you upon the smiles of a minister.  The weather of a court is more
+capricious than that of the skies,--at least we are better husbandmen
+than you who sow the wind and reap the whirlwind."
+
+"Well retorted: and really, when I look round, I am half inclined to envy
+you.  Were I not Vargrave, I would be Maltravers."
+
+It was, indeed, a scene that seemed quiet and serene, with the English
+union of the feudal and the pastoral life,--the village-green, with its
+trim scattered cottages; the fields and pastures that spread beyond; the
+turf of the park behind, broken by the shadows of the unequal grounds,
+with its mounds and hollows and venerable groves, from which rose the
+turrets of the old Hall, its mullion windows gleaming in the western sun;
+a scene that preached tranquillity and content, and might have been
+equally grateful to humble philosophy and hereditary pride.
+
+"I never saw any place so peculiar in its character as Burleigh," said
+the rector; "the old seats left to us in England are chiefly those of our
+great nobles.  It is so rare to see one that does not aspire beyond the
+residence of a private gentleman preserve all the relics of the Tudor
+age."
+
+"I think," said Vargrave, turning to Evelyn, "that as by my uncle's will
+your fortune is to be laid out in the purchase of land, we could not find
+a better investment than Burleigh.  So, whenever you are inclined to
+sell, Maltravers, I think we must outbid Doltimore.  What say you, my
+fair ward?"
+
+"Leave Burleigh in peace, I beseech you!" said Maltravers, angrily.
+
+"That is said like a Digby," returned Vargrave.  "_Allons_!--will you not
+come home with us?"
+
+"I thank you,--not to-day."
+
+"We meet at Lord Raby's next Thursday.  It is a ball given almost wholly
+in honour of your return to Burleigh; we are all going,--it is my young
+cousin's _debut_ at Knaresdean.  We have all an interest in her
+conquests."
+
+Now, as Maltravers looked up to answer, he caught Evelyn's glance, and
+his voice faltered.
+
+"Yes," he said, "we shall meet--once again.  Adieu!"  He wheeled round
+his horse, and they separated.
+
+"I can bear this no more," said Maltravers to himself; "I overrated my
+strength.  To see her thus, day after day, and to know her another's, to
+writhe beneath his calm, unconscious assertion of his rights!  Happy
+Vargrave!--and yet, ah! will _she_ be happy?  Oh, could I think so!"
+
+Thus soliloquizing, he suffered the rein to fall on the neck of his
+horse, which paced slowly home through the village, till it stopped--as
+if in the mechanism of custom--at the door of a cottage a stone's throw
+from the lodge.  At this door, indeed, for several successive days, had
+Maltravers stopped regularly; it was now tenanted by the poor woman his
+introduction to whom has been before narrated.  She had recovered from
+the immediate effects of the injury she had sustained; but her
+constitution, greatly broken by previous suffering and exhaustion, had
+received a mortal shock.  She was hurt inwardly; and the surgeon informed
+Maltravers that she had not many months to live.  He had placed her under
+the roof of one of his favourite cottagers, where she received all the
+assistance and alleviation that careful nursing and medical advice could
+give her.
+
+This poor woman, whose name was Sarah Elton, interested Maltravers much.
+She had known better days: there was a certain propriety in her
+expressions which denoted an education superior to her circumstances; and
+what touched Maltravers most, she seemed far more to feel her husband's
+death than her own sufferings,--which, somehow or other, is not common
+with widows the other side of forty!  We say that youth easily consoles
+itself for the robberies of the grave,--middle age is a still better
+self-comforter.  When Mrs. Elton found herself installed in the cottage,
+she looked round, and burst into tears.
+
+"And William is not here!" she said.  "Friends--friends! if we had had
+but one such friend before he died!"
+
+Maltravers was pleased that her first thought was rather that of sorrow
+for the dead than of gratitude for the living.  Yet Mrs. Elton was
+grateful,--simply, honestly, deeply grateful; her manner, her voice,
+betokened it.  And she seemed so glad when her benefactor called to speak
+kindly and inquire cordially, that Maltravers did so constantly; at first
+from a compassionate and at last from a selfish motive--for who is not
+pleased to give pleasure?  And Maltravers had so few in the world to care
+for him, that perhaps he was flattered by the grateful respect of this
+humble stranger.
+
+When his horse stopped, the cottager's daughter opened the door and
+courtesied,--it was an invitation to enter; and he threw his rein over
+the paling and walked into the cottage.
+
+Mrs. Elton, who had been seated by the open casement, rose to receive
+him.  But Maltravers made her sit down, and soon put her at her ease.
+The woman and her daughter who occupied the cottage retired into the
+garden, and Mrs. Elton, watching them withdraw, then exclaimed
+abruptly,--
+
+"Oh, sir, I have so longed to see you this morning!  I so long to make
+bold to ask you whether, indeed, I dreamed it--or did I, when you first
+took me to your house--did I see--" She stopped abruptly; and though she
+strove to suppress her emotion, it was too strong for her efforts,--she
+sank back on her chair, pale as death, and almost gasped for breath.
+
+Maltravers waited in surprise for her recovery.
+
+"I beg pardon, sir,--I was thinking of days long past; and--but I wished
+to ask whether, when I lay in your hall, almost insensible, any one
+besides yourself and your servants were present?---or was it"--added the
+woman, with a shudder--"was it the dead?"
+
+"I remember," said Maltravers, much struck and interested in her question
+and manner, "that a lady was present."
+
+"It is so! it is so!" cried the woman, half rising and clasping her
+hands.  "And she passed by this cottage a little time ago; her veil was
+thrown aside as she turned that fair young face towards the cottage.  Her
+name, sir,--oh, what is her name?  It was the same--the same face that
+shone across me in that hour of pain!  I did not dream!  I was not mad!"
+
+"Compose yourself; you could never, I think, have seen that lady before.
+Her name is Cameron."
+
+"Cameron--Cameron!"  The woman shook her head mournfully.  "No; that name
+is strange to me.  And her mother, sir,--she is dead?"
+
+"No; her mother lives."
+
+A shade came over the face of the sufferer; and she said, after a
+pause,--
+
+"My eyes deceive me then, sir; and, indeed, I feel that my head is
+touched, and I wander sometimes.  But the likeness was so great; yet that
+young lady is even lovelier!"
+
+"Likenesses are very deceitful and very capricious, and depend more on
+fancy than reality.  One person discovers a likeness between faces most
+dissimilar,--a likeness invisible to others.  But who does Miss Cameron
+resemble?"
+
+"One now dead, sir; dead many years ago.  But it is a long story, and one
+that lies heavy on my conscience.  Some day or other, if you will give me
+leave, sir, I will unburden myself to you."
+
+"If I can assist you in anyway, command me.  Meanwhile, have you no
+friends, no relations, no children, whom you would wish to see?"
+
+"Children!--no, sir; I never had but one child of _my own_ (she laid an
+emphasis on the last words), and that died in a foreign land."
+
+"And no other relatives?"
+
+"None, sir.  My history is very short and simple.  I was well brought
+up,--an only child.  My father was a small farmer; he died when I was
+sixteen, and I went into service with a kind old lady and her daughter,
+who treated me more as a companion than a servant.  I was a vain, giddy
+girl, then, sir.  A young man, the son of a neighbouring farmer, courted
+me, and I was much attached to him; but neither of us had money, and his
+parents would not give their consent to our marrying.  I was silly enough
+to think that, if William loved me, he should have braved all; and his
+prudence mortified me, so I married another whom I did not love.  I was
+rightly punished, for he ill-used me and took to drinking; I returned to
+my old service to escape from him--for I was with child, and my life was
+in danger from his violence.  He died suddenly, and in debt.  And then,
+afterwards, a gentleman--a rich gentleman--to whom I rendered a service
+(do not misunderstand me, sir, if I say the service was one of which I
+repent), gave me money, and made me rich enough to marry my first lover;
+and William and I went to America.  We lived many years in New York upon
+our little fortune comfortably; and I was a long while happy, for I had
+always loved William dearly.  My first affliction was the death of my
+child by my first husband; but I was soon roused from my grief.  William
+schemed and speculated, as everybody does in America, and so we lost all;
+and William was weakly and could not work.  At length he got the place of
+steward on board a vessel from New York to Liverpool, and I was taken to
+assist in the cabin.  We wanted to come to London; I thought my old
+benefactor might do something for us, though he had never answered the
+letters I sent to him.  But poor William fell ill on board, and died in
+sight of land."
+
+Mrs. Elton wept bitterly, but with the subdued grief of one to whom tears
+have been familiar; and when she recovered, she soon brought her humble
+tale to an end.  She herself, incapacitated from all work by sorrow and a
+breaking constitution, was left in the streets of Liverpool without other
+means of subsistence than the charitable contributions of the passengers
+and sailors on board the vessel.  With this sum she had gone to London,
+where she found her old patron had been long since dead, and she had no
+claims on his family.  She had, on quitting England, left one relation
+settled in a town in the North; thither she now repaired, to find her
+last hope wrecked; the relation also was dead and gone.  Her money was
+now spent, and she had begged her way along the road, or through the
+lanes, she scarce knew whither, till the accident which, in shortening
+her life, had raised up a friend for its close.
+
+"And such, sir," said she in conclusion, "such has been the story of my
+life, except one part of it, which, if I get stronger, I can tell better;
+but you will excuse that now."
+
+"And are you comfortable and contented, my poor friend?  These people are
+kind to you?"
+
+"Oh, so kind!  And every night we all pray for you, sir; you ought to be
+happy, if the blessings of the poor can avail the rich."
+
+Maltravers remounted his horse, and sought his home; and his heart was
+lighter than before he entered that cottage.  But at evening Cleveland
+talked of Vargrave and Evelyn, and the good fortune of the one, and the
+charms of the other; and the wound, so well concealed, bled afresh.
+
+"I heard from De Montaigne the other day," said Ernest, just as they were
+retiring for the night, "and his letter decides my movements.  If you
+will accept me, then, as a travelling companion, I will go with you to
+Paris.  Have you made up your mind to leave Burleigh on Saturday?"
+
+"Yes; that gives us a day to recover from Lord Raby's ball.  I am so
+delighted at your offer!  We need only stay a day or so in town.  The
+excursion will do you good,---your spirits, my dear Ernest, seem more
+dejected than when you first returned to England: you live too much alone
+here; you will enjoy Burleigh more on your return.  And perhaps then you
+will open the old house a little more to the neighbourhood, and to your
+friends.  They expect it: you are looked to for the county."
+
+"I have done with politics, and sicken but for peace."
+
+"Pick up a wife in Paris, and you will then know that peace is an
+impossible possession," said the old bachelor, laughing.
+
+
+
+BOOK V.
+
+  "FOOLS blind to truth; nor know their erring soul
+   How much the half is better than the whole."
+        --HESIOD: _Op. et Dies_, 40.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+  Do as the Heavens have done; forget your evil;
+  With them, forgive yourself.--_The Winter's Tale_.
+
+  .  .  .  The sweet'st companion that e'er man
+  Bred his hopes out of.--_Ibid._
+
+THE curate of Brook-Green was sitting outside his door.  The vicarage
+which he inhabited was a straggling, irregular, but picturesque
+building,--humble enough to suit the means of the curate, yet large
+enough to accommodate the vicar.  It had been built in an age when the
+_indigentes et pauperes_ for whom universities were founded supplied,
+more than they do now, the fountains of the Christian ministry, when
+pastor and flock were more on an equality.
+
+From under a rude and arched porch, with an oaken settle on either side
+for the poor visitor, the door opened at once upon the old-fashioned
+parlour,--a homely but pleasant room, with one wide but low cottage
+casement, beneath which stood the dark shining table that supported the
+large Bible in its green baize cover; the Concordance, and the last
+Sunday's sermon, in its jetty case.  There by the fireplace stood the
+bachelor's round elbow-chair, with a needlework cushion at the back; a
+walnut-tree bureau, another table or two, half a dozen plain chairs,
+constituted the rest of the furniture, saving some two or three hundred
+volumes, ranged in neat shelves on the clean wainscoted walls.  There was
+another room, to which you ascended by two steps, communicating with this
+parlour, smaller but finer, and inhabited only on festive days, when Lady
+Vargrave, or some other quiet neighbour, came to drink tea with the good
+curate.
+
+An old housekeeper and her grandson--a young fellow of about two and
+twenty, who tended the garden, milked the cow, and did in fact what he
+was wanted to do--composed the establishment of the humble minister.
+
+We have digressed from Mr. Aubrey himself.
+
+The curate was seated, then, one fine summer morning, on a bench at the
+left of his porch, screened from the sun by the cool boughs of a
+chestnut-tree, the shadow of which half covered the little lawn that
+separated the precincts of the house from those of silent Death and
+everlasting Hope; above the irregular and moss-grown paling rose the
+village church; and, through openings in the trees, beyond the
+burial-ground, partially gleamed the white walls of Lady Vargrave's
+cottage, and were seen at a distance the sails on the--
+
+          "Mighty waters, rolling evermore."
+
+The old man was calmly enjoying the beauty of the morning, the freshness
+of the air, the warmth of the dancing beam, and not least, perhaps, his
+own peaceful thoughts,--the spontaneous children of a contemplative
+spirit and a quiet conscience.  His was the age when we most sensitively
+enjoy the mere sense of existence,--when the face of Nature and a passive
+conviction of the benevolence of our Great Father suffice to create a
+serene and ineffable happiness, which rarely visits us till we have done
+with the passions; till memories, if more alive than heretofore, are yet
+mellowed in the hues of time, and Faith softens into harmony all their
+asperities and harshness; till nothing within us remains to cast a shadow
+over the things without; and on the verge of life, the Angels are nearer
+to us than of yore.  There is an old age which has more youth of heart
+than youth itself!
+
+As the old man thus sat, the little gate through which, on Sabbath days,
+he was wont to pass from the humble mansion to the house of God
+noiselessly opened, and Lady Vargrave appeared.
+
+The curate rose when he perceived her; and the lady's fair features were
+lighted up with a gentle pleasure, as she pressed his hand and returned
+his salutation.
+
+There was a peculiarity in Lady Vargrave's countenance which I have
+rarely seen in others.  Her smile, which was singularly expressive, came
+less from the lip than from the eyes; it was almost as if the brow
+smiled; it was as the sudden and momentary vanishing of a light but
+melancholy cloud that usually rested upon the features, placid as they
+were.
+
+They sat down on the rustic bench, and the sea-breeze wantoned amongst
+the quivering leaves of the chestnut-tree that overhung their seat.
+
+"I have come, as usual, to consult my kind friend," said Lady Vargrave;
+"and, as usual also, it is about our absent Evelyn."
+
+"Have you heard again from her, this morning?"
+
+"Yes; and her letter increases the anxiety which your observation, so
+much deeper than mine, first awakened."
+
+"Does she then write much of Lord Vargrave?"
+
+"Not a great deal; but the little she does say, betrays how much she
+shrinks from the union my poor husband desired: more, indeed, than ever!
+But this is not all, nor the worst; for you know that the late lord had
+provided against that probability--he loved her so tenderly, his ambition
+for her only came from his affection; and the letter he left behind him
+pardons and releases her, if she revolts from the choice he himself
+preferred."
+
+"Lord Vargrave is, perhaps, a generous, he certainly seems a candid, man,
+and he must be sensible that his uncle has already done all that justice
+required."
+
+"I think so.  But this, as I said, is not all; I have brought the letter
+to show you.  It seems to me as you apprehended.  This Mr. Maltravers has
+wound himself about her thoughts more than she herself imagines; you see
+how she dwells on all that concerns him, and how, after checking herself,
+she returns again and again to the same subject."
+
+The curate put on his spectacles, and took the letter.  It was a strange
+thing, that old gray-haired minister evincing such grave interest in the
+secrets of that young heart!  But they who would take charge of the soul
+must never be too wise to regard the heart!
+
+Lady Vargrave looked over his shoulder as he bent down to read, and at
+times placed her finger on such passages as she wished him to note.  The
+old curate nodded as she did so; but neither spoke till the letter was
+concluded.
+
+The curate then folded up the epistle, took off his spectacles, hemmed,
+and looked grave.
+
+"Well," said Lady Vargrave, anxiously, "well?"
+
+"My dear friend, the letter requires consideration.  In the first place,
+it is clear to me that, in spite of Lord Vargrave's presence at the
+rectory, his lordship so manages matters that the poor child is unable of
+herself to bring that matter to a conclusion.  And, indeed, to a mind so
+sensitively delicate and honourable, it is no easy task."
+
+"Shall I write to Lord Vargrave?"
+
+"Let us think of it.  In the meanwhile, this Mr. Maltravers--"
+
+"Ah, this Mr. Maltravers!"
+
+"The child shows us more of her heart than she thinks of; and yet I
+myself am puzzled.  If you observe, she has only once or twice spoken of
+the Colonel Legard whom she has made acquaintance with; while she treats
+at length of Mr. Maltravers, and confesses the effect he has produced on
+her mind.  Yet, do you know, I more dread the caution respecting the
+first than all the candour that betrays the influence of the last?  There
+is a great difference between first fancy and first love."
+
+"Is there?" said the lady, abstractedly.
+
+"Again, neither of us is acquainted with this singular man,--I mean
+Maltravers; his character, temper, and principles, of all of which Evelyn
+is too young, too guileless, to judge for herself.  One thing, however,
+in her letter speaks in his favour."
+
+"What is that?"
+
+"He absents himself from her.  This, if he has discovered her secret, or
+if he himself is sensible of too great a charm in her presence, would be
+the natural course that an honourable and a strong mind would pursue."
+
+"What!--if he love her?"
+
+"Yes; while he believes her hand is engaged to another."
+
+"True!  What shall be done--if Evelyn should love, and love in vain?  Ah,
+it is the misery of a whole existence!"
+
+"Perhaps she had better return to us," said Mr. Aubrey; "and yet, if
+already it be too late, and her affections are engaged, we should still
+remain in ignorance respecting the motives and mind of the object of her
+attachment; and he, too, might not know the true nature of the obstacle
+connected with Lord Vargrave's claims."
+
+"Shall I, then, go to her?  You know how I shrink from strangers; how I
+fear curiosity, doubts, and questions; how [and Lady Vargrave's voice
+faltered]--how unfitted I am for--for--" she stopped short, and a faint
+blush overspread her cheeks.
+
+The curate understood her, and was moved.
+
+"Dear friend," said he, "will you intrust this charge to myself?  You
+know how Evelyn is endeared to me by certain recollections!  Perhaps,
+better than you, I may be enabled silently to examine if this man be
+worthy of her, and one who could secure her happiness; perhaps, better
+than you I may ascertain the exact nature of her own feelings towards
+him; perhaps, too, better than you I may effect an understanding with
+Lord Vargrave."
+
+"You are always my kindest friend," said the lady, with emotion; "how
+much I already owe you! what hopes beyond the grave! what--"
+
+"Hush!" interrupted the curate, gently; "your own good heart and pure
+intentions have worked out your own atonement--may I hope also your own
+content?  Let us return to our Evelyn.  Poor child! how unlike this
+despondent letter to her gay light spirits when with us!  We acted for
+the best; yet perhaps we did wrong to yield her up to strangers.  And
+this Maltravers--with her enthusiasm and quick susceptibilities to
+genius, she was half prepared to imagine him all she depicts him to be.
+He must have a spell in his works that I have not discovered, for at
+times it seems to operate even on you."
+
+"Because," said Lady Vargrave, "they remind me of _his_ conversation,
+_his_ habits of thought.  If like _him_ in other things, Evelyn may
+indeed be happy!"
+
+"And if," said the curate, curiously,--"if now that you are free, you
+were ever to meet with him again, and his memory had been as faithful as
+yours; and if he offered the sole atonement in his power, for all that
+his early error cost you; if such a chance should happen in the
+vicissitudes of life, you would--"
+
+The curate stopped short; for he was struck by the exceeding paleness of
+his friend's cheek, and the tremor of her delicate frame.
+
+"If that were to happen," said she, in a very low voice; "if we were to
+meet again, and if he were--as you and Mrs. Leslie seem to think--poor,
+and, like myself, humbly born, if my fortune could assist him, if my love
+could still--changed, altered as I am--ah! do not talk of it--I cannot
+bear the thought of happiness!  And yet, if before I die I _could_ but
+see him again!"  She clasped her hands fervently as she spoke, and the
+blush that overspread her face threw over it so much of bloom and
+freshness, that even Evelyn, at that moment, would scarcely have seemed
+more young.  "Enough!" she added, after a little while, as the glow died
+away.  "It is but a foolish hope; all earthly love is buried; and my
+heart is there!"--she pointed to the heavens, and both were silent.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+  QUIBUS otio vel magnifice, vel molliter, vivere copia era
+  incerta pro certis malebant.*--SALLUST.
+
+  * "They who had the means to live at ease, either in splendour or
+    in luxury, preferred the uncertainty of change to their natural
+    security."
+
+LORD RABY--one of the wealthiest and most splendid noblemen in
+England--was prouder, perhaps, of his provincial distinctions than the
+eminence of his rank or the fashion of his wife.  The magnificent
+chateaux, the immense estates, of our English peers tend to preserve to
+us in spite of the freedom, bustle, and commercial grandeur of our people
+more of the Norman attributes of aristocracy than can be found in other
+countries.  In his county, the great noble is a petty prince; his house
+is a court; his possessions and munificence are a boast to every
+proprietor in his district.  They are as fond of talking of _the_ earl's
+or _the_ duke's movements and entertainments, as Dangeau was of the
+gossip of the Tuileries and Versailles.
+
+Lord Raby, while affecting, as lieutenant of the county, to make no
+political distinctions between squire and squire--hospitable and affable
+to all--still, by that very absence of exclusiveness, gave a tone to the
+politics of the whole county; and converted many who had once thought
+differently on the respective virtues of Whigs and Tories.  A great man
+never loses so much as when he exhibits intolerance, or parades the right
+of persecution.
+
+"My tenants shall vote exactly as they please," said Lord Raby; and he
+was never known to have a tenant vote against his wishes!  Keeping a
+vigilant eye on all the interests, and conciliating all the proprietors,
+in the county, he not only never lost a friend, but he kept together a
+body of partisans that constantly added to its numbers.
+
+Sir John Merton's colleague, a young Lord Nelthorpe, who could not speak
+three sentences if you took away his hat, and who, constant at Almack's,
+was not only inaudible but invisible in parliament, had no chance of
+being re-elected.  Lord Nelthorpe's father, the Earl of Mainwaring, was a
+new peer; and, next to Lord Raby, the richest nobleman in the county.
+Now, though they were much of the same politics, Lord Raby hated Lord
+Mainwaring.  They were too near each other,--they clashed; they had the
+jealousy of rival princes!
+
+Lord Raby was delighted at the notion of getting rid of Lord
+Nelthorpe,--it would be so sensible a blow to the Mainwaring interest.
+The party had been looking out for a new candidate, and Maltravers had
+been much talked of.  It is true that, when in parliament some years
+before, the politics of Maltravers had differed from those of Lord Raby
+and his set.  But Maltravers had of late taken no share in politics, had
+uttered no political opinions, was intimate with the electioneering
+Mertons, was supposed to be a discontented man,--and politicians believe
+in no discontent that is not political.  Whispers were afloat that
+Maltravers had grown wise, and changed his views: some remarks of his,
+more theoretical than practical, were quoted in favour of this notion.
+Parties, too, had much changed since Maltravers had appeared on the busy
+scene,--new questions had arisen, and the old ones had died off.
+
+Lord Raby and his party thought that, if Maltravers could be secured to
+them, no one would better suit their purpose.  Political faction loves
+converts better even than consistent adherents.  A man's rise in life
+generally dates from a well-timed _rat_.  His high reputation, his
+provincial rank as the representative of the oldest commoner's family in
+the county, his age, which combined the energy of one period with the
+experience of another,--all united to accord Maltravers a preference over
+richer men.  Lord Raby had been pointedly courteous and flattering to the
+master of Burleigh; and he now contrived it so, that the brilliant
+entertainment he was about to give might appear in compliment to a
+distinguished neighbour, returned to fix his residence on his patrimonial
+property, while in reality it might serve an electioneering
+purpose,--serve to introduce Maltravers to the county, as if under his
+lordship's own wing, and minister to political uses that went beyond the
+mere representation of the county.
+
+Lord Vargrave had, during his stay at Merton Rectory, paid several visits
+to Knaresdean, and held many private conversations with the marquess: the
+result of these conversations was a close union of schemes and interests
+between the two noblemen.  Dissatisfied with the political conduct of
+government, Lord Raby was also dissatisfied that, from various party
+reasons, a nobleman beneath himself in rank, and as he thought in
+influence, had obtained a preference in a recent vacancy among the
+Knights of the Garter.  And if Vargrave had a talent in the world it was
+in discovering the weak points of men whom he sought to gain, and making
+the vanities of others conduce to his own ambition.
+
+The festivities of Knaresdean gave occasion to Lord Raby to unite at his
+house the more prominent of those who thought and acted in concert with
+Lord Vargrave; and in this secret senate the operations for the following
+session were to be seriously discussed and gravely determined.
+
+On the day which was to be concluded with the ball at Knaresdean, Lord
+Vargrave went before the rest of the Merton party, for he was engaged to
+dine with the marquess.
+
+On arriving at Knaresdean, Lumley found Lord Saxingham and some other
+politicians, who had arrived the preceding day, closeted with Lord Raby;
+and Vargrave, who shone to yet greater advantage in the diplomacy of
+party management than in the arena of parliament, brought penetration,
+energy, and decision to timid and fluctuating counsels.  Lord Vargrave
+lingered in the room after the first bell had summoned the other guests
+to depart.
+
+"My dear lord," said he then, "though no one would be more glad than
+myself to secure Maltravers to our side, I very much doubt whether you
+will succeed in doing so.  On the one hand, he appears altogether
+disgusted with politics and parliament; and on the other hand, I fancy
+that reports of his change of opinions are, if not wholly unfounded, very
+unduly coloured.  Moreover, to do him justice, I think that he is not one
+to be blinded and flattered into the pale of a party; and your bird will
+fly away after you have wasted a bucketful of salt on his tail."
+
+"Very possibly," said Lord Raby, laughing,--"you know him better than I
+do.  But there are many purposes to serve in this matter,--purposes too
+provincial to interest you.  In the first place, we shall humble the
+Nelthorpe interest, merely by showing that we _do_ think of a new member;
+secondly, we shall get up a manifestation of feeling that would be
+impossible, unless we were provided with a centre of attraction; thirdly,
+we shall rouse a certain emulation among other county gentlemen, and if
+Maltravers decline, we shall have many applicants; and fourthly, suppose
+Maltravers has not changed his opinions, we shall make him suspected by
+the party he really does belong to, and which would be somewhat
+formidable if he were to head them.  In fact, these are mere county
+tactics that you can't be expected to understand."
+
+"I see you are quite right: meanwhile you will at least have an
+opportunity (though I say it, who should not say it) to present to the
+county one of the prettiest young ladies that ever graced the halls of
+Knaresdean."
+
+"Ah, Miss Cameron!  I have heard much of her beauty: you are a lucky
+fellow, Vargrave!  By the by, are we to say anything of the engagement?"
+
+"Why, indeed, my dear lord, it is now so publicly known, that it would be
+false delicacy to affect concealment."
+
+"Very well; I understand."
+
+"How long I have detained you--a thousand pardons!--I have but just time
+to dress.  In four or five months I must remember to leave you a longer
+time for your toilet."
+
+"Me--how?"
+
+"Oh, the Duke of ----- can't live long; and I always observe that when a
+handsome man has the Garter, he takes a long time pulling up his
+stockings."
+
+"Ha, ha! you are so droll, Vargrave."
+
+"Ha, ha!  I must be off."
+
+"The more publicity is given to this arrangement, the more difficult for
+Evelyn to shy at the leap," muttered Vargrave to himself as he closed the
+door.  "Thus do I make all things useful to myself!"
+
+The dinner party were assembled in the great drawing-room, when
+Maltravers and Cleveland, also invited guests to the banquet, were
+announced.  Lord Raby received the former with marked _empressement_; and
+the stately marchioness honoured him with her most gracious smile.
+Formal presentations to the rest of the guests were interchanged; and it
+was not till the circle was fully gone through that Maltravers perceived,
+seated by himself in a corner, to which he had shrunk on the entrance of
+Maltravers, a gray-haired solitary man,--it was Lord Saxingham!  The last
+time they had met was in the death-chamber of Florence; and the old man
+forgot for the moment the anticipated dukedom, and the dreamed-of
+premiership, and his heart flew back to the grave of his only child!
+They saluted each other, and shook hands in silence.  And Vargrave--whose
+eye was on them--Vargrave, whose arts had made that old man childless,
+felt not a pang of remorse!  Living ever in the future, Vargrave almost
+seemed to have lost his memory.  He knew not what regret was.  It is a
+condition of life with men thoroughly worldly that they never look
+behind!
+
+The signal was given: in due order the party were marshalled into the
+great hall,--a spacious and lofty chamber, which had received its last
+alteration from the hand of Inigo Jones; though the massive ceiling, with
+its antique and grotesque masques, betrayed a much earlier date, and
+contrasted with the Corinthian pilasters that adorned the walls, and
+supported the music-gallery, from which waved the flags of modern warfare
+and its mimicries,--the eagle of Napoleon, a token of the services of
+Lord Raby's brother (a distinguished cavalry officer in command at
+Waterloo), in juxtaposition with a much gayer and more glittering banner,
+emblematic of the martial fame of Lord Raby himself, as Colonel of the
+B-----shire volunteers!
+
+The music pealed from the gallery, the plate glittered on the board; the
+ladies wore diamonds, and the gentlemen who had them wore stars.  It was
+a very fine sight, that banquet!--such as became the festive day of a
+lord-lieutenant whose ancestors had now defied, and now intermarried,
+with royalty.  But there was very little talk, and no merriment.  People
+at the top of the table drank wine with those at the bottom; and
+gentlemen and ladies seated next to each other whispered languidly in
+monosyllabic commune.  On one side, Maltravers was flanked by a Lady
+Somebody Something, who was rather deaf, and very much frightened for
+fear he should talk Greek; on the other side he was relieved by Sir John
+Merton,--very civil, very pompous, and talking, at strictured intervals,
+about county matters, in a measured intonation, savouring of the
+House-of-Commons jerk at the end of the sentence.
+
+As the dinner advanced to its close, Sir John became a little more
+diffuse, though his voice sank into a whisper.
+
+"I fear there will be a split in the Cabinet before parliament meets."
+
+"Indeed!"
+
+"Yes; Vargrave and the premier cannot pull together very long.  Clever
+man, Vargrave! but he has not enough stake in the country for a leader!"
+
+"All men have public character to stake; and if that be good, I suppose
+no stake can be better?"
+
+"Humph!--yes--very true; but still, when a man has land and money, his
+opinions, in a country like this, very properly carry more weight with
+them.  If Vargrave, for instance, had Lord Raby's property, no man could
+be more fit for a leader,--a prime minister.  We might then be sure that
+he would have no selfish interest to further: he would not play tricks
+with his party--you understand?"
+
+"Perfectly."
+
+"I am not a party man, as you may remember; indeed, you and I have voted
+alike on the same questions.  Measures, not men,--that is my maxim; but
+still I don't like to see men placed above their proper stations."
+
+"Maltravers, a glass of wine," said Lord Vargrave across the table.
+"Will you join us, Sir John?"
+
+Sir John bowed.
+
+"Certainly," he resumed, "Vargrave is a pleasant man and a good speaker;
+but still they say he is far from rich,--embarrassed, indeed.  However,
+when he marries Miss Cameron it may make a great difference,--give him
+more respectability; do you know what her fortune is--something immense?"
+
+"Yes, I believe so; I don't know."
+
+"My brother says that Vargrave is most amiable.  The young lady is very
+handsome, almost too handsome for a wife--don't you think so?  Beauties
+are all very well in a ballroom; but they are not calculated for domestic
+life.  I am sure you agree with me.  I have heard, indeed, that Miss
+Cameron is rather learned; but there is so much scandal in a country
+neighbourhood,--people are so ill-natured.  I dare say she is not more
+learned than other young ladies, poor girl!  What do you think?"
+
+"Miss Cameron is--is very accomplished, I believe.  And so you think the
+Government cannot stand?"
+
+"I don't say that,--very far from it; but I fear there must be a change.
+However, if the country gentlemen hold together, I do not doubt but what
+we shall weather the storm.  The landed interest, Mr. Maltravers, is the
+great stay of this country,--the sheet-anchor, I may say.  I suppose Lord
+Vargrave, who seems, I must say, to have right notions on this head, will
+invest Miss Cameron's fortune in land.  But though one may buy an estate,
+one can't buy an old family, Mr. Maltravers!--you and I may be thankful
+for that.  By the way, who was Miss Cameron's mother, Lady
+Vargrave?--something low, I fear; nobody knows."
+
+"I am not acquainted with Lady Vargrave; your sister-in-law speaks of her
+most highly.  And the daughter in herself is a sufficient guarantee for
+the virtues of the mother."
+
+"Yes; and Vargrave on one side, at least, has himself nothing in the way
+of family to boast of."
+
+The ladies left the hall, the gentlemen re-seated themselves.  Lord Raby
+made some remark on politics to Sir John Merton, and the whole round of
+talkers immediately followed their leader.
+
+"It is a thousand pities, Sir John," said Lord Raby, "that you have not a
+colleague more worthy of you; Nelthorpe never attends a committee, does
+he?"
+
+"I cannot say that he is a very active member; but he is young, and we
+must make allowances for him," said Sir John, discreetly; for he had no
+desire to oust his colleague,--it was agreeable enough to be _the_
+efficient member.
+
+"In these times," said Lord Raby, loftily, "allowances are not to be made
+for systematic neglect of duty; we shall have a stormy session; the
+Opposition is no longer to be despised; perhaps a dissolution may be
+nearer at hand than we think for.  As for Nelthorpe, he cannot come in
+again."
+
+"That I am quite sure of," said a fat country gentleman of great weight
+in the county; "he not only was absent on the great Malt question, but he
+never answered my letter respecting the Canal Company."
+
+"Not answered your letter!" said Lord Raby, lifting up his hands and eyes
+in amaze and horror.  "What conduct!  Ah, Mr. Maltravers, you are the man
+for us!"
+
+"Hear! hear!" cried the fat squire.
+
+"Hear!" echoed Vargrave; and the approving sound went round the table.
+
+Lord Raby rose.  "Gentlemen, fill your glasses; a health to our
+distinguished neighbour!"
+
+The company applauded; each in his turn smiled, nodded, and drank to
+Maltravers, who, though taken by surprise, saw at once the course to
+pursue.  He returned thanks simply and shortly; and without pointedly
+noticing the allusion in which Lord Raby had indulged, remarked,
+incidentally, that he had retired, certainly for some years--perhaps
+forever--from political life.
+
+Vargrave smiled significantly at Lord Raby, and hastened to lead the
+conversation into party discussion.  Wrapped in his proud disdain of what
+he considered the contests of factions for toys and shadows, Maltravers
+remained silent; and the party soon broke up, and adjourned to the
+ballroom.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+  LE plus grand defaut de la penetration n'est pas de n'aller
+  point jusqu'au but,--c'est de la passer.*--LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.
+
+  * "The greatest defect of penetration is not that of not going
+    just up to the point,--'tis the passing it."
+
+EVELYN had looked forward to the ball at Knaresdean with feelings deeper
+than those which usually inflame the fancy of a girl proud of her dress
+and confident of her beauty.  Whether or not she _loved_ Maltravers, in
+the true acceptation of the word "love," it is certain that he had
+acquired a most powerful command over her mind and imagination.  She felt
+the warmest interest in his welfare, the most anxious desire for his
+esteem, the deepest regret at the thought of their estrangement.  At
+Knaresdean she should meet Maltravers,--in crowds, it is true; but still
+she should meet him; she should see him towering superior above the herd;
+she should hear him praised; she should mark him, the observed of all.
+But there was another and a deeper source of joy within her.  A letter
+had been that morning received from Aubrey, in which he had announced his
+arrival for the next day.  The letter, though affectionate, was short.
+Evelyn had been some months absent,--Lady Vargrave was anxious to make
+arrangements for her return; but it was to be at her option whether she
+would accompany the curate home.  Now, besides her delight at seeing once
+more the dear old man, and hearing from his lips that her mother was well
+and happy, Evelyn hailed in his arrival the means of extricating herself
+from her position with Lord Vargrave.  She would confide in him her
+increased repugnance to that union, he would confer with Lord Vargrave;
+and then--and then--did there come once more the thought of Maltravers?
+No!  I fear it was not Maltravers who called forth that smile and that
+sigh!  Strange girl, you know not your own mind!--but few of us, at your
+age, do.
+
+In all the gayety of hope, in the pride of dress and half-conscious
+loveliness, Evelyn went with a light step into Caroline's room.  Miss
+Merton had already dismissed her woman, and was seated by her
+writing-table, leaning her cheek thoughtfully on her hand.
+
+"Is it time to go?" said she, looking up.  "Well, we shall put Papa, and
+the coachman, and the horses, too, in excellent humour.  How well you
+look!  Really, Evelyn, you are indeed beautiful!" and Caroline gazed with
+honest but not unenvious admiration at the fairy form so rounded and yet
+so delicate, and the face that seemed to blush at its own charms.
+
+"I am sure I can return the flattery," said Evelyn, laughing bashfully.
+
+"Oh, as for me, I am well enough in my way: and hereafter, I dare say, we
+may be rival beauties.  I hope we shall remain good friends, and rule the
+world with divided empire.  Do you not long for the stir, and excitement,
+and ambition of London?---for ambition is open to us as to men!"
+
+"No, indeed," replied Evelyn, smiling; "I could be ambitious, indeed; but
+it would not be for myself, but for--"
+
+"A husband, perhaps; well, you will have ample scope for such sympathy.
+Lord Vargrave--"
+
+"Lord Vargrave again?" and Evelyn's smile vanished, and she turned away.
+
+"Ah," said Caroline, "I should have made Vargrave an excellent wife--pity
+he does not think so!  As it is, I must set up for myself and become a
+_maitresse femme_.  So you think I look well to-night?  I am glad of
+it--Lord Doltimore is one who will be guided by what other people say."
+
+"You are not serious about Lord Doltimore?"
+
+"Most sadly serious."
+
+"Impossible! you could not speak so if you loved him."
+
+"Loved him! no! but I intend to marry him."
+
+Evelyn was revolted, but still incredulous.
+
+"And you, too, will marry one whom you do not love--'tis our fate--"
+
+"Never!"
+
+"We shall see."
+
+Evelyn's heart was damped, and her spirits fell.
+
+"Tell me now," said Caroline, pressing on the wrung withers, "do you not
+think this excitement, partial and provincial though it be--the sense of
+beauty, the hope of conquest, the consciousness of power--better than the
+dull monotony of the Devonshire cottage?  Be honest--"
+
+"No, no, indeed!" answered Evelyn, tearfully and passionately; "one hour
+with my mother, one smile from her lips, were worth it all."
+
+"And in your visions of marriage, you think then of nothing but roses and
+doves,--love in a cottage!"
+
+"Love _in a home_, no matter whether a palace or a cottage," returned
+Evelyn.
+
+"Home!" repeated Caroline, bitterly; "home,--home is the English synonym
+for the French _ennui_.  But I hear Papa on the stairs."
+
+A ballroom--what a scene of commonplace! how hackneyed in novels! how
+trite in ordinary life! and yet ballrooms have a character and a
+sentiment of their own, for all tempers and all ages.  Something in the
+lights, the crowd, the music, conduces to stir up many of the thoughts
+that belong to fancy and romance.  It is a melancholy scene to men after
+a certain age.  It revives many of those lighter and more graceful images
+connected with the wandering desires of youth,--shadows that crossed us,
+and seemed love, but were not; having much of the grace and charm, but
+none of the passion and the tragedy, of love.  So many of our earliest
+and gentlest recollections are connected with those chalked floors, and
+that music painfully gay, and those quiet nooks and corners, where the
+talk that hovers about the heart and does not touch it has been held.
+Apart and unsympathizing in that austerer wisdom which comes to us after
+deep passions have been excited, we see form after form chasing the
+butterflies that dazzle us no longer among the flowers that have evermore
+lost their fragrance.
+
+Somehow or other, it is one of the scenes that remind us most forcibly of
+the loss of youth!  We are brought so closely in contact with the young
+and with the short-lived pleasures that once pleased us, and have
+forfeited all bloom.  Happy the man who turns from "the tinkling cymbal"
+and "the gallery of pictures," and can think of some watchful eye and
+some kind heart _at home_; but those who have no home--and they are a
+numerous tribe--never feel lonelier hermits or sadder moralists than in
+such a crowd.
+
+Maltravers leaned abstractedly against the wall, and some such
+reflections, perhaps, passed within, as the plumes waved and the diamonds
+glittered around him.  Ever too proud to be vain, the _monstrari digito_
+had not flattered even in the commencement of his career.  And now he
+heeded not the eyes that sought his look, nor the admiring murmur of lips
+anxious to be overheard.  Affluent, well-born, unmarried, and still in
+the prime of life,--in the small circles of a province, Ernest Maltravers
+would in himself have been an object of interest to the diplomacy of
+mothers and daughters; and the false glare of reputation necessarily
+deepened curiosity, and widened the range of speculators and observers.
+
+Suddenly, however, a new object of attention excited new interest; new
+whispers ran through the crowd, and these awakened Maltravers from his
+revery.  He looked up, and beheld all eyes fixed upon one form!  His own
+eyes encountered those of Evelyn Cameron!
+
+It was the first time he had seen this beautiful young person in all the
+_eclat_, pomp, and circumstance of her station, as the heiress of the
+opulent Templeton,--the first time he had seen her the cynosure of
+crowds, who, had her features been homely, would have admired the charms
+of her fortune in her face.  And now, as radiant with youth, and the
+flush of excitement on her soft cheek, she met his eye, he said to
+himself: "And could I have wished one so new to the world to have united
+her lot with a man for whom all that to her is delight has grown
+wearisome and stale?  Could I have been justified in stealing her from
+the admiration that, at her age and to her sex, has so sweet a flattery?
+Or, on the other hand, could I have gone back to her years, and
+sympathized with feelings that time has taught me to despise?  Better as
+it is."
+
+Influenced by these thoughts, the greeting of Maltravers disappointed and
+saddened Evelyn, she knew not why; it was constrained and grave.
+
+"Does not Miss Cameron look well?" whispered Mrs. Merton, on whose arm
+the heiress leaned.  "You observe what a sensation she creates?"
+
+Evelyn overheard, and blushed as she stole a glance at Maltravers.  There
+was something mournful in the admiration which spoke in his deep earnest
+eyes.
+
+"Everywhere," said he, calmly, and in the same tone, "everywhere Miss
+Cameron appears, she must outshine all others."  He turned to Evelyn, and
+said with a smile, "You must learn to inure yourself to admiration; a
+year or two hence, and you will not blush at your own gifts!"
+
+"And you, too, contribute to spoil me!--fie!"
+
+"Are you so easily spoiled?  If I meet you hereafter, you will think my
+compliments cold to the common language of others."
+
+"You do not know me,--perhaps you never will."
+
+"I am contented with the fair pages I have already read."
+
+"Where is Lady Raby?" asked Mrs. Merton.  "Oh, I see; Evelyn, my love, we
+must present ourselves to our hostess."
+
+The ladies moved on; and when Maltravers next caught a glance of Evelyn,
+she was with Lady Raby, and Lord Vargrave also was by her side.
+
+The whispers round him had grown louder.
+
+"Very lovely indeed! so young, too! and she is really going to be married
+to Lord Vargrave: so much older than she is,--quite a sacrifice!"
+
+"Scarcely so.  He is so agreeable, and still handsome.  But are you sure
+that the thing is settled?"
+
+"Oh, yes.  Lord Raby himself told me so.  It will take place very soon."
+
+"But do you know who her mother was?  I cannot make out."
+
+"Nothing particular.  You know the late Lord Vargrave was a man of low
+birth.  I believe she was a widow of his own rank; she lives quite in
+seclusion."
+
+"How d' ye do, Mr. Maltravers?  So glad to see you," said the quick,
+shrill voice of Mrs. Hare.  "Beautiful ball!  Nobody does things like
+Lord Raby; don't you dance?"
+
+"No, madam."
+
+"Oh, you young gentlemen are so _fine_ nowadays!" (Mrs. Hare, laying
+stress on the word _young_, thought she had paid a very elegant
+compliment, and ran on with increased complacency.)
+
+"You are going to let Burleigh, I hear, to Lord Doltimore,--is it true?
+No! really now, what stories people do tell.  Elegant man, Lord
+Doltimore!  Is it true, that Miss Caroline is going to marry his
+lordship?  Great match!  No scandal, I hope; you'll excuse _me_!  Two
+weddings on the _tapis_,--quite stirring for our stupid county.  Lady
+Vargrave and Lady Doltimore, two new peeresses.  Which do you think is
+the handsomer?  Miss Merton is the taller, but there is something fierce
+in her eyes.  Don't you think so?  By the by, I wish you joy,--you'll
+excuse _me_."
+
+"Wish me joy, madam?"
+
+"Oh, you are so close.  Mr. Hare says he shall support you.  You will
+have all the ladies with you.  Well, I declare, Lord Vargrave is going to
+dance.  How old is he, do you think?"
+
+Maltravers uttered an audible _pshaw_, and moved away; but his penance
+was not over.  Lord Vargrave, much as he disliked dancing, still thought
+it wise to ask the fair hand of Evelyn; and Evelyn, also, could not
+refuse.
+
+And now, as the crowd gathered round the red ropes, Maltravers had to
+undergo new exclamations at Evelyn's beauty and Vargrave's luck.
+Impatiently he turned from the spot, with that gnawing sickness of the
+heart which none but the jealous know.  He longed to depart, yet dreaded
+to do so.  It was the last time he should see Evelyn, perhaps for years;
+the last time he should see her as Miss Cameron!
+
+He passed into another room, deserted by all save four old
+gentlemen--Cleveland one of them--immersed in whist; and threw himself
+upon an ottoman, placed in a recess by the oriel window.  There, half
+concealed by the draperies, he communed and reasoned with himself.  His
+heart was sad within him; he never felt before _how_ deeply and _how_
+passionately he loved Evelyn; how firmly that love had fastened upon the
+very core of his heart!  Strange, indeed, it was in a girl so young, of
+whom he had seen but little,--and that little in positions of such quiet
+and ordinary interest,--to excite a passion so intense in a man who had
+gone through strong emotions and stern trials!  But all love is
+unaccountable.  The solitude in which Maltravers had lived, the absence
+of all other excitement, perhaps had contributed largely to fan the
+flame.  And his affections had so long slept, and after long sleep the
+passions wake with such giant strength!  He felt now too well that the
+last rose of life had bloomed for him; it was blighted in its birth, but
+it could never be replaced.  Henceforth, indeed, he should be alone, the
+hopes of home were gone forever; and the other occupations of mind and
+soul--literature, pleasure, ambition--were already forsworn at the very
+age in which by most men they are most indulged!
+
+O Youth! begin not thy career too soon, and let one passion succeed in
+its due order to another; so that every season of life may have its
+appropriate pursuit and charm!
+
+The hours waned; still Maltravers stirred not; nor were his meditations
+disturbed, except by occasional ejaculations from the four old gentlemen,
+as between each deal they moralized over the caprices of the cards.
+
+At length, close beside him he heard that voice, the lightest sound of
+which could send the blood rushing through his veins; and from his
+retreat he saw Caroline and Evelyn, seated close by.
+
+"I beg pardon," said the former, in a low voice,--"I beg pardon, Evelyn,
+for calling you away; but I longed to tell you.  The die is cast.  Lord
+Doltimore has proposed, and I have accepted him!  Alas, alas!  I half
+wish I could retract!"
+
+"Dearest Caroline!" said the silver voice of Evelyn, "for Heaven's sake,
+do not thus wantonly resolve on your own unhappiness!  You wrong
+yourself, Caroline! you do, indeed! You are not the vain ambitious
+character you affect to be!  Ah, what is it you require?  Wealth?  Are
+you not my friend; am I not rich enough for both?  Rank?  What can it
+give you to compensate for the misery of a union without love?  Pray,
+forgive me for speaking thus.  Do not think me presumptuous, or romantic;
+but, indeed, indeed, I know from my own heart what yours must undergo!"
+
+Caroline pressed her friend's hand with emotion.
+
+"You are a bad comforter, Evelyn.  My mother, my father, will preach a
+very different doctrine.  I am foolish, indeed, to be so sad in obtaining
+the very object I have sought!  Poor Doltimore! he little knows the
+nature, the feelings of her whom he thinks he has made the happiest of
+her sex; he little knows--"  Caroline paused, turned pale as death, and
+then went rapidly on, "but you, Evelyn, _you_ will meet the same fate; we
+shall bear it together."
+
+"No! no! do not think so!  Where I give my hand, there shall I give my
+heart."
+
+At this time Maltravers half rose, and sighed audibly.
+
+"Hush!" said Caroline, in alarm.  At the same moment, the whist-table
+broke up, and Cleveland approached Maltravers.
+
+"I am at your service," said he; "I know you will not stay the supper.
+You will find me in the next room; I am just going to speak to Lord
+Saxingham."  The gallant old gentleman then paid a compliment to the
+young ladies, and walked away.
+
+"So you too are a deserter from the ballroom!" said Miss Merton to
+Maltravers as she rose.
+
+"I am not very well; but do not let me frighten you away."
+
+"Oh, no!  I hear the music; it is the last quadrille before supper: and
+here is my fortunate partner looking for me."
+
+"I have been everywhere in search of you," said Lord Doltimore, in an
+accent of tender reproach: "come, we are almost too late now."
+
+Caroline put her arm into Lord Doltimore's, who hurried her into the
+ballroom.
+
+Miss Cameron looked irresolute whether or not to follow, when Maltravers
+seated himself beside her; and the paleness of his brow, and something
+that bespoke pain in the compressed lip, went at once to her heart.  In
+her childlike tenderness, she would have given worlds for the sister's
+privilege of sympathy and soothing.  The room was now deserted; they were
+alone.
+
+The words that he had overheard from Evelyn's lips, "Where I shall give
+my hand, there shall I give my heart," Maltravers interpreted but in one
+sense,--"she loved her betrothed;" and strange as it may seem, at that
+thought, which put the last seal upon his fate, selfish anguish was less
+felt than deep compassion.  So young, so courted, so tempted as she must
+be--and with such a protector!--the cold, the unsympathizing, the
+heartless Vargrave!  She, too, whose feelings, so warm, ever trembled on
+her lip and eye.  Oh! when she awoke from her dream, and knew whom she
+had loved, what might be her destiny, what her danger!
+
+"Miss Cameron," said Maltravers, "let me for one moment detain you; I
+will not trespass long.  May I once, and for the last time, assume the
+austere rights of friendship?  I have seen much of life, Miss Cameron,
+and my experience has been purchased dearly; and harsh and hermit-like as
+I may have grown, I have not outlived such feelings as you are well
+formed to excite.  Nay,"--and Maltravers smiled sadly--"I am not about to
+compliment or flatter, I speak not to you as the young to the young; the
+difference of our years, that takes away sweetness from flattery, leaves
+still sincerity to friendship.  You have inspired me with a deep
+interest,--deeper than I thought that living beauty could ever rouse in
+me again!  It may be that something in the tone of your voice, your
+manner, a nameless grace that I cannot define, reminds me of one whom I
+knew in youth,--one who had not your advantages of education, wealth,
+birth; but to whom Nature was more kind than Fortune."
+
+He paused a moment; and without looking towards Evelyn, thus renewed,--
+
+"You are entering life under brilliant auspices.  Ah, let me hope that
+the noonday will keep the promise of the dawn!  You are susceptible,
+imaginative; do not demand too much, or dream too fondly.  When you are
+wedded, do not imagine that wedded life is exempt from its trials and its
+cares; if you know yourself beloved--and beloved you must be--do not ask
+from the busy and anxious spirit of man all which Romance promises and
+Life but rarely yields.  And oh!" continued Maltravers, with an absorbing
+and earnest passion, that poured forth its language with almost
+breathless rapidity,--"if ever your heart rebels, if ever it be
+dissatisfied, fly the false sentiment as a sin!  Thrown, as from your
+rank you must be, on a world of a thousand perils, with no guide so
+constant and so safe as your own innocence, make not that world too dear
+a friend.  Were it possible that your own home ever could be lonely or
+unhappy, reflect that to woman the unhappiest home is happier than all
+excitement abroad.  You will have a thousand suitors hereafter: believe
+that the asp lurks under the flatterer's tongue, and resolve, come what
+may, to be contented with your lot.  How many have I known, lovely and
+pure as you, who have suffered the very affections--the very beauty of
+their nature--to destroy them!  Listen to me as a warner, as a brother,
+as a pilot who has passed the seas on which your vessel is about to
+launch.  And ever, ever let me know, in whatever lands your name may
+reach me, that one who has brought back to me all my faith in human
+excellence, while the idol of our sex, is the glory of her own.  Forgive
+me this strange impertinence; my heart is full, and has overflowed.  And
+now, Miss Cameron--Evelyn Cameron--this is my last offence, and my last
+farewell!"
+
+He held out his hand, and involuntarily, unknowingly, she clasped it, as
+if to detain him till she could summon words to reply.  Suddenly he heard
+Lord Vargrave's voice behind.  The spell was broken; the next moment
+Evelyn was alone, and the throng swept into the room towards the banquet,
+and laughter and gay voices were heard, and Lord Vargrave was again by
+Evelyn's side!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+            To you
+  This journey is devoted.
+       _Lover's Progress_, Act iv. sc. 1.
+
+AS Cleveland and Maltravers returned homeward, the latter abruptly
+checked the cheerful garrulity of his friend.  "I have a favour, a great
+favour to ask of you."
+
+"And what is that?"
+
+"Let us leave Burleigh tomorrow; I care not at what hour; we need go but
+two or three stages if you are fatigued."
+
+"Most hospitable host! and why?"
+
+"It is torture, it is agony to me, to breathe the air of Burleigh," cried
+Maltravers, wildly.  "Can you not guess my secret?  Have I then concealed
+it so well?  I love, I adore Evelyn Cameron, and she is betrothed to--she
+loves--another!"
+
+Mr. Cleveland was breathless with amaze; Maltravers had indeed so well
+concealed his secret, and now his emotion was so impetuous, that it
+startled and alarmed the old man, who had never himself experienced a
+passion, though he had indulged a sentiment.  He sought to console and
+soothe; but after the first burst of agony, Maltravers recovered himself,
+and said gently,--
+
+"Let us never return to this subject again: it is right that I should
+conquer this madness, and conquer it I will!  Now you know my weakness,
+you will indulge it.  My cure, cannot commence until I can no longer see
+from my casements the very roof that shelters the affianced bride of
+another."
+
+"Certainly, then, we will set off to-morrow: my friend! is it indeed--"
+
+"Ah, cease," interrupted the proud man; "no compassion, I implore: give
+me but time and silence,--they are the only remedies."
+
+Before noon the next day, Burleigh was once more deserted by its lord.
+As the carriage drove through the village, Mrs. Elton saw it from her
+open window; but her patron, too absorbed at that hour even for
+benevolence, forgot her existence and yet so complicated are the webs of
+fate, that in the breast of that lowly stranger was locked a secret of
+the most vital moment to Maltravers.
+
+"Where is he going; where is the squire going?" asked Mrs. Elton,
+anxiously.
+
+"Dear heart!" said the cottager, "they do say he be going for a short
+time to foren parts.  But he will be back at Christmas."
+
+"And at Christmas I may be gone hence forever," muttered the invalid;
+"but what will that matter to him--to any one?"
+
+At the first stage Maltravers and his friend were detained a short time
+for the want of horses.  Lord Raby's house had been filled with guests on
+the preceding night, and the stables of this little inn, dignified with
+the sign of the Raby Arms, and about two miles distant from the great
+man's place, had been exhausted by numerous claimants returning homeward
+from Knaresdean.  It was a quiet, solitary post-house, and patience, till
+some jaded horses should return, was the only remedy; the host, assuring
+the travellers that he expected four horses every moment, invited them
+within.  The morning was cold, and the fire not unacceptable to Mr.
+Cleveland; so they went into the little parlour.  Here they found an
+elderly gentleman of very prepossessing appearance, who was waiting for
+the same object.  He moved courteously from the fireplace as the
+travellers entered, and pushed the "B-----shire Chronicle" towards
+Cleveland: Cleveland bowed urbanely.  "A cold day, sir; the autumn begins
+to show itself."
+
+"It is true, sir," answered the old gentleman; "and I feel the cold the
+more, having just quitted the genial atmosphere of the South."
+
+"Of Italy?"
+
+"No, of England only.  I see by this paper (I am not much of a
+politician) that there is a chance of a dissolution of parliament, and
+that Mr. Maltravers is likely to come forward for this county; are you
+acquainted with him, sir?"
+
+"A little," said Cleveland, smiling.
+
+"He is a man I am much interested in," said the old gentleman; "and I
+hope soon to be honoured with his acquaintance."
+
+"Indeed! and you are going into his neighbourhood?" asked Cleveland,
+looking more attentively at the stranger, and much pleased with a certain
+simple candour in his countenance and manner.
+
+"Yes, to Merton Rectory."
+
+Maltravers, who had been hitherto stationed by the window, turned round.
+
+"To Merton Rectory?" repeated Cleveland.  "You are acquainted with Mr.
+Merton, then?"
+
+"Not yet; but I know some of his family.  However, my visit is rather to
+a young lady who is staying at the rectory,--Miss Cameron."
+
+Maltravers sighed heavily; and the old gentleman looked at him curiously.
+"Perhaps, sir, if you know that neighbourhood, you may have seen--"
+
+"Miss Cameron!  Certainly; it is an honour not easily forgotten."
+
+The old gentleman looked pleased.
+
+"The dear child!" said he, with a burst of honest affection, and he
+passed his hand over his eyes.  Maltravers drew near to him.
+
+"You know Miss Cameron; you are to be envied, sir," said he.
+
+"I have known her since she was a child; Lady Vargrave is my dearest
+friend."
+
+"Lady Vargrave must be worthy of such a daughter.  Only under the light
+of a sweet disposition and pure heart could that beautiful nature have
+been trained and reared."
+
+Maltravers spoke with enthusiasm; and, as if fearful to trust himself
+more, left the room.
+
+"That gentleman speaks not more warmly than justly," said the old man,
+with some surprise.  "He has a countenance which, if physiognomy be a
+true science, declares his praise to be no common compliment; may I
+inquire his name?"
+
+"Maltravers," replied Cleveland, a little vain of the effect his
+ex-pupil's name was to produce.
+
+The curate--for it was he--started and changed countenance.
+
+"Maltravers! but he is not about to leave the county?"
+
+"Yes, for a few months."
+
+Here the host entered.  Four horses, that had been only fourteen miles,
+had just re-entered the yard.  If Mr. Maltravers could spare two to that
+gentleman, who had, indeed, pre-engaged them?
+
+"Certainly," said Cleveland; "but be quick."
+
+"And is Lord Vargrave still at Mr. Merton's?" asked the curate, musingly.
+
+"Oh, yes, I believe so.  Miss Cameron is to be married to him very
+shortly,--is it not so?"
+
+"I cannot say," returned Aubrey, rather bewildered.  "You know Lord
+Vargrave, sir?"
+
+"Extremely well!"
+
+"And you think him worthy of Miss Cameron?"
+
+"That is a question for her to answer.  But I see the horses are put to.
+Good-day, sir!  Will you tell your fair young friend that you have met an
+old gentleman who wishes her all happiness; and if she ask you his name,
+say Cleveland?"
+
+So saying, Mr. Cleveland bowed, and re-entered the carriage.  But
+Maltravers was yet missing.  In fact, he returned to the house by the
+back way, and went once more into the little parlour.  It was something
+to see again one who would so soon see Evelyn!
+
+"If I mistake not," said Maltravers, "you are that Mr. Aubrey on whose
+virtues I have often heard Miss Cameron delight to linger?  Will you
+believe my regret that our acquaintance is now so brief?"
+
+As Maltravers spoke thus simply, there was in his countenance, his voice,
+a melancholy sweetness, which greatly conciliated the good curate; and as
+Aubrey gazed upon his noble features and lofty mien, he no longer
+wondered at the fascination he had appeared to exercise over the young
+Evelyn.
+
+"And may I not hope, Mr. Maltravers," said he, "that before long our
+acquaintance may be renewed?  Could not Miss Cameron," he added, with a
+smile and a penetrating look, "tempt you into Devonshire?"
+
+Maltravers shook his head, and, muttering something not very audible,
+quitted the room.  The curate heard the whirl of the wheels, and the host
+entered to inform him that his own carriage was now ready.
+
+"There is something in this," thought Aubrey, "which I do not comprehend.
+His manner, his trembling voice, bespoke emotions he struggled to
+conceal.  Can Lord Vargrave have gained his point?  Is Evelyn, indeed, no
+longer free?"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+  CERTES, c'est un grand cas, Icas,
+  Que toujours tracas ou fracas
+  Vous faites d'une ou d'autre sort;
+  C'est le diable qui vous emporte!*--VOITURE.
+
+  * "Certes, it is the fact, Icas, that you are always engaged in
+    tricks or scrapes of some sort or other; it must be the devil
+    that bewitches you."
+
+LORD VARGRAVE had passed the night of the ball and the following morning
+at Knaresdean.  It was necessary to bring the counsels of the scheming
+conclave to a full and definite conclusion; and this was at last
+effected.  Their strength numbered, friends and foes alike canvassed and
+considered, and due account taken of the waverers to be won over, it
+really did seem, even to the least sanguine, that the Saxingham or
+Vargrave party was one that might well aspire either to dictate to, or to
+break up, a government.  Nothing now was left to consider but the
+favourable hour for action.  In high spirits, Lord Vargrave returned
+about the middle of the day to the rectory.
+
+"So," thought he, as he reclined in his carriage,--"so, in politics, the
+prospect clears as the sun breaks out.  The party I have espoused is one
+that must be the most durable, for it possesses the greatest property and
+the most stubborn prejudice--what elements for Party!  All that I now
+require is a sufficient fortune to back my ambition.  Nothing can clog my
+way but these cursed debts, this disreputable want of gold.  And yet
+Evelyn alarms me!  Were I younger, or had I not made my position too
+soon, I would marry her by fraud or by force,--run off with her to
+Gretna, and make Vulcan minister to Plutus.  But this would never do at
+my years, and with my reputation.  A pretty story for the newspapers,
+d-----n them!  Well, nothing venture, nothing have; I will brave the
+hazard!  Meanwhile, Doltimore is mine; Caroline will rule him, and I rule
+her.  His vote and his boroughs are something,--his money will be more
+immediately useful: I must do him the honour to borrow a few
+thousands,--Caroline must manage that for me.  The fool is miserly,
+though a spendthrift; and looked black when I delicately hinted the other
+day that I wanted a friend--_id est_, a loan! money and friendship same
+thing,--distinction without a difference!"  Thus cogitating, Vargrave
+whiled away the minutes till his carriage stopped at Mr. Merton's door.
+
+As he entered the hall he met Caroline, who had just quitted her own
+room.
+
+"How lucky I am that you have on your bonnet!  I long for a walk with you
+round the lawn."
+
+"And I, too, am glad to see you, Lord Vargrave," said Caroline, putting
+her arm in his.
+
+"Accept my best congratulations, my own sweet friend," said Vargrave,
+when they were in the grounds.  "You have no idea how happy Doltimore is.
+He came to Knaresdean yesterday to communicate the news, and his
+neckcloth was primmer than ever.  C'est un bon enfant."
+
+"Ah, how can you talk thus?  Do you feel no pain at the thought
+that--that I am another's?"
+
+"Your heart will be ever mine,--and that is the true fidelity.  What
+else, too, could be done?  As for Lord Doltimore, we will go shares in
+him.  Come, cheer thee, _m'amie_; I rattle on thus to keep up your
+spirits.  Do not fancy I am happy!"
+
+Caroline let fall a few tears; but beneath the influence of Vargrave's
+sophistries and flatteries, she gradually recovered her usual hard and
+worldly tone of mind.
+
+"And where is Evelyn?" asked Vargrave.  "Do you know, the little witch
+seemed to be half mad the night of the ball.  Her head was turned; and
+when she sat next me at supper, she not only answered every question I
+put to her _a tort et a travers_, but I fancied every moment she was
+going to burst out crying.  Can you tell what was the matter with her?"
+
+"She was grieved to hear that I was to be married to the man I do not
+love.  Ah, Vargrave, she has more heart than you have!"
+
+"But she never fancies that you love me?" asked Lumley, in alarm.  "You
+women are so confoundedly confidential!"
+
+"No, she does not suspect our secret."
+
+"Then I scarcely think your approaching marriage was a sufficient cause
+for so much distraction."
+
+"Perhaps she may have overheard some of the impertinent whispers about
+her mother,--'Who was Lady Vargrave?' and 'What Cameron was Lady
+Vargrave's first husband?'  _I_ overheard a hundred such vulgar
+questions; and provincial people whisper so loud."
+
+"Ah, that is a very probable solution of the mystery; and for my part, I
+am almost as much puzzled as any one else can be to know who Lady
+Vargrave was!"
+
+"Did not your uncle tell you?"
+
+"He told me that she was of no very elevated birth and station,--nothing
+more; and she herself, with her quiet, say-nothing manner, slips through
+all my careless questionings like an eel.  She is still a beautiful
+creature, more regularly handsome than even Evelyn; and old Templeton had
+a very sweet tooth at the back of his head, though he never opened his
+mouth wide enough to show it."
+
+"She must ever at least have been blameless, to judge by an air which,
+even now, is more like that of a child than a matron."
+
+"Yes; she has not much of the widow about her, poor soul!  But her
+education, except in music, has not been very carefully attended to; and
+she knows about as much of the world as the Bishop of Autun (better known
+as Prince Talleyrand) knows of the Bible.  If she were not so simple, she
+would be silly; but silliness is never simple,--always cunning; however,
+there is some cunning in her keeping her past Cameronian Chronicles so
+close.  Perhaps I may know more about her in a short time, for I intend
+going to C-----, where my uncle once lived, in order to see if I can
+revive under the rose--since peers are only contraband
+electioneerers--his old parliamentary influence in that city: and they
+may tell me more there than I now know."
+
+"Did the late lord marry at C-----?"
+
+"No; in Devonshire.  I do not even know if Mrs. Cameron ever was at
+C-----."
+
+"You must be curious to know who the father of your intended wife was?"
+
+"Her father!  No; I have no curiosity in that quarter.  And, to tell you
+the truth, I am much too busy about the Present to be raking into that
+heap of rubbish we call the Past.  I fancy that both your good
+grandmother and that comely old curate of Brook-Green know everything
+about Lady Vargrave; and, as they esteem her so much, I take it for
+granted she is _sans tache_."
+
+"How could I be so stupid!  _A propos_ of the curate, I forgot to tell
+you that he is here.  He arrived about two hours ago, and has been
+closeted with Evelyn ever since!"
+
+"The deuce!  What brought the old man hither?"
+
+"That I know not.  Papa received a letter from him yesterday morning, to
+say that he would be here to-day.  Perhaps Lady Vargrave thinks it time
+for Evelyn to return home."
+
+"What am I to do?" said Vargrave, anxiously.  "Dare I yet venture to
+propose?"
+
+"I am sure it will be in vain, Vargrave.  You must prepare for
+disappointment."
+
+"And ruin," muttered Vargrave, gloomily.  "Hark you, Caroline, she may
+refuse me if she pleases.  But I am not a man to be baffled.  Have her I
+will, by one means or another; revenge urges me to it almost as much as
+ambition.  That girl's thread of life has been the dark line in my woof;
+she has robbed me of fortune, she now thwarts me in my career, she
+humbles me in my vanity.  But, like a hound that has tasted blood, I will
+run her down, whatever winding she takes."
+
+"Vargrave, you terrify me!  Reflect; we do not live in an age when
+violence--"
+
+"Tush!" interrupted Lumley, with one of those dark looks which at times,
+though very rarely, swept away all its customary character from that
+smooth, shrewd countenance.  "Tush!  We live in an age as favourable to
+intellect and to energy as ever was painted in romance.  I have that
+faith in fortune and myself that I tell you, with a prophet's voice, that
+Evelyn shall fulfil the wish of my dying uncle.  But the bell summons us
+back."
+
+On returning to the house, Lord Vargrave's valet gave him a letter which
+had arrived that morning.  It was from Mr. Gustavus Douce, and ran
+thus:--
+
+
+                         FLEET STREET, ----- 20, 18--.
+
+MY LORD,--It is with the greatest regret that I apprise you, for Self &
+Co., that we shall not be able in the present state of the Money Market
+to renew your Lordship's bill for 10,000 pounds, due the 28th instant.
+Respectfully calling your Lordship's attention to the same, I have the
+honour to be, for Self & Co., my Lord,
+
+     Your Lordship's most obedient and most obliged humble servant,
+                              GUSTAVUS DOUCE.
+
+To the Right Hon. LORD VARGRAVE, etc.
+
+
+This letter sharpened Lord Vargrave's anxiety and resolve; nay, it seemed
+almost to sharpen his sharp features as he muttered sundry denunciations
+on Messrs. Douce and Co., while arranging his neckcloth at the glass.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+  _Sol._ Why, please your honourable lordship, we were talking
+  here and there,--this and that.--_The Stranger_.
+
+AUBREY had been closeted with Evelyn the whole morning; and, simultaneous
+with his arrival, came to her the news of the departure of Maltravers.
+It was an intelligence that greatly agitated and unnerved her; and,
+coupling that event with his solemn words on the previous night, Evelyn
+asked herself, in wonder, what sentiments she could have inspired in
+Maltravers.  Could he love her,--her, so young, so inferior, so
+uninformed?  Impossible!  Alas! alas! for Maltravers!  His genius, his
+gifts, his towering qualities,--all that won the admiration, almost the
+awe, of Evelyn,--placed him at a distance from her heart!  When she asked
+herself if he loved her, she did not ask, even in that hour, if she loved
+him.  But even the question she did ask, her judgment answered erringly
+in the negative.  Why should he love, and yet fly her?  She understood
+not his high-wrought scruples, his self-deluding belief.  Aubrey was more
+puzzled than enlightened by his conversation with his pupil; only one
+thing seemed certain,--her delight to return to the cottage and her
+mother.
+
+Evelyn could not sufficiently recover her composure to mix with the party
+below; and Aubrey, at the sound of the second dinner-bell, left her to
+her solitude, and bore her excuses to Mrs. Merton.
+
+"Dear me!" said that worthy lady; "I am so sorry.  I thought Miss Cameron
+looked fatigued at breakfast, and there was something hysterical in her
+spirits; and I suppose the surprise of your arrival has upset her.
+Caroline, my dear, you had better go and see what she would like to have
+taken up to her room,--a little soup and the wing of a chicken."
+
+"My dear," said Mr. Merton, rather pompously, "I think it would be but a
+proper respect to Miss Cameron, if you yourself accompanied Caroline."
+
+"I assure you," said the curate, alarmed at the avalanche of politeness
+that threatened poor Evelyn,--"I assure you that Miss Cameron would
+prefer being left alone at present; as you say, Mrs. Merton, her spirits
+are rather agitated."
+
+But Mrs. Merton, with a sliding bow, had already quitted the room, and
+Caroline with her.
+
+"Come back, Sophy!  Cecilia, come back!" said Mr. Merton, settling his
+_jabot_.
+
+"Oh, dear Evy! poor dear Evy!--Evy is ill!" said Sophy; "I may go to Evy?
+I must go, Papa!"
+
+"No, my dear, you are too noisy; these children are quite spoiled, Mr.
+Aubrey."
+
+The old man looked at them benevolently, and drew them to his knee; and,
+while Cissy stroked his long white hair, and Sophy ran on about dear
+Evy's prettiness and goodness, Lord Vargrave sauntered into the room.
+
+On seeing the curate, his frank face lighted up with surprise and
+pleasure; he hastened to him, seized him by both hands, expressed the
+most heartfelt delight at seeing him, inquired tenderly after Lady
+Vargrave, and, not till he was out of breath, and Mrs. Merton and
+Caroline returning apprised him of Miss Cameron's indisposition, did his
+rapture vanish; and, as a moment before he was all joy, so now he was all
+sorrow.
+
+The dinner passed off dully enough; the children, re-admitted to dessert,
+made a little relief to all parties; and when they and the two ladies
+went, Aubrey himself quickly rose to join Evelyn.
+
+"Are you going to Miss Cameron?" said Lord Vargrave; "pray say how
+unhappy I feel at her illness.  I think these grapes--they are very
+fine--could not hurt her.  May I ask you to present them with my
+best--best and most anxious regards?  I shall be so uneasy till you
+return.  Now, Merton (as the door closed on the curate), let's have
+another bottle of this famous claret!  Droll old fellow that,--quite a
+character!"
+
+"He is a great favourite with Lady Vargrave and Miss Cameron, I believe,"
+said Mr. Merton.  "A mere village priest, I suppose; no talent, no
+energy--or he could not be a curate at that age."
+
+"Very true,--a shrewd remark.  The Church is as good a profession as any
+other for getting on, if a man has anything in him.  I shall live to see
+_you_ a bishop!"
+
+Mr. Merton shook his head.
+
+"Yes, I shall; though you have hitherto disdained to exhibit any one of
+the three orthodox qualifications for a mitre."
+
+"And what are they, my lord?"
+
+"Editing a Greek play, writing a political pamphlet, and apostatizing at
+the proper moment."
+
+"Ha, ha! your lordship is severe on us."
+
+"Not I; I often wish I had been brought up to the Church,--famous
+profession, properly understood.  By Jupiter, I should have been a
+capital bishop!"
+
+In his capacity of parson, Mr. Merton tried to look grave; in his
+capacity of a gentlemanlike, liberal fellow, he gave up the attempt, and
+laughed pleasantly at the joke of the rising man.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+  WILL nothing please you?
+  What do you think of the Court?--_The Plain Dealer_.
+
+ON one subject Aubrey found no difficulty in ascertaining Evelyn's wishes
+and condition of mind.  The experiment of her visit, so far as Vargrave's
+hopes were concerned, had utterly failed; she could not contemplate the
+prospect of his alliance, and she poured out to the curate, frankly and
+fully, all her desire to effect a release from her engagement.  As it was
+now settled that she should return with Aubrey to Brook-Green, it was
+indeed necessary to come to the long-delayed understanding with her
+betrothed.  Yet this was difficult, for he had so little pressed, so
+distantly alluded to, their engagement, that it was like a forwardness,
+an indelicacy in Evelyn to forestall the longed-for yet dreaded
+explanation.  This, however, Aubrey took upon himself; and at this
+promise Evelyn felt as the slave may feel when the chain is stricken off.
+
+At breakfast, Mr. Aubrey communicated to the Mertons Evelyn's intention
+to return with him to Brook-Green on the following day.  Lord Vargrave
+started, bit his lip, but said nothing.
+
+Not so silent was Mr. Merton.
+
+"Return with you! my dear Mr. Aubrey, just consider; it is impossible!
+You see Miss Cameron's rank of life, her position,--so very strange; no
+servants of her own here but her woman,--no carriage even!  You would not
+have her travel in a post-chaise such a long journey!  Lord Vargrave, you
+can never consent to that, I am sure?"
+
+"Were it only as Miss Cameron's _guardian_," said Lord Vargrave,
+pointedly, "I should certainly object to such a mode of performing such a
+journey.  Perhaps Mr. Aubrey means to perfect the project by taking two
+outside places on the top of the coach?"
+
+"Pardon me," said the curate, mildly, "but I am not so ignorant of what
+is due to Miss Cameron as you suppose.  Lady Vargrave's carriage, which
+brought me hither, will be no unsuitable vehicle for Lady Vargrave's
+daughter; and Miss Cameron is not, I trust, quite so spoiled by all your
+friendly attentions as to be unable to perform a journey of two days with
+no other protector than myself."
+
+"I forgot Lady Vargrave's carriage,--or rather I was not aware that you
+had used it, my dear sir," said Mr. Merton.  "But you must not blame us,
+if we are sorry to lose Miss Cameron so suddenly; I was in hopes that
+_you_ too would stay at least a week with us."
+
+The curate bowed at the rector's condescending politeness; and just as he
+was about to answer, Mrs. Merton put in,--
+
+"And you see I had set my heart on her being Caroline's bridesmaid."
+
+Caroline turned pale, and glanced at Vargrave, who appeared solely
+absorbed in breaking toast into his tea,--a delicacy he had never before
+been known to favour.
+
+There was an awkward pause.  The servant opportunely entered with a small
+parcel of books, a note to Mr. Merton, and that most blessed of all
+blessed things in the country,--the letter-bag.
+
+"What is this?" said the rector, opening his note, while Mrs. Merton
+unlocked the bag and dispensed the contents: "Left Burleigh for some
+months, a day or two sooner than he had expected; excuse French
+leave-taking; return Miss Merton's books, much obliged; gamekeeper has
+orders to place the Burleigh preserves at my disposal.  So we have lost
+our neighbour!"
+
+"Did you not know Mr. Maltravers was gone?" said Caroline.  "I heard so
+from Jenkins last night; he accompanies Mr. Cleveland to Paris."
+
+"Indeed!" said Mrs. Merton, opening her eyes.  "What could take him to
+Paris?"
+
+"Pleasure, I suppose," answered Caroline.  "I'm sure I should rather have
+wondered what could detain him at Burleigh."
+
+Vargrave was all this while breaking open seals and running his eyes over
+sundry scrawls with the practised rapidity of the man of business; he
+came to the last letter.  His countenance brightened.
+
+"Royal invitation, or rather command, to Windsor," he cried.  "I am
+afraid I, too, must leave you, this very day."
+
+"Bless me!" exclaimed Mrs. Merton; "is that from the king?  Do let me
+see!"
+
+"Not exactly from the king; the same thing though:" and Lord Vargrave,
+carelessly pushing the gracious communication towards the impatient hand
+and loyal gaze of Mrs. Merton, carefully put the other letters in his
+pocket, and walked musingly to the window.
+
+Aubrey seized the opportunity to approach him.  "My lord, can I speak
+with you a few moments?"
+
+"Me! certainly; will you come to my dressing-room?"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+    .  .  .  THERE was never
+  Poor gentleman had such a sudden fortune.
+
+       BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER: _The Captain_, Act v. sc. 5.
+
+"MY LORD," said the curate, as Vargrave, leaning back in his chair,
+appeared to examine the shape of his boots, while in reality "his
+sidelong looks;" not "of love," were fixed upon his companion,--"I need
+scarcely refer to the wish of the late lord, your uncle, relative to Miss
+Cameron and yourself; nor need I, to one of a generous spirit, add that
+an engagement could be only so far binding as both the parties whose
+happiness is concerned should be willing in proper time and season to
+fulfil it."
+
+"Sir!" said Vargrave, impatiently waving his hand; and, in his irritable
+surmise of what was to come, losing his habitual self-control, "I know
+not what all this has to do with you; surely you trespass upon ground
+sacred to Miss Cameron and myself?  Whatever you have to say, let me beg
+you to come at once to the point."
+
+"My lord, I will obey you.  Miss Cameron--and, I may add, with Lady
+Vargrave's consent--deputes me to say that, although she feels compelled
+to decline the honour of your lordship's alliance, yet if in any
+arrangement of the fortune bequeathed to her she could testify to you, my
+lord, her respect and friendship, it would afford her the most sincere
+gratification."
+
+Lord Vargrave started.
+
+"Sir," said he, "I know not if I am to thank you for this information,
+the announcement of which so strangely coincides with your arrival.  But
+allow me to say that there needs no ambassador between Miss Cameron and
+myself.  It is due, sir, to my station, to my relationship, to my
+character of guardian, to my long and faithful affection, to all
+considerations which men of the world understand, which men of feeling
+sympathize with, to receive from Miss Cameron alone the rejection of my
+suit."
+
+"Unquestionably Miss Cameron will grant your lordship the interview you
+have a right to seek; but pardon me, I thought it might save you both
+much pain, if the meeting were prepared by a third person; and on any
+matter of business, any atonement to your lordship--"
+
+"Atonement! what can atone to me?" exclaimed Vargrave, as he walked to
+and fro the room in great disorder and excitement.  "Can you give me back
+years of hope and expectancy,--the manhood wasted in a vain dream?  Had I
+not been taught to look to this reward, should I have rejected all
+occasion--while my youth was not yet all gone, while my heart was not yet
+all occupied--to form a suitable alliance?  Nay, should I have indulged
+in a high and stirring career, for which my own fortune is by no means
+qualified?  Atonement! atonement!  Talk of atonement to boys!  Sir, I
+stand before you a man whose private happiness is blighted, whose public
+prospects are darkened, life wasted, fortunes ruined, the schemes of an
+existence built upon one hope, which was lawfully indulged, overthrown;
+and you talk to me of _atonement_!"
+
+Selfish as the nature of this complaint might be, Aubrey was struck with
+its justice.
+
+"My lord," said he, a little embarrassed, "I cannot deny that there is
+truth in much of what you say.  Alas! it proves how vain it is for man to
+calculate on the future; how unhappily your uncle erred in imposing
+conditions, which the chances of life and the caprices of affection could
+at any time dissolve!  But this is blame that attaches only to the dead:
+can you blame the living?"
+
+"Sir, I considered myself bound by my uncle's prayer to keep my hand and
+heart disengaged, that this title--miserable and barren distinction
+though it be!--might, as he so ardently desired, descend to Evelyn.  I
+had a right to expect similar honour upon her side!"
+
+"Surely, my lord, you, to whom the late lord on his death-bed confided
+all the motives of his conduct and the secret of his life, cannot but be
+aware that, while desirous of promoting your worldly welfare, and uniting
+in one line his rank and his fortune, your uncle still had Evelyn's
+happiness at heart as his warmest wish; you must know that, if that
+happiness were forfeited by a marriage with you, the marriage became but
+a secondary consideration.  Lord Vargrave's will in itself was a proof of
+this.  He did not impose as an absolute condition upon Evelyn her union
+with yourself; he did not make the forfeiture of her whole wealth the
+penalty of her rejection of that alliance.  By the definite limit of the
+forfeit, he intimated a distinction between a command and a desire.  And
+surely, when you consider all circumstances, your lordship must think
+that, what with that forfeit and the estate settled upon the title, your
+uncle did all that in a worldly point of view equity and even affection
+could exact from him."
+
+Vargrave smiled bitterly, but said nothing.
+
+"And if this be doubted, I have clearer proof of his intentions.  Such
+was his confidence in Lady Vargrave, that in the letter he addressed to
+her before his death, and which I now submit to your lordship, you will
+observe that he not only expressly leaves it to Lady Vargrave's
+discretion to communicate to Evelyn that history of which she is at
+present ignorant, but that he also clearly defines the line of conduct he
+wished to be adopted with respect to Evelyn and yourself.  Permit me to
+point out the passage."
+
+Impatiently Lord Vargrave ran his eye over the letter placed in his hand,
+till he came to these lines:--
+
+
+"And if, when she has arrived at the proper age to form a judgment,
+Evelyn should decide against Lumley's claims, you know that on no account
+would I sacrifice her happiness; that all I require is, that fair play be
+given to his pretensions, due indulgence to the scheme I have long had at
+heart.  Let her be brought up to consider him her future husband; let her
+not be prejudiced against him; let her fairly judge for herself, when the
+time arrives."
+
+
+"You see, my lord," said Mr. Aubrey, as he took back the letter, "that
+this letter bears the same date as your uncle's will.  What he desired
+has been done.  Be just, my lord, be just, and exonerate us all from
+blame: who can dictate to the affections?"
+
+"And I am to understand that I have no chance, now or hereafter, of
+obtaining the affections of Evelyn?  Surely, at your age, Mr. Aubrey, you
+cannot encourage the heated romance common to all girls of Evelyn's age.
+Persons of our rank do not marry like the Corydon and Phyllis of a
+pastoral.  At my years, I never was fool enough to expect that I should
+inspire a girl of seventeen with what is called a passionate attachment.
+But happy marriages are based upon suitable circumstances, mutual
+knowledge and indulgence, respect, esteem.  Come, sir, let me hope
+yet,--let me hope that, on the same day, I may congratulate you on your
+preferment and you may congratulate me upon my marriage."
+
+Vargrave said this with a cheerful and easy smile; and the tone of his
+voice was that of a man who wished to convey serious meaning in a jesting
+accent.
+
+Mr. Aubrey, meek as he was, felt the insult of the hinted bribe, and
+coloured with a resentment no sooner excited than checked.  "Excuse me,
+my lord, I have now said all; the rest had better be left to your ward
+herself."
+
+"Be it so, sir.  I will ask you, then, to convey my request to Evelyn to
+honour me with a last and parting interview."
+
+Vargrave flung himself on his chair, and Aubrey left him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+  THUS airy Strephon tuned his lyre.--SHENSTONE.
+
+IN his meeting with Evelyn, Vargrave certainly exerted to the utmost all
+his ability and all his art.  He felt that violence, that sarcasm, that
+selfish complaint would not avail in a man who was not loved,--though
+they are often admirable cards in the hands of a man who is.  As his own
+heart was perfectly untouched in the matter, except by rage and
+disappointment,--feelings which with him never lasted very long,--he
+could play coolly his losing game.  His keen and ready intellect taught
+him that all he could now expect was to bequeath sentiments of generous
+compassion and friendly interest; to create a favourable impression,
+which he might hereafter improve; to reserve, in short, some spot of
+vantage-ground in the country from which he was to affect to withdraw all
+his forces.  He had known, in his experience of women, which, whether as
+an actor or a spectator, was large and various--though not among very
+delicate and refined natures--that a lady often takes a fancy to a suitor
+_after_ she has rejected him; that precisely _because_ she has once
+rejected she ultimately accepts him.  And even this chance was, in
+circumstances so desperate, not to be neglected.  He assumed, therefore,
+the countenance, the postures, and the voice of heart-broken but
+submissive despair; he affected a nobleness and magnanimity in his grief,
+which touched Evelyn to the quick, and took her by surprise.
+
+"It is enough," said he, in sad and faltering accents; "quite enough for
+me to know that you cannot love me,--that I should fail in rendering you
+happy.  Say no more, Evelyn, say no more!  Let me spare you, at least,
+the pain your generous nature must feel in my anguish.  I resign all
+pretensions to your hand; you are free!--may you be happy!"
+
+"Oh, Lord Vargrave! oh, Lumley!" said Evelyn, weeping, and moved by a
+thousand recollections of early years.  "If I could but prove in any
+other way my grateful sense of your merits, your too partial appreciation
+of me, my regard for my lost benefactor, then, indeed, nor till then,
+could I be happy.  Oh that this wealth, so little desired by me, had been
+more at my disposal! but as it is, the day that sees me in possession of
+it, shall see it placed under your disposition, your control.  This is
+but justice,--common justice to you; you were the nearest relation of the
+departed.  I had no claim on him,--none but affection.  Affection! and
+yet I disobey him!"
+
+There was much in all this that secretly pleased Vargrave; but it only
+seemed to redouble his grief.
+
+"Talk not thus, my ward, my friend--ah, still my friend," said he,
+putting his handkerchief to his eyes.  "I repine not; I am more than
+satisfied.  Still let me preserve my privilege of guardian, of
+adviser,--a privilege dearer to me than all the wealth of the Indies!"
+
+Lord Vargrave had some faint suspicion that Legard had created an undue
+interest in Evelyn's heart; and on this point he delicately and
+indirectly sought to sound her.  Her replies convinced him that if Evelyn
+had conceived any prepossession for Legard, there had not been time or
+opportunity to ripen it into deep attachment.  Of Maltravers he had no
+fear.  The habitual self-control of that reserved personage deceived him
+partly; and his low opinion of mankind deceived him still more.  For if
+there had been any love between Maltravers and Evelyn, why should the
+former not have stood his ground, and declared his suit?  Lumley would
+have "bah'd" and "pish'd" at the thought of any punctilious regard for
+engagements so easily broken having power either to check passion for
+beauty, or to restrain self-interest in the chase of an heiress.  He had
+known Maltravers ambitious; and with him, ambition and self-interest
+meant the same.  Thus, by the very _finesse_ of his character--while
+Vargrave ever with the worldly was a keen and almost infallible
+observer--with natures of a more refined, or a higher order, he always
+missed the mark by overshooting.  Besides, had a suspicion of Maltravers
+ever crossed him, Caroline's communications would have dispelled it.  It
+was more strange that Caroline should have been blind; nor would she have
+been so had she been less absorbed in her own schemes and destinies.  All
+her usual penetration had of late settled in self; and an uneasy
+feeling--half arising from conscientious reluctance to aid Vargrave's
+objects, half from jealous irritation at the thought of Vargrave's
+marrying another--had prevented her from seeking any very intimate or
+confidential communication with Evelyn herself.
+
+The dreaded conference was over; Evelyn parted from Vargrave with the
+very feelings he had calculated on exciting,--the moment he ceased to be
+her lover, her old childish regard for him recommenced.  She pitied his
+dejection, she respected his generosity, she was deeply grateful for his
+forbearance.  But still--still she was free; and her heart bounded within
+her at the thought.
+
+Meanwhile, Vargrave, after his solemn farewell to Evelyn, retreated again
+to his own room, where he remained till his post-horses arrived.  Then,
+descending into the drawing-room, he was pleased to find neither Aubrey
+nor Evelyn there.  He knew that much affectation would be thrown away
+upon Mr. and Mrs. Merton; he thanked them for their hospitality, with
+grave and brief cordiality, and then turned to Caroline, who stood apart
+by the window.
+
+"All is up with me at present," he whispered.  "I leave you, Caroline, in
+anticipation of fortune, rank, and prosperity; that is some comfort.  For
+myself, I see only difficulties, embarrassment, and poverty in the
+future; but I despond of nothing.  Hereafter you may serve me, as I have
+served you.  Adieu!--I have been advising Caroline not to spoil
+Doltimore, Mrs. Merton; he is conceited enough already.  Good-by!  God
+bless you all! love to your little girls.  Let me know if I can serve you
+in any way, Merton,--good-by again!"  And thus, sentence by sentence,
+Vargrave talked himself into his carriage.  As it drove by the
+drawing-room windows, he saw Caroline standing motionless where he had
+left her; he kissed his hand,--her eyes were fixed mournfully on his.
+Hard, wayward, and worldly as Caroline Merton was, Vargrave was yet not
+worthy of the affection he had inspired; for she could _feel_, and he
+could not,--the distinction, perhaps, between the sexes.  And there still
+stood Caroline Merton, recalling the last tones of that indifferent
+voice, till she felt her hand seized, and turned round to see Lord
+Doltimore, and smile upon the happy lover, persuaded that he was adored!
+
+
+
+BOOK VI.
+
+  "I will bring fire to thee--I reek not of the place."
+       --EURIPIDES: _Andromache_, 214.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+  .  .  .  THIS ancient city,
+  How wanton sits she amidst Nature's smiles!
+
+  .  .  .  Various nations meet,
+  As in the sea, yet not confined in space,
+  But streaming freely through the spacious streets.--YOUNG.
+
+  .  .  .  His teeth he still did grind,
+  And grimly gnash, threatening revenge in vain.--SPENSER.
+
+"PARIS is a delightful place,--that is allowed by all.  It is delightful
+to the young, to the gay, to the idle; to the literary lion, who likes to
+be petted; to the wiser epicure, who indulges a more justifiable
+appetite.  It is delightful to ladies, who wish to live at their ease,
+and buy beautiful caps; delightful to philanthropists, who wish for
+listeners to schemes of colonizing the moon; delightful to the haunters
+of balls and ballets, and little theatres and superb _cafes_, where men
+with beards of all sizes and shapes scowl at the English, and involve
+their intellects in the fascinating game of dominos.  For these, and for
+many others, Paris is delightful.  I say nothing against it.  But, for my
+own part, I would rather live in a garret in London than in a palace in
+the Chaussee d'Antin.--'Chacun a son mauvais gout.'
+
+"I don't like the streets, in which I cannot walk but in the kennel; I
+don't like the shops, that contain nothing except what's at the window; I
+don't like the houses, like prisons which look upon a courtyard; I don't
+like the _beaux jardins_, which grow no plants save a Cupid in plaster; I
+don't like the wood fires, which demand as many _petits soins_ as the
+women, and which warm no part of one but one's eyelids, I don't like the
+language, with its strong phrases about nothing, and vibrating like a
+pendulum between 'rapture' and 'desolation;' I don't like the accent,
+which one cannot get, without speaking through one's nose; I don't like
+the eternal fuss and jabber about books without nature, and revolutions
+without fruit; I have no sympathy with tales that turn on a dead jackass,
+nor with constitutions that give the ballot to the representatives, and
+withhold the suffrage from the people; neither have I much faith in that
+enthusiasm for the _beaux arts_, which shows its produce in execrable
+music, detestable pictures, abominable sculpture, and a droll something
+that I believe the _French_ call POETRY.  Dancing and cookery,--these are
+the arts the French excel in, I grant it; and excellent things they are;
+but oh, England! oh, Germany! you need not be jealous of your rival!"
+
+These are not the author's remarks,--he disowns them; they were Mr.
+Cleveland's.  He was a prejudiced man; Maltravers was more liberal, but
+then Maltravers did not pretend to be a wit.
+
+Maltravers had been several weeks in the city of cities, and now he had
+his apartments in the gloomy but interesting Faubourg St. Germain, all to
+himself.  For Cleveland, having attended eight days at a sale, and having
+moreover ransacked all the curiosity shops, and shipped off bronzes and
+cabinets, and Genoese silks and _objets de vertu_, enough to have half
+furnished Fonthill, had fulfilled his mission, and returned to his villa.
+Before the old gentleman went, he flattered himself that change of air
+and scene had already been serviceable to his friend; and that time would
+work a complete cure upon that commonest of all maladies,--an unrequited
+passion, or an ill-placed caprice.
+
+Maltravers, indeed, in the habit of conquering, as well as of concealing
+emotion, vigorously and earnestly strove to dethrone the image that had
+usurped his heart.  Still vain of his self-command, and still worshipping
+his favourite virtue of Fortitude and his delusive philosophy of the calm
+Golden Mean, he would not weakly indulge the passion, while he so sternly
+fled from its object.
+
+But yet the image of Evelyn pursued,--it haunted him; it came on him
+unawares, in solitude, in crowds.  That smile so cheering, yet so soft,
+that ever had power to chase away the shadow from his soul; that youthful
+and luxurious bloom of pure and eloquent thoughts, which was as the
+blossom of genius before its fruit, bitter as well as sweet, is born;
+that rare union of quick feeling and serene temper, which forms the very
+ideal of what we dream of in the mistress, and exact from the wife,--all,
+even more, far more, than the exquisite form and the delicate graces of
+the less durable beauty, returned to him, after every struggle with
+himself; and time only seemed to grave, in deeper if more latent folds of
+his heart, the ineradicable impression.
+
+Maltravers renewed his acquaintance with some persons not unfamiliar to
+the reader.
+
+Valerie de Ventadour--how many recollections of the fairer days of life
+were connected with that name!  Precisely as she had never reached to his
+love, but only excited his fancy (the fancy of twenty-two), had her image
+always retained a pleasant and grateful hue; it was blended with no deep
+sorrow, no stern regret, no dark remorse, no haunting shame.
+
+They met again.  Madame de Ventadour was still beautiful, and still
+admired,--perhaps more admired than ever; for to the great, fashion and
+celebrity bring a second and yet more popular youth.  But Maltravers, if
+rejoiced to see how gently Time had dealt with the fair Frenchwoman, was
+yet more pleased to read in her fine features a more serene and contented
+expression than they had formerly worn.  Valerie de Ventadour had
+preceded her younger admirer through the "MYSTERIES of LIFE;" she had
+learned the real objects of being; she distinguished between the Actual
+and the Visionary, the Shadow and the Substance; she had acquired content
+for the present, and looked with quiet hope towards the future. Her
+character was still spotless; or rather, every year of temptation and
+trial had given it a fairer lustre.  Love, that might have ruined, being
+once subdued, preserved her from all after danger.  The first meeting
+between Maltravers and Valerie was, it is true, one of some embarrassment
+and reserve: not so the second.  They did but once, and that slightly,
+recur to the past, and from that moment, as by a tacit understanding,
+true friendship between them dated.  Neither felt mortified to see that
+an illusion had passed away,--they were no longer the same in each
+other's eyes.  Both might be improved, and were so; but the Valerie and
+the Ernest of Naples were as things dead and gone!  Perhaps Valerie's
+heart was even more reconciled to the cure of its soft and luxurious
+malady by the renewal of their acquaintance.  The mature and experienced
+reasoner, in whom enthusiasm had undergone its usual change, with the
+calm brow and commanding aspect of sober manhood, was a being so
+different from the romantic boy, new to the actual world of civilized
+toils and pleasures, fresh from the adventures of Eastern wanderings, and
+full of golden dreams of poetry before it settles into authorship or
+action!  She missed the brilliant errors, the daring aspirations,--even
+the animated gestures and eager eloquence,--that had interested and
+enamoured her in the loiterer by the shores of Baiae, or amidst the
+tomb-like chambers of Pompeii.  For the Maltravers now before her--wiser,
+better, nobler, even handsomer than of yore (for he was one whom manhood
+became better than youth)--the Frenchwoman could at any period have felt
+friendship without danger.  It seemed to her, not as it really was, the
+natural _development_, but the very _contrast_, of the ardent, variable,
+imaginative boy, by whose side she had gazed at night on the moonlit
+waters and rosy skies of the soft Parthenope!  How does time, after long
+absence, bring to us such contrasts between the one we remember and the
+one we see!  And what a melancholy mockery does it seem of our own vain
+hearts, dreaming of impressions never to be changed, and affections that
+never can grow cool!
+
+And now, as they conversed with all the ease of cordial and guileless
+friendship, how did Valerie rejoice in secret that upon that friendship
+there rested no blot of shame! and that she had not forfeited those
+consolations for a home without love, which had at last settled into
+cheerful nor unhallowed resignation,--consolations only to be found in
+the conscience and the pride!
+
+M. de Ventadour had not altered, except that his nose was longer, and
+that he now wore a peruque in full curl instead of his own straight hair.
+But somehow or other--perhaps by the mere charm of custom--he had grown
+more pleasing in Valerie's eyes; habit had reconciled her to his foibles,
+deficiencies, and faults; and, by comparison with others, she could
+better appreciate his good qualities, such as they were,--generosity,
+good-temper, good-nature, and unbounded indulgence to herself.  Husband
+and wife have so many interests in common, that when they have jogged on
+through the ups and downs of life a sufficient time, the leash which at
+first galled often grows easy and familiar; and unless the _temper_, or
+rather the disposition and the heart, of either be insufferable, what was
+once a grievous yoke becomes but a companionable tie.  And for the rest,
+Valerie, now that sentiment and fancy were sobered down, could take
+pleasure in a thousand things which her pining affections once, as it
+were, overlooked and overshot.  She could feel grateful for all the
+advantages her station and wealth procured her; she could cull the roses
+in her reach, without sighing for the amaranths of Elysium.
+
+If the great have more temptations than those of middle life, and if
+their senses of enjoyment become more easily pampered into a sickly
+apathy, so at least (if they can once outlive satiety) they have many
+more resources at their command.  There is a great deal of justice in the
+old line, displeasing though it be to those who think of love in a
+cottage, "'Tis best repenting in a coach and six!"  If among the
+Eupatrids, the Well Born, there is less love in wedlock, less quiet
+happiness at home, still they are less chained each to each,--they have
+more independence, both the woman and the man, and occupations and the
+solace without can be so easily obtained!  Madame de Ventadour, in
+retiring from the mere frivolities of society--from crowded rooms, and
+the inane talk and hollow smiles of mere acquaintanceship--became more
+sensible of the pleasures that her refined and elegant intellect could
+derive from art and talent, and the communion of friendship.  She drew
+around her the most cultivated minds of her time and country.  Her
+abilities, her wit, and her conversational graces enabled her not only to
+mix on equal terms with the most eminent, but to amalgamate and blend the
+varieties of talent into harmony.  The same persons, when met elsewhere,
+seemed to have lost their charm; under Valerie's roof every one breathed
+a congenial atmosphere.  And music and letters, and all that can refine
+and embellish civilized life, contributed their resources to this gifted
+and beautiful woman.  And thus she found that the _mind_ has excitement
+and occupation, as well as the heart; and, unlike the latter, the culture
+we bestow upon the first ever yields us its return.  We talk of education
+for the poor, but we forget how much it is needed by the rich.  Valerie
+was a living instance of the advantages to women of knowledge and
+intellectual resources.  By them she had purified her fancy, by them she
+had conquered discontent, by them she had grown reconciled to life and to
+her lot!  When the heavy heart weighed down the one scale, it was the
+mind that restored the balance.
+
+The spells of Madame de Ventadour drew Maltravers into this charmed
+circle of all that was highest, purest, and most gifted in the society of
+Paris.  There he did not meet, as were met in the times of the old
+_regime_, sparkling abbes intent upon intrigues; or amorous old dowagers,
+eloquent on Rousseau; or powdered courtiers, uttering epigrams against
+kings and religions,--straws that foretold the whirlwind.  Paul Courier
+was right!  Frenchmen are Frenchmen still; they are full of fine phrases,
+and their thoughts smell of the theatre; they mistake foil for diamonds,
+the Grotesque for the Natural, the Exaggerated for the Sublime: but still
+I say, Paul Courier was right,--there is more honesty now in a single
+_salon_ in Paris than there was in all France in the days of Voltaire.
+Vast interests and solemn causes are no longer tossed about like
+shuttlecocks on the battledores of empty tongues.  In the
+_bouleversement_ of Revolutions the French have fallen on their feet!
+
+Meeting men of all parties and all classes, Maltravers was struck with
+the heightened tone of public morals, the earnest sincerity of feeling
+which generally pervaded all, as compared with his first recollections of
+the Parisians.  He saw that true elements for national wisdom were at
+work, though he saw also that there was no country in which their
+operations would be more liable to disorder, more slow and irregular in
+their results.  The French are like the Israelites in the Wilderness,
+when, according to a Hebrew tradition, every morning they seemed on the
+verge of Pisgah, and every evening they were as far from it as ever.  But
+still time rolls on, the pilgrimage draws to its close, and the Canaan
+must come at last!
+
+At Valerie's house, Maltravers once more met the De Montaignes.  It was a
+painful meeting, for they thought of Cesarini when they met.
+
+It is now time to return to that unhappy man.  Cesarini had been removed
+from England when Maltravers quitted it after Lady Florence's death; and
+Maltravers had thought it best to acquaint De Montaigne with all the
+circumstances that had led to his affliction.  The pride and the honour
+of the high-spirited Frenchman were deeply shocked by the tale of fraud
+and guilt, softened as it was; but the sight of the criminal, his awful
+punishment, merged every other feeling in compassion.  Placed under the
+care of the most skilful practitioners in Paris, great hopes of
+Cesarini's recovery had been at first entertained.  Nor was it long,
+indeed, before he appeared entirely restored, so far as the external and
+superficial tokens of sanity could indicate a cure.  He testified
+complete consciousness of the kindness of his relations, and clear
+remembrance of the past: but to the incoherent ravings of delirium, an
+intense melancholy, still more deplorable, succeeded.  In this state,
+however, he became once more the inmate of his brother-in-law's house;
+and though avoiding all society, except that of Teresa, whose
+affectionate nature never wearied of its cares, he resumed many of his
+old occupations.  Again he appeared to take delight in desultory and
+unprofitable studies, and in the cultivation of that luxury of solitary
+men, "the thankless muse."  By shunning all topics connected with the
+gloomy cause of his affliction, and talking rather of the sweet
+recollections of Italy and childhood than of more recent events, his
+sister was enabled to soothe the dark hour, and preserve some kind of
+influence over the ill-fated man.  One day, however, there fell into his
+hands an English newspaper, which was full of the praises of Lord
+Vargrave; and the article in lauding the peer referred to his services as
+the commoner Lumley Ferrers.
+
+This incident, slight as it appeared, and perfectly untraceable by his
+relations, produced a visible effect on Cesarini; and three days
+afterwards he attempted his own life.  The failure of the attempt was
+followed by the fiercest paroxysms.  His disease returned in all its
+dread force: and it became necessary to place him under yet stricter
+confinement than he had endured before.  Again, about a year from the
+date now entered upon, he had appeared to recover; and again he was
+removed to De Montaigne's house.  His relations were not aware of the
+influence which Lord Vargrave's name exercised over Cesarini; in the
+melancholy tale communicated to them by Maltravers, that name had not
+been mentioned.  If Maltravers had at one time entertained some vague
+suspicions that Lumley had acted a treacherous part with regard to
+Florence, those suspicions had long since died away for want of
+confirmation; nor did he (nor did therefore the De Montaignes) connect
+Lord Vargrave with the affliction of Cesarini.  De Montaigne himself,
+therefore, one day at dinner, alluding to a question of foreign politics
+which had been debated that morning in the Chamber, and in which he
+himself had taken an active part, happened to refer to a speech of
+Vargrave upon the subject, which had made some sensation abroad, as well
+as at home.  Teresa asked innocently who Lord Vargrave was; and De
+Montaigne, well acquainted with the biography of the principal English
+statesmen, replied that he had commenced his career as Mr. Ferrers, and
+reminded Teresa that they had once been introduced to him in Paris.
+Cesarini suddenly rose and left the room; his absence was not noted, for
+his comings and goings were ever strange and fitful.  Teresa soon
+afterwards quitted the apartment with her children, and De Montaigne, who
+was rather fatigued by the exertions and excitement of the morning,
+stretched himself in his chair to enjoy a short _siesta_.  He was
+suddenly awakened by a feeling of pain and suffocation,--awakened in time
+to struggle against a strong grip that had fastened itself at his throat.
+The room was darkened in the growing shades of the evening; and, but for
+the glittering and savage eyes that were fixed on him, he could scarcely
+discern his assailant.  He at length succeeded, however, in freeing
+himself, and casting the intended assassin on the ground.  He shouted for
+assistance; and the lights borne by the servants who rushed into the room
+revealed to him the face of his brother-in-law.  Cesarini, though in
+strong convulsions, still uttered cries and imprecations of revenge; he
+denounced De Montaigne as a traitor and a murderer!  In the dark
+confusion of his mind, he had mistaken the guardian for the distant foe,
+whose name sufficed to conjure up the phantoms of the dead, and plunge
+reason into fury.
+
+It was now clear that there was danger and death in Cesarini's disease.
+His madness was pronounced to be capable of no certain and permanent
+cure; he was placed at a new asylum (the superintendents of which were
+celebrated for humanity as well as skill), a little distance from
+Versailles, and there he still remained.  Recently his lucid intervals
+had become more frequent and prolonged; but trifles that sprang from his
+own mind, and which no care could prevent or detect, sufficed to renew
+his calamity in all its fierceness.  At such times he required the most
+unrelaxing vigilance, for his madness ever took an alarming and ferocious
+character; and had he been left unshackled, the boldest and stoutest of
+the keepers would have dreaded to enter his cell unarmed, or alone.
+
+What made the disease of the mind appear more melancholy and confirmed
+was, that all this time the frame seemed to increase in health and
+strength.  This is not an uncommon case in instances of mania--and it is
+generally the worst symptom.  In earlier youth, Cesarini had been
+delicate even to effeminacy; but now his proportions were enlarged, his
+form, though still lean and spare, muscular and vigorous,--as if in the
+torpor which usually succeeded to his bursts of frenzy, the animal
+portion gained by the repose or disorganization of the intellectual.
+When in his better and calmer mood--in which indeed none but the
+experienced could have detected his malady--books made his chief delight.
+But then he complained bitterly, if briefly, of the confinement he
+endured, of the injustice be suffered; and as, shunning all companions,
+he walked gloomily amidst the grounds that surrounded that House of Woe,
+his unseen guardians beheld him clenching his hands, as at some visionary
+enemy, or overheard him accuse some phantom of his brain of the torments
+he endured.
+
+Though the reader can detect in Lumley Ferrers the cause of the frenzy,
+and the object of the imprecation, it was not so with the De Montaignes,
+nor with the patient's keepers and physicians; for in his delirium he
+seldom or never gave name to the shadows that he invoked,--not even to
+that of Florence.  It is, indeed, no unusual characteristic of madness to
+shun, as by a kind of cunning, all mention of the names of those by whom
+the madness has been caused.  It is as if the unfortunates imagined that
+the madness might be undiscovered if the images connected with it were
+unbetrayed.
+
+Such, at this time, was the wretched state of the man, whose talents had
+promised a fair and honourable career, had it not been the wretched
+tendency of his mind, from boyhood upward, to pamper every unwholesome
+and unhallowed feeling as a token of the exuberance of genius.  De
+Montaigne, though he touched as lightly as possible upon this dark
+domestic calamity in his first communications with Maltravers, whose
+conduct in that melancholy tale of crime and woe had, he conceived, been
+stamped with generosity and feeling, still betrayed emotions that told
+how much his peace had been embittered.
+
+"I seek to console Teresa," said he, turning away his manly head, "and to
+point out all the blessings yet left to her; but that brother so beloved,
+from whom so much was so vainly expected,--still ever and ever, though
+she strives to conceal it from me, this affliction comes back to her, and
+poisons every thought!  Oh, better a thousand times that he had died!
+When reason, sense, almost the soul, are dead, how dark and fiend-like is
+the life that remains behind!  And if it should be in the blood--if
+Teresa's children--dreadful thought!"
+
+De Montaigne ceased, thoroughly overcome.
+
+"Do not, my dear friend, so fearfully exaggerate your misfortune, great
+as it is; Cesarini's disease evidently arose from no physical
+conformation,--it was but the crisis, the development, of a
+long-contracted malady of mind, passions morbidly indulged, the reasoning
+faculty obstinately neglected; and yet too he may recover.  The further
+memory recedes from the shock he has sustained, the better the chance
+that his mind will regain its tone."
+
+De Montaigne wrung his friend's hand.
+
+"It is strange that from you should come sympathy and comfort!--you whom
+he so injured; you whom his folly or his crime drove from your proud
+career, and your native soil!  But Providence will yet, I trust, redeem
+the evil of its erring creature, and I shall yet live to see you restored
+to hope and home, a happy husband, an honoured citizen.  Till then, I
+feel as if the curse lingered upon my race."
+
+"Speak not thus.  Whatever my destiny, I have recovered from that wound;
+and still, De Montaigne, I find in life that suffering succeeds to
+suffering, and disappointment to disappointment, as wave to wave.  To
+endure is the only philosophy; to believe that we shall live again in a
+brighter planet, is the only hope that our reason should accept from our
+desires."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+  MONSTRA evenerunt mihi:
+  Introit in aedes ater alienus canis,
+  Anguis per impluvium decidit de tegulis,
+  Gallina cecinit!*--TERENCE.
+
+  * "Prodigies have occurred: a strange black dog came into the house;
+    a snake glided from the tiles, through the court; the hen crowed."
+
+WITH his constitutional strength of mind, and conformably with his
+acquired theories, Maltravers continued to struggle against the latest
+and strongest passion of his life.  It might be seen in the paleness of
+his brow, and that nameless expression of suffering which betrays itself
+in the lines about the mouth, that his health was affected by the
+conflict within him; and many a sudden fit of absence and abstraction,
+many an impatient sigh, followed by a forced and unnatural gayety, told
+the observant Valerie that he was the prey of a sorrow he was too proud
+to disclose.  He compelled himself, however, to take, or to affect, an
+interest in the singular phenomena of the social state around
+him,--phenomena that, in a happier or serener mood, would indeed have
+suggested no ordinary food for conjecture and meditation.
+
+The state of _visible transition_ is the state of nearly all the
+enlightened communities in Europe.  But nowhere is it so pronounced as in
+that country which may be called the Heart of European Civilization.
+There, all to which the spirit of society attaches itself appears broken,
+vague, and half developed,--the Antique in ruins, and the New not formed.
+It is, perhaps, the only country in which the Constructive principle has
+not kept pace with the Destructive.  The Has Been is blotted out; the To
+Be is as the shadow of a far land in a mighty and perturbed sea.*
+
+  * The reader will remember that these remarks were written long
+    before the last French Revolution, and when the dynasty of Louis
+    Philippe was generally considered most secure.
+
+Maltravers, who for several years had not examined the progress of modern
+literature, looked with mingled feelings of surprise, distaste, and
+occasional and most reluctant admiration, on the various works which the
+successors of Voltaire and Rousseau have produced, and are pleased to
+call the offspring of Truth united to Romance.
+
+Profoundly versed in the mechanism and elements of those masterpieces of
+Germany and England, from which the French have borrowed so largely while
+pretending to be original, Maltravers was shocked to see the monsters
+which these Frankensteins had created from the relics and the offal of
+the holiest sepulchres.  The head of a giant on the limbs of a dwarf,
+incongruous members jumbled together, parts fair and beautiful,--the
+whole a hideous distortion!
+
+"It may be possible," said he to De Montaigne, "that these works are
+admired and extolled; but how they can be vindicated by the examples of
+Shakspeare and Goethe, or even of Byron, who redeemed poor and
+melodramatic conceptions with a manly vigour of execution, an energy and
+completeness of purpose, that Dryden himself never surpassed, is to me
+utterly inconceivable."
+
+"I allow that there is a strange mixture of fustian and maudlin in all
+these things," answered De Montaigne; "but they are but the windfalls of
+trees that may bear rich fruit in due season; meanwhile, any new school
+is better than eternal imitations of the old.  As for critical
+vindications of the works themselves, the age that produces the phenomena
+is never the age to classify and analyze them.  We have had a deluge, and
+now new creatures spring from the new soil."
+
+"An excellent simile: they come forth from slime and mud,--fetid and
+crawling, unformed and monstrous.  I grant exceptions; and even in the
+New School, as it is called, I can admire the real genius, the vital and
+creative power of Victor Hugo.  But oh, that a nation which has known a
+Corneille should ever spawn forth a -----!  And with these rickety and
+drivelling abortions--all having followers and adulators--your Public can
+still bear to be told that they have improved wonderfully on the day when
+they gave laws and models to the literature of Europe; they can bear to
+hear ----- proclaimed a sublime genius in the same circles which sneer
+down Voltaire!"
+
+Voltaire is out of fashion in France, but Rousseau still maintains his
+influence, and boasts his imitators.  Rousseau was the worse man of the
+two; perhaps he was also the more dangerous writer.  But his reputation
+is more durable, and sinks deeper into the heart of his nation; and the
+danger of his unstable and capricious doctrines has passed away.  In
+Voltaire we behold the fate of all writers purely destructive; their uses
+cease with the evils they denounce.  But Rousseau sought to construct as
+well as to destroy; and though nothing could well be more absurd than his
+constructions, still man loves to look back and see even delusive
+images--castles in the air--reared above the waste where cities have
+been.  Rather than leave even a burial-ground to solitude, we populate it
+with ghosts.
+
+By degrees, however, as he mastered all the features of the French
+literature, Maltravers become more tolerant of the present defects, and
+more hopeful of the future results.  He saw in one respect that that
+literature carried with it its own ultimate redemption.
+
+Its general characteristic--contradistinguished from the literature of
+the old French classic school--is to take the _heart_ for its study; to
+bring the passions and feelings into action, and let the Within have its
+record and history as well as the Without.  In all this our contemplative
+analyst began to allow that the French were not far wrong when they
+contended that Shakspeare made the fountain of their inspiration,--a
+fountain which the majority of our later English Fictionists have
+neglected.  It is not by a story woven of interesting incidents, relieved
+by delineations of the externals and surface of character, humorous
+phraseology, and every-day ethics, that Fiction achieves its grandest
+ends.
+
+In the French literature, thus characterized, there is much false
+morality, much depraved sentiment, and much hollow rant; but still it
+carries within it the germ of an excellence, which, sooner or later, must
+in the progress of national genius arrive at its full development.
+Meanwhile, it is a consolation to know that nothing really immoral is
+ever permanently popular, or ever, therefore, long deleterious; what is
+dangerous in a work of genius cures itself in a few years.  We can now
+read "Werther," and instruct our hearts by its exposition of weakness and
+passion, our taste by its exquisite and unrivalled simplicity of
+construction and detail, without any fear that we shall shoot ourselves
+in top-boots!  We can feel ourselves elevated by the noble sentiments of
+"The Robbers," and our penetration sharpened as to the wholesale
+immorality of conventional cant and hypocrisy, without any danger of
+turning banditti and becoming cutthroats from the love of virtue.
+Providence, that has made the genius of the few in all times and
+countries the guide and prophet of the many, and appointed Literature as
+the sublime agent of Civilization, of Opinion, and of Law, has endowed
+the elements it employs with a divine power of self-purification.  The
+stream settles of itself by rest and time; the impure particles fly off,
+or are neutralized by the healthful.  It is only fools that call the
+works of a master-spirit immoral.  There does not exist in the literature
+of the world one _popular_ book that is immoral two centuries after it is
+produced.  For, in the heart of nations, the False does not live so long;
+and the True is the Ethical to the end of time.
+
+From the literary Maltravers turned to the political state of France his
+curious and thoughtful eye.  He was struck by the resemblance which this
+nation--so civilized, so thoroughly European--bears in one respect to the
+despotisms of the East: the convulsions of the capital decide the fate of
+the country; Paris is the tyrant of France.  He saw in this inflammable
+concentration of power, which must ever be pregnant with great evils, one
+of the causes why the revolutions of that powerful and polished people
+are so incomplete and unsatisfactory, why, like Cardinal Fleury, system
+after system, and Government after Government--
+
+       .  .  .  "floruit sine fructu,
+       Defloruit sine luctu."*
+
+  * "Flourished without fruit, and was destroyed without regret."
+
+Maltravers regarded it as a singular instance of perverse ratiocination,
+that, unwarned by experience, the French should still persist in
+perpetuating this political vice; that all their policy should still be
+the policy of Centralization,--a principle which secures the momentary
+strength, but ever ends in the abrupt destruction of States.  It is, in
+fact, the perilous tonic, which seems to brace the system, but drives the
+blood to the head,--thus come apoplexy and madness.  By centralization
+the provinces are weakened, it is true,--but weak to assist as well as to
+oppose a government, weak to withstand a mob.  Nowhere, nowadays, is a
+mob so powerful as in Paris: the political history of Paris is the
+history of snobs.  Centralization is an excellent quackery for a despot
+who desires power to last only his own life, and who has but a
+life-interest in the State; but to true liberty and permanent order
+centralization is a deadly poison.  The more the provinces govern their
+own affairs, the more we find everything, even to roads and post-horses,
+are left to the people; the more the Municipal Spirit pervades every vein
+of the vast body, the more certain may we be that reform and change must
+come from universal opinion, which is slow, and constructs ere it
+destroys,--not from public clamour, which is sudden, and not only pulls
+down the edifice but sells the bricks!
+
+Another peculiarity in the French Constitution struck and perplexed
+Maltravers.  This people so pervaded by the republican sentiment; this
+people, who had sacrificed so much for Freedom; this people, who, in the
+name of Freedom, had perpetrated so much crime with Robespierre, and
+achieved so much glory with Napoleon,--this people were, as a people,
+contented to be utterly excluded from all power and voice in the State!
+Out of thirty-three millions of subjects, less than two hundred thousand
+electors!  Where was there ever an oligarchy equal to this?  What a
+strange infatuation, to demolish an aristocracy and yet to exclude a
+people!  What an anomaly in political architecture, to build an inverted
+pyramid!  Where was the safety-valve of governments, where the natural
+vents of excitement in a population so inflammable?  The people itself
+were left a mob,--no stake in the State, no action in its affairs, no
+legislative interest in its security.*
+
+  * Has not all this proved prophetic?
+
+On the other hand, it was singular to see how--the aristocracy of birth
+broken down--the aristocracy of letters had arisen.  A Peerage, half
+composed of journalists, philosophers, and authors!  This was the
+beau-ideal of Algernon Sidney's Aristocratic Republic, of the Helvetian
+vision of what ought to be the dispensation of public distinctions; yet
+was it, after all, a desirable aristocracy?  Did society gain; did
+literature lose?  Was the priesthood of Genius made more sacred and more
+pure by these worldly decorations and hollow titles; or was aristocracy
+itself thus rendered a more disinterested, a more powerful, or a more
+sagacious element in the administration of law, or the elevation of
+opinion?  These questions, not lightly to be answered, could not fail to
+arouse the speculation and curiosity of a man who had been familiar with
+the closet and the forum; and in proportion as he found his interest
+excited in these problems to be solved by a foreign nation, did the
+thoughtful Englishman feel the old instinct--which binds the citizen to
+the fatherland--begin to stir once more earnestly and vividly within him.
+
+"You, yourself individually, are passing like us," said De Montaigne one
+day to Maltravers, "through a state of transition.  You have forever left
+the Ideal, and you are carrying your cargo of experience over to the
+Practical.  When you reach that haven, you will have completed the
+development of your forces."
+
+"You mistake me,--I am but a spectator."
+
+"Yes; but you desire to go behind the scenes; and he who once grows
+familiar with the green-room, longs to be an actor."
+
+With Madame de Ventadour and the De Montaignes Maltravers passed the
+chief part of his time.  They knew how to appreciate his nobler and to
+love his gentler attributes and qualities; they united in a warm interest
+for his future fate; they combated his Philosophy of Inaction; and they
+felt that it was because he was not happy that he was not wise.
+Experience was to him what ignorance had been to Alice.  His faculties
+were chilled and dormant.  As affection to those who are unskilled in all
+things, so is affection to those who despair of all things.  The mind of
+Maltravers was a world without a sun!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+  COELEBS, quid agam?*--HORACE.
+
+  * "What shall I do, a bachelor?"
+
+IN a room at Fenton's Hotel sat Lord Vargrave and Caroline Lady
+Doltimore,--two months after the marriage of the latter.
+
+"Doltimore has positively fixed, then, to go abroad on your return from
+Cornwall?"
+
+"Positively,--to Paris.  You can join us at Christmas, I trust?"
+
+"I have no doubt of it; and before then I hope that I shall have arranged
+certain public matters, which at present harass and absorb me even more
+than my private affairs."
+
+"You have managed to obtain terms with Mr. Douce, and to delay the
+repayment of your debt to him?"
+
+"Yes, I hope so, till I touch Miss Cameron's income; which will be mine,
+I trust, by the time she is eighteen."
+
+"You mean the forfeit money of thirty thousand pounds?"
+
+"Not I; I mean what I said!"
+
+"Can you really imagine she will still accept your hand?"
+
+"With your aid, I do imagine it!  Hear me.  You must take Evelyn with you
+to Paris.  I have no doubt but that she will be delighted to accompany
+you; nay, I have paved the way so far.  For, of course, as a friend of
+the family, and guardian to Evelyn, I have maintained a correspondence
+with Lady Vargrave.  She informs me that Evelyn has been unwell and
+low-spirited; that she fears Brook-Green is dull for her, etc.  I wrote,
+in reply, to say that the more my ward saw of the world, prior to her
+accession, when of age, to the position she would occupy in it, the more
+she would fulfil my late uncle's wishes with respect to her education and
+so forth.  I added that as you were going to Paris, and as you loved her
+so much, there could not be a better opportunity for her entrance into
+life under the most favourable auspices.  Lady Vargrave's answer to this
+letter arrived this morning: she will consent to such an arrangement
+should you propose it."
+
+"But what good will result to yourself in this project?  At Paris you
+will be sure of rivals, and--"
+
+"Caroline," interrupted Lord Vargrave, "I know very well what you would
+say: I also know all the danger I must incur.  But it is a choice of
+evils, and I choose the least.  You see that while she is at Brook-Green,
+and under the eye of that sly old curate, I can effect nothing with her.
+There, she is entirely removed from my influence: not so abroad; not so
+under your roof.  Listen to me still further.  In this country, and
+especially in the seclusion and shelter of Brook-Green, I have no scope
+for any of those means which I shall be compelled to resort to, in
+failure of all else."
+
+"What can you intend?" said Caroline, with a slight shudder.
+
+"I don't know what I intend yet.  But this, at least, I can tell
+you,--that Miss Cameron's fortune I must and will have.  I am a desperate
+man; and I can play a desperate game, if need be."
+
+"And do you think that _I_ will aid, will abet?"
+
+"Hush, not so loud!  Yes, Caroline, you will, and you must aid and abet
+me in any project I may form."
+
+"Must!  Lord Vargrave?"
+
+"Ay," said Lumley, with a smile, and sinking his voice into a
+whisper,--"ay! _you are in my power_!"
+
+"Traitor!--you cannot dare! you cannot mean--"
+
+"I mean nothing more than to remind you of the ties that exist between
+us,--ties which ought to render us the firmest and most confidential of
+friends.  Come, Caroline, recollect all the benefit must not lie on one
+side.  I have obtained for you rank and wealth; I have procured you a
+husband,--you must help me to a wife!"
+
+Caroline sank back, and covered her face with her hands.
+
+"I allow," continued Vargrave, coldly,--"I allow that your beauty and
+talent were sufficient of themselves to charm a wiser man than Doltimore;
+but had I not suppressed jealousy, sacrificed love, had I dropped a hint
+to your liege lord,--nay, had I not fed his lap-dog vanity by all the
+cream and sugar of flattering falsehoods,--you would be Caroline Merton
+still!"
+
+"Oh, would that I were!  Oh that I were anything but your tool, your
+victim!  Fool that I was! wretch that I am!  I am rightly punished!"
+
+"Forgive me, forgive me, dearest," said Vargrave, soothingly; "I was to
+blame, forgive me: but you irritated, you maddened me, by your seeming
+indifference to my prosperity, my fate.  I tell you again and again,
+pride of my soul, I tell you, that you are the only being I love! and if
+you will allow me, if you will rise superior, as I once fondly hoped, to
+all the cant and prejudice of convention and education, the only woman I
+could ever respect, as well as love.  Oh, hereafter, when you see me at
+that height to which I feel that I am born to climb, let me think that to
+your generosity, your affection, your zeal, I owed the ascent.  At
+present I am on the precipice; without your hand I fall forever.  My own
+fortune is gone; the miserable forfeit due to me, if Evelyn continues to
+reject my suit, when she has arrived at the age of eighteen, is deeply
+mortgaged.  I am engaged in vast and daring schemes, in which I may
+either rise to the highest station or lose that which I now hold.  In
+either case, how necessary to me is wealth: in the one instance, to
+maintain my advancement; in the other, to redeem my fall."
+
+"But did you not tell me," said Caroline, "that Evelyn proposed and
+promised to place her fortune at your disposal, even while rejecting your
+hand?"
+
+"Absurd mockery!" exclaimed Vargrave; "the foolish boast of a girl,--an
+impulse liable to every caprice.  Can you suppose that when she launches
+into the extravagance natural to her age and necessary to her position,
+she will not find a thousand demands upon her rent-roll not dreamed of
+now; a thousand vanities and baubles that will soon erase my poor and
+hollow claim from her recollection?  Can you suppose that, if she marry
+another, her husband will ever consent to a child's romance?  And even
+were all this possible, were it possible that girls were not extravagant,
+and that husbands had no common-sense, is it for me, Lord Vargrave, to be
+a mendicant upon reluctant bounty,--a poor cousin, a pensioned
+led-captain?  Heaven knows I have as little false pride as any man, but
+still this is a degradation I cannot stoop to.  Besides, Caroline, I am
+no miser, no Harpagon: I do not want wealth for wealth's sake, but for
+the advantages it bestows,--respect, honour, position; and these I get as
+the husband of the great heiress.  Should I get them as her dependant?
+No: for more than six years I have built my schemes and shaped my conduct
+according to one assured and definite object; and that object I shall not
+now, at the eleventh hour, let slip from my hands.  Enough of this: you
+will pass Brook-Green in returning from Cornwall; you will take Evelyn
+with you to Paris,--leave the rest to me.  Fear no folly, no violence,
+from my plans, whatever they may be: I work in the dark.  Nor do I
+despair that Evelyn will love, that Evelyn will voluntarily accept me
+yet: my disposition is sanguine; I look to the bright side of things; do
+the same!"
+
+Here their conference was interrupted by Lord Doltimore, who lounged
+carelessly into the room, with his hat on one side.  "Ah, Vargrave, how
+are you?  You will not forget the letters of introduction?  Where are you
+going, Caroline?"
+
+"Only to my own room, to put on my bonnet; the carriage will be here in a
+few minutes."  And Caroline escaped.
+
+"So you go to Cornwall to-morrow, Doltimore?"
+
+"Yes; cursed bore! but Lady Elizabeth insists on seeing us, and I don't
+object to a week's good shooting.  The old lady, too, has something to
+leave, and Caroline had no dowry,--not that I care for it; but still
+marriage is expensive."
+
+"By the by, you will want the five thousand pounds you lent me?"
+
+"Why, whenever it is convenient."
+
+Say no more,--it shall be seen to.  Doltimore, I am very anxious that
+Lady Doltimore's _debut_ at Paris should be brilliant: everything depends
+on falling into the right set.  For myself, I don't care about fashion,
+and never did; but if I were married, and an idle man like you, it might
+be different."
+
+"Oh, you will be very useful to us when we return to London.  Meanwhile,
+you know, you have my proxy in the Lords.  I dare say there will be some
+sharp work the first week or two after the recess."
+
+"Very likely; and depend on one thing, my dear Doltimore, that when I am
+in the Cabinet, a certain friend of mine shall be an earl.  Adieu."
+
+"Good-by, my dear Vargrave, good-by; and, I say,--I say, don't distress
+yourself about that trifle; a few months hence it will suit me just as
+well."
+
+"Thanks.  I will just look into my accounts, and use you without
+ceremony.  Well, I dare say we shall meet at Paris.  Oh, I forgot,--I
+observe that you have renewed your intimacy with Legard.  Now, he is a
+very good fellow, and I gave him that place to oblige you; still, as you
+are no longer a _garcon_--but perhaps I shall offend you?"
+
+"Not at all.  What is there against Legard?"
+
+"Nothing in the world,--but he is a bit of a boaster.  I dare say his
+ancestor was a Gascon, poor fellow!--and he affects to say that you can't
+choose a coat, or buy a horse, without his approval and advice,--that he
+can turn you round his finger.  Now this hurts your consequence in the
+world,--you don't get credit for your own excellent sense and taste.
+Take my advice, avoid these young hangers-on of fashion, these club-room
+lions.  Having no importance of their own, they steal the importance of
+their friends.  _Verbum sap_."
+
+"You are very right,--Legard _is_ a coxcomb; and now I see why he talked
+of joining us at Paris."
+
+"Don't let him do any such thing!  He will be telling the Frenchmen that
+her ladyship is in love with him, ha, ha!"
+
+"Ha, ha!--a very good joke--poor Caroline!--very good joke!"
+
+"Well, good-by, once more."  And Vargrave closed the door.
+
+"Legard go to Paris--not if Evelyn goes there!" muttered Lumley.
+"Besides, I want no partner in the little that one can screw out of this
+blockhead."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+       MR. BUMBLECASE, a word with you--I have a little business.
+       Farewell, the goodly Manor of Blackacre, with all its woods,
+  underwoods, and appurtenances whatever.--WYCHERLEY: _Plain Dealer_.
+
+IN quitting Fenton's Hotel, Lord Vargrave entered into one of the clubs
+in St. James's Street: this was rather unusual with him, for he was not a
+club man.  It was not his system to spend his time for nothing.  But it
+was a wet December day; the House was not yet assembled, and he had done
+his official business.  Here, as he was munching a biscuit and reading an
+article in one of the ministerial papers--the heads of which he himself
+had supplied--Lord Saxingham joined and drew him to the window.
+
+"I have reason to think," said the earl, "that your visit to Windsor did
+good."
+
+"Ah, indeed; so I fancied."
+
+"I do not think that a certain personage will ever consent to the -----
+question; and the premier, whom I saw to-day, seems chafed and
+irritated."
+
+"Nothing can be better; I know that we are in the right boat."
+
+"I hope it is not true, Lumley, that your marriage with Miss Cameron is
+broken off; such was the _on dit_ in the club, just before you entered."
+
+"Contradict it, my dear lord,--contradict it.  I hope by the spring to
+introduce Lady Vargrave to you.  But who broached the absurd report?"
+
+"Why, your _protege_, Legard, says he heard so from his uncle, who heard
+it from Sir John Merton."
+
+"Legard is a puppy, and Sir John Merton a jackass.  Legard had better
+attend to his office, if he wants to get on; and I wish you'd tell him
+so.  I have heard somewhere that he talks of going to Paris,--you can
+just hint to him that he must give up such idle habits.  Public
+functionaries are not now what they were,--people are expected to work
+for the money they pocket; otherwise Legard is a cleverish fellow, and
+deserves promotion.  A word or two of caution from you will do him a vast
+deal of good."
+
+"Be sure I will lecture him.  Will you dine with me to-day, Lumley?"
+
+"No.  I expect my co-trustee, Mr. Douce, on matters of business,--a
+_tete-a-tete_ dinner."
+
+Lord Vargrave had, as he conceived, very cleverly talked over Mr. Douce
+into letting his debt to that gentleman run on for the present; and in
+the meanwhile, he had overwhelmed Mr. Douce with his condescensions.
+That gentleman had twice dined with Lord Vargrave, and Lord Vargrave had
+twice dined with him.  The occasion of the present more familiar
+entertainment was in a letter from Mr. Douce, begging to see Lord
+Vargrave on particular business; and Vargrave, who by no means liked the
+word _business_ from a gentleman to whom he owed money, thought that it
+would go off more smoothly if sprinkled with champagne.
+
+Accordingly, he begged "My dear Mr. Douce" to excuse ceremony, and dine
+with him on Thursday at seven o'clock,--he was really so busy all the
+mornings.
+
+At seven o'clock, Mr. Douce came.  The moment he entered Vargrave called
+out, at the top of his voice, "Dinner immediately!"  And as the little
+man bowed and shuffled, and fidgeted and wriggled (while Vargrave shook
+him by the hand), as if he thought he was going himself to be spitted,
+his host said, "With your leave, we'll postpone the budget till after
+dinner.  It is the fashion nowadays to postpone budgets as long as we
+can,--eh?  Well, and how are all at home?  Devilish cold; is it not?  So
+you go to your villa every day?  That's what keeps you in such capital
+health.  You know I had a villa too,--though I never had time to go
+there."
+
+"Ah, yes; I think, I remember, at Ful-Ful-Fulham!" gasped out Mr. Douce.
+"Your poor uncle's--now Lady Var-Vargrave's jointure-house.  So--so--"
+
+"She don't live there!" burst in Vargrave (far too impatient to be
+polite).  "Too cockneyfied for her,--gave it up to me; very pretty place,
+but d-----d expensive.  I could not afford it, never went there, and so I
+have let it to my wine-merchant; the rent just pays his bill.  You will
+taste some of the sofas and tables to-day in his champagne.  I don't know
+how it is, I always fancy my sherry smells like my poor uncle's old
+leather chair: very odd smell it had,--a kind of respectable smell!  I
+hope you're hungry,--dinner's ready."
+
+Vargrave thus rattled away in order to give the good banker to understand
+that his affairs were in the most flourishing condition: and he continued
+to keep up the ball all dinnertime, stopping Mr. Douce's little,
+miserable, gasping, dacelike mouth, with "a glass of wine, Douce?" or "by
+the by, Douce," whenever he saw that worthy gentleman about to make the
+AEschylean improvement of a second person in the dialogue.
+
+At length, dinner being fairly over, and the servants withdrawn, Lord
+Vargrave, knowing that sooner or later Douce would have his say, drew his
+chair to the fire, put his feet on the fender, and cried, as he tossed
+off his claret, "NOW, DOUCE, WHAT CAN I DO FOR YOU?"
+
+Mr. Douce opened his eyes to their full extent, and then as rapidly
+closed them; and this operation he continued till, having snuffed them so
+much that they could by no possibility burn any brighter, he was
+convinced that he had not misunderstood his lordship.
+
+"Indeed, then," he began, in his most frightened manner,
+"indeed--I--really, your lordship is very good--I--I wanted to speak to
+you on business."
+
+"Well, what can I do for you,--some little favour, eh?  Snug sinecure for
+a favourite clerk, or a place in the Stamp-Office for your fat
+footman--John, I think you call him?  You know, my dear Douce, you may
+command me."
+
+"Oh, indeed, you are all  good-good-goodness--but--but--"
+
+Vargrave threw himself back, and shutting his eyes and pursing up his
+mouth, resolutely suffered Mr. Douce to unbosom himself without
+interruption.  He was considerably relieved to find that the business
+referred to related only to Miss Cameron.
+
+Mr. Douce having reminded Lord Vargrave, as he had often done before, of
+the wishes of his uncle, that the greater portion of the money bequeathed
+to Evelyn should be invested in land, proceeded to say that a most
+excellent opportunity presented itself for just such a purchase as would
+have rejoiced the heart of the late lord,--a superb place, in the style
+of Blickling,--deer-park six miles round, ten thousand acres of land,
+bringing in a clear eight thousand pounds a year, purchase money only two
+hundred and forty thousand pounds.  The whole estate was, indeed, much
+larger,--eighteen thousand acres; but then the more distant farms could
+be sold in different lots, in order to meet the exact sum Miss Cameron's
+trustees were enabled to invest.
+
+"Well," said Vargrave, "and where is it?  My poor uncle was after De
+Clifford's estate, but the title was not good."
+
+"Oh! this--is much--much--much fi-fi-finer; famous investment--but rather
+far off--in--in the north, Li-Li-Lisle Court."
+
+"Lisle Court!  Why, does not that belong to Colonel Maltravers?"
+
+"Yes.  It is, indeed, quite, I may say, a secret-yes--really--a
+se-se-secret--not in the market yet--not at all--soon snapped up."
+
+"Humph!  Has Colonel Maltravers been extravagant?"
+
+"No; but he does not--I hear--or rather Lady--Julia--so I'm told, yes,
+indeed--does not li-like--going so far, and so they spend the winter in
+Italy instead.  Yes--very odd--very fine place."
+
+Lumley was slightly acquainted with the elder brother of his old
+friend,--a man who possessed some of Ernest's faults,--very proud, and
+very exacting, and very fastidious; but all these faults were developed
+in the ordinary commonplace world, and were not the refined abstractions
+of his younger brother.
+
+Colonel Maltravers had continued, since he entered the Guards, to be
+thoroughly the man of fashion, and nothing more.  But rich and well-born,
+and highly connected, and thoroughly _a la mode_ as he was, his pride
+made him uncomfortable in London, while his fastidiousness made him
+uncomfortable in the country.  He was _rather_ a great person, but he
+wanted to be a _very_ great person.  This he was at Lisle Court; but that
+did not satisfy him.  He wanted not only to be a very great person, but a
+very great person among very great persons--and squires and parsons bored
+him.  Lady Julia, his wife, was a fine lady, inane and pretty, who saw
+everything through her husband's eyes.  He was quite master _chez lui_,
+was Colonel Maltravers!  He lived a great deal abroad; for on the
+Continent his large income seemed princely, while his high character,
+thorough breeding, and personal advantages, which were remarkable,
+secured him a greater position in foreign courts than at his own.  Two
+things had greatly disgusted him with Lisle Court,--trifles they might be
+with others, but they were not trifles to Cuthbert Maltravers; in the
+first place, a man who had been his father's attorney, and who was the
+very incarnation of coarse unrepellable familiarity, had bought an estate
+close by the said Lisle Court, and had, _horresco referens_, been made a
+baronet!  Sir Gregory Gubbins took precedence of Colonel Maltravers!  He
+could not ride out but he met Sir Gregory; he could not dine out but he
+had the pleasure of walking behind Sir Gregory's bright blue coat with
+its bright brass buttons.  In his last visit to Lisle Court, which he had
+then crowded with all manner of fine people, he had seen--the very first
+morning after his arrival--seen from the large window of his state
+saloon, a great staring white, red, blue, and gilt thing, at the end of
+the stately avenue planted by Sir Guy Maltravers in honour of the victory
+over the Spanish armada.  He looked in mute surprise, and everybody else
+looked; and a polite German count, gazing through his eye-glass, said,
+"Ah! dat is vat you call a vim in your _pays_,--the vim of Colonel
+Maltravers!"
+
+This "vim" was the pagoda summer-house of Sir Gregory Gubbins, erected in
+imitation of the Pavilion at Brighton.  Colonel Maltravers was miserable:
+the _vim_ haunted him; it seemed ubiquitous; he could not escape it,--it
+was built on the highest spot in the county.  Ride, walk, sit where he
+would, the _vim_ stared at him; and he thought he saw little mandarins
+shake their round little heads at him.  This was one of the great curses
+of Lisle Court; the other was yet more galling.  The owners of Lisle
+Court had for several generations possessed the dominant interest in the
+county town.  The colonel himself meddled little in politics, and was too
+fine a gentleman for the drudgery of parliament.  He had offered the seat
+to Ernest, when the latter had commenced his public career; but the
+result of a communication proved that their political views were
+dissimilar, and the negotiation dropped without ill-feeling on either
+side.  Subsequently a vacancy occurred; and Lady Julia's brother (just
+made a Lord of the Treasury) wished to come into parliament, so the
+county town was offered to him.  Now, the proud commoner had married into
+the family of a peer as proud as himself, and Colonel Maltravers was
+always glad whenever he could impress his consequence on his connections
+by doing them a favour.  He wrote to his steward to see that the thing
+was properly settled, and came down on the nomination-day "to share the
+triumph and partake the gale."  Guess his indignation, when he found the
+nephew of Sir Gregory Gubbins was already in the field!  The result of
+the election was that Mr. Augustus Gubbins came in, and that Colonel
+Maltravers was pelted with cabbage-stalks, and accused of attempting to
+sell the worthy and independent electors to a government nominee!  In
+shame and disgust, Colonel Maltravers broke up his establishment at Lisle
+Court, and once more retired to the Continent.
+
+About a week from the date now touched upon, Lady Julia and himself had
+arrived in London from Vienna; and a new mortification awaited the
+unfortunate owner of Lisle Court.  A railroad company had been
+established, of which Sir Gregory Gubbins was a principal shareholder;
+and the speculator, Mr. Augustus Gubbins, one of the "most useful men in
+the House," had undertaken to carry the bill through parliament.  Colonel
+Maltravers received a letter of portentous size, inclosing the map of the
+places which this blessed railway was to bisect; and lo! just at the
+bottom of his park ran a portentous line, which informed him of the
+sacrifice he was expected to make for the public good,--especially for
+the good of that very county town, the inhabitants of which had pelted
+him with cabbage-stalks!
+
+Colonel Maltravers lost all patience.  Unacquainted with our wise
+legislative proceedings, he was not aware that a railway planned is a
+very different thing from a railway made; and that parliamentary
+committees are not by any means favourable to schemes for carrying the
+public through a gentleman's park.
+
+"This country is not to be lived in," said he to Lady Julia; "it gets
+worse and worse every year.  I am sure I never had any comfort in Lisle
+Court.  I've a great mind to sell it."
+
+"Why, indeed, as we have no sons, only daughters, and Ernest is so well
+provided for," said Lady Julia, "and the place is so far from London, and
+the neighbourhood is so disagreeable, I think we could do very well
+without it."
+
+Colonel Maltravers made no answer, but he revolved the pros and cons; and
+then he began to think how much it cost him in gamekeepers and carpenters
+and bailiffs and gardeners and Heaven knows whom besides; and then the
+pagoda flashed across him; and then the cabbage-stalks, and at last he
+went to his solicitor.
+
+"You may sell Lisle Court," said he, quietly.
+
+The solicitor dipped his pen in the ink.  "The particulars, Colonel?"
+
+"Particulars of Lisle Court! everybody, that is, every gentleman, knows
+Lisle Court!"
+
+"Price, sir?"
+
+"You know the rents; calculate accordingly.  It will be too large a
+purchase for one individual; sell the outlying woods and farms separately
+from the rest."
+
+"We must draw up an advertisement, Colonel."
+
+"Advertise Lisle Court! out of the question, sir.  I can have no
+publicity given to my intention: mention it quietly to any capitalist;
+but keep it out of the papers till it is all settled.  In a week or two
+you will find a purchaser,--the sooner the better."
+
+Besides his horror of newspaper comments and newspaper puffs, Colonel
+Maltravers dreaded that his brother--then in Paris--should learn his
+intention, and attempt to thwart it; and, somehow or other, the colonel
+was a little in awe of Ernest, and a little ashamed of his resolution.
+He did not know that, by a singular coincidence, Ernest himself had
+thought of selling Burleigh.
+
+The solicitor was by no means pleased with this way of settling the
+matter.  However, he whispered it about that Lisle Court was in the
+market; and as it really was one of the most celebrated places of its
+kind in England, the whisper spread among bankers and brewers and
+soap-boilers and other rich people--the Medici of the New Noblesse rising
+up amongst us--till at last it reached the ears of Mr. Douce.
+
+Lord Vargrave, however bad a man he might be, had not many of those vices
+of character which belong to what I may call the _personal class of
+vices_,--that is, he had no ill-will to individuals.  He was not,
+ordinarily, a jealous man, nor a spiteful, nor a malignant, nor a
+vindictive man: his vices arose from utter indifference to all men, and
+all things--except as conducive to his own ends.  He would not have
+injured a worm if it did him no good; but he would have set any house on
+fire if he had no other means of roasting his own eggs.  Yet still, if
+any feeling of personal rancour could harbour in his breast, it was,
+first, towards Evelyn Cameron, and, secondly, towards Ernest Maltravers.
+For the first time in his life, he did long for revenge,--revenge against
+the one for stealing his patrimony, and refusing his hand; and that
+revenge he hoped to gratify.
+
+As to the other, it was not so much dislike he felt, as an uneasy
+sentiment of inferiority.  However well he himself had got on in the
+world, he yet grudged the reputation of a man whom he had remembered a
+wayward, inexperienced boy: he did not love to hear any one praise
+Maltravers.  He fancied, too, that this feeling was reciprocal, and that
+Maltravers was pained at hearing of any new step in his own career.  In
+fact, it was that sort of jealousy which men often feel for the
+companions of their youth, whose characters are higher than their own,
+and whose talents are of an order they do not quite comprehend.  Now, it
+certainly did seem at that moment to Lord Vargrave that it would be a
+most splendid triumph over Mr. Maltravers of Burleigh to be lord of Lisle
+Court, the hereditary seat of the elder branch of the family to be, as it
+were, in the very shoes of Mr. Ernest Maltravers's elder brother.  He
+knew, too, that it was a property of great consequence.  Lord Vargrave of
+Lisle Court would hold a very different post in the peerage from Lord
+Vargrave of -----, Fulham!  Nobody would call the owner of Lisle Court an
+adventurer; nobody would suspect such a man of caring three straws about
+place and salary.  And if he married Evelyn, and if Evelyn bought Lisle
+Court, would not Lisle Court be his?  He vaulted over the _ifs_, stiff
+monosyllables though they were, with a single jump.  Besides, even should
+the thing come to nothing, there was the very excuse he sought for
+joining Evelyn at Paris, for conversing with her, consulting her.  It was
+true that the will of the late lord left it solely at the discretion of
+the trustees to select such landed investment as seemed best to them; but
+still it was, if not legally necessary, at least but a proper courtesy to
+consult Evelyn.  And plans, and drawings, and explanations, and
+rent-rolls, would justify him in spending morning after morning alone
+with her.
+
+Thus cogitating, Lord Vargrave suffered Mr. Douce to stammer out sentence
+upon sentence, till at length, as he rang for coffee, his lordship
+stretched himself with the air of a man stretching himself into
+self-complacency or a good thing, and said,--
+
+"Mr. Douce, I will go down to Lisle Court as soon as I can; I will see
+it; I will ascertain all about it; I will consider favourably of it.  I
+agree with you, I think it will do famously."
+
+"But," said Mr. Douce, who seemed singularly anxious about the matter,
+"we must make haste, my lord; for really--yes, indeed--if--if--if Baron
+Roths--Rothschild should--that is to say--"
+
+"Oh, yes, I understand; keep the thing close, my dear Douce; make friends
+with the colonel's lawyer; play with him a little, till I can run down."
+
+"Besides, you see, you are such a good man of business, my lord--that you
+see, that--yes, really--there must be time to draw out the
+purchase-money--sell out at a prop--prop--"
+
+"To be sure, to be sure!  Bless me, how late it is!  I am afraid my
+carriage is ready.  I must go to Madame de L-----'s."
+
+Mr. Douce, who seemed to have much more to say, was forced to keep it for
+another time, and to take his leave.  Lord Vargrave went to Madame de
+L-----'s.  His position in what is called Exclusive Society was rather
+peculiar.  By those who affected to be the best judges, the frankness of
+his manner and the easy oddity of his conversation were pronounced at
+variance with the tranquil serenity of thorough breeding.  But still he
+was a great favourite both with fine ladies and dandies.  His handsome
+keen countenance, his talents, his politics, his intrigues, and an
+animated boldness in his bearing, compensated for his constant violation
+of all the minutiae of orthodox conventionalism.
+
+At this house he met Colonel Maltravers, and took an opportunity to renew
+his acquaintance with that gentleman.  He then referred, in a
+confidential whisper, to the communication he had received touching Lisle
+Court.
+
+"Yes," said the colonel, "I suppose I must sell the place, if I can do so
+quietly.  To be sure, when I first spoke to my lawyer it was in a moment
+of vexation, on hearing that the ----- railroad was to go through the
+park, but I find that I overrated that danger.  Still, if you will do me
+the honour to go and look over the place, you will find very good
+shooting; and when you come back, you can see if it will suit you.  Don't
+say anything about it when you are there; it is better not to publish my
+intention all over the county.  I shall have Sir Gregory Gubbins offering
+to buy it if you do!"
+
+"You may depend on my discretion.  Have you heard anything of your
+brother lately?"
+
+"Yes; I fancy he is going to Switzerland.  He would soon be in England,
+if he heard I was going to part with Lisle Court!"
+
+"What, it would vex him so?"
+
+"I fear it would; but he has a nice old place of his own, not half so
+large, and therefore not half so troublesome as Lisle Court."
+
+"Ay! and he _did_ talk of selling that nice old place."
+
+"Selling Burleigh! you surprise me.  But really country places in England
+_are_ a bore.  I suppose he has his Gubbins as well as myself!"
+
+Here the chief minister of the government adorned by Lord Vargrave's
+virtues passed by, and Lumley turned to greet him.
+
+The two ministers talked together most affectionately in a close
+whisper,--so affectionately, that one might have seen, with half an eye,
+that they hated each other like poison!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+  INSPICERE tanquam in speculum, in vitas omnium
+  Jubeo.*--TERENCE.
+
+  * "I bid you look into the lives of all men, as
+    it were into a mirror."
+
+ERNEST MALTRAVERS still lingered at Paris: he gave up all notion of
+proceeding farther.  He was, in fact, tired of travel.  But there was
+another reason that chained him to that "Navel of the Earth,"--there is
+not anywhere a better sounding-board to London rumours than the English
+_quartier_ between the Boulevard des Italiennes and the Tuileries; here,
+at all events, he should soonest learn the worst: and every day, as he
+took up the English newspapers, a sick feeling of apprehension and fear
+came over him.  No! till the seal was set upon the bond, till the Rubicon
+was passed, till Miss Cameron was the wife of Lord Vargrave, he could
+neither return to the home that was so eloquent with the recollections of
+Evelyn, nor, by removing farther from England, delay the receipt of an
+intelligence which he vainly told himself he was prepared to meet.
+
+He continued to seek such distractions from thought as were within his
+reach; and as his heart was too occupied for pleasures which had, indeed,
+long since palled, those distractions were of the grave and noble
+character which it is a prerogative of the intellect to afford to the
+passions.
+
+De Montaigne was neither a Doctrinaire nor a Republican,--and yet,
+perhaps, he was a little of both.  He was one who thought that the
+tendency of all European States is towards Democracy; but he by no means
+looked upon Democracy as a panacea for all legislative evils.  He thought
+that, while a writer should be in advance of his time, a statesman should
+content himself with marching by its side; that a nation could not be
+ripened, like an exotic, by artificial means; that it must be developed
+only by natural influences.  He believed that forms of government are
+never universal in their effects.  Thus, De Montaigne conceived that we
+were wrong in attaching more importance to legislative than to social
+reforms.  He considered, for instance, that the surest sign of our
+progressive civilization is in our growing distaste to capital
+punishments.  He believed, not in the ultimate _perfection_ of mankind,
+but in their progressive _perfectibility_.  He thought that improvement
+was indefinite; but he did not place its advance more under Republican
+than under Monarchical forms.  "Provided," he was wont to say, "all our
+checks to power are of the right kind, it matters little to what hands
+the power itself is confided."
+
+"AEgina and Athens," said he, "were republics--commercial and
+maritime--placed under the same sky, surrounded by the same neighbours,
+and rent by the same struggles between Oligarchy and Democracy.  Yet,
+while one left the world an immortal heirloom of genius, where are the
+poets, the philosophers, the statesmen of the other?  Arrian tells us of
+republics in India, still supposed to exist by modern investigators; but
+they are not more productive of liberty of thought, or ferment of
+intellect, than the principalities.  In Italy there were commonwealths as
+liberal as the Republic of Florence; but they did not produce a
+Machiavelli or a Dante.  What daring thought, what gigantic speculation,
+what democracy of wisdom and genius, have sprung up amongst the
+despotisms of Germany!  You cannot educate two individuals so as to
+produce the same results from both; you cannot, by similar constitutions
+(which are the education of nations) produce the same results from
+different communities.  The proper object of statesmen should be to give
+every facility to the people to develop themselves, and every facility to
+philosophy to dispute and discuss as to the ultimate objects to be
+obtained.  But you cannot, as a practical legislator, place your country
+under a melon-frame: it must grow of its own accord."
+
+I do not say whether or not De Montaigne was wrong! but Maltravers saw at
+least that he was faithful to his theories; that all his motives were
+sincere, all his practice pure.  He could not but allow, too, that in his
+occupations and labours, De Montaigne appeared to feel a sublime
+enjoyment; that, in linking all the powers of his mind to active and
+useful objects, De Montaigne was infinitely happier than the Philosophy
+of Indifference, the scorn of ambition, had made Maltravers.  The
+influence exercised by the large-souled and practical Frenchman over the
+fate and the history of Maltravers was very peculiar.
+
+De Montaigne had not, apparently and directly, operated upon his friend's
+outward destinies; but he had done so indirectly, by operating on his
+mind.  Perhaps it was he who had consolidated the first wavering and
+uncertain impulses of Maltravers towards literary exertion; it was he who
+had consoled him for the mortifications at the earlier part of his
+career; and now, perhaps he might serve, in the full vigour of his
+intellect, permanently to reconcile the Englishman to the claims of life.
+
+There were, indeed, certain conversations which Maltravers held with De
+Montaigne, the germ and pith of which it is necessary that I should place
+before the reader,--for I write the inner as well as the outer history of
+a man; and the great incidents of life are not brought about only by the
+dramatic agencies of others, but also by our own reasonings and habits of
+thought.  What I am now about to set down may be wearisome, but it is not
+episodical; and I promise that it shall be the last didactic conversation
+in the work.
+
+One day Maltravers was relating to De Montaigne all that he had been
+planning at Burleigh for the improvement of his peasantry, and all his
+theories respecting Labour-Schools and Poor-rates, when De Montaigne
+abruptly turned round, and said,--
+
+"You have, then, really found that in your own little village your
+exertions--exertions not very arduous, not demanding a tenth part of your
+time--have done practical good?"
+
+"Certainly I think so," replied Maltravers, in some surprise.
+
+"And yet it was but yesterday that you declared that all the labours of
+Philosophy and Legislation were labours vain; their benefits equivocal
+and uncertain; that as the sea, where it loses in one place, gains in
+another, so civilization only partially profits us, stealing away one
+virtue while it yields another, and leaving the large proportions of good
+and evil eternally the same."
+
+"True; but I never said that man might not relieve individuals by
+individual exertion: though he cannot by abstract theories--nay, even by
+practical action in the wide circle--benefit the mass."
+
+"Do you not employ on behalf of individuals the same moral agencies that
+wise legislation or sound philosophy would adopt towards the multitude?
+For example, you find that the children of your village are happier, more
+orderly, more obedient, promise to be wiser and better men in their own
+station of life, from the new, and, I grant, excellent system of school
+discipline and teaching that you have established.  What you have done in
+one village, why should not legislation do throughout a kingdom?  Again,
+you find that, by simply holding out hope and emulation to industry, by
+making stern distinctions between the energetic and the idle, the
+independent exertion and the pauper-mendicancy, you have found a lever by
+which you have literally moved and shifted the little world around you.
+But what is the difference here between the rules of a village lord and
+the laws of a wise legislature?  The moral feelings you have appealed to
+exist universally, the moral remedies you have practised are as open to
+legislation as to the individual proprietor."
+
+"Yes; but when you apply to a nation the same principles which regenerate
+a village, new counterbalancing principles arise.  If I give education to
+my peasants, I send them into the world with advantages _superior_ to
+their fellows,--advantages which, not being common to their class, enable
+them to _outstrip_ their fellows.  But if this education were universal
+to the whole tribe, no man would have an advantage superior to the
+others; the knowledge they would have acquired being shared by all, would
+leave all as they now are, hewers of wood and drawers of water: the
+principle of individual hope, which springs from knowledge, would soon be
+baffled by the vast competition that _universal_ knowledge would produce.
+Thus by the universal improvement would be engendered a universal
+discontent.
+
+"Take a broader view of the subject.  Advantages given to the _few_
+around me--superior wages, lighter toils, a greater sense of the dignity
+of man--are not productive of any change in society.  Give these
+advantages to the _whole mass_ of the labouring classes, and what in the
+small orbit is the desire of the _individual_ to rise becomes in the
+large circumference the desire of the _class_ to rise; hence social
+restlessness, social change, revolution, and its hazards.  For
+revolutions are produced but by the aspirations of one order, and the
+resistance of the other.  Consequently, legislative improvement differs
+widely from individual amelioration; the same principle, the same agency,
+that purifies the small body, becomes destructive when applied to the
+large one.  Apply the flame to the log on the hearth, or apply it to the
+forest, is there no distinction in the result?  The breeze that freshens
+the fountain passes to the ocean, current impels current, wave urges
+wave, and the breeze becomes the storm."
+
+"Were there truth in this train of argument," replied De Montaigne, "had
+we ever abstained from communicating to the Multitude the enjoyments and
+advantages of the Few, had we shrunk from the good, because the good is a
+parent of the change and its partial ills, what now would be society?  Is
+there no difference in collective happiness and virtue between the
+painted Picts and the Druid worship, and the glorious harmony, light, and
+order of the great English nation?"
+
+"The question is popular," said Maltravers, with a smile; "and were you
+my opponent in an election, would be cheered on any hustings in the
+kingdom.  But I have lived among savage tribes,--savage, perhaps, as the
+race that resisted Caesar; and their happiness seems to me, not perhaps
+the same as that of the few whose sources of enjoyment are numerous,
+refined, and, save by their own passions, unalloyed; but equal to that of
+the mass of men in States the most civilized and advanced.  The artisans,
+crowded together in the fetid air of factories, with physical ills
+gnawing at the core of the constitution, from the cradle to the grave;
+drudging on from dawn to sunset and flying for recreation to the dread
+excitement of the dram-shop, or the wild and vain hopes of political
+fanaticism,--are not in my eyes happier than the wild Indians with hardy
+frames and calm tempers, seasoned to the privations for which you pity
+them, and uncursed with desires of that better state never to be theirs.
+The Arab in his desert has seen all the luxuries of the pasha in his
+harem; but he envies them not.  He is contented with his barb, his tent,
+his desolate sands, and his spring of refreshing water.
+
+"Are we not daily told, do not our priests preach it from their pulpits,
+that the cottage shelters happiness equal to that within the palace?  Yet
+what the distinction between the peasant and the prince, differing from
+that between the peasant and the savage?  There are more enjoyments and
+more privations in the one than in the other; but if, in the latter case,
+the enjoyments, though fewer, be more keenly felt,--if the privations,
+though apparently sharper, fall upon duller sensibilities and hardier
+frames,--your gauge of proportion loses all its value.  Nay, in
+civilization there is for the multitude an evil that exists not in the
+savage state.  The poor man sees daily and hourly all the vast
+disparities produced by civilized society; and reversing the divine
+parable, it is Lazarus who from afar, and from the despondent pit, looks
+upon Dives in the lap of Paradise: therefore, his privations, his
+sufferings, are made more keen by comparison with the luxuries of others.
+Not so in the desert and the forest.  There but small distinctions, and
+those softened by immemorial and hereditary usage--that has in it the
+sanctity of religion--separate the savage from his chief.  The fact is,
+that in civilization we behold a splendid aggregate,--literature and
+science, wealth and luxury, commerce and glory; but we see not the
+million victims crushed beneath the wheels of the machine,--the health
+sacrificed, the board breadless, the jails filled, the hospitals reeking,
+the human life poisoned in every spring, and poured forth like water!
+Neither do we remember all the steps, marked by desolation, crime, and
+bloodshed, by which this barren summit has been reached.  Take the
+history of any civilized state,--England, France, Spain before she rotted
+back into second childhood, the Italian Republics, the Greek
+Commonwealths, the Empress of the Seven Hills--what struggles, what
+persecutions, what crimes, what massacres!  Where, in the page of
+history, shall we look back and say, 'Here improvement has diminished the
+sum of evil'?  Extend, too, your scope beyond the State itself: each
+State has won its acquisitions by the woes of others.  Spain springs
+above the Old World on the blood-stained ruins of the New; and the groans
+and the gold of Mexico produce the splendours of the Fifth Charles!
+
+"Behold England, the wise, the liberal, the free England--through what
+struggles she has passed; and is she yet contented?  The sullen oligarchy
+of the Normans; our own criminal invasions of Scotland and France; the
+plundered people, the butchered kings; the persecutions of the Lollards;
+the wars of Lancaster and York; the new dynasty of the Tudors, that at
+once put back Liberty, and put forward Civilization! the Reformation,
+cradled in the lap of a hideous despot, and nursed by violence and
+rapine; the stakes and fires of Mary, and the craftier cruelties of
+Elizabeth,--England, strengthened by the desolation of Ireland, the Civil
+Wars, the reign of hypocrisy, followed by the reign of naked vice; the
+nation that beheaded the graceful Charles gaping idly on the scaffold of
+the lofty Sidney; the vain Revolution of 1688, which, if a jubilee in
+England, was a massacre in Ireland; the bootless glories of Marlborough;
+the organized corruption of Walpole, the frantic war with our own
+American sons, the exhausting struggles with Napoleon!
+
+"Well, we close the page; we say, Lo! a thousand years of incessant
+struggles and afflictions! millions have perished, but Art has survived;
+our boors wear stockings, our women drink tea, our poets read Shakspeare,
+and our astronomers improve on Newton!  Are we now contented?  No! more
+restless than ever.  New classes are called into power; new forms of
+government insisted on.  Still the same catchwords,--Liberty here,
+Religion there; Order with one faction, Amelioration with the other.
+Where is the goal, and what have we gained?  Books are written, silks are
+woven, palaces are built,--mighty acquisitions for the few--but the
+peasant is a peasant still!  The crowd are yet at the bottom of the
+wheel; better off, you say.  No, for they are not more contented!  The
+artisan is as anxious for change as ever the serf was; and the
+steam-engine has its victims as well as the sword.
+
+"Talk of legislation: all isolated laws pave the way to wholesale changes
+in the form of government!  Emancipate Catholics, and you open the door
+to democratic principle, that Opinion should be free.  If free with the
+sectarian, it should be free with the elector.  The Ballot is a corollary
+from the Catholic Relief-bill.  Grant the Ballot, and the new corollary
+of enlarged suffrage.  Suffrage enlarged is divided but by a yielding
+surface (a circle widening in the waters) from universal suffrage.
+Universal suffrage is Democracy.  Is Democracy better than the
+aristocratic commonwealth?  Look at the Greeks, who knew both forms; are
+they agreed which is the best?  Plato, Thucydides, Xenophon,
+Aristophanes--the Dreamer, the Historian, the Philosophic Man of Action,
+the penetrating Wit--have no ideals in Democracy.  Algernon Sidney, the
+martyr of liberty, allows no government to the multitude.  Brutus died
+for a republic, but a republic of Patricians!  What form of government is
+then the best?  All dispute, the wisest cannot agree.  The many still say
+'a Republic;' yet, as you yourself will allow, Prussia, the Despotism,
+does all that Republics do.  Yes, but a good despot is a lucky accident;
+true, but a just and benevolent Republic is as yet a monster equally
+short-lived.  When the People have no other tyrant, their own public
+opinion becomes one.  No secret espionage is more intolerable to a free
+spirit than the broad glare of the American eye.
+
+"A rural republic is but a patriarchal tribe--no emulation, no glory;
+peace and stagnation.  What Englishman, what Frenchman, would wish to be
+a Swiss?  A commercial republic is but an admirable machine for making
+money.  Is man created for nothing nobler than freighting ships and
+speculating on silk and sugar?  In fact, there is no certain goal in
+legislation; we go on colonizing Utopia, and fighting phantoms in the
+clouds.  Let us content ourselves with injuring no man, and doing good
+only in our own little sphere.  Let us leave States and senates to fill
+the sieve of the Danaides, and roll up the stone of Sisyphus."
+
+"My dear friend," said De Montaigne, "you have certainly made the most of
+an argument, which, if granted, would consign government to fools and
+knaves, and plunge the communities of mankind into the Slough of Despond.
+But a very commonplace view of the question might suffice to shake your
+system.  Is life, mere animal life, on the whole, a curse or a blessing?"
+
+"The generality of men in all countries," answered Maltravers, "enjoy
+existence, and apprehend death; were it otherwise, the world had been
+made by a Fiend, and not a God!"
+
+"Well, then, observe how the progress of society cheats the grave!  In
+great cities, where the effect of civilization must be the most visible,
+the diminution of mortality in a corresponding ratio with the increase of
+civilization is most remarkable.  In Berlin, from the year 1747 to 1755,
+the annual mortality was as one to twenty-eight; but from 1816 to 1822,
+it was as one to thirty-four!  You ask what England has gained by her
+progress in the arts?  I will answer you by her bills of mortality.  In
+London, Birmingham, and Liverpool, deaths have decreased in less than a
+century from one to twenty, to one to forty (precisely one-half!).
+Again, whenever a community--nay, a single city, decreases in
+civilization, and in its concomitants, activity and commerce, its
+mortality instantly increases.  But if civilization be favourable to the
+prolongation of life, must it not be favourable to all that blesses
+life,--to bodily health, to mental cheerfulness, to the capacities for
+enjoyment?  And how much more grand, how much more sublime, becomes the
+prospect of gain, if we reflect that, to each life thus called forth,
+there is a soul, a destiny beyond the grave, multiplied immortalities!
+What an apology for the continued progress of States!  But you say that,
+however we advance, we continue impatient and dissatisfied: can you
+really suppose that, because man in every state is discontented with his
+lot, there is no difference in the _degree_ and _quality_ of his
+discontent, no distinction between pining for bread and longing for the
+moon?  Desire is implanted within us, as the very principle of existence;
+the physical desire fills the world, and the moral desire improves it.
+Where there is desire, there must be discontent: if we are satisfied with
+all things, desire is extinct.  But a certain degree of discontent is not
+incompatible with happiness, nay, it has happiness of its own; what
+happiness like hope,--what is hope but desire?  The European serf, whose
+seigneur could command his life, or insist as a right on the chastity of
+his daughter, desires to better his condition.  God has compassion on his
+state; Providence calls into action the ambition of leaders, the contests
+of faction, the movement of men's aims and passions: a change passes
+through society and legislation, and the serf becomes free!  He desires
+still, but what?  No longer personal security, no longer the privileges
+of life and health; but higher wages, greater comforts, easier justice
+for diminished wrongs.  Is there no difference in the quality of that
+desire?  Was one a greater torment than the other is?  Rise a scale
+higher: a new class is created--the Middle Class,--the express creature
+of Civilization.  Behold the burgher and the citizen, and still
+struggling, still contending, still desiring, and therefore still
+discontented.  But the discontent does not prey upon the springs of life:
+it is the discontent of _hope_, not _despair_; it calls forth faculties,
+energies, and passions, in which there is more joy than sorrow.  It is
+this desire which makes the citizen in private life an anxious father, a
+careful master, an _active_, and therefore not an unhappy, man.  You
+allow that individuals can effect individual good: this very
+restlessness, this very discontent with the exact place that he occupies,
+makes the citizen a benefactor in his narrow circle.  Commerce, better
+than Charity, feeds the hungry and clothes the naked.  Ambition, better
+than brute affection, gives education to our children, and teaches them
+the love of industry, the pride of independence, the respect for others
+and themselves!
+
+"In other words, a deference to such qualities as can best fit them to
+get on in the world, and make the most money!"
+
+"Take that view if you will; but the wiser, the more civilized the State,
+the worse chances for the rogue to get on!  There may be some art, some
+hypocrisy, some avarice,--nay, some hardness of heart,--in paternal
+example and professional tuition.  But what are such sober infirmities to
+the vices that arise from defiance and despair?  Your savage has his
+virtues, but they are mostly physical,--fortitude, abstinence, patience:
+mental and moral virtues must be numerous or few, in proportion to the
+range of ideas and the exigencies of social life.  With the savage,
+therefore, they must be fewer than with civilized men; and they are
+consequently limited to those simple and rude elements which the safety
+of his state renders necessary to him.  He is usually hospitable;
+sometimes honest.  But vices are necessary to his existence as well as
+virtues: he is at war with a tribe that may destroy his own; and
+treachery without scruple, cruelty without remorse, are essential to him;
+he feels their necessity, and calls them _virtues_!  Even the
+half-civilized man, the Arab whom you praise, imagines he has a necessity
+for your money; and his robberies become virtues to him.  But in
+civilized States, vices are at least not necessary to the existence of
+the majority; they are not, therefore, worshipped as virtues.  Society
+unites against them; treachery, robbery, massacre, are not essential to
+the strength or safety of the community: they exist, it is true, but they
+are not cultivated, but punished.  The thief in St. Giles's has the
+virtues of your savage: he is true to his companions, he is brave in
+danger, he is patient in privation; he practises the virtues necessary to
+the bonds of his calling and the tacit laws of his vocation.  He might
+have made an admirable savage: but surely the mass of civilized men are
+better than the thief?"
+
+Maltravers was struck, and paused a little before he replied; and then he
+shifted his ground.  "But at least all our laws, all our efforts, must
+leave the multitude in every State condemned to a labour that deadens
+intellect, and a poverty that embitters life."
+
+"Supposing this were true, still there are multitudes besides _the_
+multitude.  In each State Civilization produces a middle class, more
+numerous to-day than the whole peasantry of a thousand years ago.  Would
+Movement and Progress be without their divine uses, even if they limited
+their effect to the production of such a class?  Look also to the effect
+of art, and refinement, and just laws, in the wealthier and higher
+classes.  See how their very habits of life tend to increase the sum of
+enjoyment; see the mighty activity that their very luxury, the very
+frivolity of their pursuits, create!  Without an aristocracy, would there
+have been a middle class?  Without a middle class, would there ever have
+been an interposition between lord and slave?  Before commerce produces a
+middle class, Religion creates one.  The Priesthood, whatever its errors,
+was the curb to Power.  But, to return to the multitude,--you say that in
+all times they are left the same.  Is it so?  I come to statistics again:
+I find that not only civilization, but liberty, has a prodigious effect
+upon human life.  It is, as it were, by the instinct of self-preservation
+that liberty is so passionately desired by the multitude.  A negro slave,
+for instance, dies annually as one to five or six, but a free African in
+the English service only as one to thirty-five!  Freedom is not,
+therefore, a mere abstract dream, a beautiful name, a Platonic
+aspiration: it is interwoven with the most practical of all
+blessings,--life itself!  And can you say fairly that by laws labour
+cannot be lightened and poverty diminished?  We have granted already that
+since there are degrees in discontent, there is a difference between the
+peasant and the serf: how know you what the peasant a thousand years
+hence may be?  Discontented, you will say,--still discontented.  Yes; but
+if he had not been discontented, he would have been a serf still!  Far
+from quelling this desire to better himself, we ought to hail it as the
+source of his perpetual progress.  That desire to him is often like
+imagination to the poet, it transports him into the Future--
+
+  'Crura sonant ferro, sed canit inter opus.'
+
+It is, indeed, the gradual transformation from the desire of Despair to
+the desire of Hope, that makes the difference between man and man,
+between misery and bliss."
+
+"And then comes the crisis.  Hope ripens into deeds; the stormy
+revolution, perhaps the armed despotism; the relapse into the second
+infancy of States!"
+
+"Can we, with new agencies at our command, new morality, new wisdom,
+predicate of the Future by the Past?  In ancient States, the mass were
+slaves; civilization and freedom rested with oligarchies; in Athens
+twenty thousand citizens, four hundred thousand slaves!  How easy
+decline, degeneracy, overthrow in such States,--a handful of soldiers and
+philosophers without a People!  Now we have no longer barriers to the
+circulation of the blood of States.  The absence of slavery, the
+existence of the Press; the healthful proportions of kingdoms, neither
+too confined nor too vast, have created new hopes, which history cannot
+destroy.  As a proof, look to all late revolutions: in England the Civil
+Wars, the Reformation,--in France her awful Saturnalia, her military
+despotism!  Has either nation fallen back?  The deluge passes, and,
+behold, the face of things more glorious than before!  Compare the French
+of to-day with the French of the old _regime_.  You are silent; well, and
+if in all States there is ever some danger of evil in their activity, is
+that a reason why you are to lie down inactive; why you are to leave the
+crew to battle for the helm?  How much may individuals by the diffusion
+of their own thoughts in letters or in action regulate the order of vast
+events,--now prevent, now soften, now animate, now guide!  And is a man
+to whom Providence and Fortune have imparted such prerogatives to stand
+aloof, because he can neither foresee the Future nor create Perfection?
+And you talk of no certain and definite goal!  How know we that there is
+a certain and definite goal, even in heaven?  How know we that excellence
+may not be illimitable?  Enough that we improve, that we proceed.  Seeing
+in the great design of earth that benevolence is an attribute of the
+Designer, let us leave the rest to Posterity and to God."
+
+"You have disturbed many of my theories," said Maltravers, candidly; "and
+I will reflect on our conversation; but, after all, is every man to
+aspire to influence others; to throw his opinion into the great scales in
+which human destinies are weighed? Private life is not criminal.  It is
+no virtue to write a book, or to make a speech.  Perhaps, I should be as
+well engaged in returning to my country village, looking at my schools,
+and wrangling with the parish overseers--"
+
+"Ah," interrupted the Frenchman, laughing; "if I have driven you to this
+point, I will go no further.  Every state of life has its duties; every
+man must be himself the judge of what he is most fit for.  It is quite
+enough that he desires to be active, and labours to be useful; that he
+acknowledges the precept, 'Never to be weary in well-doing.'  The divine
+appetite once fostered, let it select its own food.  But the man who,
+after fair trial of his capacities, and with all opportunity for their
+full development before him, is convinced that he has faculties which
+private life cannot wholly absorb, must not repine that Human Nature is
+not perfect, when he refuses even to exercise the gifts he himself
+possesses."
+
+Now these arguments have been very tedious; in some places they have been
+old and trite; in others they may appear too much to appertain to the
+abstract theory of first principles.  Yet from such arguments, _pro_ and
+_con_, unless I greatly mistake, are to be derived corollaries equally
+practical and sublime,--the virtue of Action, the obligations of Genius,
+and the philosophy that teaches us to confide in the destinies, and
+labour in the service, of mankind.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+  I'LL tell you presently her very picture;
+  Stay--yes, it is so--Lelia.
+            _The Captain_, Act V. sc. I.
+
+MALTRAVERS had not shrunk into a system of false philosophy from wayward
+and sickly dreams, from resolute self-delusion; on the contrary, his
+errors rested on his convictions: the convictions disturbed, the errors
+were rudely shaken.
+
+But when his mind began restlessly to turn once more towards the duties
+of active life; when he recalled all the former drudgeries and toils of
+political conflict, or the wearing fatigues of literature, with its small
+enmities, its false friendships, and its meagre and capricious
+rewards,--ah, then, indeed, he shrank in dismay from the thoughts of the
+solitude at home!  No lips to console in dejection, no heart to
+sympathize in triumph, no love within to counterbalance the hate
+without,--and the best of man, his household affections, left to wither
+away, or to waste themselves on ideal images, or melancholy remembrance.
+
+It may, indeed, be generally remarked (contrary to a common notion), that
+the men who are most happy at home are the most active abroad.  The
+animal spirits are necessary to healthful action; and dejection and the
+sense of solitude will turn the stoutest into dreamers.  The hermit is
+the antipodes of the citizen; and no gods animate and inspire us like the
+Lares.
+
+One evening, after an absence from Paris of nearly a fortnight, at De
+Montaigne's villa, in the neighbourhood of St. Cloud, Maltravers, who,
+though he no longer practised the art, was not less fond than heretofore
+of music, was seated in Madame de Ventadour's box at the Italian Opera;
+and Valerie, who was above all the woman's jealousy of beauty, was
+expatiating with great warmth of eulogium upon the charms of a young
+English lady whom she had met at Lady G-----'s the preceding evening.
+
+"She is just my beau-ideal of the true English beauty," said Valerie: "it
+is not only the exquisite fairness of the complexion, nor the eyes so
+purely blue,--which the dark lashes relieve from the coldness common to
+the light eyes of the Scotch and German,--that are so beautifully
+national, but the simplicity of manner, the unconsciousness of
+admiration, the mingled modesty and sense of the expression.  No, I have
+seen women more beautiful, but I never saw one more lovely: you are
+silent; I expected some burst of patriotism in return for my compliment
+to your countrywoman!"
+
+"But I am so absorbed in that wonderful Pasta--"
+
+"You are no such thing; your thoughts are far away.  But can you tell me
+anything about my fair stranger and her friends?  In the first place,
+there is a Lord Doltimore, whom I knew before--you need say nothing about
+him; in the next there is his new married bride, handsome, dark--but you
+are not well!"
+
+"It was the draught from the door; go on, I beseech you, the young lady,
+the friend, her name?"
+
+"Her name I do not remember; but she was engaged to be married to one of
+your statesmen, Lord Vargrave; the marriage is broken off--I know not if
+that be the cause of a certain melancholy in her countenance,--a
+melancholy I am sure not natural to its Hebe-like expression.  But who
+have just entered the opposite box?  Ah, Mr. Maltravers, do look, there
+is the beautiful English girl!"
+
+And Maltravers raised his eyes, and once more beheld the countenance of
+Evelyn Cameron!
+
+
+
+BOOK VII.
+
+  Words of dark import gave suspicion birth.--POTTER.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+  _Luce_.  Is the wind there?
+           That makes for me.
+  _Isab_.  Come, I forget a business.
+                 _Wit without Money_.
+
+LORD VARGRAVE'S travelling-carriage was at his door, and he himself was
+putting on his greatcoat in his library, when Lord Saxingham entered.
+
+"What! you are going into the country?"
+
+"Yes; I wrote you word,--to see Lisle Court."
+
+"Ay, true; I had forgot.  Somehow or other my memory is not so good as it
+was.  But, let me see, Lisle Court is in -----shire.  Why, you will pass
+within ten miles of C-----."
+
+"C-----!  Shall I?  I am not much versed in the geography of
+England,--never learned it at school.  As for Poland, Kamschatka, Mexico,
+Madagascar, or any other place as to which knowledge would be _useful_, I
+have every inch of the way at my finger's end.  But _a propos_ of C-----,
+it is the town in which my late uncle made his fortune."
+
+"Ah, so it is.  I recollect you were to have stood for C-----, but gave
+it up to Staunch; very handsome in you.  Have you any interest there
+still?"
+
+"I think my ward has some tenants,--a street or two,--one called Richard
+Street, and the other Templeton Place.  I had intended some weeks ago to
+have gone down there, and seen what interest was still left to our
+family; but Staunch himself told me that C----- was a sure card."
+
+"So he thought; but he has been with me this morning in great alarm: he
+now thinks he shall be thrown out.  A Mr. Winsley, who has a great deal
+of interest there, and was a supporter of his, hangs back on account of
+the ----- question.  This is unlucky, as Staunch is quite with _us_; and
+if he were to rat now it would be most unfortunate."
+
+"Winsley!  Winsley!--my poor uncle's right-hand man.  A great
+brewer,--always chairman of the Templeton Committee.  I know the name,
+though I never saw the man."
+
+"If you could take C----- in your way?"
+
+"To be sure.  Staunch must not be lost.  We cannot throw away a single
+vote, much more one of such weight,--eighteen stone at the least!  I'll
+stop at C----- on pretence of seeing after my ward's houses, and have a
+quiet conference with Mr. Winsley.  Hem!  Peers must not interfere in
+elections, eh?  Well, good-by: take care of yourself.  I shall be back in
+a week, I hope,--perhaps less."
+
+In a minute more Lord Vargrave and Mr. George Frederick Augustus Howard,
+a slim young gentleman of high birth and connections, but who, having, as
+a portionless cadet, his own way to make in the world, condescended to be
+his lordship's private secretary, were rattling over the streets the
+first stage to C-----.
+
+It was late at night when Lord Vargrave arrived at the head inn of that
+grave and respectable cathedral city, in which once Richard Templeton,
+Esq.,--saint, banker, and politician,--had exercised his dictatorial
+sway.  "Sic transit gloria mundi!"  As he warmed his hands by the fire in
+the large wainscoted apartment into which he was shown, his eye met a
+full length engraving of his uncle, with a roll of papers in his
+hand,--meant for a parliamentary bill for the turnpike trusts in the
+neighbourhood of C-----.  The sight brought back his recollections of
+that pious and saturnine relation, and insensibly the minister's thoughts
+flew to his death-bed, and to the strange secret which in that last hour
+he had revealed to Lumley,--a secret which had done much in deepening
+Lord Vargrave's contempt for the forms and conventionalities of decorous
+life.  And here it may be mentioned--though in the course of this volume
+a penetrating reader may have guessed as much--that, whatever that
+secret, it did not refer expressly or exclusively to the late lord's
+singular and ill-assorted marriage.  Upon that point much was still left
+obscure to arouse Lumley's curiosity, had he been a man whose curiosity
+was very vivacious.  But on this he felt but little interest.  He knew
+enough to believe that no further information could benefit himself
+personally; why should he trouble his head with what never would fill his
+pockets?
+
+An audible yawn from the slim secretary roused Lord Vargrave from his
+revery.
+
+"I envy you, my young friend," said he, good-humouredly.  "It is a
+pleasure we lose as we grow older,--that of being sleepy.  However, 'to
+bed,' as Lady Macbeth says.  Faith, I don't wonder the poor devil of a
+thane was slow in going to bed with such a tigress.  Good-night to you."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+  MA fortune va prendre une face nouvelle.*
+            RACINE. _Androm_., Act i. sc. 1.
+
+  * "My fortune is about to take a turn."
+
+THE next morning Vargrave inquired the way to Mr. Winsley's, and walked
+alone to the house of the brewer.  The slim secretary went to inspect the
+cathedral.
+
+Mr. Winsley was a little, thickset man, with a civil but blunt
+electioneering manner.  He started when he heard Lord Vargrave's name,
+and bowed with great stiffness.  Vargrave saw at a glance that there was
+some cause of grudge in the mind of the worthy man; nor did Mr. Winsley
+long hesitate before he cleansed his bosom of its perilous stuff.
+
+"This is an unexpected honour, my lord: I don't know how to account for
+it."
+
+"Why, Mr. Winsley, your friendship with my late uncle can, perhaps,
+sufficiently explain and apologize for a visit from a nephew sincerely
+attached to his memory."
+
+"Humph!  I certainly did do all in my power to promote Mr. Templeton's
+interests.  No man, I may say, did more; and yet I don't think it was
+much thought of the moment he turned his back upon the electors of
+C-----.  Not that I bear any malice; I am well to do, and value no man's
+favour,--no man's, my lord!"
+
+"You amaze me!  I always heard my poor uncle speak of you in the highest
+terms."
+
+"Oh, well, it don't signify; pray say no more of it.  Can I offer your
+lordship a glass of wine?"
+
+"No, I am much obliged to you; but we really must set this little matter
+right.  You know that after his marriage my uncle never revisited C-----;
+and that shortly before his death he sold the greater part of his
+interest in this city.  His young wife, I suppose, liked the
+neighbourhood of London; and when elderly gentlemen _do_ marry, you know
+they are no longer their own masters; but if you had ever come to
+Fulham--ah! then, indeed, my uncle would have rejoiced to see his old
+friend."
+
+"Your lordship thinks so," said Mr. Winsley with a sardonic smile.  "You
+are mistaken; I did call at Fulham; and though I sent in my card, Lord
+Vargrave's servant (he was then My Lord) brought back word that his
+lordship was not at home."
+
+"But that must have been true; he was out, you may depend on it."
+
+"I saw him at the window, my lord," said Mr. Winsley, taking a pinch of
+snuff.
+
+"Oh, the deuce!  I'm in for it," thought Lumley.--"Very strange, indeed!
+but how can you account for it?  Ah, perhaps the health of Lady
+Vargrave--she was so very delicate then, and my poor uncle lived for
+her--you know that he left all his fortune to Miss Cameron?"
+
+"Miss Cameron!  Who is she, my lord?"
+
+"Why, his daughter-in-law; Lady Vargrave was a widow,--a Mrs. Cameron."
+
+"Mrs. Cam--I remember now,--they put Cameron in the newspapers; but I
+thought it was a mistake.  But, perhaps" (added Winsley, with a sneer of
+peculiar malignity),--"perhaps, when your worthy uncle thought of being a
+peer, he did not like to have it known that he married so much beneath
+him."
+
+"You quite mistake, my dear sir; my uncle never denied that Mrs. Cameron
+was a lady of no fortune or connections,--widow to some poor Scotch
+gentleman, who died I think in India."
+
+"He left her very ill off, poor thing; but she had a great deal of merit,
+and worked hard; she taught my girls to play--"
+
+"Your girls! did Mrs. Cameron ever reside in C-----?"
+
+"To be sure; but she was then called Mrs. Butler--just as pretty a name
+to my fancy."
+
+"You must make a mistake: my uncle married this lady in Devonshire."
+
+"Very possibly," quoth the brewer, doggedly.  "Mrs. Butler left the town
+with her little girl some time before Mr. Templeton married."
+
+"Well, you are wiser than I am," said Lumley, forcing a smile.  "But how
+can you be sure that Mrs. Butler and Mrs. Cameron are one and the same
+person?  You did not go into the house, you could not have seen Lady
+Vargrave" (and here Lumley shrewdly guessed--if the tale were true--at
+the cause of his uncle's exclusion of his old acquaintance).
+
+"No! but I saw her ladyship on the lawn," said Mr. Winsley, with another
+sardonic smile; "and I asked the porter at the lodge as I went out if
+that was Lady Vargrave, and he said, 'yes.' However, my lord, bygones are
+bygones,--I bear no malice; your uncle was a good man: and if he had but
+said to me, 'Winsley, don't say a word about Mrs. Butler,' he might have
+reckoned on me just as much as when in his elections he used to put five
+thousand pounds in my hands, and say, 'Winsley, no bribery,--it is
+wicked; let this be given in charity.'  Did any one ever know how that
+money went?  Was your uncle ever accused of corruption?  But, my lord,
+surely you will take some refreshment?"
+
+"No, indeed; but if you will let me dine with you tomorrow, you'll oblige
+me much; and, whatever my uncle's faults (and latterly, poor man, he was
+hardly in his senses; what a will he made!) let not the nephew suffer for
+them.  Come, Mr. Winsley," and Lumley held out his hand with enchanting
+frankness, "you know my motives are disinterested; I have no
+parliamentary interest to serve, we have no constituents for our Hospital
+of Incurables; and--oh! that's right,--we're friends, I see!  Now I must
+go and look after my ward's houses.  Let me see, the agent's name
+is--is--"
+
+"Perkins, I think, my lord," said Mr. Winsley, thoroughly softened by the
+charm of Vargrave's words and manner.  "Let me put on my hat, and show
+you his house."
+
+"Will you?  That's very kind; give me all the election news by the
+way--you know I was once within an ace of being your member."
+
+Vargrave learned from his new friend some further particulars relative to
+Mrs. Butler's humble habits and homely mode of life at C-----, which
+served completely to explain to him why his proud and worldly uncle had
+so carefully abstained from all intercourse with that city, and had
+prevented the nephew from standing for its vacant representation.  It
+seemed, however, that Winsley--whose resentment was not of a very active
+or violent kind--had not communicated the discovery he had made to his
+fellow townspeople; but had contented himself with hints and aphorisms,
+whenever he had heard the subject of Mr. Templeton's marriage discussed,
+which had led the gossips of the place to imagine that he had made a much
+worse selection than he really had.  As to the accuracy of Winsley's
+assertion, Vargrave, though surprised at first, had but little doubt on
+consideration, especially when he heard that Mrs. Butler's principal
+patroness had been the Mrs. Leslie, now the intimate friend of Lady
+Vargrave.  But what had been the career, what the earlier condition and
+struggles of this simple and interesting creature?  With her appearance
+at C-----, commenced all that surmise could invent.  Not greater was the
+mystery that wrapped the apparition of Manco Capac by the lake Titiaca,
+than that which shrouded the places and the trials whence the lowly
+teacher of music had emerged amidst the streets of C------.
+
+Weary, and somewhat careless, of conjecture, Lord Vargrave, in dining
+with Mr. Winsley, turned the conversation upon the business on which he
+had principally undertaken his journey,--namely, the meditated purchase
+of Lisle Court.
+
+"I myself am not a very good judge of landed property," said Vargrave; "I
+wish I knew of an experienced surveyor to look over the farms and timber:
+can you help me to such a one?"
+
+Mr. Winsley smiled, and glanced at a rosy-cheeked young lady, who
+simpered and turned away.  "I think my daughter could recommend one to
+your lordship, if she dared."
+
+"Oh, Pa!"
+
+"I see.  Well, Miss Winsley, I will take no recommendation but yours."
+
+Miss Winsley made an effort.
+
+"Indeed, my lord, I have always heard Mr. Robert Hobbs considered very
+clever in his profession."
+
+"Mr. Robert Hobbs is my man!  His good health--and a fair wife to him."
+
+Miss Winsley glanced at Mamma, and then at a younger sister; and then
+there was a titter, and then a fluttering, and then a rising, and Mr.
+Winsley, Lord Vargrave, and the slim secretary were left alone.
+
+"Really, my lord," said the host, resettling himself, and pushing the
+wine, "though you have guessed our little family arrangement, and I have
+some interest in the recommendation, since Margaret will be Mrs. Robert
+Hobbs in a few weeks, yet I do not know a more acute, intelligent young
+man anywhere.  Highly respectable, with an independent fortune; his
+father is lately dead, and made at least thirty thousand pounds in trade.
+His brother Edward is also dead; so he has the bulk of the property, and
+he follows his profession merely for amusement.  He would consider it a
+great honour."
+
+"And where does he live?"
+
+"Oh, not in this county,--a long way off; close to -----; but it is all
+in your lordship's road.  A very nice house he has, too.  I have known
+his family since I was a boy; it is astonishing how his father improved
+the place,--it was a poor little lath-and-plaster cottage when the late
+Mr. Hobbs bought it, and it is now a very excellent family house."
+
+"Well, you shall give me the address and a letter of introduction, and so
+much for that matter.  But to return to politics;" and here Lord Vargrave
+ran eloquently on, till Mr. Winsley thought him the only man in the world
+who could save the country from that utter annihilation, the possibility
+of which he had never even suspected before.
+
+It may be as well to add, that, on wishing Lord Vargrave good-night, Mr.
+Winsley whispered in his ear, "Your lordship's friend, Lord Staunch, need
+be under no apprehension,--we are all right!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+  THIS is the house, sir.--_Love's Pilgrimage_, Act iv, sc. 2.
+
+            Redeunt Saturnia regna.*--VIRGIL.
+
+  * "A former state of things returns."
+
+THE next morning, Lumley and his slender companion were rolling rapidly
+over the same road on which, sixteen years ago, way-worn and weary, Alice
+Darvil had first met with Mrs. Leslie; they were talking about a new
+opera-dancer as they whirled by the very spot.
+
+It was about five o'clock in the afternoon, the next day, when the
+carriage stopped at a cast-iron gate, on which was inscribed this
+epigraph, "Hobbs' lodge--Ring the Bell."
+
+"A snug place enough," said Lord Vargrave, as they were waiting the
+arrival of the footman to unbar the gate.
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Howard.  "If a retired Cit could be transformed into a
+house, such is the house he would be."
+
+Poor Dale Cottage,--the home of Poetry and Passion!  But change visits
+the Commonplace as well as the Romantic.  Since Alice had pressed to that
+cold grating her wistful eyes, time had wrought his allotted revolutions;
+the old had died, the young grown up.  Of the children playing on the
+lawn, death had claimed some, and marriage others,--and the holiday of
+youth was gone for all.
+
+The servant opened the gate.  Mr. Robert Hobbs was at home; he had
+friends with him,--he was engaged; Lord Vargrave sent in his card, and
+the introductory letter from Mr. Winsley.  In two seconds, these missives
+brought to the gate Mr. Robert Hobbs himself, a smart young man, with a
+black stock, red whiskers, and an eye-glass pendant to a hair-chain which
+was possibly _a gage d'amour_ from Miss Margaret Winsley.
+
+A profusion of bows, compliments, apologies, etc., the carriage drove up
+the sweep, and Lord Vargrave descended, and was immediately ushered into
+Mr. Hobbs's private room.  The slim secretary followed, and sat silent,
+melancholy, and upright, while the peer affably explained his wants and
+wishes to the surveyor.
+
+Mr. Hobbs was well acquainted with the locality of Lisle Court, which was
+little more than thirty miles distant, he should be proud to accompany
+Lord Vargrave thither the next morning.  But, might he venture, might he
+dare, might he presume--a gentleman who lived at the town of ----- was to
+dine with him that day; a gentleman of the most profound knowledge of
+agricultural affairs; a gentleman who knew every farm, almost every acre,
+belonging to Colonel Maltravers; if his lordship could be induced to
+waive ceremony, and dine with Mr. Hobbs; it might be really useful to
+meet this gentleman.  The slim secretary, who was very hungry, and who
+thought he sniffed an uncommonly savoury smell, looked up from his boots.
+Lord Vargrave smiled.
+
+"My young friend here is too great an admirer of Mrs. Hobbs--who is to
+be--not to feel anxious to make the acquaintance of any member of the
+family she is to enter."
+
+Mr. George Frederick Augustus Howard blushed indignant refutation of the
+calumnious charge.  Vargrave continued,--"As for me, I shall be delighted
+to meet any friends of yours, and am greatly obliged for your
+consideration.  We may dismiss the postboys, Howard; and what time shall
+we summon them,--ten o'clock?"
+
+"If your lordship would condescend to accept a bed, we can accommodate
+your lordship and this gentleman, and start at any hour in the morning
+that--"
+
+"So be it," interrupted Vargrave.  "You speak like a man of business.
+Howard, be so kind as to order the horses for six o'clock to-morrow.
+We'll breakfast at Lisle Court."
+
+This matter settled, Lord Vargrave and Mr. Howard were shown into their
+respective apartments.  Travelling dresses were changed, the dinner put
+back, and the fish over-boiled; but what mattered common fish, when Mr.
+Hobbs had just caught such a big one?  Of what consequence he should be
+henceforth and ever!  A peer, a minister, a stranger to the county,--to
+come all this way to consult _him_! to be _his_ guest! to be shown off,
+and patted, and trotted out before all the rest of the company!  Mr.
+Hobbs was a made man!  Careless of all this, ever at home with any one,
+and delighted, perhaps, to escape a _tete-a-tete_ with Mr. Howard in a
+strange inn, Vargrave lounged into the drawing-room, and was formally
+presented to the expectant family and the famishing guests.
+
+During the expiring bachelorship of Mr. Robert Hobbs, his sister, Mrs.
+Tiddy (to whom the reader was first introduced as a bride gathering the
+wisdom of economy and large joints from the frugal lips of her mamma),
+officiated as lady of the house,--a comely matron, and well-preserved,--
+except that she had lost a front tooth,--in a jaundiced satinet gown,
+with a fall of British blonde, and a tucker of the same, Mr. Tiddy being
+a starch man, and not willing that the luxuriant charms of Mrs. T.
+should be too temptingly exposed!  There was also Mr. Tiddy, whom his
+wife had married for love, and who was now well to do,--a fine-looking
+man, with large whiskers, and a Roman nose, a little awry. Moreover,
+there was a Miss Biddy or Bridget Hobbs, a young lady of four or five
+and twenty, who was considering whether she might ask Lord Vargrave to
+write something in her album, and who cast a bashful look of admiration
+at the slim secretary, as he now sauntered into the room, in a black
+coat, black waistcoat, black trousers, and a black neckcloth, with a
+black pin,--looking much like an ebony cane split half-way up.  Miss
+Biddy was a fair young lady, a _leetle_ faded, with uncommonly thin arms
+and white satin shoes, on which the slim secretary cast his eyes and--
+shuddered!
+
+In addition to the family group were the Rector of -----, an agreeable
+man, who published sermons and poetry; also Sir William Jekyll, who was
+employing Mr. Hobbs to make a map of an estate he had just purchased;
+also two country squires and their two wives; moreover, the physician of
+the neighbouring town,--a remarkably tall man, who wore spectacles and
+told anecdotes; and, lastly, Mr. Onslow, the gentleman to whom Mr. Hobbs
+had referred,--an elderly man of prepossessing exterior, of high repute
+as the most efficient magistrate, the best farmer, and the most sensible
+person in the neighbourhood.  This made the party, to each individual of
+which the great man bowed and smiled; and the great man's secretary bent,
+condescendingly, three joints of his backbone.
+
+The bell was now rung, dinner announced.  Sir William Jekyll led the way
+with one of the she-squires, and Lord Vargrave offered his arm to the
+portly Mrs. Tiddy.
+
+Vargrave, as usual, was the life of the feast.  Mr. Howard, who sat next
+to Miss Bridget, conversed with her between the courses, "in dumb show."
+Mr. Onslow and the physician played second and third to Lord Vargrave.
+When the dinner was over, and the ladies had retired, Vargrave found
+himself seated next to Mr. Onslow, and discovered in his neighbour a most
+agreeable companion.  They talked principally about Lisle Court, and from
+Colonel Maltravers the conversation turned naturally upon Ernest.
+Vargrave proclaimed his early intimacy with the latter gentleman,
+complained, feelingly, that politics had divided them of late, and told
+two or three anecdotes of their youthful adventures in the East.  Mr.
+Onslow listened to him with much attention.
+
+"I made the acquaintance of Mr. Maltravers many years ago," said he, "and
+upon a very delicate occasion.  I was greatly interested in him; I never
+saw one so young (for he was then but a boy) manifest feelings so deep.
+By the dates you have referred to, your acquaintance with him must have
+commenced very shortly after mine.  Was he at that time cheerful, in good
+spirits?"
+
+"No, indeed; hypochondriacal to the greatest degree."
+
+"Your lordship's intimacy with him, and the confidence that generally
+exists between young men, induce me to suppose that he may have told you
+a little romance connected with his early years."
+
+Lumley paused to consider; and this conversation, which had been carried
+on apart, was suddenly broken into by the tall doctor, who wanted to know
+whether his lordship had ever heard the anecdote about Lord Thurlow and
+the late king.  The anecdote was as long as the doctor himself; and when
+it was over, the gentlemen adjourned to the drawing-room, and all
+conversation was immediately drowned by "Row, brothers, row," which had
+only been suspended till the arrival of Mr. Tiddy, who had a fine bass
+voice.
+
+Alas! eighteen years ago, in that spot of earth, Alice Darvil had first
+caught the soul of music from the lips of Genius and of Love!  But better
+as it is,--less romantic, but more proper,--as Hobbs' Lodge was less
+pretty, but more safe from the winds and rains, than Dale Cottage.
+
+Miss Bridget ventured to ask the good-humoured Lord Vargrave if he sang.
+"Not I, Miss Hobbs; but Howard, there!--ah, if you heard _him_!"  The
+consequence of this hint was, that the unhappy secretary, who, alone, in
+a distant corner, was unconsciously refreshing his fancy with some cool
+weak coffee, was instantly beset with applications from Miss Bridget,
+Mrs. Tiddy, Mr. Tiddy, and the tall doctor, to favour the company with a
+specimen of his talents.  Mr. Howard could sing,--he could even play the
+guitar.  But to sing at Hobbs' Lodge, to sing to the accompaniment of
+Mrs. Tiddy, to have his gentle tenor crushed to death in a glee by the
+heavy splayfoot of Mr. Tiddy's manly bass--the thought was insufferable!
+He faltered forth assurances of his ignorance, and hastened to bury his
+resentment in the retirement of a remote sofa.  Vargrave, who had
+forgotten the significant question of Mr. Onslow, renewed in a whisper
+his conversation with that gentleman relative to the meditated
+investment, while Mr. and Mrs. Tiddy sang "Come dwell with me;" and
+Onslow was so pleased with his new acquaintance, that he volunteered to
+make a fourth in Lumley's carriage the next morning, and accompany him to
+Lisle Court.  This settled, the party soon afterwards broke up.  At
+midnight Lord Vargrave was fast asleep; and Mr. Howard, tossing
+restlessly to and fro on his melancholy couch, was revolving all the
+hardships that await a native of St. James's, who ventures forth among--
+
+            "The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads
+             Do grow beneath their shoulders!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+  BUT how were these doubts to be changed into absolute certainty?
+                      EDGAR HUNTLEY.
+
+THE next morning, while it was yet dark, Lord Vargrave's carriage picked
+up Mr. Onslow at the door of a large old-fashioned house, at the entrance
+of the manufacturing town of -----.  The party were silent and sleepy
+till they arrived at Lisle Court.  The sun had then appeared, the morning
+was clear, the air frosty and bracing; and as, after traversing a noble
+park, a superb quadrangular pile of brick flanked by huge square turrets
+coped with stone broke upon the gaze of Lord Vargrave, his worldly heart
+swelled within him, and the image of Evelyn became inexpressibly lovely
+and seductive.
+
+Though the housekeeper was not prepared for Vargrave's arrival at so
+early an hour, yet he had been daily expected: the logs soon burned
+bright in the ample hearth of the breakfast-room; the urn hissed, the
+cutlets smoked; and while the rest of the party gathered round the fire,
+and unmuffled themselves of cloaks and shawl-handkerchiefs, Vargrave
+seized upon the housekeeper, traversed with delighted steps the
+magnificent suite of rooms, gazed on the pictures, admired the state
+bed-chambers, peeped into the offices, and recognized in all a mansion
+worthy of a Peer of England,--but which a more prudent man would have
+thought, with a sigh, required careful management of the rent-roll raised
+from the property adequately to equip and maintain.  Such an idea did not
+cross the mind of Vargrave; he only thought how much he should be
+honoured and envied, when, as Secretary of State, he should yearly fill
+those feudal chambers with the pride and rank of England!  It was
+characteristic of the extraordinary sanguineness and self-confidence of
+Vargrave, that he entirely overlooked one slight obstacle to this
+prospect, in the determined refusal of Evelyn to accept that passionate
+homage which he offered to--her fortune!
+
+When breakfast was over the steward was called in, and the party, mounted
+upon ponies, set out to reconnoitre.  After spending the short day most
+agreeably in looking over the gardens, pleasure-grounds, park, and
+home-farm, and settling to visit the more distant parts of the property
+the next day, the party were returning home to dine, when Vargrave's eye
+caught the glittering _whim_ of Sir Gregory Gubbins.
+
+He pointed it out to Mr. Onslow, and laughed much at hearing of the
+annoyance it occasioned to Colonel Maltravers.  "Thus," said Lumley, "do
+we all crumple the rose-leaf under us, and quarrel with couches the most
+luxuriant!  As for me, I will wager, that were this property mine, or my
+ward's, in three weeks we should have won the heart of Sir Gregory, made
+him pull down his _whim_, and coaxed him out of his interest in the city
+of -----.  A good seat for you, Howard, some day or other."
+
+"Sir Gregory has prodigiously bad taste," said Mr. Hobbs.  "For my part,
+I think that there ought to be a certain modest simplicity in the display
+of wealth got in business,--that was my poor father's maxim."
+
+"Ah!" said Vargrave, "Hobbs' Lodge is a specimen.  Who was your
+predecessor in that charming retreat?"
+
+"Why, the place--then called Dale Cottage--belonged to a Mr. Berners, a
+rich bachelor in business, who was rich enough not to mind what people
+said of him, and kept a lady there.  She ran off from him, and he then
+let it to some young man--a stranger, very eccentric, I hear--a Mr.--Mr.
+Butler--and he, too, gave the cottage an unlawful attraction,--a most
+beautiful girl, I have heard."
+
+"Butler!" echoed Vargrave,--"Butler!  Butler!"  Lumley recollected that
+such had been the real name of Mrs. Cameron.
+
+Onslow looked hard at Vargrave.
+
+"You recognize the name, my lord," said he in a whisper, as Hobbs had
+turned to address himself to Mr. Howard.  "I thought you very discreet
+when I asked you, last night, if you remembered the early follies of your
+friend."  A suspicion at once flashed upon the quick mind of Vargrave:
+Butler was a name on the mother's side in the family of Maltravers; the
+gloom of Ernest when he first knew him, the boy's hints that the gloom
+was connected with the affections, the extraordinary and single
+accomplishment of Lady Vargrave in that art of which Maltravers was so
+consummate a master, the similarity of name,--all taken in conjunction
+with the meaning question of Mr. Onslow, were enough to suggest to
+Vargrave that he might be on the verge of a family secret, the knowledge
+of which could be turned to advantage.  He took care not to confess his
+ignorance, but artfully proceeded to draw out Mr. Onslow's
+communications.
+
+"Why, it is true," said he, "that Maltravers and I had no secrets.  Ah,
+we were wild fellows then!  The name of Butler is in his family, eh?"
+
+"It is.  I see you know all."
+
+"Yes; he told me the story, but it is eighteen years ago.  Do refresh my
+memory.  Howard, my good fellow, just ride on and expedite dinner: Mr.
+Hobbs, will you go with Mr. What's-his-name, the steward, and look over
+the maps, out-goings, etc.?  Now, Mr. Onslow--so Maltravers took the
+cottage, and a lady with it?--ay, I remember."
+
+Mr. Onslow (who was in fact that magistrate to whom Ernest had confided
+his name and committed the search after Alice, and who was really anxious
+to know if any tidings of the poor girl had ever been ascertained) here
+related that history with which the reader is acquainted,--the robbery of
+the cottage, the disappearance of Alice, the suspicions that connected
+that disappearance with her ruffian father, the despair and search of
+Maltravers.  He added that Ernest, both before his departure from
+England, and on his return, had written to him to learn if Alice had ever
+been heard of; the replies of the magistrate were unsatisfactory.  "And
+do you think, my lord, that Mr. Maltravers has never to this day
+ascertained what became of the poor young woman?"
+
+"Why, let me see,--what was her name?"
+
+The magistrate thought a moment, and replied, "Alice Darvil."
+
+"Alice!" exclaimed  Vargrave.  "Alice!"--aware that such was the
+Christian name of his uncle's wife, and now almost convinced of the truth
+of his first vague suspicion.
+
+"You seem to know the name?"
+
+"Of Alice; yes--but not Darvil.  No, no; I believe he has never heard of
+the girl to this hour.  Nor you either?"
+
+"I have not.  One little circumstance related to me by Mr. Hobbs, your
+surveyor's father, gave me some uneasiness.  About two years after the
+young woman disappeared, a girl, of very humble dress and appearance,
+stopped at the gate of Hobbs' Lodge, and asked earnestly for Mr. Butler.
+On hearing he was gone, she turned away, and was seen no more.  It seems
+that this girl had an infant in her arms--which rather shocked the
+propriety of Mr. and Mrs. Hobbs.  The old gentleman told me the
+circumstance a few days after it happened, and I caused inquiry to be
+made for the stranger; but she could not be discovered.  I thought at
+first this possibly might be the lost Alice; but I learned that, during
+his stay at the cottage, your friend--despite his error, which we will
+not stop to excuse--had exercised so generous and wide a charity amongst
+the poor in the town and neighbourhood, that it was a more probable
+supposition of the two that the girl belonged to some family he had
+formerly relieved, and her visit was that of a mendicant, not a mistress.
+Accordingly, after much consideration, I resolved not to mention the
+circumstances to Mr. Maltravers, when he wrote to me on his return from
+the Continent.  A considerable time had then elapsed since the girl had
+applied to Mr. Hobbs; all trace of her was lost; the incident might open
+wounds that time must have nearly healed, might give false hopes--or,
+what was worse, occasion a fresh and unfounded remorse at the idea of
+Alice's destitution; it would, in fact, do no good, and might occasion
+unnecessary pain.  I therefore suppressed all mention of it."
+
+"You did right: and so the poor girl had an infant in her arms?--humph!
+What sort of looking person was this Alice Darvil,--pretty, of course?"
+
+"I never saw her; and none but the persons employed in the premises knew
+her by sight; they described her as remarkably lovely."
+
+"Fair and slight, with blue eyes, I suppose?--those are the orthodox
+requisites of a heroine."
+
+"Upon my word I forget; indeed I should never have remembered as much as
+I do, if the celebrity of Mr. Maltravers, and the consequence of his
+family in these parts, together with the sight of his own agony--the most
+painful I ever witnessed--had not served to impress the whole affair very
+deeply on my mind."
+
+"Was the girl who appeared at the gate of Hobbs' Lodge described to you?"
+
+"No; they scarcely observed her countenance, except that her complexion
+was too fair for a gypsy's; yet, now I think of it, Mrs. Tiddy, who was
+with her father when he told me the adventure, dwelt particularly on her
+having (as you so pleasantly conjecture) fair hair and blue eyes.  Mrs.
+Tiddy, being just married, was romantic at that day."
+
+"Well, it is an odd tale; but life is full of odd tales.  Here we are at
+the house; it really is a splendid old place!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+  PENDENT opera interrupta.*--VIRGIL.
+
+  * "The things begun are interrupted and suspended."
+
+THE history Vargrave had heard he revolved much when he retired to rest.
+He could not but allow that there was still little ground for more than
+conjecture that Alice Darvil and Alice Lady Vargrave were one and the
+same person.  It might, however, be of great importance to him to trace
+this conjecture to certainty.  The knowledge of a secret of early sin and
+degradation in one so pure, so spotless, as Lady Vargrave, might be of
+immense service in giving him a power over her, which he could turn to
+account with Evelyn.  How could he best prosecute further inquiry,--by
+repairing at once to Brook-Green, or--the thought struck him--by visiting
+and "pumping" Mrs. Leslie, the patroness of Mrs. Butler, of C-----, the
+friend of Lady Vargrave?  It was worth trying the latter,--it was little
+out of his way back to London.  His success in picking the brains of Mr.
+Onslow of a secret encouraged him in the hope of equal success with Mrs.
+Leslie.  He decided accordingly, and fell asleep to dream of Christmas
+_battues_, royal visitors, the Cabinet, the premiership!  Well, no
+possession equals the dream of it!  Sleep on, my lord! you would be
+restless enough if you were to get all you want.
+
+For the next three days, Lord Vargrave was employed in examining the
+general outlines of the estate; and the result of this survey satisfied
+him as to the expediency of the purchase.  On the third day, he was
+several miles from the house when a heavy rain came on.  Lord Vargrave
+was constitutionally hardy, and not having been much exposed to
+visitations of the weather of late years, was not practically aware that
+when a man is past forty, he cannot endure with impunity all that falls
+innocuously on the elasticity of twenty-six.  He did not, therefore, heed
+the rain that drenched him to the skin, and neglected to change his dress
+till he had finished reading some letters and newspapers which awaited
+his return at Lisle Court.  The consequence of this imprudence was, that
+the next morning when he woke, Lord Vargrave found himself, for almost
+the first time in his life, seriously ill.  His head ached violently,
+cold shiverings shook his frame like an ague; the very strength of the
+constitution on which the fever had begun to fasten itself augmented its
+danger.  Lumley--the last man in the world to think of the possibility of
+dying--fought up against his own sensations, ordered his post-horses, as
+his visit of survey was now over, and scarcely even alluded to his
+indisposition.  About an hour before he set off, his letters arrived; one
+of these informed him that Caroline, accompanied by Evelyn, had already
+arrived in Paris; the other was from Colonel Legard, respectfully
+resigning his office, on the ground of an accession of fortune by the
+sudden death of the admiral, and his intention to spend the ensuing year
+in a Continental excursion.  This last letter occasioned Vargrave
+considerable alarm; he had always felt a deep jealousy of the handsome
+ex-guardsman, and he at once suspected that Legard was about to repair to
+Paris as his rival.  He sighed, and looked round the spacious apartment,
+and gazed on the wide prospects of grove and turf that extended from the
+window, and said to himself, "Is another to snatch these from my grasp?"
+His impatience to visit Mrs. Leslie, to gain ascendency over Lady
+Vargrave, to repair to Paris, to scheme, to manoeuvre, to triumph,
+accelerated the progress of the disease that was now burning in his
+veins; and the hand that he held out to Mr. Hobbs, as he stepped into his
+carriage, almost scorched the cold, plump, moist fingers of the surveyor.
+Before six o'clock in the evening Lord Vargrave confessed reluctantly to
+himself that he was too ill to proceed much farther.  "Howard," said he
+then, breaking a silence that had lasted some hours, "don't be alarmed; I
+feel that I am about to have a severe attack; I shall stop at M-----
+(naming a large town they were approaching); I shall send for the best
+physician the place affords; if I am delirious to-morrow, or unable to
+give my own orders, have the kindness to send express for Dr.
+Holland,--but don't leave me yourself, my good fellow.  At my age, it is
+a hard thing to have no one in the world to care for me in illness;
+d-----n affection when I am well!"
+
+After this strange burst, which very much frightened Mr. Howard, Lumley
+relapsed into silence, not broken till he reached M-----.  The best
+physician was sent for; and the next morning, as he had half foreseen and
+foretold, Lord Vargrave _was_ delirious!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+  NOUGHT under Heaven so strongly doth allure
+  The sense of man, and all his mind possess,
+  As Beauty's love-bait.--SPENSER.
+
+LEGARD was, as I have before intimated, a young man of generous and
+excellent dispositions, though somewhat spoiled by the tenor of his
+education, and the gay and reckless society which had administered tonics
+to his vanity and opiates to his intellect.  The effect which the beauty,
+the grace, the innocence of Evelyn had produced upon him had been most
+deep and most salutary.  It had rendered dissipation tasteless and
+insipid; it had made him look more deeply into his own heart, and into
+the rules of life.  Though, partly from irksomeness of dependence upon an
+uncle at once generous and ungracious, partly from a diffident and
+feeling sense of his own inadequate pretensions to the hand of Miss
+Cameron, and partly from the prior and acknowledged claims of Lord
+Vargrave, he had accepted, half in despair, the appointment offered to
+him, he still found it impossible to banish that image which had been the
+first to engrave upon ardent and fresh affections an indelible
+impression.  He secretly chafed at the thought that it was to a fortunate
+rival that he owed the independence and the station he had acquired, and
+resolved to seize an early opportunity to free himself from obligations
+that he deeply regretted he had incurred.  At length he learned that Lord
+Vargrave had been refused,--that Evelyn was free; and within a few days
+from that intelligence, the admiral was seized with apoplexy; and Legard
+suddenly found himself possessed, if not of wealth, at least of a
+competence sufficient to redeem his character as a suitor from the
+suspicion attached to a fortune-hunter and adventurer.  Despite the new
+prospects opened to him by the death of his uncle, and despite the surly
+caprice which had mingled with and alloyed the old admiral's kindness,
+Legard was greatly shocked by his death; and his grateful and gentle
+nature was at first only sensible to grief for the loss he had sustained.
+But when, at last, recovering from his sorrow, he saw Evelyn disengaged
+and free, and himself in a position honourably to contest her hand, he
+could not resist the sweet and passionate hopes that broke upon him.  He
+resigned, as we have seen, his official appointment, and set out for
+Paris.  He reached that city a day or two after the arrival of Lord and
+Lady Doltimore.  He found the former, who had not forgotten the cautions
+of Vargrave, at first cold and distant; but partly from the indolent
+habit of submitting to Legard's dictates on matters of taste, partly from
+a liking to his society, and principally from the popular suffrages of
+fashion, which had always been accorded to Legard, and which were
+nowadays diminished by the news of his accession of fortune, Lord
+Doltimore, weak and vain, speedily yielded to the influences of his old
+associate, and Legard became quietly installed as the _enfant de la
+maison_.  Caroline was not in this instance a very faithful ally to
+Vargrave's views and policy.  In his singular _liaison_ with Lady
+Doltimore, the crafty manoeuvrer had committed the vulgar fault of
+intriguers: he had over-refined and had overreached himself.  At the
+commencement of their strange and unprincipled intimacy, Vargrave had
+had, perhaps, no other thought than that of piquing Evelyn, consoling his
+vanity, amusing his _ennui_, and indulging rather his propensities as a
+gallant than promoting his more serious objects as a man of the world.
+By degrees, and especially at Knaresdean, Vargrave himself became deeply
+entangled by an affair that he had never before contemplated as more
+important than a passing diversion; instead of securing a friend to
+assist him in his designs on Evelyn, he suddenly found that he had
+obtained a mistress anxious for his love and jealous of his homage.  With
+his usual promptitude and self-confidence, he was led at once to deliver
+himself of all the ill-consequences of his rashness,--to get rid of
+Caroline as a mistress, and to retain her as a tool, by marrying her to
+Lord Doltimore.  By the great ascendancy which his character acquired
+over her, and by her own worldly ambition, he succeeded in inducing her
+to sacrifice all romance to a union that gave her rank and fortune; and
+Vargrave then rested satisfied that the clever wife would not only secure
+him a permanent power over the political influence and private fortune of
+the weak husband, but also abet his designs in securing an alliance
+equally desirable for himself.  Here it was that Vargrave's incapacity to
+understand the refinements and scruples of a woman's affection and
+nature, however guilty the one, and however worldly the other, foiled and
+deceived him.  Caroline, though the wife of another, could not
+contemplate without anguish a similar bondage for her lover; and having
+something of the better qualities of her sex still left to her, she
+recoiled from being an accomplice in arts that were to drive the young,
+inexperienced, and guileless creature who called her "friend" into the
+arms of a man who openly avowed the most mercenary motives, and who took
+gods and men to witness that his heart was sacred to another.  Only in
+Vargrave's presence were these scruples overmastered; but the moment he
+was gone they returned in full force.  She had yielded, from positive
+fear, to his commands that she should convey Evelyn to Paris; but she
+trembled to think of the vague hints and dark menaces that Vargrave had
+let fall as to ulterior proceedings, and was distracted at the thought of
+being implicated in some villanous or rash design.  When, therefore, the
+man whose rivalry Vargrave most feared was almost established at her
+house, she made but a feeble resistance; she thought that, if Legard
+should become a welcome and accepted suitor before Lumley arrived, the
+latter would be forced to forego whatever hopes he yet cherished, and
+that she should be delivered from a dilemma, the prospect of which
+daunted and appalled her.  Added to this, Caroline was now, alas!
+sensible that a fool is not so easily governed; her resistance to an
+intimacy with Legard would have been of little avail: Doltimore, in these
+matters, had an obstinate will of his own; and, whatever might once have
+been Caroline's influence over her liege, certain it is that such
+influence had been greatly impaired of late by the indulgence of a
+temper, always irritable, and now daily more soured by regret, remorse,
+contempt for her husband,--and the melancholy discovery that fortune,
+youth, beauty, and station are no talismans against misery.
+
+It was the gayest season of Paris; and to escape from herself, Caroline
+plunged eagerly into the vortex of its dissipations.  If Doltimore's
+heart was disappointed, his vanity was pleased at the admiration Caroline
+excited; and he himself was of an age and temper to share in the pursuits
+and amusements of his wife.  Into these gayeties, new to their
+fascination, dazzled by their splendour, the young Evelyn entered with
+her hostess; and ever by her side was the unequalled form of Legard.
+Each of them in the bloom of youth, each of them at once formed to
+please, and to be pleased by that fair Armida which we call the World,
+there was, necessarily, a certain congeniality in their views and
+sentiments, their occupations and their objects; nor was there, in all
+that brilliant city, one more calculated to captivate the eye and fancy
+than George Legard.  But still, to a certain degree diffident and
+fearful, Legard never yet spoke of love; nor did their intimacy at this
+time ripen to that point in which Evelyn could have asked herself if
+there were danger in the society of Legard, or serious meaning in his
+obvious admiration.  Whether that melancholy, to which Lady Vargrave had
+alluded in her correspondence with Lumley, were occasioned by thoughts
+connected with Maltravers, or unacknowledged recollections of Legard, it
+remains for the acute reader himself to ascertain.
+
+The Doltimores had been about three weeks in Paris; and for a fortnight
+of that time Legard had been their constant guest, and half the inmate of
+their hotel, when, on that night which has been commemorated in our last
+book, Maltravers suddenly once more beheld the face of Evelyn, and in the
+same hour learned that she was free.  He quitted Valerie's box; with a
+burning pulse and a beating heart, joy and surprise and hope sparkling in
+his eyes and brightening his whole aspect, he hastened to Evelyn's side.
+
+It was at this time Legard, who sat behind Miss Cameron, unconscious of
+the approach of a rival, happened by one of those chances which occur in
+conversation to mention the name of Maltravers.  He asked Evelyn if she
+had yet met him.
+
+"What! is he, then, in Paris?" asked Evelyn, quickly.  "I heard, indeed,"
+she continued, "that he left Burleigh for Paris, but imagined he had gone
+on to Italy."
+
+"No, he is still here; but he goes, I believe, little into the society
+Lady Doltimore chiefly visits.  Is he one of your favourites, Miss
+Cameron?"
+
+There was a slight increase of colour in Evelyn's beautiful cheek, as she
+answered,--
+
+"Is it possible not to admire and be interested in one so gifted?"
+
+"He has certainly noble and fine qualities," returned Legard; "but I
+cannot feel at ease with him: a coldness, a _hauteur_, a measured
+distance of manner, seem to forbid even esteem.  Yet _I_ ought not to say
+so," he added, with a pang of self-reproach.
+
+"No, indeed, you ought not to say so," said Evelyn, shaking her head with
+a pretty affectation of anger; "for I know that you pretend to like what
+I like, and admire what I admire; and I am an enthusiast in all that
+relates to Mr. Maltravers!"
+
+"I know that I would wish to see all things in life through Miss
+Cameron's eyes," whispered Legard, softly; and this was the most meaning
+speech he had ever yet made.
+
+Evelyn turned away, and seemed absorbed in the opera; and at that instant
+the door of the box opened, and Maltravers entered.
+
+In her open, undisguised, youthful delight at seeing him again,
+Maltravers felt, indeed, "as if Paradise were opened in her face."  In
+his own agitated emotions, he scarcely noticed that Legard had risen and
+resigned his seat to him; he availed himself of the civility, greeted his
+old acquaintance with a smile and a bow, and in a few minutes he was in
+deep converse with Evelyn.
+
+Never had he so successfully exerted the singular, the master-fascination
+that he could command at will,--the more powerful from its contrast to
+his ordinary coldness.  In the very expression of his eyes, the very tone
+of his voice, there was that in Maltravers, seen at his happier moments,
+which irresistibly interested and absorbed your attention: he could make
+you forget everything but himself, and the rich, easy, yet earnest
+eloquence, which gave colour to his language and melody to his voice.  In
+that hour of renewed intercourse with one who had at first awakened, if
+not her heart, at least her imagination and her deeper thoughts, certain
+it is that even Legard was not missed.  As she smiled and listened,
+Evelyn dreamed not of the anguish she inflicted.  Leaning against the
+box, Legard surveyed the absorbed attention of Evelyn, the adoring eyes
+of Maltravers, with that utter and crushing wretchedness which no passion
+but jealousy, and that only while it is yet a virgin agony, can bestow!
+He had never before even dreamed of rivalry in such a quarter; but there
+was that ineffable instinct, which lovers have, and which so seldom errs,
+that told him at once that in Maltravers was the greatest obstacle his
+passion could encounter.  He waited in hopes that Evelyn would take the
+occasion to turn to him at least--when the fourth act closed.  She did
+not; and, unable to constrain his emotions, and reply to the small-talk
+of Lord Doltimore, he abruptly quitted the box.
+
+When the opera was over, Maltravers offered his arm to Evelyn; she
+accepted it, and then she looked round for Legard.  He was gone.
+
+
+
+BOOK VIII.
+
+  O Fate!  O Heaven!--what have ye then decreed?
+                 SOPHOCLES: _OEd. Tyr._ 738.
+
+  "Insolent pride  .  .  .
+  .  .  .  .  .  .
+  The topmost crag of the great precipice
+  Surmounts--to rush to ruin."
+                 _Ibid._ 874.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+  .  .  .  SHE is young, wise, fair,
+  In these to Nature she's immediate heir.
+  .  .  .  .  .  .
+  .  .  .  Honours best thrive
+  When rather from our acts we them derive
+  Than our foregoers!--_All's Well that Ends Well_.
+
+
+LETTER FROM ERNEST MALTRAVERS TO THE HON. FREDERICK CLEVELAND.
+
+
+EVELYN is free; she is in Paris; I have seen her,--I see her daily!
+
+How true it is that we cannot make a philosophy of indifference!  The
+affections are stronger than all our reasonings.  We must take them into
+our alliance, or they will destroy all our theories of self-government.
+Such fools of fate are we, passing from system to system, from scheme to
+scheme, vainly seeking to shut out passion and sorrow-forgetting that
+they are born within us--and return to the soul as the seasons to the
+earth!  Yet,--years, many years ago, when I first looked gravely into my
+own nature and being here, when I first awakened to the dignity and
+solemn responsibilities of human life, I had resolved to tame and curb
+myself into a thing of rule and measure.  Bearing within me the wound
+scarred over but never healed, the consciousness of wrong to the heart
+that had leaned upon me, haunted by the memory of my lost Alice, I
+shuddered at new affections bequeathing new griefs.  Wrapped in a haughty
+egotism, I wished not to extend my empire over a wider circuit than my
+own intellect and passions.  I turned from the trader-covetousness of
+bliss, that would freight the wealth of life upon barks exposed to every
+wind upon the seas of Fate; I was contented with the hope to pass life
+alone, honoured, though unloved.  Slowly and reluctantly I yielded to the
+fascinations of Florence Lascelles.  The hour that sealed the compact
+between us was one of regret and alarm.  In vain I sought to deceive
+myself,--I felt that I did not love.  And then I imagined that Love was
+no longer in my nature,--that I had exhausted its treasures before my
+time, and left my heart a bankrupt.  Not till the last--not till that
+glorious soul broke out in all its brightness the nearer it approached
+the source to which it has returned--did I feel of what tenderness she
+was worthy and I was capable.  She died, and the world was darkened!
+Energy, ambition, my former aims and objects, were all sacrificed at her
+tomb.  But amidst ruins and through the darkness, my soul yet supported
+me; I could no longer hope, but I could endure.  I was resolved that I
+would not be subdued, and that the world should not hear me groan.
+Amidst strange and far-distant scenes, amidst hordes to whom my very
+language was unknown, in wastes and forests, which the step of civilized
+man, with his sorrows and his dreams, had never trodden, I wrestled with
+my soul, as the patriarch of old wrestled with the angel,--and the angel
+was at last the victor!  You do not mistake me: you know that it was not
+the death of Florence alone that worked in me that awful revolution; but
+with that death the last glory fled from the face of things that had
+seemed to me beautiful of old.  Hers was a love that accompanied and
+dignified the schemes and aspirations of manhood,--a love that was an
+incarnation of ambition itself; and all the evils and disappointments
+that belong to ambition seemed to crowd around my heart like vultures to
+a feast allured and invited by the dead.  But this at length was over;
+the barbarous state restored me to the civilized.  I returned to my
+equals, prepared no more to be an actor in the strife, but a calm
+spectator of the turbulent arena.  I once more laid my head beneath the
+roof of my fathers; and if without any clear and definite object, I at
+least hoped to find amidst "my old hereditary trees" the charm of
+contemplation and repose.  And scarce--in the first hours of my
+arrival--had I indulged that dream, when a fair face, a sweet voice, that
+had once before left deep and unobliterated impressions on my heart,
+scattered all my philosophy to the winds.  I saw Evelyn! and if ever
+there was love at first sight, it was that which I felt for her: I lived
+in her presence, and forgot the Future!  Or, rather, I was with the
+Past,--in the bowers of my springtide of life and hope!  It was an
+after-birth of youth--my love for that young heart!
+
+It is, indeed, only in maturity that we know how lovely were our earliest
+years!  What depth of wisdom in the old Greek myth, that allotted Hebe as
+the prize to the god who had been the arch-labourer of life! and whom the
+satiety of all that results from experience had made enamoured of all
+that belongs to the Hopeful and the New!
+
+This enchanting child, this delightful Evelyn, this ray of undreamed of
+sunshine, smiled away all my palaces of ice.  I loved, Cleveland,--I
+loved more ardently, more passionately, more wildly than ever I did of
+old!  But suddenly I learned that she was affianced to another, and felt
+that it was not for me to question, to seek the annulment of the bond.  I
+had been unworthy to love Evelyn if I had not loved honour more!  I fled
+from her presence, honestly and resolutely; I sought to conquer a
+forbidden passion; I believed that I had not won affection in return; I
+believed, from certain expressions that I overheard Evelyn utter to
+another, that her heart as well as her hand was given to Vargrave.  I
+came hither; you know how sternly and resolutely I strove to eradicate a
+weakness that seemed without even the justification of hope!  If I
+suffered, I betrayed it not.  Suddenly Evelyn appeared again before
+me!--and suddenly I learned that she was free!  Oh, the rapture of that
+moment!  Could you have seen her bright face, her enchanting smile, when
+we met again!  Her ingenuous innocence did not conceal her gladness at
+seeing me!  What hopes broke upon me!  Despite the difference of our
+years, I think she loves me! that in that love I am about at last to
+learn what blessings there are in life.
+
+Evelyn has the simplicity, the tenderness, of Alice, with the refinement
+and culture of Florence herself; not the genius, not the daring spirit,
+not the almost fearful brilliancy of that ill-fated being,--but with a
+taste as true to the Beautiful, with a soul as sensitive to the Sublime!
+In Evelyn's presence I feel a sense of peace, of security, of home!
+Happy! thrice happy! he who will take her to his breast!  Of late she has
+assumed a new charm in my eyes,--a certain pensiveness and abstraction
+have succeeded to her wonted gayety.  Ah, Love is pensive,--is it not,
+Cleveland?  How often I ask myself that question!  And yet, amidst all my
+hopes, there are hours when I tremble and despond!  How can that innocent
+and joyous spirit sympathize with all that mine has endured and known?
+How, even though her imagination be dazzled by some prestige around my
+name, how can I believe that I have awakened her heart to that deep and
+real love of which it is capable, and which youth excites in youth?  When
+we meet at her home, or amidst the quiet yet brilliant society which is
+gathered round Madame de Ventadour or the Montaignes, with whom she is an
+especial favourite; when we converse; when I sit by her, and her soft
+eyes meet mine,--I feel not the disparity of years; my heart speaks to
+her, and _that_ is youthful still!  But in the more gay and crowded
+haunts to which her presence allures me, when I see that fairy form
+surrounded by those who have not outlived the pleasures that so naturally
+dazzle and captivate her, then, indeed, I feel that my tastes, my habits,
+my pursuits, belong to another season of life, and ask myself anxiously
+if my nature and my years are those that can make _her_ happy?  Then,
+indeed, I recognize the wide interval that time and trial place between
+one whom the world has wearied, and one for whom the world is new.  If
+she should discover hereafter that youth should love only youth, my
+bitterest anguish would be that of remorse!  I know how deeply I love by
+knowing how immeasurably dearer her happiness is than my own!  I will
+wait, then, yet a while, I will examine, I will watch well that I do not
+deceive myself.  As yet I think that I have no rivals whom I need fear:
+surrounded as she is by the youngest and the gayest, she still turns with
+evident pleasure to me, whom she calls her friend.  She will forego the
+amusements she most loves for society in which we can converse more at
+ease.  You remember, for instance, young Legard?  He is here; and, before
+I met Evelyn, was much at Lady Doltimore's house.  I cannot be blind to
+his superior advantages of youth and person; and there is something
+striking and prepossessing in the gentle yet manly frankness of his
+manner,--and yet no fear of his rivalship ever haunts me.  True, that of
+late he has been little in Evelyn's society; nor do I think, in the
+frivolity of his pursuits, he can have educated his mind to appreciate
+Evelyn, or be possessed of those qualities which would render him worthy
+of her.  But there is something good in the young man, despite his
+foibles,--something that wins upon me; and you will smile to learn, that
+he has even surprised from _me_--usually so reserved on such matters--the
+confession of my attachment and hopes!  Evelyn often talks to me of her
+mother, and describes her in colours so glowing that I feel the greatest
+interest in one who has helped to form so beautiful and pure a mind.  Can
+you learn who Lady Vargrave was?  There is evidently some mystery thrown
+over her birth and connections; and, from what I can hear, this arises
+from their lowliness.  You know that, though I have been accused of
+family pride, it is a pride of a peculiar sort.  I am proud, not of the
+length of a mouldering pedigree, but of some historical quarterings in my
+escutcheon,--of some blood of scholars and of heroes that rolls in my
+veins; it is the same kind of pride that an Englishman may feel in
+belonging to a country that has produced Shakspeare and Bacon.  I have
+never, I hope, felt the vulgar pride that disdains want of birth in
+others; and I care not three straws whether my friend or my wife be
+descended from a king or a peasant.  It is myself, and not my
+connections, who alone can disgrace my lineage; therefore, however humble
+Lady Vargrave's parentage, do not scruple to inform me, should you learn
+any intelligence that bears upon it.
+
+I had a conversation last night with Evelyn that delighted me.  By some
+accident we spoke of Lord Vargrave; and she told me, with an enchanting
+candour, of the position in which she stood with him, and the
+conscientious and noble scruples she felt as to the enjoyment of a
+fortune, which her benefactor and stepfather had evidently intended to be
+shared with his nearest relative.  In these scruples I cordially
+concurred; and if I marry Evelyn, my first care will be to carry them
+into effect,--by securing to Vargrave, as far as the law may permit, the
+larger part of the income; I should like to say all,--at least till
+Evelyn's children would have the right to claim it: a right not to be
+enforced during her own, and, therefore, probably not during Vargrave's
+life.  I own that this would be no sacrifice, for I am proud enough to
+recoil from the thought of being indebted for fortune to the woman I
+love.  It was that kind of pride which gave coldness and constraint to my
+regard for Florence; and for the rest, my own property (much increased by
+the simplicity of my habits of life for the last few years) will suffice
+for all Evelyn or myself could require.  Ah, madman that I am!  I
+calculate already on marriage, even while I have so much cause for
+anxiety as to love.  But my heart beats,--my heart has grown a dial that
+keeps the account of time; by its movements I calculate the moments--in
+an hour I shall see her!
+
+Oh, never, never, in my wildest and earliest visions, could I have
+fancied that I should love as I love now!  Adieu, my oldest and kindest
+friend!  If I am happy at last, it will be something to feel that at last
+I shall have satisfied your expectations of my youth.
+
+          Affectionately yours,
+
+               E. MALTRAVERS.
+
+     RUE DE -----, PARIS,
+          January --, 18--.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+            IN her youth
+  There is a prone and speechless dialect--
+  Such as moves men.--_Measure for Measure_.
+
+  _Abbess_.  Haply in private--
+  _Adriana_.  And in assemblies too.--_Comedy of Errors_.
+
+IT was true, as Maltravers had stated, that Legard had of late been
+little at Lady Doltimore's, or in the same society as Evelyn.  With the
+vehemence of an ardent and passionate nature, he yielded to the jealous
+rage and grief that devoured him.  He saw too clearly, and from the
+first, that Maltravers adored Evelyn; and in her familiar kindness of
+manner towards him, in the unlimited veneration in which she appeared to
+hold his gifts and qualities, he thought that that love might become
+reciprocal.  He became gloomy and almost morose; he shunned Evelyn, he
+forbore to enter into the lists against his rival.  Perhaps the
+intellectual superiority of Maltravers, the extraordinary conversational
+brilliancy that he could display when he pleased, the commanding dignity
+of his manners, even the matured authority of his reputation and years,
+might have served to awe the hopes, as well as to wound the vanity, of a
+man accustomed himself to be the oracle of a circle.  These might have
+strongly influenced Legard in withdrawing himself from Evelyn's society;
+but there was one circumstance, connected with motives much more
+generous, that mainly determined his conduct.  It happened that
+Maltravers, shortly after his first interview with Evelyn, was riding
+alone one day in the more sequestered part of the Bois de Boulogne, when
+he encountered Legard, also alone, and on horseback.  The latter, on
+succeeding to his uncle's fortune, had taken care to repay his debt to
+Maltravers; he had done so in a short but feeling and grateful letter,
+which had been forwarded to Maltravers at Paris, and which pleased and
+touched him.  Since that time he had taken a liking to the young man, and
+now, meeting him at Paris, he sought, to a certain extent, Legard's more
+intimate acquaintance.  Maltravers was in that happy mood when we are
+inclined to be friends with all men.  It is true, however, that, though
+unknown to himself, that pride of bearing, which often gave to the very
+virtues of Maltravers an unamiable aspect, occasionally irritated one who
+felt he had incurred to him an obligation of honour and of life never to
+be effaced; it made the sense of this obligation more intolerable to
+Legard; it made him more desirous to acquit himself of the charge.  But
+on this day there was so much cordiality in the greeting of Maltravers,
+and he pressed Legard in so friendly a manner to join him in his ride,
+that the young man's heart was softened, and they rode together,
+conversing familiarly on such topics as were in common between them.  At
+last the conversation fell on Lord and Lady Doltimore; and thence
+Maltravers, whose soul was full of one thought, turned it indirectly
+towards Evelyn.
+
+"Did you ever see Lady Vargrave?"
+
+"Never," replied Legard, looking another way; "but Lady Doltimore says
+she is as beautiful as Evelyn herself, if that be possible; and still so
+young in form and countenance, that she looks rather like her sister than
+her mother!"
+
+"How I should like to know her!" said Maltravers, with a sudden energy.
+
+Legard changed the subject.  He spoke of the Carnival, of balls, of
+masquerades, of operas, of reigning beauties!
+
+"Ah," said Maltravers, with a half sigh, "yours is the age for those
+dazzling pleasures; to me they are 'the twice-told tale.'"
+
+Maltravers meant it not, but this remark chafed Legard. He thought it
+conveyed a sarcasm on the childishness of his own mind or the levity of
+his pursuits; his colour mounted, as he replied,--
+
+"It is not, I fear, the slight difference of years between us,--it is the
+difference of intellect you would insinuate; but you should remember all
+men have not your resources; all men cannot pretend to genius!"
+
+"My dear Legard," said Maltravers, kindly, "do not fancy that I could
+have designed any insinuation half so presumptuous and impertinent.
+Believe me, I envy you, sincerely and sadly, all those faculties of
+enjoyment which I have worn away.  Oh, how I envy you! for, were they
+still mine, then--then, indeed, I might hope to mould myself into greater
+congeniality with the beautiful and the young!"
+
+Maltravers paused a moment, and resumed, with a grave smile: "I trust,
+Legard, that you will be wiser than I have been; that you will gather
+your roses while it is yet May: and that you will not live to thirty-six,
+pining for happiness and home, a disappointed and desolate man; till,
+when your ideal is at last found, you shrink back appalled, to discover
+that you have lost none of the tendencies to love, but many of the graces
+by which love is to be allured!"
+
+There was so much serious and earnest feeling in these words that they
+went home at once to Legard's sympathies.  He felt irresistibly impelled
+to learn the worst.
+
+"Maltravers," said he, in a hurried tone, "it would be an idle compliment
+to say that you are not likely to love in vain; perhaps it is indelicate
+in me to apply a general remark; and yet--yet I cannot but fancy that I
+have discovered your secret, and that you are not insensible to the
+charms of Miss Cameron!"
+
+"Legard!" said Maltravers,--and so strong was his fervent attachment to
+Evelyn, that it swept away all his natural coldness and reserve,--"I tell
+you plainly and frankly that in my love for Evelyn Cameron lie the last
+hopes I have in life.  I have no thought, no ambition, no sentiment that
+is not vowed to her.  If my love should be unreturned, I may strive to
+endure the blow, I may mix with the world, I may seem to occupy myself in
+the aims of others; but my heart will be broken!  Let us talk of this no
+more; you have surprised my secret, though it must have betrayed itself.
+Learn from me how preternaturally strong, how generally fatal is love
+deferred to that day when--in the stern growth of all the feelings--love
+writes itself on granite!"
+
+Maltravers, as if impatient of his own weakness, put spurs to his horse,
+and they rode on rapidly for some time without speaking.
+
+That silence was employed by Legard in meditating over all he had heard
+and witnessed, in recalling all that he owed to Maltravers; and before
+that silence was broken the young man nobly resolved not even to attempt,
+not even to hope, a rivalry with Maltravers; to forego all the
+expectations he had so fondly nursed, to absent himself from the company
+of Evelyn, to requite faithfully and firmly that act of generosity to
+which he owed the preservation of his life,--the redemption of his
+honour.
+
+Agreeably to this determination, he abstained from visiting those haunts
+in which Evelyn shone; and if accident brought them together, his manner
+was embarrassed and abrupt.  She wondered,--at last, perhaps she
+resented,--it may be that she grieved; for certain it is that Maltravers
+was right in thinking that her manner had lost the gayety that
+distinguished it at Merton Rectory.  But still it may be doubted whether
+Evelyn had seen enough of Legard, and whether her fancy and romance were
+still sufficiently free from the magical influences of the genius that
+called them forth in the eloquent homage of Maltravers, to trace,
+herself, to any causes connected with her younger lover the listless
+melancholy that crept over her.  In very young women--new alike to the
+world and the knowledge of themselves--many vague and undefined feelings
+herald the dawn of Love; shade after shade and light upon light succeeds
+before the sun breaks forth, and the earth awakens to his presence.
+
+It was one evening that Legard had suffered himself to be led into a
+party at the ----- ambassador's; and there, as he stood by the door, he
+saw at a little distance Maltravers conversing with Evelyn.  Again he
+writhed beneath the tortures of his jealous anguish; and there, as he
+gazed and suffered, he resolved (as Maltravers had done before him) to
+fly from the place that had a little while ago seemed to him Elysium!  He
+would quit Paris, he would travel, he would not see Evelyn again till the
+irrevocable barrier was passed, and she was the wife of Maltravers!  In
+the first heat of this determination, he turned towards some young men
+standing near him, one of whom was about to visit Vienna.  He gayly
+proposed to join him,--a proposal readily accepted, and began conversing
+on the journey, the city, its splendid and proud society, with all that
+cruel exhilaration which the forced spirits of a stricken heart can alone
+display, when Evelyn (whose conference with Maltravers was ended) passed
+close by him.  She was leaning on Lady Doltimore's arm, and the admiring
+murmur of his companions caused Legard to turn suddenly round.
+
+"You are not dancing to-night, Colonel Legard," said Caroline, glancing
+towards Evelyn.  "The more the season for balls advances, the more
+indolent you become."
+
+Legard muttered a confused reply, one half of which seemed petulant,
+while the other half was inaudible.
+
+"Not so indolent as you suppose," said his friend.  "Legard meditates an
+excursion sufficient, I hope, to redeem his character in your eyes.  It
+is a long journey, and, what is worse, a very cold journey, to Vienna."
+
+"Vienna! do you think of going to Vienna?" cried Caroline.
+
+"Yes," said Legard.  "I hate Paris; any place better than this odious
+city!" and he moved away.
+
+Evelyn's eyes followed him sadly and gravely.  She remained by Lady
+Doltimore's side, abstracted and silent for several minutes.
+
+Meanwhile Caroline, turning to Lord Devonport (the friend who had
+proposed the Viennese excursion), said, "It is cruel in you to go to
+Vienna,--it is doubly cruel to rob Lord Doltimore of his best friend and
+Paris of its best waltzer."
+
+"Oh, it is a voluntary offer of Legard's, Lady Doltimore,--believe me, I
+have used no persuasive arts.  But the fact is, that we have been talking
+of a fair widow, the beauty of Austria, and as proud and as unassailable
+as Ehrenbreitstein itself.  Legard's vanity is piqued; and so--as a
+professed lady-killer--he intends to see what can be effected by the
+handsomest Englishman of his time."
+
+Caroline laughed, and new claimants on her notice succeeded to Lord
+Devonport.  It was not till the ladies were waiting their carriage in the
+shawl-room that Lady Doltimore noticed the paleness and thoughtful brow
+of Evelyn.
+
+"Are you fatigued or unwell, dear?" she said.
+
+"No," answered Evelyn, forcing a smile; and at that moment they were
+joined by Maltravers, with the intelligence that it would be some minutes
+before the carriage could draw up.  Caroline amused herself in the
+interval by shrewd criticisms on the dresses and characters of her
+various friends.  Caroline had grown an amazing prude in her judgment of
+others!
+
+"What a turban!--prudent for Mrs. A----- to wear,--bright red; it puts
+out her face, as the sun puts out the fire.  Mr. Maltravers, do observe
+Lady B----- with that _very_ young gentleman.  After all her experience
+in angling, it is odd that she should still only throw in for small fish.
+Pray, why is the marriage between Lady C----- D----- and Mr. F-----
+broken off?  Is it true that he is so much in debt, and is so very--very
+profligate?  They say she is heartbroken."
+
+"Really, Lady Doltimore," said Maltravers, smiling, "I am but a bad
+scandal-monger.  But poor F----- is not, I believe, much worse than
+others.  How do we know whose fault it is when a marriage is broken off?
+Lady C----- D----- heartbroken! what an idea!  Nowadays there is never
+any affection in compacts of that sort; and the chain that binds the
+frivolous nature is but a gossamer thread!  Fine gentlemen and fine
+ladies, their loves and their marriages--
+
+                 "'May flourish and may fade;
+       A breath can make them, as a breath has made.'
+
+"Never believe that a heart long accustomed to beat only in good society
+can be broken,--it is rarely ever touched!"
+
+Evelyn listened attentively, and seemed struck.  She sighed, and said in
+a very low voice, as to herself, "It is true--how could I think
+otherwise?"
+
+For the next few days Evelyn was unwell, and did not quit her room.
+Maltravers was in despair.  The flowers, the books, the music he sent;
+his anxious inquiries, his earnest and respectful notes, touched with
+that ineffable charm which Heart and Intellect breathe into the most
+trifling coinage from their mint,--all affected Evelyn sensibly.  Perhaps
+she contrasted them with Legard's indifference and apparent caprice;
+perhaps in that contrast Maltravers gained more than by all his brilliant
+qualities.  Meanwhile, without visit, without message, without
+farewell,--unconscious, it is true, of Evelyn's illness,--Legard departed
+for Vienna.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+  A PLEASING land  .  .  .
+  Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye,
+    And of gay castles in the clouds that pass,
+  Forever flashing round a summer sky.--THOMSON.
+
+DAILY, hourly, increased the influence of Evelyn over Maltravers.  Oh,
+what a dupe is a man's pride! what a fool his wisdom!  That a girl, a
+mere child, one who scarce knew her own heart, beautiful as it
+was,--whose deeper feelings still lay coiled up in their sweet
+buds,--that she should thus master this proud, wise man!  But as
+thou--our universal teacher--as thou, O Shakspeare! haply speaking from
+the hints of thine own experience, hast declared--
+
+  "None are so truly caught, when they are catched,
+   As wit turned fool; folly in wisdom hatched,
+   Hath wisdom's warrant."
+
+Still, methinks that, in that surpassing and dangerously indulged
+affection which levelled thee, Maltravers, with the weakest, which
+overturned all thy fine philosophy of Stoicism, and made thee the veriest
+slave of the "Rose Garden,"--still, Maltravers, thou mightest at least
+have seen that thou hast lost forever all right to pride, all privilege
+to disdain the herd!  But thou wert proud of thine own infirmity!  And
+far sharper must be that lesson which can teach thee that Pride--thine
+angel--is ever pre-doomed to fall.
+
+What a mistake to suppose that the passions are strongest in youth!  The
+passions are not stronger, but the control over them is weaker.  They are
+more easily excited, they are more violent and more apparent; but they
+have less energy, less durability, less intense and concentrated power,
+than in maturer life.  In youth, passion succeeds to passion, and one
+breaks upon the other, as waves upon a rock, till the heart frets itself
+to repose.  In manhood, the great deep flows on, more calm, but more
+profound; its serenity is the proof of the might and terror of its
+course, were the wind to blow and the storm to rise.
+
+A young man's ambition is but vanity,--it has no definite aim, it plays
+with a thousand toys.  As with one passion, so with the rest.  In youth,
+Love is ever on the wing, but, like the birds in April, it hath not yet
+built its nest.  With so long a career of summer and hope before it, the
+disappointment of to-day is succeeded by the novelty of to-morrow, and
+the sun that advances to the noon but dries up its fervent tears.  But
+when we have arrived at that epoch of life,--when, if the light fail us,
+if the last rose wither, we feel that the loss cannot be retrieved, and
+that the frost and the darkness are at hand, Love becomes to us a
+treasure that we watch over and hoard with a miser's care.  Our
+youngest-born affection is our darling and our idol, the fondest pledge
+of the Past, the most cherished of our hopes for the Future.  A certain
+melancholy that mingles with our joy at the possession only enhances its
+charm.  We feel ourselves so dependent on it for all that is yet to come.
+Our other barks--our gay galleys of pleasure, our stately argosies of
+pride--have been swallowed up by the remorseless wave.  On this last
+vessel we freight our all, to its frail tenement we commit ourselves.
+The star that guides it is our guide, and in the tempest that menaces we
+behold our own doom!
+
+Still Maltravers shrank from the confession that trembled on his lips;
+still he adhered to the course he had prescribed to himself.  If ever (as
+he had implied in his letter to Cleveland)--if ever Evelyn should
+discover they were not suited to each other!  The possibility of such an
+affliction impressed his judgment, the dread of it chilled his heart.
+With all his pride, there was a certain humility in Maltravers that was
+perhaps one cause of his reserve.  He knew what a beautiful possession is
+youth,--its sanguine hopes, its elastic spirit, its inexhaustible
+resources!  What to the eyes of woman were the acquisitions which manhood
+had brought him,--the vast but the sad experience, the arid wisdom, the
+philosophy based on disappointment?  He might be loved but for the vain
+glitter of name and reputation,--and love might vanish as custom dimmed
+the illusion.  Men of strong affections are jealous of their own genius.
+They know how separate a thing from the household character genius often
+is,--they fear lest they should be loved for a quality, not for
+themselves.
+
+Thus communed he with himself; thus, as the path had become clear to his
+hopes, did new fears arise; and thus did love bring, as it ever does, in
+its burning wake,--
+
+                 "The pang, the agony, the doubt!"
+
+Maltravers then confirmed himself in the resolution he had formed: he
+would cautiously examine Evelyn and himself; he would weigh in the
+balance every straw that the wind should turn up; he would not aspire to
+the treasure, unless he could feel secure that the coffer could preserve
+the gem.  This was not only a prudent, it was a just and a generous
+determination.  It was one which we all ought to form if the fervour of
+our passions will permit us.  We have no right to sacrifice years to
+moments, and to melt the pearl that has no price in a single draught!
+But can Maltravers adhere to his wise precautions?  The truth must be
+spoken,--it was, perhaps, the first time in his life that Maltravers had
+been really in love.  As the reader will remember, he had not been in
+love with the haughty Florence; admiration, gratitude,--the affection of
+the head, not that of the feelings,--had been the links that bound him to
+the enthusiastic correspondent revealed in the gifted beauty; and the
+gloomy circumstances connected with her early fate had left deep furrows
+in his memory.  Time and vicissitude had effaced the wounds, and the
+Light of the Beautiful dawned once more in the face of Evelyn.  Valerie
+de Ventadour had been but the fancy of a roving breast.  Alice, the sweet
+Alice!--her, indeed, in the first flower of youth, he had loved with a
+boy's romance.  He had loved her deeply, fondly,--but perhaps he had
+never been in love with her; he had mourned her loss for
+years,--insensibly to himself her loss had altered his character and cast
+a melancholy gloom over all the colours of his life.  But she whose range
+of ideas was so confined, she who had but broke into knowledge, as the
+chrysalis into the butterfly--how much in that prodigal and gifted
+nature, bounding onwards into the broad plains of life, must the peasant
+girl have failed to fill!  They had had nothing in common but their youth
+and their love.  It was a dream that had hovered over the poet-boy in the
+morning twilight,--a dream he had often wished to recall, a dream that
+had haunted him in the noon-day,--but had, as all boyish visions ever
+have done, left the heart unexhausted, and the passions unconsumed!
+Years, long years, since then had rolled away, and yet, perhaps, one
+unconscious attraction that drew Maltravers so suddenly towards Evelyn
+was a something indistinct and undefinable that reminded him of Alice.
+There was no similarity in their features; but at times a tone in
+Evelyn's voice, a "trick of the manner," an air, a gesture, recalled him,
+over the gulfs of Time, to Poetry, and Hope, and Alice.
+
+In the youth of each--the absent and the present one--there was
+resemblance,--resemblance in their simplicity, their grace.  Perhaps
+Alice, of the two, had in her nature more real depth, more ardour of
+feeling, more sublimity of sentiment, than Evelyn.  But in her primitive
+ignorance half her noblest qualities were embedded and unknown.  And
+Evelyn--his equal in rank; Evelyn, well cultivated; Evelyn, so long
+courted, so deeply studied--had such advantages over the poor peasant
+girl!  Still the poor peasant girl often seemed to smile on him from that
+fair face; and in Evelyn he half loved Alice again!
+
+So these two persons now met daily; their intercourse was even more
+familiar than before, their several minds grew hourly more developed and
+transparent to each other.  But of love Maltravers still forbore to
+speak; they were friends,--no more; such friends as the disparity of
+their years and their experience might warrant them to be.  And in that
+young and innocent nature--with its rectitude, its enthusiasm, and its
+pious and cheerful tendencies--Maltravers found freshness in the desert,
+as the camel-driver lingering at the well.  Insensibly his heart warmed
+again to his kind; and as the harp of David to the ear of Saul, was the
+soft voice that lulled remembrance and awakened hope in the lonely man.
+
+Meanwhile, what was the effect that the presence, the attentions, of
+Maltravers produced on Evelyn?  Perhaps it was of that kind which most
+flatters us and most deceives.  She never dreamed of comparing him with
+others.  To her thoughts he stood aloof and alone from all his kind.  It
+may seem a paradox, but it might be that she admired and venerated him
+almost too much for love.  Still her pleasure in his society was so
+evident and unequivocal, her deference to his opinion so marked, she
+sympathized in so many of his objects, she had so much blindness or
+forbearance for his faults (and he never sought to mask them), that the
+most diffident of men might have drawn from so many symptoms hopes the
+most auspicious.  Since the departure of Legard, the gayeties of Paris
+lost their charm for Evelyn, and more than ever she could appreciate the
+society of her friend.  He thus gradually lost his earlier fears of her
+forming too keen an attachment to the great world; and as nothing could
+be more apparent than Evelyn's indifference to the crowd of flatterers
+and suitors that hovered round her, Maltravers no longer dreaded a rival.
+He began to feel assured that they had both gone through the ordeal; and
+that he might ask for love without a doubt of its immutability and faith.
+At this period they were both invited, with the Doltimores, to spend a
+few days at the villa of De Montaigne, near St. Cloud.  And there it was
+that Maltravers determined to know his fate!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+  CHAOS of Thought and Passion all confused.--POPE.
+
+IT is to the contemplation of a very different scene that the course of
+our story now conducts us.
+
+Between St. Cloud and Versailles there was at that time--perhaps there
+still is--a lone and melancholy house, appropriated to the
+insane,--melancholy, not from its site, but the purpose to which it is
+devoted.  Placed on an eminence, the windows of the mansion
+command--beyond the gloomy walls that gird the garden ground--one of
+those enchanting prospects which win for France her title to _La Belle_.
+There the glorious Seine is seen in the distance, broad and winding
+through the varied plains, and beside the gleaming villages and villas.
+There, too, beneath the clear blue sky of France, the forest-lands of
+Versailles and St. Germains stretch in dark luxuriance around and afar.
+There you may see sleeping on the verge of the landscape the mighty
+city,--crowned with the thousand spires from which, proud above the rest,
+rises the eyry of Napoleon's eagle, the pinnacle of Notre Dame.
+
+Remote, sequestered, the place still commands the survey of the turbulent
+world below; and Madness gazes upon prospects that might well charm the
+thoughtful eyes of Imagination or of Wisdom!  In one of the rooms of this
+house sat Castruccio Cesarini.  The apartment was furnished even with
+elegance; a variety of books strewed the table; nothing for comfort or
+for solace that the care and providence of affection could dictate was
+omitted.  Cesarini was alone: leaning his cheek upon his hand, he gazed
+on the beautiful and tranquil view we have described.  "And am I never to
+set a free foot on that soil again?" he muttered indignantly, as he broke
+from his revery.
+
+The door opened, and the keeper of the sad abode (a surgeon of humanity
+and eminence) entered, followed by De Montaigne.  Cesarini turned round
+and scowled upon the latter; the surgeon, after a few words of
+salutation, withdrew to a corner of the room, and appeared absorbed in a
+book.  De Montaigne approached his brother-in-law,--"I have brought you
+some poems just published at Milan, my dear Castruccio,--they will please
+you."
+
+"Give me my liberty!" cried Cesarini, clenching his hands.  "Why am I to
+be detained here?  Why are my nights to be broken by the groans of
+maniacs, and my days devoured in a solitude that loathes the aspect of
+things around me?  Am I mad?  You know I am not!  It is an old trick to
+say that poets are mad,--you mistake our agonies for insanity.  See, I am
+calm; I can reason: give me any test of sound mind--no matter how
+rigid--I will pass it; I am not mad,--I swear I am not!"
+
+"No, my dear Castruccio," said De Montaigne, soothingly; "but you are
+still unwell,--you still have fever; when next I see you perhaps you may
+be recovered sufficiently to dismiss the doctor and change the air.
+Meanwhile is there anything you would have added or altered?"
+
+Cesarini had listened to this speech with a mocking sarcasm on his lip,
+but an expression of such hopeless wretchedness in his eyes, as they
+alone can comprehend who have witnessed madness in its lucid intervals.
+He sank down, and his head drooped gloomily on his breast.  "No," said
+he; "I want nothing but free air or death,--no matter which."
+
+De Montaigne stayed some time with the unhappy man, and sought to soothe
+him; but it was in vain.  Yet when he rose to depart, Cesarini started
+up, and fixing on him his large wistful eyes, exclaimed, "Ah! do not
+leave me yet.  It is so dreadful to be alone with the dead and the worse
+than dead!"
+
+The Frenchman turned aside to wipe his eyes, and stifle the rising at his
+heart; and again he sat, and again he sought to soothe.  At length
+Cesarini, seemingly more calm, gave him leave to depart.  "Go," said he,
+"go; tell Teresa I am better, that I love her tenderly, that I shall live
+to tell her children not to be poets.  Stay, you asked if there was aught
+I wished changed: yes, this room; it is too still: I hear my own pulse
+beat so loudly in the silence, it is horrible!  There is a room below, by
+the window of which there is a tree, and the winds rock its boughs to and
+fro, and it sighs and groans like a living thing; it will be pleasant to
+look at that tree, and see the birds come home to it,--yet that tree is
+wintry and blasted too!  It will be pleasant to hear it fret and chafe in
+the stormy nights; it will be a friend to me, that old tree! let me have
+that room.  Nay, look not at each other,--it is not so high as this; but
+the window is  barred,--I cannot escape!"  And Cesarini smiled.
+
+"Certainly," said the surgeon, "if you prefer that room; but it has not
+so fine a view."
+
+"I hate the view of the world that has cast me off.  When may I change?"
+
+"This very evening."
+
+"Thank you; it will be a great revolution in my life."
+
+And Cesarini's eyes brightened, and he looked happy.  De Montaigne,
+thoroughly unmanned, tore himself away.
+
+The promise was kept, and Cesarini was transferred that night to the
+chamber he had selected.
+
+As soon as it was deep night, the last visit of the keeper paid, and,
+save now and then, by some sharp cry in the more distant quarter of the
+house, all was still, Cesarini rose from his bed; a partial light came
+from the stars that streamed through the frosty and keen air, and cast a
+sickly gleam through the heavy bars of the casement.  It was then that
+Cesarini drew from under his pillow a long-cherished and
+carefully-concealed treasure.  Oh, with what rapture had he first
+possessed himself of it! with what anxiety had it been watched and
+guarded! how many cunning stratagems and profound inventions had gone
+towards the baffling, the jealous search of the keeper and his myrmidons!
+The abandoned and wandering mother never clasped her child more fondly to
+her bosom, nor gazed upon his features with more passionate visions for
+the future.  And what had so enchanted the poor prisoner, so deluded the
+poor maniac?  A large nail!  He had found it accidentally in the garden;
+he had hoarded it for weeks,--it had inspired him with the hope of
+liberty.  Often, in the days far gone, he had read of the wonders that
+had been effected, of the stones removed, and the bars filed, by the
+self-same kind of implement.  He remembered that the most celebrated of
+those bold unfortunates who live a life against the law, had said,
+"Choose my prison, and give me but a rusty nail, and I laugh at your
+jailers and your walls!"  He crept to the window; he examined his relic
+by the dim starlight; he kissed it passionately, and the tears stood in
+his eyes.
+
+Ah, who shall determine the worth of things?  No king that night so
+prized his crown as the madman prized that rusty inch of wire,--the
+proper prey of the rubbish-cart and dunghill.  Little didst thou think,
+old blacksmith, when thou drewest the dull metal from the fire, of what
+precious price it was to become!
+
+Cesarini, with the astuteness of his malady, had long marked out this
+chamber for the scene of his operations; he had observed that the
+framework in which the bars were set seemed old and worm-eaten; that the
+window was but a few feet from the ground; that the noise made in the
+winter nights by the sighing branches of the old tree without would
+deaden the sound of the lone workman.  Now, then, his hopes were to be
+crowned.  Poor fool! and even _thou_ hast hope still!  All that night he
+toiled and toiled, and sought to work his iron into a file; now he tried
+the bars, and now the framework.  Alas! he had not learned the skill in
+such tools, possessed by his renowned model and inspirer; the flesh was
+worn from his fingers, the cold drops stood on his brow; and morning
+surprised him, advanced not a hair-breadth in his labour.
+
+He crept back to bed, and again hid the useless implement, and at last he
+slept.
+
+And, night after night, the same task, the same results!  But at length,
+one day, when Cesarini returned from his moody walk in the gardens
+(_pleasure_-grounds they were called by the owner), he found better
+workmen than he at the window; they were repairing the framework, they
+were strengthening the bars,--all hope was now gone!  The unfortunate
+said nothing; too cunning to show his despair he eyed them silently, and
+cursed them; but the old tree was left still, and that was
+something,--company and music.
+
+A day or two after this barbarous counterplot, Cesarini was walking in
+the gardens towards the latter part of the afternoon (just when in the
+short days the darkness begins to steal apace over the chill and western
+sun), when he was accosted by a fellow-captive, who had often before
+sought his acquaintance; for they try to have friends,--those poor
+people!  Even _we_ do the same; though _we_ say we are _not_ mad!  This
+man had been a warrior, had served with Napoleon, had received honours
+and ribbons,--might, for aught we know, have dreamed of being a marshal!
+But the demon smote him in the hour of his pride.  It was his disease to
+fancy himself a monarch.  He believed, for he forgot chronology, that he
+was at once the Iron Mask, and the true sovereign of France and Navarre,
+confined in state by the usurpers of his crown.  On other points he was
+generally sane; a tall, strong man, with fierce features, and stern
+lines, wherein could be read many a bloody tale of violence and wrong, of
+lawless passions, of terrible excesses, to which madness might be at once
+the consummation and the curse.  This man had taken a fancy to Cesarini;
+and, in some hours Cesarini had shunned him less than others,--for they
+could alike rail against all living things.  The lunatic approached
+Cesarini with an air of dignity and condescension.
+
+"It is a cold night, sir,--and there will be no moon.  Has it never
+occurred to you that the winter is the season for escape?"
+
+Cesarini started; the ex-officer continued,--
+
+"Ay, I see by your manner that you, too, chafe at our ignominious
+confinement.  I think that together we might brave the worst.  You
+probably are confined on some state offence.  I give you full pardon, if
+you assist me.  For myself I have but to appear in my capital; old Louis
+le Grand must be near his last hour."
+
+"This madman my best companion!" thought Cesarini, revolting at his own
+infirmity, as Gulliver started from the Yahoo.  "No matter, he talks of
+escape.
+
+"And how think you," said the Italian, aloud,--"how think you, that we
+have any chance of deliverance?"
+
+"Hush, speak lower," said the soldier.  "In the inner garden, I have
+observed for the last two days that a gardener is employed in nailing
+some fig-trees and vines to the wall.  Between that garden and these
+grounds there is but a paling, which we can easily scale.  He works till
+dusk; at the latest hour we can, let us climb noiselessly over the
+paling, and creep along the vegetable beds till we reach the man.  He
+uses a ladder for his purpose; the rest is clear,--we must fell and gag
+him,--twist his neck if necessary,--I have twisted a neck before," quoth
+the maniac, with a horrid smile.  "The ladder will help us over the wall,
+and the night soon grows dark at this season."
+
+Cesarini listened, and his heart beat quick.  "Will it be too late to try
+to-night?" said he in a whisper.
+
+"Perhaps not," said the soldier, who retained all his military acuteness.
+"But are you prepared,--don't you require time to man yourself?"
+
+"No--no,--I have had time enough!--I am ready."
+
+"Well, then,--hist!---we are watched--one of the jailers!  Talk easily,
+smile, laugh.  This way."
+
+They passed by one of the watch of the place, and just as they were in
+his hearing, the soldier turned to Cesarini, "Sir, will you favour me
+with your snuff-box?"
+
+"I have none."
+
+"None? what a pity!  My good friend," and he turned to the scout, "may I
+request you to look in my room for my snuff-box?  It is on the
+chimney-piece,--it will not take you a minute."
+
+The soldier was one of those whose insanity was deemed most harmless, and
+his relations, who were rich and wellborn, had requested every indulgence
+to be shown to him. The watch suspected nothing, and repaired to the
+house.  As soon as the trees hid him,--"Now," said the soldier, "stoop
+almost on all fours, and run quick."
+
+So saying the maniac crouched low, and glided along with a rapidity which
+did not distance Cesarini.  They reached the paling that separated the
+vegetable garden from the pleasure-ground; the soldier vaulted over it
+with ease, Cesarini with more difficulty followed.  They crept along; the
+herbs and vegetable beds, with their long bare stalks, concealed their
+movements; the man was still on the ladder.  "_La bonne Esperance_" said
+the soldier through his ground teeth, muttering some old watchword of the
+wars, and (while Cesarini, below, held the ladder steadfast) he rushed up
+the steps, and with a sudden effort of his muscular arm, hurled the
+gardener to the ground.  The man, surprised, half stunned, and wholly
+terrified, did not attempt to wrestle with the two madmen, he uttered
+loud cries for help!  But help came too late; these strange and fearful
+comrades had already scaled the wall, had dropped on the other side, and
+were fast making across the dusky fields to the neighbouring forest.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+                      HOPES and Fears
+  Start up alarmed, and o'er life's narrow verge
+  Look down: on what?--a fathomless abyss!--YOUNG.
+
+MIDNIGHT--and intense frost!  There they were--houseless and
+breadless--the two fugitives, in the heart of that beautiful forest which
+has rung to the horns of many a royal chase.  The soldier, whose youth
+had been inured to hardships, and to the conquests which our mother-wit
+wrings from the stepdame Nature, had made a fire by the friction of two
+pieces of dry wood; such wood was hard to be found, for the snow whitened
+the level ground, and lay deep in the hollows; and when it was
+discovered, the fuel was slow to burn; however, the fire blazed red at
+last.  On a little mound, shaded by a semicircle of huge trees, sat the
+Outlaws of Human Reason.  They cowered over the blaze opposite to each
+other, and the glare crimsoned their features.  And each in his heart
+longed to rid himself of his mad neighbour; and each felt the awe of
+solitude,--the dread of sleep beside a comrade whose soul had lost God's
+light!
+
+"Ho!" said the warrior, breaking a silence that had been long kept, "this
+is cold work at the best, and hunger pinches me; I almost regret the
+prison."
+
+"I do not feel the cold," said Cesarini, "and I do not care for hunger: I
+am revelling only in the sense of liberty!"
+
+"Try and sleep," quoth the soldier, with a coaxing and, sinister softness
+of voice; "we will take it by turns to watch."
+
+"I cannot sleep,--take you the first turn."
+
+"Hark ye, sir!" said the soldier sullenly; "I must not have my commands
+disputed; now we are free, we are no longer equal: I am heir to the
+crowns of France and Navarre.  Sleep, I say!"
+
+"And what Prince or Potentate, King or Kaiser," cried Cesarini, catching
+the quick contagion of the fit that had seized his comrade, "can dictate
+to the monarch of Earth and Air, the Elements and the music-breathing
+Stars?  I am Cesarini the Bard! and the huntsman Orion halts in his chase
+above to listen to my lyre!  Be stilled, rude man!--thou scarest away the
+angels, whose breath even now was rushing through my hair!"
+
+"It is too horrible!" cried the grim man of blood, shivering; "my enemies
+are relentless, and give me a madman for a jailer!"
+
+"Ha! a madman!" exclaimed Cesarini, springing to his feet, and glaring at
+the soldier with eyes that caught and rivalled the blaze of the fire.
+"And who are you?--what devil from the deep hell, that art leagued with
+my persecutors against me?"
+
+With the instinct of his old calling and valour, the soldier also rose
+when he saw the movement of his companion; and his fierce features worked
+with rage and fear.
+
+"Avaunt!" said he, waving his arm; "we banish thee from our presence!
+This is our palace!--and our guards are at hand!" pointing to the still
+and skeleton trees that grouped round in ghastly bareness.  "Begone!"
+
+At that moment they heard at a distance the deep barking of a dog, and
+each cried simultaneously, "They are after me!--betrayed!" The soldier
+sprang at the throat of Cesarini; but the Italian, at the same instant,
+caught a half-burned brand from the fire, and dashed the blazing end in
+the face of his assailant.  The soldier uttered a cry of pain, and
+recoiled back, blinded and dismayed.  Cesarini, whose madness, when
+fairly roused, was of the most deadly nature, again raised his weapon,
+and probably nothing but death could have separated the foes; but again
+the bay of the dog was heard, and Cesarini, answering the sound by a wild
+yell, threw down the brand, and fled away through the forest with
+inconceivable swiftness.  He hurried on through bush and dell,--and the
+boughs tore his garments and mangled his flesh,--but stopped not his
+progress till he fell at last on the ground, breathless and exhausted,
+and heard from some far-off clock the second hour of morning.  He had
+left the forest; a farmhouse stood before him, and the whitened roofs of
+scattered cottages sloped to the tranquil sky.  The witness of man--the
+social tranquil sky and the reasoning man--operated like a charm upon the
+senses which recent excitement had more than usually disturbed.  The
+unhappy wretch gazed at the peaceful abodes, and sighed heavily; then,
+rising from the earth, he crept into one of the sheds that adjoined the
+farmhouse, and throwing himself on some straw, slept sound and quietly
+till daylight, and the voices of peasants in the shed awakened him.
+
+He rose refreshed, calm, and, for ordinary purposes, sufficiently sane to
+prevent suspicion of his disease.  He approached the startled peasants,
+and representing himself as a traveller who had lost his way in the night
+and amidst the forest, begged for food and water.  Though his garments
+were torn, they were new and of good fashion; his voice was mild; his
+whole appearance and address those of one of some station--and the French
+peasant is a hospitable fellow.  Cesarini refreshed and rested himself an
+hour or two at the farm, and then resumed his wanderings; he offered no
+money, for the rules of the asylum forbade money to its inmates,--he had
+none with him; but none was expected from him, and they bade him farewell
+as kindly as if he had bought their blessings.  He then began to consider
+where he was to take refuge, and how provide for himself; the feeling of
+liberty braced, and for a time restored, his intellect.
+
+Fortunately, he had on his person, besides some rings of trifling cost, a
+watch of no inconsiderable value, the sale of which might support him, in
+such obscure and humble quarter as he could alone venture to inhabit, for
+several weeks, perhaps months.  This thought made him cheerful and
+elated; he walked lustily on, shunning the high road.  The day was clear,
+the sun bright, the air full of racy health.  Oh, what soft raptures
+swelled the heart of the wanderer, as he gazed around him!  The Poet and
+the Freeman alike stirred within his shattered heart!  He paused to
+contemplate the berries of the icy trees, to listen to the sharp glee of
+the blackbird; and once--when he found beneath a hedge a cold, scentless
+group of hardy violets--he laughed aloud in his joy.  In that laughter
+there was no madness, no danger; but when as he journeyed on, he passed
+through a little hamlet, and saw the children at play upon the ground,
+and heard from the open door of a cabin the sound of rustic music, then
+indeed he paused abruptly; the past gathered over him: _he knew that
+which he had been, that which he was now_!--an awful memory! a dread
+revelation!  And, covering his face with his hands, he wept aloud.  In
+those tears were the peril and method of madness.  He woke from them to
+think of his youth, his hopes, of Florence, of revenge!  Lumley Lord
+Vargrave! better, from that hour, to encounter the tiger in his lair than
+find thyself alone with that miserable man!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+  IT seemed the laurel chaste and stubborn oak,
+  And all the gentle trees on earth that grew,
+  It seemed the land, the sea, and heaven above,
+  All breathed out fancy sweet, and sighed out love.
+                          FAIRFAX'S _Tasso_.
+
+AT De Montaigne's villa, Evelyn, for the first time, gathered from the
+looks, the manners, of Maltravers that she was beloved.  It was no longer
+possible to mistake the evidences of affection.  Formerly, Maltravers had
+availed himself of his advantage of years and experience, and would warn,
+admonish, dispute, even reprove; formerly, there had been so much of
+seeming caprice, of cold distance, of sudden and wayward haughtiness, in
+his bearing; but now the whole man was changed,--the Mentor had vanished
+in the Lover; he held his being on her breath.  Her lightest pleasure
+seemed to have grown his law, no coldness ever alternated the deep
+devotion of his manner; an anxious, a timid, a watchful softness replaced
+all his stately self-possession.  Evelyn saw that she was loved; and she
+then looked into her own heart.
+
+I have said before that Evelyn was gentle, even to _yieldingness_; that
+her susceptibility made her shrink from the thought of pain to another:
+and so thoroughly did she revere Maltravers, so grateful did she feel for
+a love that could not but flatter pride, and raise her in her
+self-esteem, that she felt it impossible that she could reject his suit.
+"Then, do I love him as I dreamed I could love?" she asked herself; and
+her heart gave no intelligible reply.  "Yes, it must be so; in his
+presence I feel a tranquil and eloquent charm; his praise delights me;
+his esteem is my most high ambition;--and yet--and yet--" she sighed and
+thought of Legard; "but _he_ loved me not!" and she turned restlessly
+from that image.  "He thinks but of the world, of pleasure; Maltravers is
+right,--the spoiled children of society cannot love: why should I think
+of him?"
+
+There were no guests at the villa, except Maltravers, Evelyn, and Lord
+and Lady Doltimore.  Evelyn was much captivated by the graceful vivacity
+of Teresa, though that vivacity was not what it had been before her
+brother's affliction; their children, some of whom had grown up,
+constituted an amiable and intelligent family; and De Montaigne himself
+was agreeable and winning, despite his sober manners and his love of
+philosophical dispute.  Evelyn often listened thoughtfully to Teresa's
+praises of her husband,--to her account of the happiness she had known in
+a marriage where there had been so great a disparity of years; Evelyn
+began to question the truth of her early visions of romance.
+
+Caroline saw the unequivocal attachment of Maltravers with the same
+indifference with which she had anticipated the suit of Legard.  It was
+the same to her what hand delivered Evelyn and herself from the designs
+of Vargrave; but Vargrave occupied nearly all her thoughts.  The
+newspapers had reported him as seriously ill,--at one time in great
+danger.  He was now recovering, but still unable to quit his room.  He
+had written to her once, lamenting his ill-fortune, trusting soon to be
+at Paris; and touching, with evident pleasure, upon Legard's departure
+for Vienna, which he had seen in the "Morning Post."  But he was
+afar--alone, ill, untended; and though Caroline's guilty love had been
+much abated by Vargrave's icy selfishness, by absence and remorse, still
+she had the heart of a woman,--and Vargrave was the only one that had
+ever touched it.  She felt for him, and grieved in silence; she did not
+dare to utter sympathy aloud, for Doltimore had already given evidence of
+a suspicious and jealous temper.
+
+Evelyn was also deeply affected by the account of her guardian's illness.
+As I before said, the moment he ceased to be her lover, her childish
+affection for him returned.  She even permitted herself to write to him;
+and a tone of melancholy depression which artfully pervaded his reply
+struck her with something like remorse.  He told her in the letter that
+he had much to say to her relative to an investment, in conformity with
+her stepfather's wishes, and he should hasten to Paris, even before the
+doctor would sanction his removal.  Vargrave forbore to mention what the
+meditated investment was.  The last public accounts of the minister had,
+however, been so favourable, that his arrival might be almost daily
+expected; and both Caroline and Evelyn felt relieved.
+
+To De Montaigne, Maltravers confided his attachment, and both the
+Frenchman and Teresa sanctioned and encouraged it.  Evelyn enchanted
+them; and they had passed that age when they could have imagined it
+possible that the man they had known almost as a boy was separated by
+years from the lively feelings and extreme youth of Evelyn.  They could
+not believe that the sentiments he had inspired were colder than those
+that animated himself.
+
+One day, Maltravers had been absent for some hours on his solitary
+rambles, and De Montaigne had not yet returned from Paris, which he
+visited almost daily.  It was so late in the noon as almost to border on
+evening, when Maltravers; on his return, entered the grounds by a gate
+that separated them from an extensive wood.  He saw Evelyn, Teresa, and
+two of her children walking on a terrace immediately before him.  He
+joined them; and, somehow or other, it soon chanced that Teresa and
+himself loitered behind the rest, a little out of hearing.  "Ah, Mr.
+Maltravers," said the former, "we miss the soft skies of Italy and the
+beautiful hues of Como."
+
+"And, for my part, I miss the youth that gave 'glory to the grass and
+splendour to the flower.'"
+
+"Nay; we are happier now, believe me,--or at least I should be, if--But I
+must not think of my poor brother.  Ah, if his guilt deprived you of one
+who was worthy of you, it would be some comfort to his sister to think at
+last that the loss was repaired.  And you still have scruples?"
+
+"Who that loves truly has not?  How young, how lovely, how worthy of
+lighter hearts and fairer forms than mine!  Give me back the years that
+have passed since we last met at Como, and I might hope!"
+
+"And this to me who have enjoyed such happiness with one older, when we
+married, by ten years than you are now!"
+
+"But you, Teresa, were born to see life through the Claude glass."
+
+"Ah, you provoke me with these refinements; you turn from a happiness you
+have but to demand."
+
+"Do not--do not raise my hopes too high," cried Maltravers, with great
+emotion; "I have been schooling myself all day.  But if I _am_ deceived!"
+
+"Trust me, you are not.  See, even now she turns round to look for you;
+she loves you,--loves you as you deserve.  This difference of years that
+you so lament does but deepen and elevate her attachment!"
+
+Teresa turned to Maltravers, surprised at his silence.  How joyous sat
+his heart upon his looks,--no gloom on his brow, no doubt in his
+sparkling eyes!  He was mortal, and he yielded to the delight of
+believing himself beloved.  He pressed Teresa's hand in silence, and,
+quitting her abruptly, gained the side of Evelyn.  Madame de Montaigne
+comprehended all that passed within him; and as she followed, she soon
+contrived to detach her children, and returned with them to the house on
+a whispered pretence of seeing if their father had yet arrived.  Evelyn
+and Maltravers continued to walk on,--not aware, at first, that the rest
+of the party were not close behind.
+
+The sun had set; and they were in a part of the grounds which, by way of
+contrast to the rest, was laid out in the English fashion; the walk
+wound, serpent-like, among a profusion of evergreens irregularly planted;
+the scene was shut in and bounded, except where at a distance, through an
+opening of the trees, you caught the spire of a distant church, over
+which glimmered, faint and fair, the smile of the evening star.
+
+"This reminds me of home," said Evelyn, gently.
+
+"And hereafter it will remind me of you," said Maltravers, in whispered
+accents.  He fixed his eyes on her as he spoke.  Never had his look been
+so true to his heart; never had his voice so undisguisedly expressed the
+profound and passionate sentiment which had sprung up within him,--to
+constitute, as he then believed, the latest bliss, or the crowning
+misery, of his life!  At that moment, it was a sort of instinct that told
+him they were _alone_; for who has not felt--in those few and memorable
+hours of life when love long suppressed overflows the fountain, and seems
+to pervade the whole frame and the whole spirit--that there is a magic
+around and within us that hath a keener intelligence than intellect
+itself?  Alone at such an hour with the one we love, the whole world
+besides seems to vanish, and our feet to have entered the soil, and our
+lips to have caught the air, of Fairyland.
+
+They were alone.  And why did Evelyn tremble?  Why did she feel that a
+crisis of existence was at hand?
+
+"Miss Cameron--Evelyn," said Maltravers, after they had walked some
+moments in silence, "hear me--and let your reason as well as your heart
+reply.  From the first moment we met, you became dear to me.  Yes, even
+when a child, your sweetness and your fortitude foretold so well what you
+would be in womanhood; even then you left upon my memory a delightful and
+mysterious shadow,--too prophetic of the light that now hallows and wraps
+your image!  We met again,--and the attraction that had drawn me towards
+you years before was suddenly renewed.  I love you, Evelyn!  I love you
+better than all words can tell!  Your future fate, your welfare, your
+happiness, contain and embody all the hopes left to me in life!  But our
+years are different, Evelyn; I have known sorrows,--and the
+disappointments and the experience that have severed me from the common
+world have robbed me of more than time itself hath done.  They have
+robbed me of that zest for the ordinary pleasures of our race,--which may
+it be yours, sweet Evelyn, ever to retain!  To me, the time foretold by
+the Preacher as the lot of age has already arrived, when the sun and the
+moon are darkened, and when, save in you and through you, I have no
+pleasure in anything.  Judge, if such a being you can love!  Judge, if my
+very confession does not revolt and chill, if it does not present to you
+a gloomy and cheerless future, were it possible that you could unite your
+lot to mine!  Answer not from friendship or from pity; the love I feel
+for you can have a reply from love alone, and from that reasoning which
+love, in its enduring power, in its healthful confidence, in its
+prophetic foresight, alone supplies!  I can resign you without a murmur;
+but I could not live with you and even fancy that you had one care I
+could not soothe, though you might have happiness I could not share.  And
+fate does not present to me any vision so dark and terrible--no, not your
+loss itself; no, not your indifference; no, not your aversion--as your
+discovery, after time should make regret in vain, that you had mistaken
+fancy or friendship for affection, a sentiment for love.  Evelyn, I have
+confided to you all,--all this wild heart, now and evermore your own.  My
+destiny is with you."
+
+Evelyn was silent; he took her hand, and her tears fell warm and fast
+upon it.  Alarmed and anxious, he drew her towards him and gazed upon her
+face.
+
+"You fear to wound me," he said, with pale lips and trembling voice.
+"Speak on,--I can bear all."
+
+"No, no," said Evelyn, falteringly; "I have no fear but not to deserve
+you."
+
+"You love me, then,--you love me!" cried Maltravers wildly, and clasping
+her to his heart.
+
+The moon rose at that instant, and the wintry sward and the dark trees
+were bathed in the sudden light.  The time--the light--so exquisite to
+all, even in loneliness and in sorrow--how divine in such companionship!
+in such overflowing and ineffable sense of bliss!  There and then for the
+first time did Maltravers press upon that modest and blushing cheek the
+kiss of Love, of Hope,--the seal of a union he fondly hoped the grave
+itself could not dissolve!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+  _Queen_.  Whereon do you look?
+  _Hamlet_. On him, on him,--look you how pale he glares!--_Hamlet_.
+
+PERHAPS to Maltravers those few minutes which ensued, as they walked
+slowly on, compensated for all the troubles and cares of years; for
+natures like his feel joy even yet more intensely than sorrow.  It might
+be that the transport, the delirium of passionate and grateful thoughts
+that he poured forth, when at last he could summon words, expressed
+feelings the young Evelyn could not comprehend, and which less delighted
+than terrified her with the new responsibility she had incurred.  But
+love so honest, so generous, so intense, dazzled and bewildered and
+carried her whole soul away.  Certainly at that hour she felt no
+regret--no thought but that one in whom she had so long recognized
+something nobler than is found in the common world was thus happy and
+thus made happy by a word, a look from her!  Such a thought is woman's
+dearest triumph; and one so thoroughly unselfish, so yielding, and so
+soft, could not be insensible to the rapture she had caused.
+
+"And oh!" said Maltravers, as he clasped again and again the hand that he
+believed he had won forever, "now, at length, have I learned how
+beautiful is life!  For this--for this I have been reserved!  Heaven is
+merciful to me, and the waking world is brighter than all my dreams!"
+
+He ceased abruptly.  At that instant they were once more on the terrace
+where he had first joined Teresa, facing the wood, which was divided by a
+slight and low palisade from the spot where they stood.  He ceased
+abruptly, for his eyes encountered a terrible and ominous apparition,--a
+form connected with dreary associations of fate and woe.  The figure had
+raised itself upon a pile of firewood on the other side of the fence, and
+hence it seemed almost gigantic in its stature.  It gazed upon the pair
+with eyes that burned with a preternatural blaze, and a voice which
+Maltravers too well remembered shrieked out "Love! love!  What! _thou_
+love again?  Where is the Dead!  Ha, ha!  Where is the Dead?"
+
+Evelyn, startled by the words, looked up, and clung in speechless terror
+to Maltravers.  He remained rooted to the spot.
+
+"Unhappy man," said he, at length, and soothingly, "how came you hither?
+Fly not, you are with friends."
+
+"Friends!" said the maniac, with a scornful laugh.  "I know thee, Ernest
+Maltravers,--I know thee: but it is not thou who hast locked me up in
+darkness and in hell, side by side with the mocking fiend!  Friends! ah,
+but no Friends shall catch me now!  I am free!  I am free!  Air and wave
+are not more free!"  And the madman laughed with horrible glee.  "She is
+fair--fair," he said, abruptly checking himself, and with a changed
+voice, "but not so fair as the Dead.  Faithless that thou art--and yet
+she loved _thee_!  Woe to thee! woe!  Maltravers, the perfidious!  Woe to
+thee--and remorse--and shame!"
+
+"Fear not, Evelyn,--fear not," whispered Maltravers, gently, and placing
+her behind him; "support your courage,--nothing shall harm you."
+
+Evelyn, though very pale, and trembling from head to foot, retained her
+senses.  Maltravers advanced towards the mad man.  But no sooner did the
+quick eye of the last perceive the movement, than, with the fear which
+belongs to that dread disease,--the fear of losing liberty,--he turned,
+and with a loud cry fled into the wood.  Maltravers leaped over the
+fence, and pursued him some way in vain.  The thick copses of the wood
+snatched every trace of the fugitive from his eye.
+
+Breathless and exhausted, Maltravers returned to the spot where he had
+left Evelyn.  As he reached it, he saw Teresa and her husband approaching
+towards him, and Teresa's merry laugh sounded clear and musical in the
+racy air.  The sound appalled him; he hastened his steps to Evelyn.
+
+"Say nothing of what we have seen to Madame de Montaigne, I beseech you,"
+said he; "I will explain why hereafter."
+
+Evelyn, too overcome to speak, nodded her acquiescence.  They joined the
+De Montaignes, and Maltravers took the Frenchman aside.
+
+But before he could address him, De Montaigne said,--
+
+"Hush! do not alarm my wife--she knows nothing; but I have just heard at
+Paris, that--that he has escaped--you know whom I mean?"
+
+"I do; he is at hand; send in search of him!  I have seen him.  Once more
+I have seen Castruccio Cesarini!"
+
+
+
+BOOK IX.
+
+  "Woe, woe: all things are clear."--SOPHOCLES: OEd. Tyr. 754.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+  THE privilege that statesmen ever claim,
+  Who private interest never yet pursued,
+  But still pretended 'twas for others' good.
+  .  .  .  .  .  .
+  From hence on every humorous wind that veered
+  With shifted sails a several course you steered.
+                 _Absalom and Achitophel_, Part ii.
+
+LORD VARGRAVE had for more than a fortnight remained at the inn at
+M-----, too ill to be removed with safety in a season so severe.  Even
+when at last, by easy stages, he reached London, he was subjected to a
+relapse; and his recovery was slow and gradual.  Hitherto unused to
+sickness, he bore his confinement with extreme impatience; and against
+the commands of his physician insisted on continuing to transact his
+official business, and consult with his political friends in his
+sick-room; for Lumley knew well, that it is most pernicious to public men
+to be considered failing in health,--turkeys are not more unfeeling to a
+sick brother than politicians to an ailing statesman; they give out that
+his head is touched, and see paralysis and epilepsy in every speech and
+every despatch.  The time, too, nearly ripe for his great schemes, made
+it doubly necessary that he should exert himself, and prevent being
+shelved with a plausible excuse of tender compassion for his infirmities.
+As soon therefore as he learned that Legard had left Paris, he thought
+himself safe for a while in that quarter, and surrendered his thoughts
+wholly to his ambitious projects.  Perhaps, too, with the susceptible
+vanity of a middle-aged man, who has had his _bonnes fortunes_, Lumley
+deemed, with Rousseau, that a lover, pale and haggard--just raised from
+the bed of suffering--is more interesting to friendship than attractive
+to love.  He and Rousseau were, I believe, both mistaken; but that is a
+matter of opinion: they both thought very coarsely of women,--one from
+having no sentiment, and the other from having a sentiment that was but a
+disease.  At length, just as Lumley was sufficiently recovered to quit
+his house, to appear at his office, and declare that his illness had
+wonderfully improved his constitution, intelligence from Paris, the more
+startling from being wholly unexpected, reached him.  From Caroline he
+learned that Maltravers had proposed to Evelyn, and been accepted.  From
+Maltravers himself he heard the confirmation of the news.  The last
+letter was short, but kind and manly.  He addressed Lord Vargrave as
+Evelyn's guardian; slightly alluded to the scruples he had entertained
+till Lord Vargrave's suit was broken off; and feeling the subject too
+delicate for a letter, expressed a desire to confer with Lumley
+respecting Evelyn's wishes as to certain arrangements in her property.
+
+And for this was it that Lumley had toiled! for this had he visited Lisle
+Court! and for this had he been stricken down to the bed of pain!  Was it
+only to make his old rival the purchaser, if he so pleased it, of the
+possessions of his own family?  Lumley thought at that moment less of
+Evelyn than of Lisle Court.  As he woke from the stupor and the first fit
+of rage into which these epistles cast him, the recollection of the story
+he had heard from Mr. Onslow flashed across him.  Were his suspicions
+true, what a secret he would possess! How fate might yet befriend him!
+Not a moment was to be lost.  Weak, suffering as he still was, he ordered
+his carriage, and hastened down to Mrs. Leslie.
+
+In the interview that took place, he was careful not to alarm her into
+discretion.  He managed the conference with his usual consummate
+dexterity.  He did not appear to believe that there had been any actual
+connection between Alice and the supposed Butler.  He began by simply
+asking whether Alice had ever, in early life, been acquainted with a
+person of that name, and when residing in the neighbourhood of -----.
+The change of countenance, the surprised start of Mrs. Leslie, convinced
+him that his suspicions were true.
+
+"And why do you ask, my lord?" said the old lady.  "Is it to ascertain
+this point that you have done me the honour to visit me?"
+
+"Not exactly, my dear madam," said Lumley, smiling.  "But I am going to
+C----- on business; and besides that I wished to give an account of your
+health to Evelyn, whom I shall shortly see at Paris, I certainly did
+desire to know whether it would be any gratification to Lady Vargrave,
+for whom I have the deepest regard, to renew her acquaintance with the
+said Mr. Butler."
+
+"What does your lordship know of him?  What is he; who is he?"
+
+"Ah, my dear lady, you turn the tables on me, I see,--for my one question
+you would give me fifty.  But, seriously, before I answer you, you must
+tell me whether Lady Vargrave does know a gentleman of that name; yet,
+indeed, to save trouble, I may as well inform you, that I know it was
+under that name that she resided at C-----, when my poor uncle first made
+her acquaintance.  What I ought to ask is this,--supposing Mr. Butler be
+still alive, and a gentleman of character and fortune, would it please
+Lady Vargrave to meet with him once more?"
+
+"I cannot tell you," said Mrs. Leslie, sinking back in her chair, much
+embarrassed.
+
+"Enough, I shall not stir further in the matter.  Glad to see you looking
+so well.  Fine place, beautiful trees.  Any commands at C-----, or any
+message for Evelyn?"
+
+Lumley rose to depart.
+
+"Stay," said Mrs. Leslie, recalling all the pining, restless, untiring
+love that Lady Vargrave had manifested towards the lost, and feeling that
+she ought not to sacrifice to slight scruples the chance of happiness for
+her friend's future years,--"stay; I think this question you should
+address to Lady Vargrave,--or shall I?"
+
+"As you will,--perhaps I had better write.  Good-day," and Vargrave
+hurried away.
+
+He had satisfied himself, but he had another yet to satisfy,--and that,
+from certain reasons known but to himself, without bringing the third
+person in contact with Lady Vargrave.  On arriving at C----- he wrote,
+therefore, to Lady Vargrave as follows:--
+
+
+MY DEAR FRIEND,--Do not think me impertinent or intrusive--but you know
+me too well for that.  A gentleman of the name of Butler is exceedingly
+anxious to ascertain if you once lived near -----, in a pretty little
+cottage,--Dove, or Dale, or Dell cottage (some such appellation),--and if
+you remember a person of his name.  Should you care to give a reply to
+these queries, send me a line addressed to London, which I shall get on
+my way to Paris.
+
+     Yours most truly,
+
+          VARGRAVE.
+
+
+As soon as he had concluded, and despatched this letter, Vargrave wrote
+to Mr. Winsley as follows:--
+
+
+MY DEAR SIR,--I am so unwell as to be unable to call on you, or even to
+see any one, however agreeable (nay, the more agreeable the more
+exciting!).  I hope, however, to renew our personal acquaintance before
+quitting C-----.  Meanwhile, oblige me with a line to say if I did not
+understand you to signify that you could, if necessary, prove that Lady
+Vargrave once resided in this town as Mrs. Butler, a very short time
+before she married my uncle, under the name of Cameron, in Devonshire;
+and had she not also at that time a little girl,--an infant, or nearly
+so,--who must necessarily be the young lady who is my uncle's heiress,
+Miss Evelyn Cameron.  My reason for thus troubling you is obvious.  As
+Miss Cameron's guardian, I have very shortly to wind up certain affairs
+connected with my uncle's will; and, what is more, there is some property
+bequeathed by the late Mr. Butler, which may make it necessary to prove
+identity.
+
+     Truly yours,
+
+          VARGRAVE.
+
+
+The answer to the latter communication ran thus:--
+
+
+"MY LORD,--I am very sorry to hear your lordship is so unwell, and will
+pay my respects to-morrow.  I certainly can swear that the present Lady
+Vargrave was the Mrs. Butler who resided at C-----, and taught music.
+And as the child with her was of the same sex, and about the same age as
+Miss Cameron, there can, I should think, be no difficulty in establishing
+the identity between that young lady and the child Lady Vargrave had by
+her first husband, Mr. Butler; but of this, of course, I cannot speak.
+
+     "I have the honour, etc."
+
+
+The next morning Vargrave despatched a note to Mr. Winsley, saying that
+his health required him to return to town immediately,--and to town, in
+fact, he hastened.  The day after his arrival, he received, in a hurried
+hand--strangely blurred and blotted, perhaps by tears--this short
+letter:--
+
+
+For Heaven's sake, tell me what you mean!  Yes, yes, I did once reside at
+Dale Cottage, I did know one of the name of Butler!  Has _he_ discovered
+the name _I_ bear?  Where is he?  I implore you to write, or let me see
+you before you leave England!
+
+          ALICE VARGRAVE.
+
+
+Lumley smiled triumphantly when he read and carefully put up this letter.
+
+"I must now amuse and put her off--at all events for the present."
+
+In answer to Lady Vargrave's letter, he wrote a few lines to say that he
+had only heard through a third person (a lawyer) of a Mr. Butler residing
+somewhere abroad, who had wished these inquiries to be made; that he
+believed it only related to some disposition of property; that,
+_perhaps_, the Mr. Butler who made the inquiry was heir to the Mr. Butler
+she had known; that he could learn nothing else at present, as the
+purport of her reply must be sent abroad,--the lawyer would or could say
+nothing more; that directly he received a further communication it should
+be despatched to her, that he was most affectionately and most truly
+hers.
+
+The rest of that morning Vargrave devoted to Lord Saxingham and his
+allies; and declaring, and believing, that he should not be long absent
+at Paris, he took an early dinner, and was about once more to commit
+himself to the risks of travel, when, as he crossed the hall, Mr. Douce
+came hastily upon him.
+
+"My lord--my lord--I must have a word with your l-l-lordship;--you are
+going to--that is--" (and the little man looked frightened) "you intend
+to--to go to--that is--ab-ab-ab--"
+
+"Not abscond, Mr. Douce; come into the library: I am in a great hurry,
+but I have always time for _you_.  What's the matter?"
+
+"Why, then, my  lord,--I--I have heard nothing m-m-more from your
+lordship about the pur-pur--"
+
+"Purchase?--I am going to Paris, to settle all particulars with Miss
+Cameron; tell the lawyers so."
+
+"May--may--we draw out the money to--to--show--that--that we are in
+earnest?  Otherwise I fear--that is, I suspect--I mean I know, that
+Colonel Maltravers will be off the bargain."
+
+"Why, Mr. Douce, really I must just see my ward first; but you shall hear
+from me in a day or two;--and the ten thousand pounds I owe you!"
+
+"Yes, indeed, the  ten--ten--ten!--my  partner is very--"
+
+"Anxious for it, no doubt!  My compliments to him.  God bless you!--take
+care of yourself,--must be off to save the packet;" and Vargrave hurried
+away, muttering, "Heaven sends money, and the devil sends duns!"
+
+Douce gasped like a fish for breath, as his eyes followed the rapid steps
+of Vargrave; and there was an angry scowl of disappointment on his small
+features.  Lumley, by this time, seated in his carriage, and wrapped up
+in his cloak, had forgotten the creditor's existence, and whispered to
+his aristocratic secretary, as he bent his head out of the carriage
+window, "I have told Lord Saxingham to despatch you to me, if there is
+any--the least--necessity for me in London.  I leave you behind, Howard,
+because your sister being at court, and your cousin with our notable
+premier, you will find out every change in the wind--you understand.
+And, I say, Howard, don't think I forget your kindness!--you know that no
+man ever served me in vain!  Oh, there's that horrid little Douce behind
+you,--tell them to drive on!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+            HEARD you that?
+  What prodigy of horror is disclosing?--LILLO: _Fatal Curiosity_.
+
+THE unhappy companion of Cesarini's flight was soon discovered and
+recaptured; but all search for Cesarini himself proved ineffectual, not
+only in the neighbourhood of St. Cloud, but in the surrounding country
+and in Paris.  The only comfort was in thinking that his watch would at
+least preserve him for some time from the horrors of want; and that by
+the sale of the trinket, he might be traced.  The police, too, were set
+at work,--the vigilant police of Paris!  Still day rolled on day, and no
+tidings.  The secret of the escape was carefully concealed from Teresa;
+and public cares were a sufficient excuse for the gloom on De Montaigne's
+brow.
+
+Evelyn heard from Maltravers with mingled emotions of compassion, grief,
+and awe the gloomy tale connected with the history of the maniac.  She
+wept for the fate of Florence; she shuddered at the curse that had fallen
+on Cesarini; and perhaps Maltravers grew dearer to her from the thought
+that there was so much in the memories of the past that needed a
+comforter and a soother.
+
+They returned to Paris, affianced and plighted lovers; and then it was
+that Evelyn sought carefully and resolutely to banish from her mind all
+recollection, all regret, of the absent Legard: she felt the solemnity of
+the trust confided in her, and she resolved that no thought of hers
+should ever be of a nature to gall the generous and tender spirit that
+had confided its life of life to her care.  The influence of Maltravers
+over her increased in their new and more familiar position, and yet still
+it partook too much of veneration, too little of passion; but that might
+be her innocence and youth.  He, at least, was sensible of no want,--she
+had chosen him from the world; and fastidious as he deemed himself, he
+reposed, without a doubt, on the security of her faith.  None of those
+presentiments which had haunted him when first betrothed to Florence
+disturbed him now.  The affection of one so young and so guileless seemed
+to bring back to him all his own youth--we are ever young while the young
+can love us!  Suddenly, too, the world took to his eyes a brighter and
+fairer aspect.  Hope, born again, reconciled him to his career and to his
+race!  The more he listened to Evelyn, the more he watched every evidence
+of her docile but generous nature, the more he felt assured that he had
+found at last a heart suited to his own.  Her beautiful serenity of
+temper, cheerful, yet never fitful or unquiet, gladdened him with its
+insensible contagion.  To be with Evelyn was like basking in the sunshine
+of some happy sky!  It was an inexpressible charm to one wearied with
+"the hack sights and sounds" of this jaded world,--to watch the
+ever-fresh and sparkling the thoughts and fancies which came from a soul
+so new to life!  It enchanted one, painfully fastidious in what relates
+to the true nobility of character, that, however various the themes
+discussed, no low or mean thought ever sullied those beautiful lips.  It
+was not the mere innocence of inexperience, but the moral incapability of
+guile, that charmed him in the companion he had chosen on his path to
+Eternity!  He was also delighted to notice Evelyn's readiness of
+resources: she had that faculty, without which woman has no independence
+from the world, no pledge that domestic retirement will not soon languish
+into wearisome monotony,--the faculty of making trifles contribute to
+occupation or amusement; she was easily pleased, and yet she so soon
+reconciled herself to disappointment.  He felt, and chid his own dulness
+for not feeling it before, that, young and surpassingly lovely as she
+was, she required no stimulant from the heated pursuits and the hollow
+admiration of the crowd.
+
+"Such," thought he, "are the natures that alone can preserve through
+years the poetry of the first passionate illusion, that can alone render
+wedlock the seal that confirms affection, and not the mocking ceremonial
+that vainly consecrates its grave!"
+
+Maltravers, as we have seen, formally wrote to Lumley some days after
+their return to Paris.  He would have written also to Lady Vargrave, but
+Evelyn thought it best to prepare her mother by a letter from herself.
+
+Miss Cameron now wanted but a few weeks to the age of eighteen, at which
+she was to be the sole mistress of her own destiny.  On arriving at that
+age the marriage was to take place.  Valerie heard with sincere delight
+of the new engagement her friend had formed.  She eagerly sought every
+opportunity to increase her intimacy with Evelyn, who was completely won
+by her graceful kindness; the result of Valerie's examination was, that
+she did not wonder at the passionate love of Maltravers, but that her
+deep knowledge of the human heart (that knowledge so remarkable in the
+women of her country!) made her doubt how far it was adequately returned,
+how far Evelyn deceived herself.  Her first satisfaction became mingled
+with anxiety, and she relied more for the future felicity of her friend
+on Evelyn's purity of thought and general tenderness of heart than on the
+exclusiveness and ardour of her love.  Alas! few at eighteen are not too
+young for the irrevocable step,--and Evelyn was younger than her years!
+One evening at Madame de Ventadour's Maltravers asked Evelyn if she had
+yet heard from Lady Vargrave.  Evelyn expressed her surprise that she had
+not, and the conversation fell, as was natural, upon Lady Vargrave
+herself.  "Is she as fond of music as you are?" asked Maltravers.
+
+"Yes, indeed, I think so--and of the songs of a certain person in
+particular; they always had for her an indescribable charm.  Often have I
+heard her say that to read your writings was like talking to an early
+friend.  Your name and genius seemed to make her solitary connection with
+the great world.  Nay--but you will not be angry--I half think it was her
+enthusiasm, so strange and rare, that first taught me interest in
+yourself."
+
+"I have a double reason, then, for loving your mother," said Maltravers,
+much pleased and flattered.  "And does she not like Italian music?"
+
+"Not much; she prefers some rather old-fashioned German airs, very
+simple, but very touching."
+
+"My own early passion," said Maltravers, more and more interested.
+
+"But there are also one or two English songs which I have occasionally,
+but very seldom, heard her sing.  One in especial affects her so deeply,
+even when she plays the air, that I have always attached to it a certain
+mysterious sanctity.  I should not like to sing it before a crowd, but
+to-morrow, when you call on me, and we are alone--"
+
+"Ah, to-morrow I will not fail to remind you."
+
+Their conversation ceased; yet, somehow or other, that night when he
+retired to rest the recollection of it haunted Maltravers.  He felt a
+vague, unaccountable curiosity respecting this secluded and solitary
+mother; all concerning her early fate seemed so wrapped in mystery.
+Cleveland, in reply to his letter, had informed him that all inquiries
+respecting the birth and first marriage of Lady Vargrave had failed.
+Evelyn evidently knew but little of either, and he felt a certain
+delicacy in pressing questions which might be ascribed to the
+inquisitiveness of a vulgar family pride.  Moreover, lovers have so much
+to say to each other, that he had not time to talk at length to Evelyn
+about third persons.  He slept ill that night,--dark and boding dreams
+disturbed his slumber.  He rose late and dejected by presentiments he
+could not master: his morning meal was scarcely over, and he had already
+taken his hat to go to Evelyn's for comfort and sunshine, when the door
+opened, and he was surprised by the entrance of Lord Vargrave.
+
+Lumley seated himself with a formal gravity very unusual to him, and as
+if anxious to waive unnecessary explanations, began as follows, with a
+serious and impressive voice and aspect:--
+
+"Maltravers, of late years we have been estranged from each other.  I do
+not presume to dictate to you your friendships or your dislikes.  Why
+this estrangement has happened you alone can determine.  For my part I am
+conscious of no offence; that which I was I am still.  It is you who have
+changed.  Whether it be the difference of our political opinions, or any
+other and more secret cause, I know not.  I lament, but it is now too
+late to attempt to remove it.  If you suspect me of ever seeking, or even
+wishing, to sow dissension between yourself and my ill-fated cousin, now
+no more, you are mistaken.  I ever sought the happiness and union of you
+both.  And yet, Maltravers, you then came between me and an early and
+cherished dream.  But I suffered in silence; my course was at least
+disinterested, perhaps generous: let it pass.  A second time you cross my
+path,--you win from me a heart I had long learned to consider mine.  You
+have no scruple of early friendship, you have no forbearance towards
+acknowledged and affianced ties.  You are my rival with Evelyn Cameron,
+and your suit has prospered."
+
+"Vargrave," said Maltravers, "you have spoken frankly; and I will reply
+with an equal candour.  A difference of tastes, tempers, and opinions led
+us long since into opposite paths.  I am one who cannot disunite public
+morality from private virtue.  From motives best known to you, but which
+I say openly I hold to have been those of interest or ambition, you did
+not change your opinions (there is no sin in that), but retaining them in
+private, professed others in public, and played with the destinies of
+mankind as if they were but counters to mark a mercenary game.  This led
+me to examine your character with more searching eyes; and I found it one
+I could no longer trust.  With respect to the Dead, let the pall drop
+over that early grave,--I acquit you of all blame.  He who sinned has
+suffered more than would atone the crime!  You charge me with my love to
+Evelyn.  Pardon me, but I seduced no affection, I have broken no tie.
+Not till she was free in heart and in hand to choose between us, did I
+hint at love.  Let me think that a way may be found to soften one portion
+at least of the disappointment you cannot but feel acutely."
+
+"Stay!" said Lord Vargrave (who, plunged in a gloomy revery, had scarcely
+seemed to hear the last few sentences of his rival): "stay, Maltravers.
+Speak not of love to Evelyn!  A horrible foreboding tells me that, a few
+hours hence, you would rather pluck out your tongue by the roots than
+couple the words of love with the thought of that unfortunate girl!  Oh,
+if I were vindictive, what awful triumph would await me now!  What
+retaliation on your harsh judgment, your cold contempt, your momentary
+and wretched victory over me!  Heaven is my witness, that my only
+sentiment is that of terror and woe!  Maltravers, in your earliest youth,
+did you form connection with one whom they called Alice Darvil?"
+
+"Alice! merciful Heaven! what of her?"
+
+"Did you never know that the Christian name of Evelyn's mother is Alice?"
+
+"I never asked, I never knew; but it is a common name," faltered
+Maltravers.
+
+"Listen to me," resumed Vargrave: "with Alice Darvil you lived in the
+neighbourhood of -----, did you not?"
+
+"Go on, go on!"
+
+"You took the name of Butler; by that name Alice Darvil was afterwards
+known in the town in which my uncle resided--there are gaps in the
+history that I cannot of my own knowledge fill up,--she taught music; my
+uncle became enamoured of her, but he was vain and worldly.  She removed
+into Devonshire, and he married her there, under the name of Cameron, by
+which name he hoped to conceal from the world the lowness of her origin,
+and the humble calling she had followed.  Hold! do not interrupt me.
+Alice had one daughter, as was supposed, by a former marriage; that
+daughter was the offspring of him whose name she bore--yes, of the false
+Butler!--that daughter is Evelyn Cameron!"
+
+"Liar! devil!" cried Maltravers, springing to his feet, as if a shot had
+pierced his heart.  "Proofs! proofs!"
+
+"Will these suffice?" said Vargrave, as he drew forth the letters of
+Winsley and Lady Vargrave.  Maltravers took them, but it was some moments
+before he could dare to read.  He supported himself with difficulty from
+falling to the ground; there was a gurgle in his throat like the sound of
+the death-rattle; at last he read, and dropped the letters from his hand.
+
+"Wait me here," he said very faintly, and moved mechanically to the door.
+
+"Hold!" said Lord Vargrave, laying his hand upon Ernest's arm.  "Listen
+to me for Evelyn's sake, for her mother's.  You are about to seek
+Evelyn,--be it so!  I know that you possess the god-like gift of
+self-control.  You will not suffer her to learn that her mother has done
+that which dishonours alike mother and child?  You will not consummate
+your wrong to Alice Darvil by robbing her of the fruit of a life of
+penitence and remorse?  You will not unveil her shame to her own
+daughter?  Convince yourself, and master yourself while you do so!"
+
+"Fear me not," said Maltravers, with a terrible smile; "I will not
+afflict my conscience with a double curse.  As I have sowed, so must I
+reap.  Wait me here!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+  .  .  .  MISERY
+  That gathers force each moment as it rolls,
+  And must, at last, o'erwhelm me.--LILLO: _Fatal Curiosity_.
+
+MALTRAVERS found Evelyn alone; she turned towards him with her usual
+sweet smile of welcome; but the smile vanished at once, as her eyes met
+his changed and working countenance; cold drops stood upon the rigid and
+marble brow, the lips writhed as if in bodily torture, the muscles of the
+face had fallen, and there was a wildness which appalled her in the fixed
+and feverish brightness of the eyes.
+
+"You are ill, Ernest,--dear Ernest, you are ill,--your look freezes me!"
+
+"Nay, Evelyn," said Maltravers, recovering himself by one of those
+efforts of which men who have _suffered without sympathy_ are alone
+capable,--"nay, I am better now; I have been ill--very ill--but I am
+better!"
+
+"Ill! and I not know of it?" She attempted to take his hand as she spoke.
+Maltravers recoiled.
+
+"It is fire! it burns!  Avaunt!" he cried, frantically.  "O Heaven!
+spare me, spare me!"
+
+Evelyn was not seriously alarmed; she gazed on him with the tenderest
+compassion.  Was this one of those moody and overwhelming paroxysms to
+which it had been whispered abroad that he was subject?  Strange as it
+may seem, despite her terror, he was dearer to her in that hour--as she
+believed, of gloom and darkness--than in all the glory of his majestic
+intellect, or all the blandishments of his soft address.
+
+"What has happened to you?" she said, approaching him again; "have you
+seen Lord Vargrave?  I know that he has arrived, for his servant has been
+here to say so; has he uttered anything to distress you? or has--" (she
+added falteringly and timidly)--"has poor Evelyn offended you?  Speak to
+me,--only speak!"
+
+Maltravers turned, and his face was now calm and serene save by its
+extreme and almost ghastly paleness, no trace of the hell within him
+could be discovered.
+
+"Pardon me," said he, gently, "I know not this morning what I say or do;
+think not of it, think not of me,--it will pass away when I hear your
+voice."
+
+"Shall I sing to you the words I spoke of last night?  See, I have them
+ready; I know them by heart, but I thought you might like to read them,
+they are so full of simple but deep feeling."
+
+Maltravers took the song from her hands, and bent over the paper; at
+first, the letters seemed dim and indistinct, for there was a mist before
+his eyes; but at last a chord of memory was struck,--he recalled the
+words: they were some of those he had composed for Alice in the first
+days of their delicious intercourse,--links of the golden chain, in which
+he had sought to bind the spirit of knowledge to that of love.
+
+"And from whom," said he, in a faint voice, as he calmly put down the
+verses,--"from whom did your mother learn these words?"
+
+"I know not; some dear friend, years ago, composed and gave them to her.
+It must have been one very dear to her, to judge by the effect they still
+produce."
+
+"Think you," said Maltravers, in a hollow voice, "think you IT WAS YOUR
+FATHER?"
+
+"My father!  She never speaks of him!  I have been early taught to shun
+all allusion to his memory.  My father!--it is probable; yes, it may have
+been my father; whom else could she have loved so fondly?"
+
+There was a long silence; Evelyn was the first to break it.
+
+"I have heard from my mother to-day, Ernest; her letter alarms me,--I
+scarce know why!"
+
+"Ah! and how--"
+
+"It is hurried and incoherent,--almost wild: she says she has learned
+some intelligence that has unsettled and unstrung her mind; she has
+requested me to inquire if any one I am acquainted with has heard of, or
+met abroad, some person of the name of Butler.  You start!--have you
+known one of that name?"
+
+"I!--did your mother never allude to that name before?"
+
+"Never!--and yet, once I remember--"
+
+"What?"
+
+That I was reading an account in the papers of the sudden death of some
+Mr. Butler; and her agitation made a powerful and strange impression upon
+me,--in fact, she fainted, and seemed almost delirious when she
+recovered; she would not rest till I had completed the account, and when
+I came to the particulars of his age, etc. (he was old, I think) she
+clasped her hands, and wept; but they seemed tears of joy.  The name is
+so common--whom of that name have you known?"
+
+"It is no matter.  Is that your mother's letter; is that her
+handwriting?"
+
+"Yes;" and Evelyn gave the letter to Maltravers.  He glanced over the
+characters; he had once or twice seen Lady Vargrave's handwriting before,
+and had recognized no likeness between that handwriting and such early
+specimens of Alice's art as he had witnessed so many years ago; but now,
+"trifles light as air" had grown "confirmation strong as proof of Holy
+Writ,"--he thought he detected Alice in every line of the hurried and
+blotted scroll; and when his eye rested on the words, "Your affectionate
+MOTHER, _Alice_!" his blood curdled in his veins.
+
+"It is strange!" said he, still struggling for self-composure; "strange
+that I never thought of asking her name before!  Alice! her name is
+Alice?"
+
+"A sweet name, is it not?  It accords so well with her simple
+character--how you would love her!"
+
+As she said this, Evelyn turned to Maltravers with enthusiasm, and again
+she was startled by his aspect; for again it was haggard, distorted, and
+convulsed.
+
+"Oh, if you love me," she cried, "do send immediately for advice!  And
+yet; is it illness, Ernest, or is it some grief that you hide from me?"
+
+"It is illness, Evelyn," said Maltravers, rising: and his knees knocked
+together.  "I am not fit even for your companionship,--I will go home."
+
+"And send instantly for advice?"
+
+"Ay; it waits me there already."
+
+"Thank Heaven! and you will write to me one little word--to relieve me?
+I am so uneasy!"
+
+"I will write to you."
+
+"This evening?"
+
+"Ay!"
+
+"Now go,--I will not detain you."
+
+He walked slowly to the door, but when he reached it he turned, and
+catching her anxious gaze, he opened his arms; overpowered with strange
+fear and affectionate sympathy, she burst into passionate tears; and
+surprised out of the timidity and reserve which had hitherto
+characterized her pure and meek attachment to him, she fell on his
+breast, and sobbed aloud.  Maltravers raised his hands, and, placing them
+solemnly on her young head, his lips muttered as if in prayer.  He
+paused, and strained her to his heart; but he shunned that parting kiss,
+which, hitherto, he had so fondly sought.  That embrace was one of agony,
+and not of rapture; and yet Evelyn dreamed not that he designed it for
+the last!
+
+
+
+Maltravers re-entered the room in which he had left Lord Vargrave, who
+still awaited his return.
+
+He walked up to Lumley, and held out his hand.  "You have saved me from a
+dreadful crime,--from an everlasting remorse.  I thank you!"
+
+Hardened and frigid as his nature was, Lumley was touched; the movement
+of Maltravers took him by surprise.  "It has been a dreadful duty,
+Ernest," said he, pressing the hand he held; "but to come, too, from
+_me_,--your rival!"
+
+"Proceed, proceed, I pray you; explain all this--yet explanation! what do
+I want to know?  Evelyn is my daughter,--Alice's child!  For Heaven's
+sake, give me hope; say it is not so; say that she is Alice's child, but
+not _mine_!  Father! father!--and they call it a holy name--it is a
+horrible one!"
+
+"Compose yourself, my dear friend: recollect what you have escaped!  You
+will recover this shock.  Time, travel--"
+
+"Peace, man,--peace!  Now then I am calm!  When Alice left me she had no
+child.  I knew not that she bore within her the pledge of our ill-omened
+and erring love.  Verily, the sins of my youth have arisen against me;
+and the curse has come home to roost!"
+
+"I cannot explain to you all details."
+
+"But why not have told me of this?  Why not have warned me; why not have
+said to me, when my heart could have been satisfied by so sweet a tie,
+'Thou hast a daughter: thou art not desolate'?  Why reserve the knowledge
+of the blessing until it has turned to poison?  Fiend that you are! you
+have waited this hour to gloat over the agony from which a word from you
+a year, nay, a month ago--a little month ago--might have saved me and
+her!"
+
+Maltravers, as he spoke, approached Vargrave, with eyes sparkling with
+fierce passion, his hand clenched, his form dilated, the veins on his
+forehead swelled like cords.  Lumley, brave as he was, recoiled.
+
+"I knew not of this secret," said he, deprecatingly, "till a few days
+before I came hither; and I came hither at once to disclose it to you.
+Will you listen to me?  I knew that my uncle had married a person much
+beneath him in rank; but he was guarded and cautious, and I knew no more,
+except that by a first husband that lady had one daughter,--Evelyn.  A
+chain of accidents suddenly acquainted me with the rest."
+
+Here Vargrave pretty faithfully repeated what he had learned from the
+brewer at C-----, and from Mr. Onslow; but when he came to the tacit
+confirmation of all his suspicions received from Mrs. Leslie, he greatly
+exaggerated and greatly distorted the account.  "Judge, then," concluded
+Lumley, "of the horror with which I heard that you had declared an
+attachment to Evelyn, and that it was returned.  Ill as I was, I hastened
+hither: you know the rest.  Are you satisfied?"
+
+"I will go to Alice!  I will learn from her own lips--yet, how can I meet
+her again?  How say to her, 'I have taken from thee thy last hope,--I
+have broken thy child's heart'?"
+
+"Forgive me, but I should confess to you, that, from all I can learn from
+Mrs. Leslie, Lady Vargrave has but one prayer, one hope in life,--that
+she may never again meet with her betrayer.  You may, indeed, in her own
+letter perceive how much she is terrified by the thought of your
+discovering her.  She has, at length, recovered peace of mind and
+tranquillity of conscience.  She shrinks with dread from the prospect of
+ever again encountering one once so dear, now associated in her mind with
+recollections of guilt and sorrow.  More than this, she is sensitively
+alive to the fear of shame, to the dread of detection.  If ever her
+daughter were to know her sin, it would be to her as a death-blow.  Yet
+in her nervous state of health, her ever-quick and uncontrollable
+feelings, if you were to meet her, she would disguise nothing, conceal
+nothing.  The veil would be torn aside: the menials in her own house
+would tell the tale, and curiosity circulate, and scandal blacken the
+story of her early errors.  No, Maltravers, at least wait awhile before
+you see her; wait till her mind can be prepared for such an interview,
+till precautions can be taken, till you yourself are in a calmer state of
+mind."
+
+Maltravers fixed his piercing eyes on Lumley while he thus spoke, and
+listened in deep attention.
+
+"It matters not," said he, after a long pause, "whether these be your
+real reasons for wishing to defer or prevent a meeting between Alice and
+myself.  The affliction that has come upon me bursts with too clear and
+scorching a blaze of light for me to see any chance of escape or
+mitigation.  Even if Evelyn were the daughter of Alice by another, she
+would be forever separated from me.  The mother and the child! there is a
+kind of incest even in that thought!  But such an alleviation of my
+anguish is forbidden to my reason.  No, poor Alice, I will not disturb
+the repose thou hast won at last!  Thou shalt never have the grief to
+know that our error has brought upon thy lover so black a doom!  All is
+over! the world never shall find me again.  Nothing is left for me but
+the desert and the grave!"
+
+"Speak not so, Ernest," said Lord Vargrave, soothingly; "a little while,
+and you will recover this blow: your control over passion has, even in
+youth, inspired me with admiration and surprise; and now, in calmer
+years, and with such incentives to self-mastery, your triumph will come
+sooner than you think.  Evelyn, too, is so young; she has not known you
+long; perhaps her love, after all, is that caused by some mystic, but
+innocent working of nature, and she would rejoice to call you 'father.'
+Happy years are yet in store for you."
+
+Maltravers did not listen to these vain and hollow consolations.  With
+his head drooping on his bosom, his whole form unnerved, the large tears
+rolling unheeded down his cheeks, he seemed the very picture of a
+broken-hearted man, whom fate never again could raise from despair.  He,
+who had, for years, so cased himself in pride, on whose very front was
+engraved the victory over passion and misfortune, whose step had trod the
+earth in the royalty of the conqueror; the veriest slave that crawls bore
+not a spirit more humbled, fallen, or subdued!  He who had looked with
+haughty eyes on the infirmities of others, who had disdained to serve his
+race because of their human follies and partial frailties,--_he_, even
+_he_, the Pharisee of Genius,--had but escaped by a chance, and by the
+hand of the man he suspected and despised, from a crime at which nature
+herself recoils,--which all law, social and divine, stigmatizes as
+inexpiable, which the sternest imagination of the very heathen had
+invented as the gloomiest catastrophe that can befall the wisdom and the
+pride of mortals!  But one step farther, and the fabulous OEdipus had not
+been more accursed!
+
+Such thoughts as these, unformed, confused, but strong enough to bow him
+to the dust, passed through the mind of this wretched man.  He had been
+familiar with grief, he had been dull to enjoyment; sad and bitter
+memories had consumed his manhood: but pride had been left him still; and
+he had dared in his secret heart to say, "I can defy Fate!"  Now the bolt
+had fallen; Pride was shattered into fragments, Self-abasement was his
+companion, Shame sat upon his prostrate soul.  The Future had no hope
+left in store.  Nothing was left for him but to die!
+
+Lord Vargrave gazed at him in real pain, in sincere compassion; for his
+nature, wily, deceitful, perfidious though it was, had cruelty only so
+far as was necessary to the unrelenting execution of his schemes.  No
+pity could swerve him from a purpose; but he had enough of the man within
+him to feel pity not the less, even for his own victim!  At length
+Maltravers lifted his head, and waved his hand gently to Lord Vargrave.
+
+"All is now explained," said he, in a feeble voice; "our interview is
+over.  I must be alone; I have yet to collect my reason, to commune
+calmly and deliberately with myself; I have to write to her--to invent,
+to lie,--I, who believed I could never, never utter, even to an enemy,
+what was false! And I must not soften the blow to her.  I must not utter
+a word of love,--love, it is incest!  I must endeavour brutally to crush
+out the very affection I created!  She must hate me!--oh, _teach_ her to
+hate me!  Blacken my name, traduce my motives,--let her believe them
+levity or perfidy, what you will.  So will she forget me the sooner; so
+will she the easier bear the sorrow which the father brings upon the
+child.  And _she_ has not sinned!  O Heaven, the sin was mine!  Let my
+punishment be a sacrifice that Thou wilt accept for her!"
+
+Lord Vargrave attempted again to console; but this time the words died
+upon his lips.  His arts failed him.  Maltravers turned impatiently away
+and pointed to the door.
+
+"I will see you again," said he, "before I quit Paris; leave your address
+below."
+
+Vargrave was not, perhaps, unwilling to terminate a scene so painful: he
+muttered a few incoherent words, and abruptly withdrew.  He heard the
+door locked behind him as he departed.  Ernest Maltravers was
+alone!--what a solitude!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+  PITY me not, but lend thy serious hearing
+  To what I shall unfold.--_Hamlet_.
+
+
+LETTER FROM ERNEST MALTRAVERS TO EVELYN CAMERON.
+
+
+EVELYN!
+
+All that you have read of faithlessness and perfidy will seem tame to you
+when compared with that conduct which you are doomed to meet from me.  We
+must part, and for ever.  We have seen each other for the last time.  It
+is bootless even to ask the cause.  Believe that I am fickle, false,
+heartless,--that a whim has changed me, if you will.  My resolve is
+unalterable.  We meet no more even as friends.  I do not ask you either
+to forgive or to remember me.  Look on me as one wholly unworthy even of
+resentment!  Do not think that I write this in madness or in fever or
+excitement.  Judge me not by my seeming illness this morning.  I invent
+no excuse, no extenuation, for my broken faith and perjured vows.
+Calmly, coldly, and deliberately I write; and thus writing, I renounce
+your love.
+
+This language is wanton cruelty,--it is fiendish insult,--is it not,
+Evelyn?  Am I not a villain?  Are you not grateful for your escape?  Do
+you not look on the past with a shudder at the precipice on which you
+stood?
+
+I have done with this subject,--I turn to another.  We are parted,
+Evelyn, and forever.  Do not fancy,--I repeat, do not fancy that there is
+any error, any strange infatuation on my mind, that there is any
+possibility that the sentence can be annulled.  It were almost easier to
+call the dead from the grave than bring us again together, as we were and
+as we hoped to be.  Now that you are convinced of that truth, learn, as
+soon as you have recovered the first shock of knowing how much wickedness
+there is on earth,--learn to turn to the future for happier and more
+suitable ties than those you could have formed with me.  You are very
+young; in youth our first impressions are lively but evanescent,--you
+will wonder hereafter at having fancied you loved me.  Another and a
+fairer image will replace mine.  This is what I desire and pray for.  _As
+soon as I learn that you love another, that you are wedded to another, I
+will re-appear in the world; till then, I am a wanderer and an exile.
+Your hand alone can efface from my brow the brand of Cain!_  When I am
+gone, Lord Vargrave will probably renew his suit.  I would rather you
+married one of your own years,--one whom you could love fondly, one who
+would chase away every remembrance of the wretch who now forsakes you.
+But perhaps I have mistaken Lord Vargrave's character; perhaps he may be
+worthier of you than I deemed (_I_ who set up for the censor of other
+men!); perhaps he may both win and deserve your affection.
+
+Evelyn, farewell!  God, who tempers the wind to the shorn lamb, will
+watch over you!
+
+          ERNEST MALTRAVERS.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+  OUR acts our angels are, or good or ill,
+  The fatal shadows that walk by us still.--JOHN FLETCHER.
+
+THE next morning came; the carriage was at the door of Maltravers, to
+bear him away he cared not whither.  Where could he fly from memory?  He
+had just despatched the letter to Evelyn,--a letter studiously written
+for the object of destroying all the affection to which he had so fondly
+looked as the last charm of life.  He was now only waiting for Vargrave,
+to whom he had sent, and who hastened to obey the summons.
+
+When Lumley arrived, he was shocked at the alteration which a single
+night had effected in the appearance of Maltravers; but he was surprised
+and relieved to find him calm and self-possessed.
+
+"Vargrave," said Maltravers, "whatever our past coldness, henceforth I
+owe to you an eternal gratitude; and henceforth this awful secret makes
+between us an indissoluble bond.  If I have understood you rightly,
+neither Alice nor other living being than yourself know that in me,
+Ernest Maltravers, stands the guilty object of Alice's first love.  Let
+that secret still be kept; relieve Alice's mind from the apprehension of
+learning that the man who betrayed her yet lives: he will not live long!
+I leave time and method of explanation to your own judgment and
+acuteness.  Now for Evelyn."  Here Maltravers stated generally the tone
+of the letter he had written.  Vargrave listened thoughtfully.
+
+"Maltravers," said he, "it is right to try first the effect of your
+letter.  But if it fail, if it only serve to inflame the imagination and
+excite the interest, if Evelyn still continue to love you, if that love
+preys upon her, if it should undermine health and spirit, if it should
+destroy her?"
+
+Maltravers groaned.  Lumley proceeded: "I say this not to wound you, but
+to provide against all circumstances.  I too have spent the night in
+revolving what is best to be done in such a case; and this is the plan I
+have formed.  Let us, if need be, tell the truth to Evelyn, robbing the
+truth only of its shame.  Nay, nay, listen.  Why not say that under a
+borrowed name and in the romance of early youth you knew and loved Alice
+(though in innocence and honour)?  Your tender age, the difference of
+rank, forbade your union.  Her father, discovering your clandestine
+correspondence, suddenly removed her from the country, and destroyed all
+clew for your inquiries.  You lost sight of each other,--each was taught
+to believe the other dead.  Alice was compelled by her father to marry
+Mr. Cameron; and after his death, her poverty and her love for her only
+child induced her to accept my uncle.  You have now learned all,--have
+learned that Evelyn is the daughter of your first love, the daughter of
+one who adores you still, and whose life your remembrance has for so many
+years embittered.  Evelyn herself will at once comprehend all the
+scruples of a delicate mind; Evelyn herself will recoil from the thought
+of making the child the rival to the mother.  She will understand why you
+have flown from her; she will sympathize with your struggles; she will
+recall the constant melancholy of Alice; she will hope that the ancient
+love may be renewed, and efface all grief; Generosity and Duty alike will
+urge her to conquer her own affection!  And hereafter, when time has
+restored you both, father and child may meet with such sentiments as
+father and child may own!"
+
+Maltravers was silent for some minutes; at length he said abruptly, "And
+you really loved her, Vargrave,--you love her still?  Your dearest care
+must be her welfare."
+
+"It is! indeed, it is!"
+
+"Then I must trust to your discretion; I can have no other confidant; I
+myself am not fit to judge.  My mind is darkened--you may be right--I
+think so."
+
+"One word more,--she may discredit my tale, if unsupported.  Will you
+write one line to me to say that I am authorized to reveal the secret,
+and that it is known only to me?  I will not use it unless I should think
+it absolutely required."
+
+Hastily and mechanically Maltravers wrote a few words to the effect of
+what Lumley had suggested.  "I will inform you," he said to Vargrave as
+he gave him the paper, "of whatever spot may become my asylum; and you
+can communicate to me all that I dread and long to hear; but let no man
+know the refuge of despair!"
+
+There was positively a tear in Vargrave's cold eye,--the only tear that
+had glistened there for many years; he paused irresolute, then advanced,
+again halted, muttered to himself, and turned aside.
+
+"As for the world," Lumley resumed, after a pause, "your engagement has
+been public,--some public account of its breach must be invented.  You
+have always been considered a proud man; we will say that it was low
+birth on the side of both mother and father (the last only just
+discovered) that broke off the alliance!"
+
+Vargrave was talking to the deaf; what cared Maltravers for the world?
+He hastened from the room, threw himself into his carriage, and Vargrave
+was left to plot, to hope, and to aspire.
+
+
+
+BOOK X.
+
+  "A dream!"--HOMER, I, 3.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+  QUALIS ubi in lucem coluber
+  .  .  .  Mala gramina pastus.*--VIRGIL.
+
+  Pars minima est ipsa puella sui.**--OVID.
+
+  * "As when a snake glides into light, having fed on pernicious
+    pastures."
+
+  ** "The girl is the least part of himself."
+
+IT would be superfluous, and, perhaps, a sickening task, to detail at
+length the mode and manner in which Vargrave coiled his snares round the
+unfortunate girl whom his destiny had marked out for his prey.  He was
+right in foreseeing that, after the first amazement caused by the letter
+of Maltravers, Evelyn would feel resentment crushed beneath her certainty
+of his affection her incredulity at his self-accusations, and her secret
+conviction that some reverse, some misfortune he was unwilling she should
+share, was the occasion of his farewell and flight.  Vargrave therefore
+very soon communicated to Evelyn the tale he had suggested to Maltravers.
+He reminded her of the habitual sorrow, the evidence of which was so
+visible in Lady Vargrave; of her indifference to the pleasures of the
+world; of her sensitive shrinking from all recurrence to her early fate.
+"The secret of this," said he, "is in a youthful and most fervent
+attachment; your mother loved a young stranger above her in rank, who
+(his head being full of German romance) was then roaming about the
+country on pedestrian and adventurous excursions, under the assumed name
+of Butler.  By him she was most ardently beloved in return.  Her father,
+perhaps, suspected the rank of her lover, and was fearful of her honour
+being compromised.  He was a strange man, that father! and I know not his
+real character and motives; but he suddenly withdrew his daughter from
+the suit and search of her lover,--they saw each other no more; her lover
+mourned her as one dead.  In process of time your mother was constrained
+by her father to marry Mr. Cameron, and was left a widow with an only
+child,--yourself: she was poor;--very poor! and her love and anxiety for
+you at last induced her to listen to the addresses of my late uncle; for
+your sake she married again; again death dissolved the tie!  But still,
+unceasingly and faithfully, she recalled that first love, the memory of
+which darkened and embittered all her life, and still she lived upon the
+hope to meet with the lost again.  At last, and most recently, it was my
+fate to discover that the object of this unconquerable affection
+lived,--was still free in hand if not in heart: you behold the lover of
+your mother in Ernest Maltravers!  It devolved on me (an invidious--a
+reluctant duty) to inform Maltravers of the identity of Lady Vargrave
+with the Alice of his boyish passion; to prove to him her suffering,
+patient, unsubdued affection; to convince him that the sole hope left to
+her in life was that of one day or other beholding him once again.  You
+know Maltravers,--his high-wrought, sensitive, noble character; he
+recoiled in terror from the thought of making his love to the daughter
+the last and bitterest affliction to the mother he had so loved; knowing
+too how completely that mother had entwined herself round your
+affections, he shuddered at the pain and self-reproach that would be
+yours when you should discover to whom you had been the rival, and whose
+the fond hopes and dreams that your fatal beauty had destroyed.
+Tortured, despairing, and half beside himself, he has fled from this
+ill-omened passion, and in solitude he now seeks to subdue that passion.
+Touched by the woe, the grief, of the Alice of his youth, it is his
+intention, as soon as he can know you restored to happiness and content,
+to hasten to your mother, and offer his future devotion as the fulfilment
+of former vows.  On you, and you alone, it depends to restore Maltravers
+to the world,--on you alone it depends to bless the remaining years of
+the mother who so dearly loves you!"
+
+It may be easily conceived with what sensations of wonder, compassion,
+and dismay, Evelyn listened to this tale, the progress of which her
+exclamations, her sobs, often interrupted.  She would write instantly to
+her mother, to Maltravers.  Oh, how gladly she would relinquish his suit:
+How cheerfully promise to rejoice in that desertion which brought
+happiness to the mother she had so loved!
+
+"Nay," said Vargrave, "your mother must not know, till the intelligence
+can be breathed by his lips, and softened by his protestations of
+returning affection, that the mysterious object of her early romance is
+that Maltravers whose vows have been so lately offered to her own child.
+Would not such intelligence shock all pride, and destroy all hope?  How
+could she then consent to the sacrifice which Maltravers is prepared to
+make?  No! not till you are another's--not (to use the words of
+Maltravers) till you are a happy and beloved wife--must your mother
+receive the returning homage of Maltravers; not till then can she know
+where that homage has been recently rendered; not till then can
+Maltravers feel justified in the atonement he meditates.  He is willing
+to sacrifice himself; he trembles at the thought of sacrificing you!  Say
+nothing to your mother, till from her own lips she tells you that she has
+learned all."
+
+Could Evelyn hesitate; could Evelyn doubt?  To allay the fears, to fulfil
+the prayers of the man whose conduct appeared so generous, to restore him
+to peace and the world; above all, to pluck from the heart of that
+beloved and gentle mother the rankling dart, to shed happiness over her
+fate, to reunite her with the loved and lost,--what sacrifice too great
+for this?
+
+Ah, why was Legard absent?  Why did she believe him capricious, light,
+and false?  Why had she shut her softest thoughts from her soul?  But
+he--the true lover--was afar, and his true love unknown! and Vargrave,
+the watchful serpent, was at hand.
+
+In a fatal hour, and in the transport of that enthusiasm which inspires
+alike our more rash and our more sublime deeds, which makes us alike
+dupes and martyrs,--the enthusiasm that tramples upon self, that forfeits
+all things to a high-wrought zeal for others, Evelyn consented to become
+the wife of Vargrave!  Nor was she at first sensible of the
+sacrifice,--sensible of anything but the glow of a noble spirit and an
+approving conscience.  Yes, thus, and thus alone, did she obey both
+duties,--that, which she had well-nigh abandoned, to her dead benefactor,
+and that to the living mother.  Afterwards came a dread reaction; and
+then, at last, that passive and sleep-like resignation, which is Despair
+under a milder name.  Yes,--such a lot had been predestined from the
+first; in vain had she sought to fly it: Fate had overtaken her, and she
+must submit to the decree!
+
+She was most anxious that the intelligence of the new bond might be
+transmitted instantly to Maltravers.  Vargrave promised, but took care
+not to perform.  He was too acute not to know that in so sudden a step
+Evelyn's motives would be apparent, and his own suit indelicate and
+ungenerous.  He was desirous that Maltravers should learn nothing till
+the vows had been spoken, and the indissoluble chain forged.  Afraid to
+leave Evelyn, even for a day, afraid to trust her in England to an
+interview with her mother,--he remained at Paris, and hurried on all the
+requisite preparations.  He sent to Douce, who came in person, with the
+deeds necessary for the transfer of the money for the purchase of Lisle
+Court, which was now to be immediately completed.  The money was to be
+lodged in Mr. Douce's bank till the lawyers had completed their
+operations; and in a few weeks, when Evelyn had attained the allotted
+age, Vargrave trusted to see himself lord alike of the betrothed bride,
+and the hereditary lands of the crushed Maltravers.  He refrained from
+stating to Evelyn who was the present proprietor of the estate to become
+hers; he foresaw all the objections she would form;--and, indeed, she was
+unable to think, to talk, of such matters.  One favour she had asked, and
+it had been granted,--that she was to be left unmolested to her solitude
+till the fatal day.  Shut up in her lonely room, condemned not to confide
+her thoughts, to seek for sympathy even in her mother,--the poor girl in
+vain endeavoured to keep up to the tenor of her first enthusiasm, and
+reconcile herself to a step, which, however, she was heroine enough not
+to retract or to repent, even while she recoiled from its contemplation.
+
+Lady Doltimore, amazed at what had passed,--at the flight of Maltravers,
+the success of Lumley,--unable to account for it, to extort explanation
+from Vargrave or from Evelyn, was distracted by the fear of some
+villanous deceit which she could not fathom.  To escape herself she
+plunged yet more eagerly into the gay vortex.  Vargrave, suspicious, and
+fearful of trusting to what she might say in her nervous and excited
+temper if removed from his watchful eye, deemed himself compelled to
+hover round her.  His manner, his conduct, were most guarded; but
+Caroline herself, jealous, irritated, unsettled, evinced at times a right
+both to familiarity and anger, which drew upon her and himself the sly
+vigilance of slander.  Meanwhile Lord Doltimore, though too cold and
+proud openly to notice what passed around him, seemed disturbed and
+anxious.  His manner to Vargrave was distant; he shunned all
+_tete-a-tetes_ with his wife.  Little, however, of this did Lumley heed.
+A few weeks more, and all would be well and safe.  Vargrave did not
+publish his engagement with Evelyn: he sought carefully to conceal it
+till the very day was near at hand; but it was whispered abroad; some
+laughed, some believed.  Evelyn herself was seen nowhere.  De Montaigne
+had, at first, been indignantly incredulous at the report that Maltravers
+had broken off a connection he had so desired from a motive so weak and
+unworthy as that of mere family pride.  A letter from Maltravers, who
+confided to him and Vargrave alone the secret of his retreat, reluctantly
+convinced him that the wise are but pompous fools; he was angry and
+disgusted; and still more so when Valerie and Teresa (for female friends
+stand by us right or wrong) hinted at excuses, or surmised that other
+causes lurked behind the one alleged.  But his thoughts were much drawn
+from this subject by increasing anxiety for Cesarini, whose abode and
+fate still remained an alarming mystery.
+
+It so happened that Lord Doltimore, who had always had a taste for the
+antique, and who was greatly displeased with his own family-seat because
+it was comfortable and modern, fell, from _ennui_, into a habit,
+fashionable enough in Paris, of buying curiosities and cabinets,--
+high-back chairs and oak-carvings; and with this habit returned the
+desire and the affection for Burleigh.  Understanding from Lumley that
+Maltravers had probably left his native land forever, he imagined it
+extremely probable that the latter would now consent to the sale,
+and he begged Vargrave to forward a letter from him to that effect.
+
+Vargrave made some excuse, for he felt that nothing could be more
+indelicate than such an application forwarded through his hands at such a
+time; and Doltimore, who had accidentally heard De Montaigne confess that
+he knew the address of Maltravers, quietly sent his letter to the
+Frenchman, and, without mentioning its contents, begged him to forward
+it.  De Montaigne did so.  Now it is very strange how slight men and
+slight incidents bear on the great events of life; but that simple letter
+was instrumental to a new revolution in the strange history of
+Maltravers.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+  QUID frustra simulacra fugacia captas?--
+  Quod petis est nusquam.*--OVID: _Met._ iii. 432.
+
+  * "Why, in vain, do you catch at fleeting shadows?
+     That which you seek is nowhere."
+
+TO no clime dedicated to the indulgence of majestic griefs or to the soft
+melancholy of regret--not to thy glaciers, or thy dark-blue lakes,
+beautiful Switzerland, mother of many exiles; nor to thy fairer earth and
+gentler heaven, sweet Italy,--fled the agonized Maltravers.  Once, in his
+wanderings, he had chanced to pass by a landscape so steeped in sullen
+and desolate gloom, that it had made a powerful and uneffaced impression
+upon his mind: it was amidst those swamps and morasses that formerly
+surrounded the castle of Gil de Retz, the ambitious Lord, the dreaded
+Necromancer, who perished at the stake, after a career of such power and
+splendour as seemed almost to justify the dark belief in his
+preternatural agencies.*
+
+  * See, for description of this scenery, and the fate of De Retz,
+    the high-wrought and glowing romance by Mr. Ritchie called
+    "The Magician."
+
+Here, in a lonely and wretched inn, remote from other habitations,
+Maltravers fixed himself.  In gentler griefs there is a sort of luxury in
+bodily discomfort; in his inexorable and unmitigated anguish, bodily
+discomfort was not felt.  There is a kind of magnetism in extreme woe, by
+which the body itself seems laid asleep, and knows no distinction between
+the bed of Damiens and the rose-couch of the Sybarite.  He left his
+carriage and servants at a post-house some miles distant.  He came to
+this dreary abode alone; and in that wintry season, and that most
+disconsolate scene, his gloomy soul found something congenial, something
+that did not mock him, in the frowns of the haggard and dismal Nature.
+Vain would it be to describe what he then felt, what he then endured.
+Suffice it that, through all, the diviner strength of man was not wholly
+crushed, and that daily, nightly, hourly, he prayed to the Great
+Comforter to assist him in wrestling against a guilty love.  No man
+struggles so honestly, so ardently as he did, utterly in vain; for in us
+all, if we would but cherish it, there is a spirit that must rise at
+last--a crowned, if bleeding conqueror--over Fate and all the Demons!
+
+One day after a prolonged silence from Vargrave, whose letters all
+breathed comfort and assurance in Evelyn's progressive recovery of spirit
+and hope, his messenger returned from the post-town with a letter in the
+hand of De Montaigne.  It contained, in a blank envelope (De Montaigne's
+silence told him how much he had lost in the esteem of his friend), the
+communication of Lord Doltimore.  It ran thus:--
+
+
+MY DEAR SIR,--As I hear that your plans are likely to make you a long
+resident on the Continent, may I again inquire if you would be induced to
+dispose of Burleigh?  I am willing to give more than its real value, and
+would raise a mortgage on my own property sufficient to pay off, at once,
+the whole purchase-money.  Perhaps you may be the more induced to the
+sale from the circumstance of having an example in the head of your
+family, Colonel Maltravers, as I learn through Lord Vargrave, having
+resolved to dispose of Lisle Court.  Waiting your answer,
+
+     I am, dear Sir, truly yours,
+
+          DOLTIMORE.
+
+
+"Ay," said Maltravers, bitterly, crushing the letter in his hand, "let
+our name be blotted out from the land, and our hearths pass to the
+stranger.  How could I ever visit the place where I first saw _her_?"
+
+He resolved at once,--he would write to England, and place the matter in
+the hands of agents.  This was but a short-lived diversion to his
+thoughts, and their cloudy darkness soon gathered round him again.
+
+What I am now about to relate may appear, to a hasty criticism, to savour
+of the Supernatural; but it is easily accounted for by ordinary agencies,
+and it is strictly to the letter of the truth.
+
+In his sleep that night a dream appeared to Maltravers.  He thought he
+was alone in the old library at Burleigh, and gazing on the portrait of
+his mother; as he so gazed, he fancied that a cold and awful tremor
+seized upon him, that he in vain endeavoured to withdraw his eyes from
+the canvas--his sight was chained there by an irresistible spell.  Then
+it seemed to him that the portrait gradually changed,--the features the
+same, but the bloom vanished into a white and ghastly hue; the colours of
+the dress faded, their fashion grew more large and flowing, but heavy and
+rigid as if cut in stone,--the robes of the grave.  But on the face there
+was a soft and melancholy smile, that took from its livid aspect the
+natural horror; the lips moved, and, it seemed as if without a sound, the
+released soul spoke to that which the earth yet owned.
+
+"Return," it said, "to thy native land, and thine own home.  Leave not
+the last relic of her who bore and yet watches over thee to stranger
+hands.  Thy good Angel shall meet thee at thy hearth!"
+
+The voice ceased.  With a violent effort Maltravers broke the spell that
+had forbidden his utterance.  He called aloud, and the dream vanished: he
+was broad awake, his hair erect, the cold dews on his brow.  The pallet,
+rather than bed on which he lay, was opposite to the window, and the
+wintry moonlight streamed wan and spectral into the cheerless room.  But
+between himself and the light there seemed to stand a shape, a shadow,
+that into which the portrait had changed in his dream,--that which had
+accosted and chilled his soul.  He sprang forward, "My mother! even in
+the grave canst thou bless thy wretched son!  Oh, leave me not--say that
+thou--" The delusion vanished, and Maltravers fell back insensible.
+
+It was long in vain, when, in the healthful light of day, he revolved
+this memorable dream, that Maltravers sought to convince himself that
+dreams need no ministers from heaven or hell to bring the gliding
+falsehoods along the paths of sleep; that the effect of that dream
+itself, on his shattered nerves, his excited fancy, was the real and sole
+raiser of the spectre he had thought to behold on waking.  Long was it
+before his judgment could gain the victory, and reason disown the empire
+of a turbulent imagination; and even when at length reluctantly
+convinced, the dream still haunted him, and he could not shake it from
+his breast.  He longed anxiously for the next night; it came, but it
+brought neither dreams nor sleep, and the rain beat, and the winds
+howled, against the casement.  Another night, and the moon was again
+bright; and he fell into a deep sleep; no vision disturbed or hallowed
+it.  He woke ashamed of his own expectation.  But the event, such as it
+was, by giving a new turn to his thoughts, had roused and relieved his
+spirit, and misery sat upon him with a lighter load.  Perhaps, too, to
+that still haunting recollection was mainly owing a change in his former
+purpose.  He would still sell the old Hall; but he would first return,
+and remove that holy portrait, with pious hands; he would garner up and
+save all that had belonged to her whose death had been his birth.  Ah,
+never had she known for what trials the infant had been reserved!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+            THE weary hours steal on
+  And flaky darkness breaks.--_Richard III._
+
+ONCE more, suddenly and unlooked for, the lord of Burleigh appeared at
+the gates of his deserted hall! and again the old housekeeper and her
+satellites were thrown into dismay and consternation.  Amidst blank and
+welcomeless faces, Maltravers passed into his study: and as soon as the
+logs burned and the bustle was over, and he was left alone, he took up
+the light and passed into the adjoining library.  It was then about nine
+o'clock in the evening; the air of the room felt damp and chill, and the
+light but faintly struggled against the mournful gloom of the dark
+book-lined walls and sombre tapestry.  He placed the candle on the table,
+and drawing aside the curtain that veiled the portrait, gazed with deep
+emotion, not unmixed with awe, upon the beautiful face whose eyes seemed
+fixed upon him with mournful sweetness.  There is something mystical
+about those painted ghosts of ourselves, that survive our very dust!
+Who, gazing upon them long and wistfully, does not half fancy that they
+seem not insensible to his gaze, as if we looked our own life into them,
+and the eyes that followed us where we moved were animated by a stranger
+art than the mere trick of the limner's colours?
+
+With folded arms, rapt and motionless, Maltravers contemplated the form
+that, by the upward rays of the flickering light, seemed to bend down
+towards the desolate son.  How had he ever loved the memory of his
+mother! how often in his childish years had he stolen away, and shed wild
+tears for the loss of that dearest of earthly ties, never to be
+compensated, never to be replaced!  How had he respected, how sympathized
+with the very repugnance which his father had at first testified towards
+him, as the innocent cause of her untimely death!  He had never seen
+her,--never felt her passionate kiss; and yet it seemed to him, as he
+gazed, as if he had known her for years.  That strange kind of inner and
+spiritual memory which often recalls to us places and persons we have
+never seen before, and which Platonists would resolve to the unquenched
+and struggling consciousness of a former life, stirred within him, and
+seemed to whisper, "You were united in the old time."  "Yes!" he said,
+half aloud, "we will never part again.  Blessed be the delusion of the
+dream that recalled to my heart the remembrance of thee, which, at least,
+I can cherish without a sin.  'My good angel shall meet me at my hearth!'
+so didst thou say in the solemn vision.  Ah, does thy soul watch over me
+still?  How long shall it be before the barrier is broken! how long
+before we meet, but not in dreams!"
+
+The door opened, the housekeeper looked in.  "I beg pardon, sir, but I
+thought your honour would excuse the liberty, though I know it is very
+bold to--"
+
+"What is the matter?  What do you want?"
+
+"Why, sir, poor Mrs. Elton is dying,--they say she cannot get over the
+night; and as the carriage drove by the cottage window, the nurse told
+her that the squire was returned; and she has sent up the nurse to
+entreat to see your honour before she dies.  I am sure I was most loth to
+disturb you, sir, with such a message; and says I, the squire has only
+just come off a journey--"
+
+"Who is Mrs. Elton?"
+
+"Don't your honour remember the poor woman that was run over, and you
+were so good to, and brought into the house the day Miss Cameron--"
+
+"I remember,--say I will be with her in a few minutes.  About to die!"
+muttered Maltravers; "she is to be envied,--the prisoner is let loose,
+the bark leaves the desert isle!"
+
+He took his hat and walked across the park, dimly lighted by the stars,
+to the cottage of the sufferer.  He reached her bedside, and took her
+hand kindly.  She seemed to rally at the sight of him; the nurse was
+dismissed, they were left alone.  Before morning, the spirit had left
+that humble clay; and the mists of dawn were heavy on the grass as
+Maltravers returned home.  There were then on his countenance the traces
+of recent and strong emotion, and his step was elastic, and his cheek
+flushed.  Hope once more broke within him, but mingled with doubt, and
+faintly combated by reason.  In another hour Maltravers was on his way to
+Brook-Green.  Impatient, restless, fevered, he urged on the horses, he
+sowed the road with gold; and at length the wheels stopped before the
+door of the village inn.  He descended, asked the way to the curate's
+house; and crossing the burial-ground, and passing under the shadow of
+the old yew-tree, entered Aubrey's garden.  The curate was at home, and
+the conference that ensued was of deep and breathless interest to the
+visitor.
+
+It is now time to place before the reader, in due order and connection,
+the incidents of that story, the knowledge of which, at that period,
+broke in detached and fragmentary portions on Maltravers.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+  I CANNA chuse, but ever will
+  Be luving to thy father still,
+  Whaireir he gae, whaireir he ryde,
+  My luve with him maun still abyde;
+  In weil or wae, whaireir he gae,
+  Mine heart can neir depart him frae.
+                 Lady Anne Bothwell's Lament.
+
+IT may be remembered that in the earlier part of this continuation of the
+history of Maltravers it was stated that Aubrey had in early life met
+with the common lot of a disappointed affection.  Eleanor Westbrook, a
+young woman of his own humble rank, had won, and seemed to return, his
+love; but of that love she was not worthy.  Vain, volatile, and
+ambitious, she forsook the poor student for a more brilliant marriage.
+She accepted the hand of a merchant, who was caught by her beauty, and
+who had the reputation of great wealth.  They settled in London, and
+Aubrey lost all traces of her.  She gave birth to an only daughter: and
+when that child had attained her fourteenth year, her husband suddenly,
+and seemingly without cause, put an end to his existence.  The cause,
+however, was apparent before he was laid in his grave.  He was involved
+far beyond his fortune,--he had died to escape beggary and a jail.  A
+small annuity, not exceeding one hundred pounds, had been secured on the
+widow.  On this income she retired with her child into the country; and
+chance, the vicinity of some distant connections, and the cheapness of
+the place, concurred to fix her residence in the outskirts of the town of
+C-----.  Characters that in youth have been most volatile and most
+worldly, often when bowed down and dejected by the adversity which they
+are not fitted to encounter, become the most morbidly devout; they ever
+require an excitement, and when earth denies, they seek it impatiently
+from heaven.
+
+This was the case with Mrs. Westbrook; and this new turn of mind brought
+her naturally into contact with the principal saint of the neighbourhood,
+Mr. Richard Templeton.  We have seen that that gentleman was not happy in
+his first marriage; death had not then annulled the bond.  He was of an
+ardent and sensual temperament, and quietly, under the broad cloak of his
+doctrines, he indulged his constitutional tendencies.  Perhaps in this
+respect he was not worse than nine men out of ten.  But then he professed
+to be better than nine hundred thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine men
+out of a million!  To a fault of temperament was added the craft of
+hypocrisy, and the vulgar error became a dangerous vice.  Upon Mary
+Westbrook, the widow's daughter, he gazed with eyes that were far from
+being the eyes of the spirit.  Even at the age of fourteen she charmed
+him; but when, after watching her ripening beauty expand, three years
+were added to that age, Mr. Templeton was most deeply in love.  Mary was
+indeed lovely,--her disposition naturally good and gentle, but her
+education worse than neglected.  To the frivolities and meannesses of a
+second-rate fashion, inculcated into her till her father's death, had now
+succeeded the quackeries, the slavish subservience, the intolerant
+bigotries, of a transcendental superstition.  In a change so abrupt and
+violent, the whole character of the poor girl was shaken; her principles
+unsettled, vague, and unformed, and naturally of mediocre and even feeble
+intellect, she clung to the first plank held out to her in "that wide sea
+of wax" in which "she halted."  Early taught to place the most implicit
+faith in the dictates of Mr. Templeton, fastening her belief round him as
+the vine winds its tendrils round the oak, yielding to his ascendency,
+and pleased with his fostering and almost caressing manner, no confessor
+in Papal Italy ever was more dangerous to village virtue than Richard
+Templeton (who deemed himself the archetype of the only pure
+Protestantism) to the morals and heart of Mary Westbrook.
+
+Mrs. Westbrook, whose constitution had been prematurely broken by long
+participation in the excesses of London dissipation and by the reverse of
+fortune which still preyed upon a spirit it had rather soured than
+humbled, died when Mary was eighteen.  Templeton became the sole friend,
+comforter, and supporter of the daughter.
+
+In an evil hour (let us trust not from premeditated villany),--an hour
+when the heart of one was softened by grief and gratitude, and the
+conscience of the other laid asleep by passion, the virtue of Mary
+Westbrook was betrayed.  Her sorrow and remorse, his own fears of
+detection and awakened self-reproach, occasioned Templeton the most
+anxious and poignant regret.  There had been a young woman in Mrs.
+Westbrook's service, who had left it a short time before the widow died,
+in consequence of her marriage.  Her husband ill-used her; and glad to
+escape from him and prove her gratitude to her employer's daughter, of
+whom she had been extremely fond, she had returned to Miss Westbrook
+after the funeral of her mother.  The name of this woman was Sarah Miles.
+Templeton saw that Sarah more than suspected his connection with Mary; it
+was necessary to make a confidant,--he selected her.  Miss Westbrook was
+removed to a distant part of the country, and Templeton visited her
+cautiously and rarely.  Four months afterwards, Mrs. Templeton died, and
+the husband was free to repair his wrong.  Oh, how he then repented of
+what had passed! but four months' delay, and all this sin and sorrow
+might have been saved!  He was now racked with perplexity and doubt: his
+unfortunate victim was advanced in her pregnancy.  It was necessary, if
+he wished his child to be legitimate--still more if he wished to preserve
+the honour of its mother--that he should not hesitate long in the
+reparation to which duty and conscience urged him.  But on the other
+hand, he, the saint, the oracle, the immaculate example for all forms,
+proprieties, and decorums, to scandalize the world by so rapid and
+premature a hymen--
+
+  "Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
+   Had left the flushing in his galled eyes,
+   To marry."
+
+No! he could not brave the sneer of the gossips, the triumph of his foes,
+the dejection of his disciples, by so rank and rash a folly.  But still
+Mary pined so, he feared for her health--for his own unborn offspring.
+There was a middle path,--a compromise between duty and the world; he
+grasped at it as most men similarly situated would have done,--they were
+married, but privately, and under feigned names: the secret was kept
+close.  Sarah Miles was the only witness acquainted with the real
+condition and names of the parties.
+
+Reconciled to herself, the bride recovered health and spirits, Templeton
+formed the most sanguine hopes.  He resolved, as soon as the confinement
+was over, to go abroad; Mary should follow; in a foreign land they should
+be publicly married; they would remain some years on the Continent; when
+he returned, his child's age could be put back a year.  Oh, nothing could
+be more clear and easy!
+
+Death shivered into atoms all the plans of Mr. Templeton. Mary suffered
+most severely in childbirth, and died a few weeks afterwards.  Templeton
+at first was inconsolable, but worldly thoughts were great comforters.
+He had done all that conscience could do to atone a sin, and he was freed
+from a most embarrassing dilemma, and from a temporary banishment utterly
+uncongenial and unpalatable to his habits and ideas.  But now he had a
+child,--a legitimate child, successor to his name, his wealth; a
+first-born child,--the only one ever sprung from him, the prop and hope
+of advancing years!  On this child he doted with all that paternal
+passion which the hardest and coldest men often feel the most for their
+own flesh and blood--for fatherly love is sometimes but a transfer of
+self-love from one fund to another.
+
+Yet this child--this darling that he longed to show to the whole
+world--it was absolutely necessary, for the present, that he should
+conceal and disown.  It had happened that Sarah's husband died of his own
+excesses a few weeks before the birth of Templeton's child, she having
+herself just recovered from her confinement; Sarah was therefore free
+forever from her husband's vigilance and control.  To her care the
+destined heiress was committed, and her own child put out to nurse.  And
+this was the woman and this the child who had excited so much benevolent
+curiosity in the breasts of the worthy clergyman and the three old maids
+of C-----.* Alarmed at Sarah's account of the scrutiny of the parson, and
+at his own rencontre with that hawk-eyed pastor, Templeton lost no time
+in changing the abode of the nurse; and to her new residence had the
+banker bent his way, with rod and angle, on that evening which witnessed
+his adventure with Luke Darvil.** When Mr. Templeton first met Alice, his
+own child was only about thirteen or fourteen months old,--but little
+older than Alice's.  If the beauty of Mrs. Leslie's _protege_ first
+excited his coarser nature, her maternal tenderness, her anxious care for
+her little one, struck a congenial chord in the father's heart.  It
+connected him with her by a mute and unceasing sympathy.  Templeton had
+felt so deeply the alarm and pain of illicit love, he had been (as he
+profanely believed) saved from the brink of public shame by so signal an
+interference of grace, that he resolved no more to hazard his good name
+and his peace of mind upon such perilous rocks.  The dearest desire at
+his heart was to have his daughter under his roof,--to fondle, to play
+with her, to watch her growth, to win her affection.  This, at present,
+seemed impossible.  But if he were to marry,--marry a widow, to whom he
+might confide all, or a portion, of the truth; if that child could be
+passed off as hers--ah, that was the best plan!  And Templeton wanted a
+wife!  Years were creeping on him, and the day would come when a wife
+would be useful as a nurse.  But Alice was supposed to be a widow; and
+Alice was so meek, so docile, so motherly.  If she could be induced to
+remove from C-----, either part with her own child or call it her
+niece,--and adopt his.  Such, from time to time, were Templeton's
+thoughts, as he visited Alice, and found, with every visit, fresh
+evidence of her tender and beautiful disposition; such the objects which,
+in the First Part of this work, we intimated were different from those of
+mere admiration for her beauty.*** But again, worldly doubts and
+fears--the dislike of so unsuitable an alliance, the worse than lowness
+of Alice's origin, the dread of discovery for her early error--held him
+back, wavering and irresolute.  To say truth, too, her innocence and
+purity of thought kept him at a certain distance.  He was acute enough to
+see that he--even he, the great Richard Templeton--might be refused by
+the faithful Alice.
+
+  * See "Ernest Maltravers," book iv., p. 164.
+
+  ** "Ernest Maltravers," book iv., p. 181.
+
+  *** "Our banker always seemed more struck by Alice's moral
+  feelings than even by her physical beauty.  Her love for her
+  child, for instance, impressed him powerfully," etc.  "His
+  feelings altogether for Alice, the designs he entertained
+  towards her, were of a very complicated nature, and it will
+  be long, perhaps, before the reader can thoroughly comprehend
+  them."--See "Ernest Maltravers," book iv., p. 178.
+
+At last Darvil was dead; he breathed more freely, he revolved more
+seriously his projects; and at this time, Sarah, wooed by her first
+lover, wished to marry again; his secret would pass from her breast to
+her second husband's, and thence how far would it travel?  Added to this,
+Sarah's conscience grew uneasy; the brand ought to be effaced from the
+memory of the dead mother, the legitimacy of the child proclaimed; she
+became importunate, she wearied and she alarmed the pious man.  He
+therefore resolved to rid himself of the only witness to his marriage
+whose testimony he had cause to fear,--of the presence of the only one
+acquainted with his sin and the real name of the husband of Mary
+Westbrook.  He consented to Sarah's marriage with William Elton, and
+offered a liberal dowry on the condition that she should yield to the
+wish of Elton himself, an adventurous young man, who desired to try his
+fortunes in the New World.  His daughter he must remove elsewhere.
+
+While this was going on, Alice's child, long delicate and drooping,
+became seriously ill.  Symptoms of decline appeared; the physician
+recommended a milder air, and Devonshire was suggested.  Nothing could
+equal the generous, the fatherly kindness which Templeton evinced on this
+most painful occasion.  He insisted on providing Alice with the means to
+undertake the journey with ease and comfort; and poor Alice, with a heart
+heavy with gratitude and sorrow, consented for her child's sake to all he
+offered.
+
+Now the banker began to perceive that all his hopes and wishes were in
+good train.  He foresaw that the child of Alice was doomed!--that was one
+obstacle out of the way.  Alice herself was to be removed from the sphere
+of her humble calling.  In a distant county she might appear of better
+station, and under another name.  Conformably to these views, he
+suggested to her that, in proportion to the seeming wealth and
+respectability of patients, did doctors attend to their complaints.  He
+proposed that Alice should depart privately to a town many miles off;
+that there he would provide for her a carriage, and engage a servant;
+that he would do this for her as for a relation, and that she should take
+that relation's name.  To this, Alice rapt in her child, and submissive
+to all that might be for the child's benefit, passively consented.  It
+was arranged then as proposed, and under the name of Cameron, which, as
+at once a common yet a well-sounding name, occurred to his invention,
+Alice departed with her sick charge and a female attendant (who knew
+nothing of her previous calling or story), on the road to Devonshire.
+Templeton himself resolved to follow her thither in a few days; and it
+was fixed that they should meet at Exeter.
+
+It was on this melancholy journey that occurred that memorable day when
+Alice once more beheld Maltravers; and, as she believed, uttering the
+vows of love to another.* The indisposition of her child had delayed her
+some hours at the inn: the poor sufferer had fallen asleep; and Alice had
+stolen from its couch for a little while, when her eyes rested on the
+father.  Oh, how then she longed, she burned to tell him of the new
+sanctity, that, by a human life, had been added to their early love!  And
+when, crushed and sick at heart, she turned away, and believed herself
+forgotten and replaced, it was the pride of the mother rather than of the
+mistress that supported her.  She, meek creature, felt not the injury to
+herself; but _his_ child,--the sufferer, perhaps the dying one,--_there_,
+_there_ was the wrong!  No! she would not hazard the chance of a
+cold--great Heaven! perchance an _incredulous_--look upon the hushed,
+pale face above.  But little time was left for thought, for explanation,
+for discovery.  She saw him--unconscious of the ties so near, and thus
+lost--depart as a stranger from the spot; and henceforth was gone the
+sweet hope of living for the future.  Nothing was left her but the pledge
+of that which had been.  Mournful, despondent, half broken-hearted, she
+resumed her journey.  At Exeter she was joined, as agreed, by Mr.
+Templeton; and with him came a fair, a blooming, and healthful girl to
+contrast her own drooping charge.  Though but a few weeks older, you
+would have supposed the little stranger by a year the senior of Alice's
+child: the one was so well grown, so advanced; the other so backward, so
+nipped in the sickly bud.
+
+  * See "Ernest Maltravers," book v., p. 221.
+
+"You can repay me for all, for more than I have done; more than I ever
+can do for you and yours," said Templeton, "by taking this young stranger
+also under your care.  It is the child of one dear, most dear to me; an
+orphan; I know not with whom else to place it.  Let it for the present be
+supposed your own,--the elder child."
+
+Alice could refuse nothing to her benefactor; but her heart did not open
+at first to the beautiful girl, whose sparkling eyes and rosy cheeks
+mocked the languid looks and faded hues of her own darling.  But the
+sufferer seemed to hail a playmate; it smiled, it put forth its poor,
+thin hands; it uttered its inarticulate cry of pleasure, and Alice burst
+into tears, and clasped them _both_ to her heart.
+
+Mr. Templeton took care not to rest under the same roof with her he now
+seriously intended to make his wife; but he followed Alice to the
+seaside, and visited her daily.  Her infant rallied; it was tenacious of
+the upper air; it clung to life so fondly; poor child, it could not
+foresee what a bitter thing to some of us life is!  And now it was that
+Templeton, learning from Alice her adventure with her absent lover,
+learning that all hope in that quarter was gone, seized the occasion, and
+pressed his suit.  Alice at the hour was overflowing with gratitude; in
+her child's reviving looks she read all her obligations to her
+benefactor.  But still, at the word _love_, at the name of _marriage_,
+her heart recoiled; and the lost, the faithless, came back to his fatal
+throne.  In choked and broken accents, she startled the banker with the
+refusal--the faltering, tearful, but resolute refusal--of his suit.
+
+But Templeton brought new engines to work: he wooed her through her
+child; he painted all the brilliant prospects that would open to the
+infant by her marriage with him.  He would cherish, rear, provide for it
+as his own.  This shook her resolves; but this did not prevail.  He had
+recourse to a more generous appeal: he told her so much of his history
+with Mary Westbrook as commenced with his hasty and indecorous
+marriage,--attributing the haste to love! made her comprehend his
+scruples in owning the child of a union the world would be certain to
+ridicule or condemn; he expatiated on the inestimable blessings she could
+afford him, by delivering him from all embarrassment, and restoring his
+daughter, though under a borrowed name, to her father's roof.  At this
+Alice mused; at this she seemed irresolute.  She had long seen how
+inexpressibly dear to Templeton was the child confided to her care; how
+he grew pale if the slightest ailment reached her; how he chafed at the
+very wind if it visited her cheek too roughly; and she now said to him
+simply,--
+
+"Is your child, in truth, your dearest object in life?  Is it with her,
+and her alone, that your dearest hopes are connected?"
+
+"It is,--it is indeed!" said the banker, honestly surprised out of his
+gallantry; "at least," he added, recovering his self-possession, "as much
+so as is compatible with my affection for you."
+
+"And only if I marry you, and adopt her as my own, do you think that your
+secret may be safely kept, and all your wishes with respect to her be
+fulfilled?"
+
+"Only so."
+
+"And for that reason, chiefly, nay entirely, you condescend to forget
+what I have been, and seek my hand?  Well, if that were all, I owe you
+too much; my poor babe tells me too loudly what I owe you to draw back
+from anything that can give you so blessed an enjoyment.  Ah, one's
+child! one's own child, under one's own roof, it _is_ such a blessing!
+But then, if I marry you, it can be only to secure to you that object; to
+be as a mother to your child; but wife only in name to you!  I am not so
+lost as to despise myself.  I know now, though I knew it not at first,
+that I have been guilty; nothing can excuse that guilt but fidelity to
+_him_!  Oh, yes!  I never, never can be unfaithful to my babe's father!
+As for all else, dispose of me as you will."  And Alice, who from very
+innocence had uttered all this without a blush, now clasped her hands
+passionately, and left Templeton speechless with mortification and
+surprise.
+
+When he recovered himself, he affected not to understand her; but Alice
+was not satisfied, and all further conversation ceased.  He began slowly,
+and at last, and after repeated conferences and urgings, to comprehend
+how strange and stubborn in some points was the humble creature whom his
+proposals so highly honoured.  Though his daughter was indeed his first
+object in life; though for her he was willing to make a _mesalliance_,
+the extent of which it would be incumbent on him studiously to
+conceal,--yet still, the beauty of Alice awoke an earthlier sentiment
+that he was not disposed to conquer.  He was quite willing to make
+promises, and talk generously; but when it came to an oath,--a solemn, a
+binding oath--and this Alice rigidly exacted,--he was startled, and drew
+back.  Though hypocritical, he was, as we have before said, a most
+sincere believer.  He might creep through a promise with unbruised
+conscience; but he was not one who could have dared to violate an oath,
+and lay the load of perjury on his soul.  Perhaps, after all, the union
+never would have taken place, but Templeton fell ill; that soft and
+relaxing air did not agree with him; a low but dangerous fever seized
+him, and the worldly man trembled at the aspect of Death.  It was in this
+illness that Alice nursed him with a daughter's vigilance and care; and
+when at length he recovered, impressed with her zeal and kindness,
+softened by illness, afraid of the approach of solitary age,--and feeling
+more than ever his duties to his motherless child, he threw himself at
+Alice's feet, and solemnly vowed all that she required.
+
+It was during this residence in Devonshire, and especially during his
+illness, that Templeton made and cultivated the acquaintance of Mr.
+Aubrey.  The good clergyman prayed with him by his sick-bed; and when
+Templeton's danger was at its height, he sought to relieve his conscience
+by a confession of his wrongs to Mary Westbrook.  The name startled
+Aubrey; and when he learned that the lovely child who had so often sat on
+his knee, and smiled in his face, was the granddaughter of his first and
+only love, he had a new interest in her welfare, a new reason to urge
+Templeton to reparation, a new motive to desire to procure for the infant
+years of Eleanor's grandchild the gentle care of the young mother, whose
+own bereavement he sorrowfully foretold.  Perhaps the advice and
+exhortations of Aubrey went far towards assisting the conscience of Mr.
+Templeton, and reconciling him to the sacrifice he made to his affection
+for his daughter. Be that as it may, he married Alice, and Aubrey
+solemnized and blessed the chill and barren union.
+
+But now came a new and inexpressible affliction; the child of Alice had
+rallied but for a time.  The dread disease had but dallied with its prey;
+it came on with rapid and sudden force; and within a month from the day
+that saw Alice the bride of Templeton, the last hope was gone, and the
+mother was bereft and childless!
+
+The blow that stunned Alice was not, after the first natural shock of
+sympathy, an unwelcome event to the banker.  Now _his_ child would be
+Alice's sole care; now there could be no gossip, no suspicion why, in
+life and after death, he should prefer one child, supposed not his own,
+to the other.
+
+He hastened to remove Alice from the scene of her affliction.  He
+dismissed the solitary attendant who had accompanied her on her journey;
+he bore his wife to London, and finally settled, as we have seen, at a
+villa in its vicinity.  And there, more and more, day by day, centred his
+love upon the supposed daughter of Mrs. Templeton, his darling and his
+heiress, the beautiful Evelyn Cameron.
+
+For the first year or two, Templeton evinced some alarming disposition to
+escape from the oath he had imposed upon himself; but on the slightest
+hint there was a sternness in the wife, in all else so respectful, so
+submissive, that repressed and awed him.  She even threatened--and at one
+time was with difficulty prevented carrying the threat into effect--to
+leave his roof forever, if there were the slightest question of the
+sanctity of his vow.  Templeton trembled; such a separation would excite
+gossip, curiosity, scandal, a noise in the world, public talk, possible
+discovery.  Besides, Alice was necessary to Evelyn, necessary to his own
+comfort; something to scold in health, something to rely upon in illness.
+Gradually then, but sullenly, he reconciled himself to his lot; and as
+years and infirmities grew upon him, he was contented at least to have
+secured a faithful friend and an anxious nurse.  Still a marriage of this
+sort was not blessed: Templeton's vanity was wounded; his temper, always
+harsh, was soured; he avenged his affront by a thousand petty tyrannies;
+and, without a murmur, Alice perhaps in those years of rank and opulence
+suffered more than in all her wanderings, with love at her heart and her
+infant in her arms.
+
+Evelyn was to be the heiress to the wealth of the banker.  But the
+_title_ of the new peer!--if he could unite wealth and title, and set the
+coronet on that young brow!  This had led him to seek the alliance with
+Lumley.  And on his death-bed, it was not the secret of Alice, but that
+of Mary Westbrook and his daughter, which he had revealed to his dismayed
+and astonished nephew, in excuse for the apparently unjust alienation of
+his property, and as the cause of the alliance he had sought.
+
+While her husband, if husband he might be called, lived, Alice had seemed
+to bury in her bosom her regret--deep, mighty, passionate, as it was--for
+her lost child, the child of the unforgotten lover, to whom, through such
+trials, and amid such new ties, she had been faithful from first to last.
+But when once more free, her heart flew back to the far and lowly grave.
+Hence her yearly visits to Brook-Green; hence her purchase of the
+cottage, hallowed by memories of the dead.  There, on that lawn, had she
+borne forth the fragile form, to breathe the soft noontide air; there, in
+that chamber, had she watched and hoped, and prayed and despaired; there,
+in that quiet burial-ground, rested the beloved dust!  But Alice, even in
+her holiest feelings, was not selfish: she forbore to gratify the first
+wish of her heart till Evelyn's education was sufficiently advanced to
+enable her to quit the neighbourhood; and then, to the delight of Aubrey
+(who saw in Evelyn a fairer, and nobler, and purer Eleanor), she came to
+the solitary spot, which, in all the earth, was the _least_ solitary to
+her!
+
+And now the image of the lover of her youth--which during her marriage
+she had _sought_, at least, to banish--returned to her, and at times
+inspired her with the only hopes that the grave had not yet transferred
+to heaven!  In relating her tale to Aubrey or in conversing with Mrs.
+Leslie, whose friendship she still maintained, she found that both
+concurred in thinking that this obscure and wandering Butler, so skilled
+in an art in which eminence in man is generally professional, must be of
+mediocre or perhaps humble station.  Ah! now that she was free and rich,
+if she were to meet him again, and his love was not all gone, and he
+would believe in _her_ strange and constant truth; now, _his_ infidelity
+could be forgiven,--forgotten in the benefits it might be hers to bestow!
+And how, poor Alice, in that remote village, was chance to throw him in
+your way?  She knew not: but something often whispered to her, "Again you
+shall meet those eyes; again you shall hear that voice; and you shall
+tell him, weeping on his breast, how you loved his child!"  And would he
+not have forgotten her; would he not have formed new ties?--could he read
+the loveliness of unchangeable affection in that pale and pensive face!
+Alas, when we love intensely, it is difficult to make us fancy that there
+is no love in return!
+
+The reader is acquainted with the adventures of Mrs. Elton, the sole
+confidant of the secret union of Templeton and Evelyn's mother.  By a
+singular fatality, it was the selfish and characteristic recklessness of
+Vargrave that had, in fixing her home at Burleigh, ministered to the
+revelation of his own villanous deceit.  On returning to England she had
+inquired for Mr. Templeton; she had learned that he had married again,
+had been raised to the peerage under the title of Lord Vargrave, and was
+gathered to his fathers.  She had no claim on his widow or his family.
+But the unfortunate child who should have inherited his property, she
+could only suppose her dead.
+
+When she first saw Evelyn, she was startled by her likeness to her
+unfortunate mother.  But the unfamiliar name of Cameron, the intelligence
+received from Maltravers that Evelyn's mother still lived, dispelled her
+suspicions; and though at times the resemblance haunted her, she doubted
+and inquired no more.  In fact, her own infirmities grew upon her, and
+pain usurped her thoughts.
+
+Now it so happened that the news of the engagement of Maltravers to Miss
+Cameron became known to the county but a little time before he
+arrived,--for news travels slow from the Continent to our
+provinces,--and, of course, excited all the comment of the villagers.
+Her nurse repeated the tale to Mrs. Elton, who instantly remembered the
+name, and recalled the resemblance of Miss Cameron to the unfortunate
+Mary Westbrook.
+
+"And," said the gossiping nurse, "she was engaged, they say, to a great
+lord, and gave him up for the squire,--a great lord in the court, who had
+been staying at Parson Merton's, Lord Vargrave!"
+
+"Lord Vargrave!" exclaimed Mrs. Elton, remembering the title to which Mr.
+Templeton had been raised.
+
+"Yes; they do say as how the late lord left Miss Cameron all his
+money--such a heap of it--though she was not his child, over the head of
+his nevy, the present lord, on the understanding like that they were to
+be married when she came of age.  But she would not take to him after she
+had seen the squire.  And, to be sure, the squire is the finest-looking
+gentleman in the county."
+
+"Stop! stop!" said Mrs. Elton, feebly; "the late lord left all his
+fortune to Miss Cameron,--not his child!  I guess the riddle!  I
+understand it all! my foster-child!" she murmured, turning away; "how
+could I have mistaken that likeness?"
+
+The agitation of the discovery she supposed she had made, her joy at the
+thought that the child she had loved as her own was alive and possessed
+of its rights, expedited the progress of Mrs. Elton's disease; and
+Maltravers arrived just in time to learn her confession (which she
+naturally wished to make to one who was at once her benefactor, and
+supposed to be the destined husband of her foster-child), and to be
+agitated with hope, with joy, at her solemn conviction of the truth of
+her surmises.  If Evelyn were not his daughter--even if not to be his
+bride--what a weight from his soul!  He hastened to Brook-Green; and
+dreading to rush at once to the presence of Alice, he recalled Aubrey to
+his recollection.  In the interview he sought, all, or at least much, was
+cleared up.  He saw at once the premeditated and well-planned villany of
+Vargrave.  And Alice, her tale--her sufferings--her indomitable
+love!--how should he meet _her_?
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+  YET once more, O ye laurels! and once more,
+  Ye myrtles!--LYCIDAS.
+
+WHILE Maltravers was yet agitated and excited by the disclosures of the
+curate, to whom, as a matter of course, he had divulged his own identity
+with the mysterious Butler, Aubrey, turning his eyes to the casement, saw
+the form of Lady Vargrave slowly approaching towards the house.
+
+"Will you withdraw to the inner room?" said he; "she is coming; you are
+not yet prepared to meet her!--nay, would it be well?"
+
+"Yes, yes; I am prepared.  We must be alone.  I will await her here."
+
+"But--"
+
+"Nay, I implore you!"
+
+The curate, without another word, retired into the inner apartment, and
+Maltravers sinking in a chair breathlessly awaited the entrance of Lady
+Vargrave.  He soon heard the light step without; the door, which opened
+at once on the old-fashioned parlour, was gently unclosed, and Lady
+Vargrave was in the room!  In the position he had taken, only the outline
+of Ernest's form was seen by Alice, and the daylight came dim through the
+cottage casement; and seeing some one seated in the curate's accustomed
+chair, she could but believe that it was Aubrey himself.
+
+"Do not let me interrupt you," said that sweet, low voice, whose music
+had been dumb for so many years to Maltravers, "but I have a letter from
+France, from a stranger.  It alarms me so; it is about Evelyn;" and, as
+if to imply that she meditated a longer visit than ordinary, Lady
+Vargrave removed her bonnet, and placed it on the table.  Surprised that
+the curate had not answered, had not come forward to welcome her, she
+then approached; Maltravers rose, and they stood before each other face
+to face.  And how lovely still was Alice! lovelier he thought even than
+of old!  And those eyes, so divinely blue, so dovelike and soft, yet
+with some spiritual and unfathomable mystery in their clear depth, were
+once more fixed upon him.  Alice seemed turned to stone; she moved not,
+she spoke not, she scarcely breathed; she gazed spellbound, as if her
+senses--as if life itself--had deserted her.
+
+"Alice!" murmured Maltravers,--"Alice, we meet at last!"
+
+His voice restored memory, consciousness, youth, at once to her!  She
+uttered a loud cry of unspeakable joy, of rapture!  She sprang
+forward--reserve, fear, time, change, all forgotten; she threw herself
+into his arms, she clasped him to her heart again and again!--the
+faithful dog that has found its master expresses not his transport more
+uncontrollably, more wildly.  It was something fearful--the excess of her
+ecstasy!  She kissed his hands, his clothes; she laughed, she wept; and
+at last, as words came, she laid her head on his breast, and said
+passionately, "I have been true to thee!  I have been true to thee!--or
+this hour would have killed me!"  Then, as if alarmed by his silence, she
+looked up into his face, and as his burning tears fell upon her cheek,
+she said again and with more hurried vehemence, "I _have_ been
+faithful,--do you not believe me?"
+
+"I do, I do, noble, unequalled Alice!  Why, why were you so long lost to
+me?  Why now does your love so shame my own?"
+
+At these words, Alice appeared to awaken from her first oblivion of all
+that had chanced since they met; she blushed deeply, and drew herself
+gently and bashfully from his embrace.  "Ah," she said, in altered and
+humbled accents, "you have loved another!  Perhaps you have no love left
+for me!  Is it so; is it?  No, no; those eyes--you love me--you love me
+still!"
+
+And again she clung to him, as if it were heaven to believe all things,
+and death to doubt.  Then, after a pause, she drew him gently with both
+her hands towards the light, and gazed upon him fondly, proudly, as if to
+trace, line by line, and feature by feature, the countenance which had
+been to her sweet thoughts as the sunlight to the flowers.  "Changed,
+changed," she muttered; "but still the same,--still beautiful, still
+divine!"  She stopped.  A sudden thought struck her: his garments were
+worn and soiled by travel, and that princely crest, fallen and dejected,
+no longer towered in proud defiance above the sons of men.  "You are not
+rich," she exclaimed eagerly,--"say you are not rich!  I am rich enough
+for both; it is all yours,--all yours; I did not betray you for it; there
+is no shame in it.  Oh, we shall be so happy!  Thou art come back to thy
+poor Alice! thou knowest how she loved thee!"
+
+There was in Alice's manner, her wild joy, something so different from
+her ordinary self, that none who could have seen her--quiet, pensive,
+subdued--would have fancied her the same being.  All that Society and its
+woes had taught were gone; and Nature once more claimed her fairest
+child.  The very years seemed to have fallen from her brow, and she
+looked scarcely older than when she had stood with him beneath the
+moonlight by the violet banks far away.  Suddenly, her colour faded; the
+smile passed from the dimpled lips; a sad and solemn aspect succeeded to
+that expression of passionate joy.  "Come," she said, in a whisper,
+"come, follow;" and still clasping his hand, she drew him to the door.
+Silent and wonderingly he followed her across the lawn, through the
+moss-grown gate, and into the lonely burial-ground.  She moved on with a
+noiseless and gliding step,--so pale, so hushed, so breathless, that even
+in the noonday you might have half fancied the fair shape was not owned
+by earth.  She paused where the yew-tree cast its gloomy shadow; and the
+small and tombless mound, separated from the rest, was before them.  She
+pointed to it, and falling on her knees beside it, murmured, "Hush, it
+sleeps below,--thy child!" She covered her face with both her hands, and
+her form shook convulsively.
+
+Beside that form and before that grave knelt Maltravers.  There vanished
+the last remnant of his stoic pride; and there--Evelyn herself
+forgotten--there did he pray to Heaven for pardon to himself, and
+blessings on the heart he had betrayed.  There solemnly did he vow, the
+remainder of his years, to guard from all future ill the faithful and
+childless mother.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+  WILL Fortune never come with both hands full,
+  But write her fair words still in foulest letters?
+                      _Henry IV._ Part ii.
+
+I PASS over those explanations, that record of Alice's eventful history,
+which Maltravers learned from her own lips, to confirm and add to the
+narrative of the curate, the purport of which is already known to the
+reader.
+
+It was many hours before Alice was sufficiently composed to remember the
+object for which she had sought the curate.  But she had laid the letter
+which she had brought, and which explained all, on the table at the
+vicarage; and when Maltravers, having at last induced Alice, who seemed
+afraid to lose sight of him for an instant, to retire to her room, and
+seek some short repose, returned towards the vicarage, he met Aubrey in
+the garden.  The old man had taken the friend's acknowledged license to
+read the letter evidently meant for his eye; and, alarmed and anxious, he
+now eagerly sought a consultation with Maltravers.  The letter, written
+in English, as familiar to the writer as her own tongue, was from Madame
+de Ventadour.  It had been evidently dictated by the kindest feelings.
+After apologizing briefly for her interference, she stated that Lord
+Vargrave's marriage with Miss Cameron was now a matter of public
+notoriety; that it would take place in a few days; that it was observed
+with suspicion that Miss Cameron appeared nowhere; that she seemed almost
+a prisoner in her room; that certain expressions which had dropped from
+Lady Doltimore had alarmed her greatly.  According to these expressions,
+it would seem that Lady Vargrave was not apprised of the approaching
+event; that, considering Miss Cameron's recent engagement to Mr.
+Maltravers suddenly (and, as Valerie thought, unaccountably) broken off
+on the arrival of Lord Vargrave; considering her extreme youth, her
+brilliant fortune; and, Madame de Ventadour delicately hinted,
+considering also Lord Vargrave's character for unscrupulous determination
+in the furtherance of any object on which he was bent,--considering all
+this, Madame de Ventadour had ventured to address Miss Cameron's mother,
+and to guard her against the possibility of design or deceit.  Her best
+apology for her intrusion must be her deep interest in Miss Cameron, and
+her long friendship for one to whom Miss Cameron had been so lately
+betrothed.  If Lady Vargrave were aware of the new engagement, and had
+sanctioned it, of course her intrusion was unseasonable and superfluous;
+but if ascribed to its real motive, would not be the less forgiven.
+
+It was easy for Maltravers to see in this letter how generous and zealous
+had been that friendship for himself which could have induced the woman
+of the world to undertake so officious a task.  But of this he thought
+not, as he hurried over the lines, and shuddered at Evelyn's urgent
+danger.
+
+"This intelligence," said Aubrey, "must be, indeed, a surprise to Lady
+Vargrave.  For we have not heard a word from Evelyn or Lord Vargrave to
+announce such a marriage; and she (and myself till this day) believed
+that the engagement between Evelyn and Mr. -----, I mean," said Aubrey
+with confusion,--"I mean yourself, was still in force.  Lord Vargrave's
+villany is apparent; we must act immediately.  What is to be done?"
+
+"I will return to Paris to-morrow; I will defeat his machination, expose
+his falsehood!"
+
+"You may need a proxy for Lady Vargrave, an authority for Evelyn; one
+whom Lord Vargrave knows to possess the secret of her birth, her rights:
+I will go with you.  We must speak to Lady Vargrave."
+
+Maltravers turned sharply round.  "And Alice knows not who I am; that
+I--I am, or was, a few weeks ago, the suitor of another; and that other
+the child she has reared as her own!  Unhappy Alice! in the very hour of
+her joy at my return, is she to writhe beneath this new affliction?"
+
+"Shall I break it to her?" said Aubrey, pityingly.
+
+"No, no; these lips must inflict the last wrong!" Maltravers walked away,
+and the curate saw him no more till night.
+
+In the interval, and late in the evening, Maltravers rejoined Alice.
+
+The fire burned clear on the hearth, the curtains were drawn, the
+pleasant but simple drawing-room of the cottage smiled its welcome as
+Maltravers entered, and Alice sprang up to greet him!  It was as if the
+old days of the music-lesson and the meerschaum had come back.
+
+"This is yours," said Alice, tenderly, as he looked round the apartment.
+"Now--now I know what a blessed thing riches are!  Ah, you are looking on
+that picture; it is of her who supplied your daughter's place,--she is so
+beautiful, so good, you will love her as a daughter.  Oh, that
+letter--that--that letter--I forgot it till now--it is at the vicarage--I
+must go there immediately, and you will come too,--you will advise us."
+
+"Alice, I have read the letter,--I know all.  Alice, sit down and hear
+me,--it is you who have to learn from me.  In our young days I was
+accustomed to tell you stories in winter nights like these,--stories of
+love like our own, of sorrows which, at that time, we only knew by
+hearsay.  I have one now for your ear, truer and sadder than they were.
+Two children, for they were then little more--children in ignorance of
+the world, children in freshness of heart, children almost in years--were
+thrown together by strange vicissitudes, more than eighteen years ago.
+They were of different sexes,--they loved and they erred.  But the error
+was solely with the boy; for what was innocence in her was but passion in
+him.  He loved her dearly; but at that age her qualities were half
+developed.  He knew her beautiful, simple, tender; but he knew not all
+the virtue, the faith, and the nobleness that Heaven had planted in her
+soul.  They parted,--they knew not each other's fate.  He sought her
+anxiously, but in vain; and sorrow and remorse long consumed him, and her
+memory threw a shadow over his existence.  But again--for his love had
+not the exalted holiness of hers (_she_ was true!)--he sought to renew in
+others the charm he had lost with her.  In vain,--long, long in vain.
+Alice, you know to whom the tale refers.  Nay, listen yet.  I have heard
+from the old man yonder that you were witness to a scene many years ago
+which deceived you into the belief that you beheld a rival.  It was not
+so: that lady yet lives,--then, as now, a friend to me; nothing more.  I
+grant that, at one time, my fancy allured me to her, but my heart was
+still true to thee."
+
+"Bless you for those words!" murmured Alice; and she crept more closely
+to him.
+
+He went on.  "Circumstances, which at some calmer occasion you shall
+hear, again nearly connected my fate by marriage to another.  I had then
+seen you at a distance, unseen by you,--seen you apparently surrounded by
+respectability and opulence; and I blessed Heaven that your lot, at
+least, was not that of penury and want."  (Here Maltravers related where
+he had caught that brief glimpse of Alice,*--how he had sought for her
+again and again in vain.) "From that hour," he continued, "seeing you in
+circumstances of which I could not have dared to dream, I felt more
+reconciled to the past; yet, when on the verge of marriage with
+another--beautiful, gifted, generous as she was--a thought, a memory half
+acknowledged, dimly traced, chained back my sentiments; and admiration,
+esteem, and gratitude were not love!  Death--a death melancholy and
+tragic--forbade this union; and I went forth in the world, a pilgrim and
+a wanderer.  Years rolled away, and I thought I had conquered the desire
+for love,--a desire that had haunted me since I lost thee.  But, suddenly
+and recently, a being, beautiful as yourself--sweet, guileless, and young
+as you were when we met--woke in me a new and a strange sentiment.  I
+will not conceal it from you: Alice, at last I loved another!  Yet,
+singular as it may seem to you, it was a certain resemblance to yourself,
+not in feature, but in the tones of the voice, the nameless grace of
+gesture and manner, the very music of your once happy laugh,--those
+traits of resemblance which I can now account for, and which children
+catch not from their parents only, but from those they most see, and,
+loving most, most imitate in their tender years,--all these, I say, made
+perhaps a chief attraction, that drew me towards--Alice, are you prepared
+for it?--drew me towards Evelyn Cameron.  Know me in my real character,
+by my true name: I am that Maltravers to whom the hand of Evelyn was a
+few weeks ago betrothed!"
+
+  * See "Ernest Maltravers," book v., p. 228.
+
+He paused, and ventured to look up at Alice; she was exceedingly pale,
+and her hands were tightly clasped together, but she neither wept nor
+spoke.  The worst was over; he continued more rapidly, and with less
+constrained an effort: "By the art, the duplicity, the falsehood of Lord
+Vargrave, I was taught in a sudden hour to believe that Evelyn was our
+daughter, that you recoiled from the prospect of beholding once more the
+author of so many miseries.  I need not tell you, Alice, of the horror
+that succeeded to love. I pass over the tortures I endured.  By a train
+of incidents to be related to you hereafter, I was led to suspect the
+truth of Vargrave's tale.  I came hither; I have learned all from Aubrey.
+I regret no more the falsehood that so racked me for the time; I regret
+no more the rupture of my bond with Evelyn; I regret nothing that brings
+me at last free and unshackled to thy feet, and acquaints me with thy
+sublime faith and ineffable love.  Here then--here beneath your own
+roof--here he, at once your earliest friend and foe, kneels to you for
+pardon and for hope!  He woos you as his wife, his companion to the
+grave!  Forget all his errors, and be to him, under a holier name, all
+that you were to him of old!"
+
+"And you are then Evelyn's suitor,--you are he whom she loves?  I see it
+all--all!"  Alice rose, and, before he was even aware of her purpose, or
+conscious of what she felt, she had vanished from the room.
+
+Long, and with the bitterest feelings, he awaited her return; she came
+not.  At last he wrote a hurried note, imploring her to join him again,
+to relieve his suspense; to believe his sincerity; to accept his vows.
+He sent it to her own room, to which she had hastened to bury her
+emotions.  In a few minutes there came to him this answer, written in
+pencil, blotted with tears.
+
+
+"I thank you, I understand your heart; but forgive me--I cannot see you
+yet.  She is so beautiful and good, she is worthy of you.  I shall soon
+be reconciled.  God bless you,--bless you both!"
+
+
+The door of the vicarage was opened abruptly, and Maltravers entered with
+a hasty but heavy tread.
+
+"Go to her, go to that angel; go, I beseech you!  Tell her that she
+wrongs me, if she thinks I can ever wed another, ever have an object in
+life, but to atone to, to merit her.  Go, plead for me."
+
+Aubrey, who soon gathered from Maltravers what had passed, departed to
+the cottage.  It was near midnight before he returned.  Maltravers met
+him in the churchyard, beside the yew-tree.  "Well, well, what message do
+you bring?"
+
+"She wishes that we should both set off for Paris to-morrow.  Not a day
+is to be lost,--we must save Evelyn from this snare."
+
+"Evelyn!  Yes, Evelyn shall be saved; but the rest--the rest--why do you
+turn away?"
+
+"'You are not the poor artist, the wandering adventurer; you are the
+high-born, the wealthy, the renowned Maltravers: Alice has nothing to
+confer on you.  You have won the love of Evelyn,--Alice cannot doom the
+child confided to her care to hopeless affection; you love Evelyn,--Alice
+cannot compare herself to the young and educated and beautiful creature,
+whose love is a priceless treasure.  Alice prays you not to grieve for
+her; she will soon be content and happy in your happiness.' This is the
+message."
+
+"And what said you,--did you not tell her such words would break my
+heart?"
+
+"No matter what I said; I mistrust myself when I advise her.  Her
+feelings are truer than all our wisdom!"
+
+Maltravers made no answer, and the curate saw him gliding rapidly away by
+the starlit graves towards the village.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+  THINK you I can a resolution fetch
+  From flowery tenderness?--_Measure for Measure_.
+
+THEY were on the road to Dover.  Maltravers leaned back in the corner of
+the carriage with his hat over his brows, though the morning was yet too
+dark for the curate to perceive more than the outline of his features.
+Milestone after milestone glided by the wheels, and neither of the
+travellers broke the silence.  It was a cold, raw morning, and the mists
+rose sullenly from the dank hedges and comfortless fields.
+
+Stern and self-accusing was the scrutiny of Maltravers into the recesses
+of his conscience, and the blotted pages of the Past.  That pale and
+solitary mother, mourning over the grave of her--of his own--child, rose
+again before his eyes, and seemed silently to ask him for an account of
+the heart he had made barren, and of the youth to which his love had
+brought the joylessness of age.  With the image of Alice,--afar, alone,
+whether in her wanderings, a beggar and an outcast, or in that hollow
+prosperity, in which the very ease of the frame allowed more leisure to
+the pinings of the heart,--with that image, pure, sorrowing, and faithful
+from first to last, he compared his own wild and wasted youth, his resort
+to fancy and to passion for excitement.  He contrasted with her patient
+resignation his own arrogant rebellion against the trials, the bitterness
+of which his proud spirit had exaggerated; his contempt for the pursuits
+and aims of others; the imperious indolence of his later life, and his
+forgetfulness of the duties which Providence had fitted him to discharge.
+His mind, once so rudely hurled from that complacent pedestal, from which
+it had so long looked down on men, and said, "I am wiser and better than
+you," became even too acutely sensitive to its own infirmities; and that
+desire for Virtue, which he had ever deeply entertained, made itself more
+distinctly and loudly heard amidst the ruins and the silence of his
+pride.
+
+From the contemplation of the Past, he roused himself to face the Future.
+Alice had refused his hand, Alice herself had ratified and blessed his
+union with another!  Evelyn, so madly loved,--Evelyn might still be his!
+No law--from the violation of which, even in thought, Human Nature
+recoils appalled and horror-stricken--forbade him to reclaim her hand, to
+snatch her from the grasp of Vargrave, to woo again, and again to win
+her!  But did Maltravers welcome, did he embrace that thought?  Let us do
+him justice: he did not.  He felt that Alice's resolution, in the first
+hour of mortified affection, was not to be considered final; and even if
+it were so, he felt yet more deeply that her love--the love that had
+withstood so many trials--never could be subdued.  Was he to make her
+nobleness a curse?  Was he to say, "Thou hast passed away in thy
+generation, and I leave thee again to thy solitude for her whom thou hast
+cherished as a child?"  He started in dismay from the thought of this new
+and last blow upon the shattered spirit; and then fresh and equally
+sacred obstacles between Evelyn and himself broke slowly on his view.
+Could Templeton rise from his grave, with what resentment, with what just
+repugnance, would he have regarded in the betrayer of his wife (even
+though wife but in name) the suitor to his child!
+
+These thoughts came in fast and fearful force upon Maltravers, and served
+to strengthen his honour and his conscience.  He felt that though, in
+law, there was no shadow of connection between Evelyn and himself, yet
+his tie with Alice had been of a nature that ought to separate him from
+one who had regarded Alice as a mother.  The load of horror, the agony of
+shame, were indeed gone; but still a voice whispered as before, "Evelyn
+is lost to thee forever!"  But so shaken had already been her image in
+the late storms and convulsion of his soul, that this thought was
+preferable to the thought of sacrificing Alice.  If _that_ were all--but
+Evelyn might still love him; and justice to Alice might be misery to her!
+He started from his revery with a vehement gesture, and groaned audibly.
+
+The curate turned to address to him some words of inquiry and surprise;
+but the words were unheard, and he perceived, by the advancing daylight,
+that the countenance of Maltravers was that of a man utterly rapt and
+absorbed by some mastering and irresistible thought.  Wisely, therefore,
+he left his companion in peace, and returned to his own anxious and
+engrossing meditations.
+
+The travellers did not rest till they arrived at Dover.  The vessel
+started early the following morning, and Aubrey, who was much fatigued,
+retired to rest. Maltravers glanced at the clock upon the mantelpiece; it
+was the hour of nine.  For him there was no hope of sleep; and the
+prospect of the slow night was that of dreary suspense and torturing
+self-commune.
+
+As he turned restlessly in his seat, the waiter entered to say that there
+was a gentleman who had caught a glimpse of him below on his arrival, and
+who was anxious to speak with him.  Before Maltravers could answer, the
+gentleman himself entered, and Maltravers recognized Legard.
+
+"I beg your pardon," said the latter, in a tone of great agitation, "but
+I was most anxious to see you for a few moments.  I have just returned to
+England--all places alike hateful to me!  I read in the papers--an--an
+announcement--which--which occasions me the greatest--I know not what I
+would say,--but is it true?  Read this paragraph;" and Legard placed "The
+Courier" before Maltravers.
+
+The passage was as follows:
+
+
+"It is whispered that Lord Vargrave, who is now at Paris, is to be
+married in a few days to the beautiful and wealthy Miss Cameron, to whom
+he has been long engaged."
+
+
+"Is it possible?" exclaimed Legard, following the eyes of Maltravers, as
+he glanced over the paragraph.  "Were not _you_ the lover,--the accepted,
+the happy lover of Miss Cameron?  Speak, tell me, I implore you!--that it
+was for you, who saved my life and redeemed my honour, and not for that
+cold schemer, that I renounced all my hopes of earthly happiness, and
+surrendered the dream of winning the heart and hand of the only woman I
+ever loved!"
+
+A deep shade fell over the features of Maltravers.  He gazed earnestly
+and long upon the working countenance of Legard, and said, after a
+pause,--
+
+"You, too, loved her, then?  I never knew it,--never guessed it; or, if
+once I suspected, it was but for a moment; and--"
+
+"Yes," interrupted Legard, passionately, "Heaven is my witness how
+fervently and truly I did love--I do still love Evelyn Cameron!  But when
+you confessed to me your affection--your hopes--I felt all that I owed
+you; I felt that I never ought to become your rival.  I left Paris
+abruptly.  What I have suffered I will not say; but it was some comfort
+to think that I had acted as became one who owed you a debt never to be
+cancelled nor repaid.  I travelled from place to place, each equally
+hateful and wearisome; at last, I scarce know why, I returned to England.
+I have arrived this day; and now--but tell me, is it true?"
+
+"I believe it true," said Maltravers, in a hollow voice, "that Evelyn is
+at this moment engaged to Lord Vargrave.  I believe it equally true that
+that engagement, founded upon false impressions, never will be fulfilled.
+With that hope and that belief, I am on my road to Paris."
+
+"And she will be yours, still?" said Legard, turning away his face:
+"well, that I can bear.  May you be happy, sir!"
+
+"Stay, Legard," said Maltravers, in a voice of great feeling: "let us
+understand each other better; you have renounced your passion to your
+sense of honour."  Maltravers paused thoughtfully.  "It was noble in you,
+it was more than just to me; I thank you and respect you.  But, Legard,
+was there aught in the manner, the bearing of Evelyn Cameron, that could
+lead you to suppose that she would have returned your affection?  True,
+had we started on equal terms, I am not vain enough to be blind to your
+advantages of youth and person; but I believed that the affections of
+Evelyn were already mine, before we met at Paris."
+
+"It might be so," said Legard, gloomily; "nor is it for me to say that a
+heart so pure and generous as Evelyn's could deceive yourself or me.  Yet
+I _had_ fancied, I _had_ hoped, while you stood aloof, that the
+partiality with which she regarded you was that of admiration more than
+love; that you had dazzled her imagination rather than won her heart.  I
+had hoped that I should win, that I was winning, my way to her affection!
+But let this pass; I drop the subject forever--only, Maltravers, only do
+me justice.  You are a proud man, and your pride has often irritated and
+stung me, in spite of my gratitude.  Be more lenient to me than you have
+been; think that, though I have my errors and my follies, I am still
+capable of some conquests over myself.  And most sincerely do I now wish
+that Evelyn's love may be to you that blessing it would have been to me!"
+
+This was, indeed, a new triumph over the pride of Maltravers,--a new
+humiliation.  He had looked with a cold contempt on this man, because he
+affected not to be above the herd; and this man had preceded him in the
+very sacrifice he himself meditated.
+
+"Legard," said Maltravers, and a faint blush overspread his face, "you
+rebuke me justly.  I acknowledge my fault, and I ask you to forgive it.
+From this night, whatever happens, I shall hold it an honour to be
+admitted to your friendship; from this night, George Legard never shall
+find in me the offences of arrogance and harshness."
+
+Legard wrung the hand held out to him warmly, but made no answer; his
+heart was full, and he would not trust himself to speak.
+
+"You think, then," resumed Maltravers, in a more thoughtful tone,--"you
+think that Evelyn could have loved you, had my pretensions not crossed
+your own?  And you think, also--pardon me, dear Legard--that you could
+have acquired the steadiness of character, the firmness of purpose, which
+one so fair, so young, so inexperienced and susceptible, so surrounded by
+a thousand temptations, would need in a guardian and protector?"
+
+"Oh, do not judge of me by what I have been.  I feel that Evelyn could
+have reformed errors worse than mine; that her love would have elevated
+dispositions yet more light and commonplace.  You do not know what
+miracles love works!  But now, what is there left for me?  What matters
+it how frivolous and poor the occupations which can distract my thoughts,
+and bring me forgetfulness?  Forgive me; I have no right to obtrude all
+this egotism on you."
+
+"Do not despond, Legard," said Maltravers, kindly; "there may be better
+fortunes in store for you than you yet anticipate.  I cannot say more
+now; but will you remain at Dover a few days longer?  Within a week you
+shall hear from me. I will not raise hopes that it may not be mine to
+realize.  But if it be as you think it was, why little, indeed, would
+rest with me.  Nay, look not on me so wistfully," added Maltravers, with
+a mournful smile; "and let the subject close for the present.  You will
+stay at Dover?"
+
+"I will; but--"
+
+"No buts, Legard; it is so settled."
+
+
+
+BOOK XI.
+
+  "Man is born to be a doer of good."--MARCUS ANTONINUS, lib. iii.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+            His teeth he still did grind,
+  And grimly gnash, threatening revenge in vain.--SPENSER.
+
+IT is now time to return to Lord Vargrave.  His most sanguine hopes were
+realized; all things seemed to prosper.  The hand of Evelyn Cameron was
+pledged to him, the wedding-day was fixed.  In less than a week she was
+to confer upon the ruined peer a splendid dowry, that would smooth all
+obstacles in the ascent of his ambition.  From Mr. Douce he learned that
+the deeds, which were to transfer to himself the baronial possessions of
+the head of the house of Maltravers, were nearly completed; and on his
+wedding-day he hoped to be able to announce that the happy pair had set
+out for their princely mansion of Lisle Court.  In politics; though
+nothing could be finally settled till his return, letters from Lord
+Saxingham assured him that all was auspicious: the court and the heads of
+the aristocracy daily growing more alienated from the premier, and more
+prepared for a Cabinet revolution.  And Vargrave, perhaps, like most
+needy men, overrated the advantages he should derive from, and the
+servile opinions he should conciliate in, his new character of landed
+proprietor and wealthy peer.  He was not insensible to the silent anguish
+that Evelyn seemed to endure, nor to the bitter gloom that hung on the
+brow of Lady Doltimore. But these were clouds that foretold no
+storm,--light shadows that obscured not the serenity of the favouring
+sky.  He continued to seem unconscious to either; to take the coming
+event as a matter of course, and to Evelyn he evinced so gentle,
+unfamiliar, respectful, and delicate an attachment, that he left no
+opening, either for confidence or complaint.  Poor Evelyn! her gayety,
+her enchanting levity, her sweet and infantine playfulness of manner,
+were indeed vanished.  Pale, wan, passive, and smileless, she was the
+ghost of her former self!  But days rolled on, and the evil one drew
+near; she recoiled, but she never dreamed of resisting.  How many equal
+victims of her age and sex does the altar witness!
+
+One day, at early noon, Lord Vargrave took his way to Evelyn's.  He had
+been to pay a political visit in the Faubourg St. Germain, and he was now
+slowly crossing the more quiet and solitary part of the gardens of the
+Tuileries, his hands clasped behind him, after his old, unaltered habit,
+and his eyes downcast,--when suddenly a man, who was seated alone beneath
+one of the trees, and who had for some moments watched his steps with an
+anxious and wild aspect, rose and approached him.  Lord Vargrave was not
+conscious of the intrusion, till the man laid his hand on Vargrave's arm,
+and exclaimed,--
+
+"It is he! it is!  Lumley Ferrers, we meet again!"
+
+Lord Vargrave started and changed colour, as he gazed on the intruder.
+
+"Ferrers," continued Cesarini (for it was he), and he wound his arm
+firmly into Lord Vargrave's as he spoke, "you have not changed; your step
+is light, your cheek healthful; and yet I--you can scarcely recognize me.
+Oh, I have suffered so horribly since we parted!  Why is this?  Why have
+I been so heavily visited, and why have you gone free?  Heaven is not
+just!"
+
+Castruccio was in one of his lucid intervals; but there was that in his
+uncertain eye, and strange unnatural voice, which showed that a breath
+might dissolve the avalanche.  Lord Vargrave looked anxiously round; none
+were near: but he knew that the more public parts of the garden were
+thronged, and through the trees he saw many forms moving in the distance.
+He felt that the sound of his voice could summon assistance in an
+instant, and his assurance returned to him.
+
+"My poor friend," said he soothingly, as he quickened his pace, "it
+grieves me to the heart to see you look ill; do not think so much of what
+is past."
+
+"There is no past!" replied Cesarini, gloomily.  "The Past is my Present!
+And I have thought and thought, in darkness and in chains, over all that
+I have endured, and a light has broken on me in the hours when they told
+me I was mad!  Lumley Ferrers, it was not for my sake that you led me,
+devil as you are, into the lowest hell!  You had some object of your own
+to serve in separating _her_ from Maltravers.  You made me your
+instrument.  What was I to you that you should have sinned for _my_ sake?
+Answer me, and truly, if those lips can utter truth!"
+
+"Cesarini," returned Vargrave, in his blandest accents, "another time we
+will converse on what has been; believe me, my only object was your
+happiness, combined, it may be, with my hatred of your rival."
+
+"Liar!" shouted Cesarini, grasping Vargrave's arm with the strength of
+growing madness, while his burning eyes were fixed upon his tempter's
+changing countenance.  "You, too, loved Florence; you, too, sought her
+hand; _you_ were my real rival!"
+
+"Hush! my friend, hush!" said Vargrave, seeking to shake off the grip of
+the maniac, and becoming seriously alarmed; "we are approaching the
+crowded part of the gardens, we shall be observed."
+
+"And why are men made my foes?  Why is my own sister become my
+persecutor?  Why should she give me up to the torturer and the dungeon?
+Why are serpents and fiends my comrades?  Why is there fire in my brain
+and heart; and why do you go free and enjoy liberty and life?  Observed!
+What care _you_ for observation?  All men search for _me_!"
+
+"Then why so openly expose yourself to their notice; why--"
+
+"Hear me!" interrupted Cesarini.  "When I escaped from the horrible
+prison into which I was plunged; when I scented the fresh air, and
+bounded over the grass; when I was again free in limbs and spirit,--a
+sudden strain of music from a village came on my ear, and I stopped
+short, and crouched down, and held my breath to listen.  It ceased; and I
+thought I had been with Florence, and I wept bitterly!  When I recovered,
+memory came back to me distinct and clear; and I heard a voice say to me,
+'Avenge her and thyself!'  From that hour the voice has been heard again,
+morning and night!  Lumley Ferrers, I hear it now! it speaks to my heart,
+it warms my blood, it nerves my hand!  On whom should vengeance fall?
+Speak to me!"
+
+Lumley strode rapidly on.  They were now without the grove; a gay throng
+was before them.  "All is safe," thought the Englishman.  He turned
+abruptly and haughtily on Cesarini, and waved his hand; "Begone, madman!"
+said he, in a loud and stern voice,--"begone! vex me no more, or I give
+you into custody.  Begone, I say!"
+
+Cesarini halted, amazed and awed for the moment; and then, with a dark
+scowl and a low cry, threw himself on Vargrave.  The eye and hand of the
+latter were vigilant and prepared; he grasped the uplifted arm of the
+maniac, and shouted for help.  But the madman was now in his full fury;
+he hurled Vargrave to the ground with a force for which the peer was not
+prepared, and Lumley might never have risen a living man from that spot,
+if two soldiers, seated close by, had not hastened to his assistance.
+Cesarini was already kneeling on his breast, and his long bony fingers
+were fastening upon the throat of his intended victim.  Torn from his
+hold, he glared fiercely on his new assailants; and after a fierce but
+momentary struggle, wrested himself from their grip.  Then, turning round
+to Vargrave, who had with some effort risen from the ground, he shrieked
+out, "I shall have thee yet!" and fled through the trees and disappeared.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+  AH, who is nigh?  Come to me, friend or foe!
+  My parks, my walks, my manors that I had,
+  Ev'n now forsake me.--_HENRY VI_. Part iii.
+
+LORD VARGRAVE, bold as he was by nature, in vain endeavoured to banish
+from his mind the gloomy impression which the startling interview with
+Cesarini had bequeathed.  The face, the voice of the maniac, haunted him,
+as the shape of the warning wraith haunts the mountaineer.  He returned
+at once to his hotel, unable for some hours to collect himself
+sufficiently to pay his customary visit to Miss Cameron.  Inly resolving
+not to hazard a second meeting with the Italian during the rest of his
+sojourn at Paris by venturing in the streets on foot, he ordered his
+carriage towards evening; dined at the Cafe de Paris; and then re-entered
+his carriage to proceed to Lady Doltimore's house.
+
+"I beg your pardon, my lord," said his servant, as he closed the
+carriage-door, "but I forgot to say that, a short time after you returned
+this morning, a strange gentleman asked at the porter's lodge if Mr.
+Ferrers was not staying at the hotel.  The porter said there was no Mr.
+Ferrers, but the gentleman insisted upon it that he had seen Mr. Ferrers
+enter.  I was in the lodge at the moment, my lord, and I explained--"
+
+"That Mr. Ferrers and Lord Vargrave are one and the same?  What sort of
+looking person?"
+
+"Thin and dark, my lord,--evidently a foreigner.  When I said that you
+were now Lord Vargrave, he stared a moment, and said very abruptly that
+he recollected it perfectly, and then he laughed and walked away."
+
+"Did he not ask to see me?"
+
+"No, my lord; he said he should take another opportunity.  He was a
+strange-looking gentleman, and his clothes were threadbare."
+
+"Ah, some troublesome petitioner.  Perhaps a Pole in distress!  Remember
+I am never at home when he calls.  Shut the door.  To Lady Doltimore's."
+
+Lumley's heart beat as he threw himself back,--he again felt the grip of
+the madman at his throat.  He saw, at once, that Cesarini had dogged him;
+he resolved the next morning to change his hotel, and to apply to the
+police.  It was strange how sudden and keen a fear had entered the breast
+of this callous and resolute man!
+
+On arriving at Lady Doltimore's, he found Caroline alone in the
+drawing-room.  It was a _tete-a-tete_ that he by no means desired.
+
+"Lord Vargrave," said Caroline, coldly, "I wished a short conversation
+with you; and finding you did not come in the morning, I sent you a note
+an hour ago.  Did you receive it?"
+
+"No; I have been from home since six o'clock,--it is now nine."
+
+"Well, then, Vargrave," said Caroline, with a compressed and writhing
+lip, and turning very pale, "I tremble to tell you that I fear Doltimore
+suspects.  He looked at me sternly this morning, and said, 'You seem
+unhappy, madam; this marriage of Lord Vargrave's distresses you!'"
+
+"I warned you how it would be,--your own selfishness will betray and ruin
+you."
+
+"Do not reproach me, man!" said Lady Doltimore, with great vehemence.
+"From you at least I have a right to pity, to forbearance, to succour.  I
+will not bear reproach from _you_."
+
+"I reproach you for your own sake, for the faults you commit against
+yourself; and I must say, Caroline, that after I had generously conquered
+all selfish feeling, and assisted you to so desirable and even brilliant
+a position, it is neither just nor high-minded in you to evince so
+ungracious a reluctance to my taking the only step which can save me from
+actual ruin.  But what does Doltimore suspect?  What ground has he for
+suspicion, beyond that want of command of countenance which it is easy to
+explain,--and which it is yet easier for a woman and a great lady [here
+Lumley sneered] to acquire?"
+
+"I know not; it has been put into his head.  Paris is so full of slander.
+But, Vargrave--Lumley--I tremble, I shudder with terror, if ever
+Doltimore should discover--"
+
+"Pooh! pooh!  Our conduct at Paris has been most guarded, most discreet.
+Doltimore is Self-conceit personified,--and Self-conceit is horn-eyed.  I
+am about to leave Paris,--about to marry, from under your own roof; a
+little prudence, a little self-control, a smiling face, when you wish us
+happiness, and so forth, and all is safe.  Tush! think of it no more!
+Fate has cut and shuffled the cards for you; the game is yours, unless
+you revoke.  Pardon my metaphor; it is a favourite one,--I have worn it
+threadbare; but human life _is_ so like a rubber at whist.  Where is
+Evelyn?"
+
+"In her own room.  Have you no pity for her?"
+
+"She will be very happy when she is Lady Vargrave; and for the rest, I
+shall neither be a stern nor a jealous husband.  She might not have given
+the same character to the magnificent Maltravers."
+
+Here Evelyn entered; and Vargrave hastened to press her hand, to whisper
+tender salutations and compliments, to draw the easy-chair to the fire,
+to place the footstool,--to lavish the _petits soins_ that are so
+agreeable, when they are the small moralities of love.
+
+Evelyn was more than usually pale,--more than usually abstracted.  There
+was no lustre in her eye, no life in her step; she seemed unconscious of
+the crisis to which she approached.  As the myrrh and hyssop which
+drugged the malefactors of old into forgetfulness of their doom, so there
+are griefs which stupefy before their last and crowning consummation!
+
+Vargrave conversed lightly on the weather, the news, the last book.
+Evelyn answered but in monosyllables; and Caroline, with a hand-screen
+before her face, preserved an unbroken silence.  Thus gloomy and joyless
+were two of the party, thus gay and animated the third, when the clock on
+the mantelpiece struck ten; and as the last stroke died, and Evelyn
+sighed heavily,--for it was an hour nearer to the fatal day,--the door
+was suddenly thrown open, and pushing aside the servant, two gentlemen
+entered the room.
+
+Caroline, the first to perceive them, started from her seat with a faint
+exclamation of surprise.  Vargrave turned abruptly, and saw before him
+the stern countenance of Maltravers.
+
+"My child! my Evelyn!" exclaimed a familiar voice; and Evelyn had already
+flown into the arms of Aubrey.
+
+The sight of the curate in company with Maltravers explained all at once
+to Vargrave.  He saw that the mask was torn from his face, the prize
+snatched from his grasp, his falsehood known, his plot counterworked, his
+villany baffled!  He struggled in vain for self-composure; all his
+resources of courage and craft seemed drained and exhausted.  Livid,
+speechless, almost trembling, he cowered beneath the eyes of Maltravers.
+
+Evelyn, not as yet aware of the presence of her former lover, was the
+first to break the silence.  She lifted her face in alarm from the bosom
+of the good curate.  "My mother--she is well--she lives--what brings you
+hither?"
+
+"Your mother is well, my child.  I have come hither at her earnest
+request to save you from a marriage with that unworthy man!"
+
+Lord Vargrave smiled a ghastly smile, but made no answer.
+
+"Lord Vargrave," said Maltravers, "you will feel at once that you have no
+further business under this roof.  Let us withdraw,--I have much to thank
+you for."
+
+"I will not stir!" exclaimed Vargrave, passionately, and stamping on the
+floor.  "Miss Cameron, the guest of Lady Doltimore, whose house and
+presence you thus rudely profane, is my affianced bride,--affianced with
+her own consent.  Evelyn, beloved Evelyn! mine you are yet; you alone can
+cancel the bond.  Sir, I know not what you have to say, what mystery in
+your immaculate life to disclose; but unless Lady Doltimore, whom your
+violence appalls and terrifies, orders me to quit her roof, it is not
+I,--it is yourself, who are the intruder!  Lady Doltimore, with your
+permission, I will direct your servants to conduct this gentleman to his
+carriage!"
+
+"Lady Doltimore, pardon me," said Maltravers, coldly; "I will not be
+urged to any failure of respect to you.  My lord, if the most abject
+cowardice be not added to your other vices, you will not make this room
+the theatre for our altercation.  I invite you, in those terms which no
+gentleman ever yet refused, to withdraw with me."
+
+The tone and manner of Maltravers exercised a strange control over
+Vargrave; he endeavoured in vain to keep alive the passion into which he
+had sought to work himself; his voice faltered, his head sank upon his
+breast.  Between these two personages, none interfered; around them, all
+present grouped in breathless silence,--Caroline, turning her eyes from
+one to the other in wonder and dismay; Evelyn, believing all a dream, yet
+alive only to the thought that, by some merciful interposition of
+Providence, she should escape the consequences of her own rashness,
+clinging to Aubrey, with her gaze riveted on Maltravers; and Aubrey,
+whose gentle character was borne down and silenced by the powerful and
+tempestuous passions that now met in collision and conflict, withheld by
+his abhorrence of Vargrave's treachery from his natural desire to
+propitiate, and yet appalled by the apprehension of bloodshed, that for
+the first time crossed him.
+
+There was a moment of dead silence, in which Vargrave seemed to be
+nerving and collecting himself for such course as might be best to
+pursue, when again the door opened, and the name of Mr. Howard was
+announced.
+
+Hurried and agitated, the young secretary, scarcely noticing the rest of
+the party, rushed to Lord Vargrave.
+
+"My lord! a thousand pardons for interrupting you,--business of such
+importance!  I am so fortunate to find you!"
+
+"What is the matter, sir?"
+
+"These letters, my lord; I have so much to say!"
+
+Any interruption, even an earthquake, at that moment must have been
+welcome to Vargrave.  He bent his head, with a polite smile, linked his
+arm into his secretary's, and withdrew to the recess of the farthest
+window.  Not a minute elapsed before he turned away with a look of
+scornful exultation.  "Mr. Howard," said he, "go and refresh yourself,
+and come to me at twelve o'clock to-night; I shall be at home then."  The
+secretary bowed, and withdrew.
+
+"Now, sir," said Vargrave, to Maltravers, "I am willing to leave you in
+possession of the field.  Miss Cameron, it will be, I fear, impossible
+for me to entertain any longer the bright hopes I had once formed; my
+cruel fate compels me to seek wealth in any matrimonial engagement.  I
+regret to inform you that you are no longer the great heiress; the whole
+of your capital was placed in the hands of Mr. Douce for the completion
+of the purchase of Lisle Court.  Mr. Douce is a bankrupt; he has fled to
+America.  This letter is an express from my lawyer; the house has closed
+its payments!  Perhaps we may hope to obtain sixpence in the pound.  I am
+a loser also; the forfeit money bequeathed to me is gone.  I know not
+whether, as your trustee, I am not accountable for the loss of your
+fortune (drawn out on my responsibility); probably so.  But as I have not
+now a shilling in the world, I doubt whether Mr. Maltravers will advise
+you to institute proceedings against me.  Mr. Maltravers, to-morrow, at
+nine o'clock, I will listen to what you have to say.  I wish you all
+good-night."  He bowed, seized his hat, and vanished.
+
+"Evelyn," said Aubrey, "can you require to learn more; do you not already
+feel you are released from union with a man without heart and honour?"
+
+"Yes, yes!  I am so happy!" cried Evelyn, bursting into tears.  "This
+hated wealth,--I feel not its loss; I am released from all duty to my
+benefactor.  I am free!"
+
+The last tie that had yet united the guilty Caroline to Vargrave was
+broken,--a woman forgives sin in her lover, but never meanness.  The
+degrading, the abject position in which she had seen one whom she had
+served as a slave (though, as yet, all his worst villanies were unknown
+to her), filled her with shame, horror, and disgust.  She rose abruptly,
+and quitted the room.  They did not miss her.
+
+Maltravers approached Evelyn; he took her hand, and pressed it to his
+lips and heart.
+
+"Evelyn," said he, mournfully, "you require an explanation,--to-morrow I
+will give and seek it.  To-night we are both too unnerved for such
+communications.  I can only now feel joy at your escape, and hope that I
+may still minister to your future happiness."
+
+"But," said Aubrey, "can we believe this new and astounding statement?
+Can this loss be so irremediable; may we not yet take precaution, and
+save, at least, some wrecks of this noble fortune?"
+
+"I thank you for recalling me to the world," said Maltravers, eagerly.
+"I will see to it this instant; and tomorrow, Evelyn, after my interview
+with you, I will hasten to London, and act in that capacity still left to
+me,--your guardian, your friend."
+
+He turned away his face, and hurried to the door.
+
+Evelyn clung more closely to Aubrey.  "But you will not leave me
+to-night?  You can stay?  We can find you accommodation; do not leave
+me."
+
+"Leave you, my child! no; we have a thousand things to say to each other.
+I will not," he added in a whisper, turning to Maltravers, "forestall
+your communications."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+  ALACK, 'tis he.  Why, he was met even now
+  As mad as the vexed sea.--_Lear_.
+
+IN the Rue de la Paix there resided an English lawyer of eminence, with
+whom Maltravers had had previous dealings; to this gentleman he now
+drove.  He acquainted him with the news he had just heard, respecting the
+bankruptcy of Mr. Douce; and commissioned him to leave Paris, the first
+moment he could obtain a passport, and to proceed to London.
+
+At all events, he would arrive there some hours before Maltravers; and
+those hours were something gained.  This done, he drove to the nearest
+hotel, which chanced to be the Hotel de M-----, where, though he knew it
+not, it so happened that Lord Vargrave himself lodged.  As his carriage
+stopped without, while the porter unclosed the gates, a man, who had been
+loitering under the lamps, darted forward, and prying into the
+carriage-window, regarded Maltravers earnestly.  The latter, pre-occupied
+and absorbed, did not notice him; but when the carriage drove into the
+courtyard it was followed by the stranger, who was muffled in a worn and
+tattered cloak, and whose movements were unheeded amidst the bustle of
+the arrival.  The porter's wife led the way to a second-floor, just left
+vacant, and the waiter began to arrange the fire.  Maltravers threw
+himself abstractedly upon the sofa, insensible to all around him, when,
+lifting his eyes, he saw before him the countenance of Cesarini!  The
+Italian (supposed, perhaps, by the persons of the hotel to be one of the
+newcomers) was leaning over the back of a chair, supporting his face with
+his hand, and fixing his eyes with an earnest and sorrowful expression
+upon the features of his ancient rival.  When he perceived that he was
+recognized, he approached Maltravers, and said in Italian, and in a low
+voice, "You are the man of all others, whom, save one, I most desired to
+see.  I have much to say to you, and my time is short.  Spare me a few
+minutes."
+
+The tone and manner of Cesarini were so calm and rational that they
+changed the first impulse of Maltravers, which was that of securing a
+maniac; while the Italian's emaciated countenance, his squalid garments,
+the air of penury and want diffused over his whole appearance,
+irresistibly invited compassion.  With all the more anxious and pressing
+thoughts that weighed upon him, Maltravers could not refuse the
+conference thus demanded.  He dismissed the attendants, and motioned
+Cesarini to be seated.
+
+The Italian drew near to the fire, which now blazed brightly and
+cheerily, and, spreading his thin hands to the flame, seemed to enjoy the
+physical luxury of the warmth.  "Cold, cold," he said piteously, as to
+himself; "Nature is a very bitter protector.  But frost and famine are,
+at least, more merciful than slavery and darkness."
+
+At this moment Ernest's servant entered to know if his master would not
+take refreshments, for he had scarcely touched food upon the road.  And
+as he spoke, Cesarini turned keenly and wistfully round.  There was no
+mistaking the appeal.  Wine and cold meat were ordered: and when the
+servant vanished, Cesarini turned to Maltravers with a strange smile, and
+said, "You see what the love of liberty brings men to!  They found me
+plenty in the jail!  But I have read of men who feasted merrily before
+execution--have not you?--and my hour is at hand.  All this day I have
+felt chained by an irresistible destiny to this house.  But it was not
+you I sought; no matter, in the crisis of our doom all its agents meet
+together.  It is the last act of a dreary play!"
+
+The Italian turned again to the fire, and bent over it, muttering to
+himself.
+
+Maltravers remained silent and thoughtful.  Now was the moment once more
+to place the maniac under the kindly vigilance of his family, to snatch
+him from the horrors, perhaps, of starvation itself, to which his escape
+condemned him: if he could detain Cesarini till De Montaigne could
+arrive!
+
+Agreeably to this thought, he quietly drew towards him the portfolio
+which had been laid on the table, and, Cesarini's back still turned to
+him, wrote a hasty line to De Montaigne.  When his servant re-entered
+with the wine and viands, Maltravers followed him out of the room, and
+bade him see the note sent immediately.  On returning, he found Cesarini
+devouring the food before him with all the voracity of famine.  It was a
+dreadful sight!--the intellect ruined, the mind darkened, the wild,
+fierce animal alone left!
+
+When Cesarini had appeased his hunger, he drew near to Maltravers, and
+thus accosted him,--
+
+"I must lead you back to the past.  I sinned against you and the dead;
+but Heaven has avenged you, and me you can pity and forgive.  Maltravers,
+there is another more guilty than I,--but proud, prosperous, and great.
+_His_ crime Heaven has left to the revenge of man!  I bound myself by an
+oath not to reveal his villany.  I cancel the oath now, for the knowledge
+of it should survive his life and mine.  And, mad though they deem me,
+the mad are prophets, and a solemn conviction, a voice not of earth,
+tells me that he and I are already in the Shadow of Death."
+
+Here Cesarini, with a calm and precise accuracy of self-possession,--a
+minuteness of circumstance and detail, that, coming from one whose very
+eyes betrayed his terrible disease, was infinitely thrilling in its
+effect,--related the counsels, the persuasions, the stratagems of Lumley.
+Slowly and distinctly he forced into the heart of Maltravers that
+sickening record of cold fraud calculating on vehement passion as its
+tool; and thus he concluded his narration,--
+
+"Now wonder no longer why I have lived till this hour; why I have clung
+to freedom, through want and hunger, amidst beggars, felons, and
+outcasts!  In that freedom was my last hope,--the hope of revenge!"
+
+Maltravers returned no answer for some moments.  At length he said
+calmly, "Cesarini, there are injuries so great that they defy revenge.
+Let us alike, since we are alike injured, trust our cause to Him who
+reads all hearts, and, better than we can do, measures both crime and its
+excuses.  You think that our enemy has not suffered,--that he has gone
+free.  We know not his internal history; prosperity and power are no
+signs of happiness, they bring no exemption from care.  Be soothed and be
+ruled, Cesarini.  Let the stone once more close over the solemn grave.
+Turn with me to the future; and let us rather seek to be the judges of
+ourselves, than the executioners of another."
+
+Cesarini listened gloomily, and was about to answer, when--
+
+But here we must return to Lord Vargrave.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+            MY noble lord,
+  Your worthy friends do lack you.--_Macbeth_.
+
+            He is about it;
+  The doors are open.--_Ibid._
+
+ON quitting Lady Doltimore's house, Lumley drove to his hotel.  His
+secretary had been the bearer of other communications, with the nature of
+which he had not yet acquainted himself; but he saw by the
+superscriptions that they were of great importance.  Still, however, even
+in the solitude and privacy of his own chamber, it was not on the instant
+that he could divert his thoughts from the ruin of his fortunes: the loss
+not only of Evelyn's property, but his own claims upon it (for the whole
+capital had been placed in Douce's hands), the total wreck of his grand
+scheme, the triumph he had afforded to Maltravers!  He ground his teeth
+in impotent rage, and groaned aloud, as he traversed his room with hasty
+and uneven strides.  At last he paused and muttered: "Well, the spider
+toils on even when its very power of weaving fresh webs is exhausted; it
+lies in wait,--it forces itself into the webs of others.  Brave insect,
+thou art my model!  While I have breath in my body, the world and all its
+crosses, Fortune and all her malignity, shall not prevail against me!
+What man ever yet failed until he himself grew craven, and sold his soul
+to the arch fiend, Despair!  'Tis but a girl and a fortune lost,--they
+were gallantly fought for, that is some comfort.  Now to what is yet left
+to me!"
+
+The first letter Lumley opened was from Lord Saxingham.  It filled him
+with dismay.  The question at issue had been formally, but abruptly,
+decided in the Cabinet against Vargrave and his manoeuvres.  Some hasty
+expressions of Lord Saxingham had been instantly caught at by the
+premier, and a resignation, rather hinted at than declared, had been
+peremptorily accepted.  Lord Saxingham and Lumley's adherents in the
+Government were to a man dismissed; and at the time Lord Saxingham wrote
+the premier was with the king.
+
+"Curse their folly!--the puppets! the dolts!" exclaimed Lumley, crushing
+the letter in his hand.  "The moment I leave them, they run their heads
+against the wall.  Curse them! curse myself! curse the man who weaves
+ropes with sand!  Nothing--nothing left for me but exile or suicide!
+Stay, what is this?"  His eye fell on the well-known hand writing of the
+premier.  He tore the envelope, impatient to know the worst.  His eyes
+sparkled as he proceeded.  The letter was most courteous, most
+complimentary, most wooing.  The minister was a man consummately versed
+in the arts that increase, as well as those which purge, a party.
+Saxingham and his friends were imbeciles, incapables, mostly men who had
+outlived their day.  But Lord Vargrave, in the prime of life--versatile,
+accomplished, vigorous, bitter, unscrupulous--Vargrave was of another
+mould, Vargrave was to be dreaded; and therefore, if possible, to be
+retained.  His powers of mischief were unquestionably increased by the
+universal talk of London that he was about soon to wed so wealthy a lady.
+The minister knew his man.  In terms of affected regret, he alluded to
+the loss the Government would sustain in the services of Lord Saxingham,
+etc.; he rejoiced that Lord Vargrave's absence from London had prevented
+his being prematurely mixed up, by false scruples of honour, in
+secessions which his judgment must condemn.  He treated of the question
+in dispute with the most delicate address,--confessed the reasonableness
+of Lord Vargrave's former opposition to it; but contended that it was
+now, if not wise, inevitable.  He said nothing of the _justice_ of the
+measure he proposed to adopt, but much on the _expediency_.  He concluded
+by offering to Vargrave, in the most cordial and flattering terms, the
+very seat in the Cabinet which Lord Saxingham had vacated, with an
+apology for its inadequacy to his lordship's merits, and a distinct and
+definite promise of the refusal of the gorgeous viceroyalty of India,
+which would be vacant next year by the return of the present
+governor-general.
+
+Unprincipled as Vargrave was, it is not, perhaps, judging him too mildly
+to say that, had he succeeded in obtaining Evelyn's hand and fortune, he
+would have shrunk from the baseness he now meditated.  To step coldly
+into the very post of which he, and he alone, had been the cause of
+depriving his earliest patron and nearest relative; to profit by the
+betrayal of his own party; to damn himself eternally in the eyes of his
+ancient friends; to pass down the stream of history as a mercenary
+apostate,--from all this Vargrave must have shrunk, had he seen one spot
+of honest ground on which to maintain his footing.  But now the waters of
+the abyss were closing over his head; he would have caught at a straw;
+how much more consent to be picked up by the vessel of an enemy!  All
+objection, all scruple, vanished at once.  And the "barbaric gold" "of
+Ormus and of Ind" glittered before the greedy eyes of the penniless
+adventurer!  Not a day was now to be lost.  How fortunate that a written
+proposition, from which it was impossible to recede, had been made to him
+before the failure of his matrimonial projects had become known!  Too
+happy to quit Paris, he would set off on the morrow, and conclude in
+person the negotiation.  Vargrave glanced towards the clock; it was
+scarcely past eleven.  What revolutions are worked in moments!  Within an
+hour he had lost a wife, a noble fortune, changed the politics of his
+whole life, stepped into a Cabinet office, and was already calculating
+how much a governor-general of India could lay by in five years!  But it
+was only eleven o'clock.  He had put off Mr. Howard's visit till twelve;
+he wished so much to see him, and learn all the London gossip connected
+with the recent events.  Poor Mr. Douce!  Vargrave had already forgotten
+_his_ existence!--he rang his bell hastily.  It was some time before his
+servant answered.
+
+Promptitude and readiness were virtues that Lord Vargrave peremptorily
+demanded in a servant; and as he paid the best price for the
+articles--less in wages than in plunder--he was generally sure to obtain
+them.
+
+"Where the deuce have you been?  This is the third time I have rung! you
+ought to be in the anteroom!"
+
+"I beg your lordship's pardon; but I was helping Mr. Maltravers's valet
+to find a key which he dropped in the courtyard."
+
+"Mr. Maltravers!  Is he at this hotel?"
+
+"Yes, my lord; his rooms are just overhead."
+
+"Humph!  Has Mr. Howard engaged a lodging here?"
+
+"No, my lord.  He left word that he was gone to his aunt, Lady Jane."
+
+"Ah, Lady Jane--lives at Paris--so she does; Rue Chaussee d'Antin--you
+know the House?  Go immediately--go yourself; don't trust to a
+messenger--and beg Mr. Howard to return with you.  I want to see him
+instantly."
+
+"Yes, my lord."
+
+The servant went.  Lumley was in a mood in which solitude was
+intolerable.  He was greatly excited; and some natural compunctions at
+the course on which he had decided made him long to escape from thought.
+So Maltravers was under the same roof!  He had promised to give him an
+interview next day; but next day he wished to be on the road to London.
+Why not have it over to-night?  But could Maltravers meditate any hostile
+proceedings?  Impossible!  Whatever his causes of complaint, they were of
+too delicate and secret a nature for seconds, bullets, and newspaper
+paragraphs!  Vargrave might feel secure that he should not be delayed by
+any Bois de Boulogne assignation; but it was necessary to _his honour_
+(!) that he should not seem to shun the man he had deceived and wronged.
+He would go up to him at once,--a new excitement would distract his
+thoughts.  Agreeably to this resolution, Lord Vargrave quitted his room,
+and was about to close the outer door, when he recollected that perhaps
+his servant might not meet with Howard; that the secretary might probably
+arrive before the time fixed,--it would be as well to leave his door
+open.  He accordingly stopped, and writing upon a piece of paper, "Dear
+Howard, send up for me the moment you arrive: I shall be with Mr.
+Maltravers _au second_"--Vargrave wafered the _affiche_ to the door,
+which he then left ajar, and the lamp in the landing-place fell clear and
+full on the paper.
+
+It was the voice of Vargrave, in the little stone-paved antechamber
+without, inquiring of the servant if Mr. Maltravers was at home, which
+had startled and interrupted Cesarini as he was about to reply to Ernest.
+Each recognized that sharp clear voice; each glanced at the other.
+
+"I will not see him," said Maltravers, hastily moving towards the door;
+"you are not fit to--"
+
+"Meet him? no!" said Cesarini, with a furtive and sinister glance, which
+a man versed in his disease would have understood, but which Maltravers
+did not even observe; "I will retire into your bedroom; my eyes are
+heavy.  I could sleep."
+
+He opened the inner door as he spoke, and had scarcely reclosed it before
+Vargrave entered.
+
+"Your servant said you were engaged; but I thought you might see an old
+friend:" and Vargrave coolly seated himself.
+
+Maltravers drew the bolt across the door that separated them from
+Cesarini; and the two men, whose characters and lives were so strongly
+contrasted, were now alone.
+
+"You wished an interview,--an explanation," said Lumley; "I shrink from
+neither.  Let me forestall inquiry and complaint.  I deceived you
+knowingly and deliberately, it is quite true,--all stratagems are fair in
+love and war.  The prize was vast!  I believed my career depended on it:
+I could not resist the temptation.  I knew that before long you would
+learn that Evelyn was not your daughter; that the first communication
+between yourself and Lady Vargrave would betray me; but it was worth
+trying a _coup de main_.  You have foiled me, and conquered: be it so; I
+congratulate you.  You are tolerably rich, and the loss of Evelyn's
+fortune will not vex you as it would have done me."
+
+"Lord Vargrave, it is but poor affectation to treat thus lightly the dark
+falsehood you conceived, the awful curse you inflicted upon me.  Your
+sight is now so painful to me, it so stirs the passions that I would seek
+to suppress, that the sooner our interview is terminated the better.  I
+have to charge you, also, with a crime,--not, perhaps, baser than the one
+you so calmly own, but the consequences of which were more fatal: you
+understand me?"
+
+"I do not."
+
+"Do not tempt me! do not lie!" said Maltravers, still in a calm voice,
+though his passions, naturally so strong, shook his whole frame.  "To
+your arts I owe the exile of years that should have been better spent; to
+those arts Cesarini owes the wreck of his reason, and Florence Lascelles
+her early grave!  Ah, you are pale now; your tongue cleaves to your
+mouth!  And think you these crimes will go forever unrequited; think you
+that there is no justice in the thunderbolts of God?"
+
+"Sir," said Vargrave, starting to his feet, "I know not what you suspect,
+I care not what you believe!  But I am accountable to man, and that
+account I am willing to render.  You threatened me in the presence of my
+ward; you spoke of cowardice, and hinted at danger.  Whatever my faults,
+want of courage is not one.  Stand by your threats,--I am ready to brave
+them!"
+
+"A year, perhaps a short month, ago," replied Maltravers, and I would
+have arrogated justice to my own mortal hand; nay, this very night, had
+the hazard of either of our lives been necessary to save Evelyn from your
+persecution, I would have incurred all things for her sake!  But that is
+past; from me you have nothing to fear.  The proofs of your earlier
+guilt, with its dreadful results, would alone suffice to warn me from the
+solemn responsibility of human vengeance.  Great Heaven! what hand could
+dare to send a criminal so long hardened, so black with crime, unatoning,
+unrepentant, and unprepared, before the judgment-seat of the ALL JUST?
+Go, unhappy man! may life long be spared to you!  Awake! awake from this
+world, before your feet pass the irrevocable boundary of the next!"
+
+"I came not here to listen to homilies, and the cant of the conventicle,"
+said Vargrave, vainly struggling for a haughtiness of mien that his
+conscience-stricken aspect terribly belied; "not I; but this wrong world
+is to be blamed, if deeds that strict morality may not justify, but the
+effects of which I, no prophet, could not foresee, were necessary for
+success in life.  I have been but as all other men have been who struggle
+against fortune to be rich and great: ambition must make use of foul
+ladders."
+
+"Oh," said Maltravers, earnestly, touched involuntarily, and in spite of
+his abhorrence of the criminal, by the relenting that this miserable
+attempt at self-justification seemed to denote,--"oh, be warned, while it
+is yet time; wrap not yourself in these paltry sophistries; look back to
+your past career; see to what heights you might have climbed, if with
+those rare gifts and energies, with that subtle sagacity and indomitable
+courage--your ambition had but chosen the straight, not the crooked,
+path.  Pause! many years may yet, in the course of nature, afford you
+time to retrace your steps, to atone to thousands the injuries you have
+inflicted on the few.  I know not why I thus address you: but something
+diviner than indignation urges me; something tells me that you are
+already on the brink of the abyss!"
+
+Lord Vargrave changed colour, nor did he speak for some moments; then
+raising his head, with a faint smile, he said, "Maltravers, you are a
+false soothsayer.  At this moment my paths, crooked though they be, have
+led me far towards the summit of my proudest hopes; the straight path
+would have left me at the foot of the mountain.  You yourself are a
+beacon against the course you advise.  Let us contrast each other.  You
+took the straight path, I the crooked.  You, my superior in fortune; you,
+infinitely above me in genius; you, born to command and never to crouch:
+how do we stand now, each in the prime of life?  You, with a barren and
+profitless reputation; without rank, without power, almost without the
+hope of power.  I--but you know not my new dignity--I, in the Cabinet of
+England's ministry, vast fortunes opening to my gaze, the proudest
+station not too high for my reasonable ambition!  You, wedding yourself
+to some grand chimera of an object, aimless when it eludes your grasp.
+I, swinging, squirrel-like, from scheme to scheme; no matter if one
+breaks, another is at hand!  Some men would have cut their throats in
+despair, an hour ago, in losing the object of a seven years'
+chase,--Beauty and Wealth, both!  I open a letter, and find success in
+one quarter to counterbalance failure in another.  Bah! bah! each to his
+_metier_, Maltravers!  For you, honour, melancholy, and, if it please
+you, repentance also!  For me, the onward, rushing life, never looking
+back to the Past, never balancing the stepping-stones to the Future.  Let
+us not envy each other; if you were not Diogenes, you would be Alexander.
+Adieu! our interview is over.  Will you forget and forgive, and shake
+hands once more?  You draw back, you frown! well, perhaps you are right.
+If we meet again--"
+
+"It will be as strangers."
+
+"No rash vows! you may return to politics, you may want office.  I am of
+your way of thinking now: and--ha! ha!--poor Lumley Ferrers could make
+you a Lord of the Treasury; smooth travelling and cheap turnpikes on
+crooked paths, believe me.  Farewell!"
+
+
+
+On entering the room into which Cesarini had retired, Maltravers found
+him flown.  His servant said that the gentleman had gone away shortly
+after Lord Vargrave's arrival.  Ernest reproached himself bitterly for
+neglecting to secure the door that conducted to the ante-chamber; but
+still it was probable that Cesarini would return in the morning.
+
+The messenger who had taken the letter to De Montaigne brought back word
+that the latter was at his villa, but expected at Paris early the next
+day.  Maltravers hoped to see him before his departure; meanwhile he
+threw himself on his bed, and despite all the anxieties that yet
+oppressed him, the fatigues and excitements he had undergone exhausted
+even the endurance of that iron frame, and he fell into a profound
+slumber.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+            BY eight to-morrow
+  Thou shalt be made immortal.
+                 _Measure for Measure_.
+
+LORD VARGRAVE returned to his apartment to find Mr. Howard, who had but
+just that instant arrived, warming his white and well-ringed hands by the
+fire.  He conversed with him for half an hour on all the topics on which
+the secretary could give him information, and then dismissed him once
+more to the roof of Lady Jane.
+
+As he slowly undressed himself, he saw on his writing-table the note
+which Lady Doltimore had referred to, and which he had not yet opened.
+He lazily broke the seal, ran his eye carelessly over its few blotted
+words of remorse and alarm, and threw it down again with a contemptuous
+"pshaw!"  Thus unequally are the sorrows of a guilty tie felt by the man
+of the world and the woman of society!
+
+As his servant placed before him his wine and water, Vargrave told him to
+see early to the preparations for departure, and to call him at nine
+o'clock.
+
+"Shall I shut that door, my lord?" said the valet, pointing to one that
+communicated with one of those large closets, or _armoires_, that are
+common appendages to French bedrooms, and in which wood and sundry other
+matters are kept.
+
+"No," said Lord Vargrave, petulantly; "you servants are so fond of
+excluding every breath of air.  I should never have a window open, if I
+did not open it myself.  Leave the door as it is, and do not be later
+than nine to-morrow."
+
+The servant, who slept in a kind of kennel that communicated with the
+anteroom, did as he was bid; and Vargrave put out his candle, betook
+himself to bed, and, after drowsily gazing some minutes on the dying
+embers of the fire, which threw a dim ghastly light over the chamber,
+fell fast asleep.  The clock struck the first hour of morning, and in
+that house all seemed still.
+
+The next morning, Maltravers was disturbed from his slumber by De
+Montaigne, who, arriving, as was often his wont, at an early hour from
+his villa, had found Ernest's note of the previous evening.
+
+Maltravers rose and dressed himself; and while De Montaigne was yet
+listening to the account which his friend gave of his adventure with
+Cesarini, and the unhappy man's accusation of his accomplice, Ernest's
+servant entered the room very abruptly.
+
+"Sir," said he, "I thought you might like to know.  What is to be done?
+The whole hotel is in confusion, Mr. Howard has been sent for, and Lord
+Doltimore.  So very strange, so sudden!"
+
+"What is the matter?  Speak plain."
+
+"Lord Vargrave, sir,--poor Lord Vargrave--"
+
+"Lord Vargrave!"
+
+"Yes, sir; the master of the hotel, hearing you knew his lordship, would
+be so glad if you would come down.  Lord Vargrave, sir, is dead,--found
+dead in his bed!"
+
+Maltravers was rooted to the spot with amaze and horror.  Dead! and but
+last night so full of life and schemes and hope and ambition.
+
+As soon as he recovered himself, he hurried to the spot, and De Montaigne
+followed.  The latter, as they descended the stairs, laid his hand on
+Ernest's arm and detained him.
+
+"Did you say that Castruccio left the apartment while Vargrave was with
+you, and almost immediately after his narrative of Vargrave's instigation
+to his crime?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+The eyes of the friends met; a terrible suspicion possessed both.  "No;
+it is impossible!" exclaimed Maltravers.  "How could he obtain entrance,
+how pass Lord Vargrave's servants?  No, no; think of it not!"
+
+They hurried down the stairs; they reached the other door of Vargrave's
+apartment.  The notice to Howard, with the name of Vargrave underscored,
+was still on the panels.  De Montaigne saw and shuddered.
+
+They were in the room by the bedside.  A group were collected round; they
+gave way as the Englishman and his friend approached; and the eyes of
+Maltravers suddenly rested on the face of Lord Vargrave, which was
+locked, rigid, and convulsed.
+
+There was a buzz of voices which had ceased at the entrance of
+Maltravers; it was now renewed.  A surgeon had been summoned--the nearest
+surgeon,--a young Englishman of no great repute or name.  He was making
+inquiries as he bent over the corpse.
+
+"Yes, sir," said Lord Vargrave's servant, "his lordship told me to call
+him at nine o'clock.  I came in at that hour, but his lordship did not
+move nor answer me.  I then looked to see if he were very sound asleep,
+and I saw that the pillows had got somehow over his face, and his head
+seemed to lie very low; so I moved the pillows, and I saw that his
+lordship was dead."
+
+"Sir," said the surgeon, turning to Maltravers, "you were a friend of his
+lordship, I hear.  I have already sent for Mr. Howard and Lord Doltimore.
+Shall I speak with you a minute?"
+
+Maltravers nodded assent.  The surgeon cleared the room of all but
+himself, De Montaigne, and Maltravers.
+
+"Has that servant lived long with Lord Vargrave?" asked the surgeon.
+
+"I believe so,--yes; I recollect his face.  Why?"
+
+"And you think him safe and honest?"
+
+"I don't know; I know nothing of him."
+
+"Look here, sir,"--and the surgeon pointed to a slight discoloration on
+one side the throat of the dead man.  "This may be accidental--purely
+natural; his lordship may have died in a fit; there are no certain marks
+of outward violence, but murder by suffocation might still--"
+
+"But who besides the servant could gain admission?  Was the outer door
+closed?"
+
+"The servant can take oath that he shut the door before going to bed, and
+that no one was with his lordship, or in the rooms, when Lord Vargrave
+retired to rest.  Entrance from the windows is impossible.  Mind, sir, I
+do not think I have any right to suspect any one.  His lordship had been
+in very ill health a short time before; had had, I hear, a rush of blood
+to the head.  Certainly, if the servant be innocent, we can suspect no
+one else.  You had better send for more experienced practitioners."
+
+De Montaigne, who had hitherto said nothing, now looked with a hurried
+glance around the room: he perceived the closet-door, which was ajar, and
+rushed to it, as by an involuntary impulse.  The closet was large, but a
+considerable pile of wood, and some lumber of odd chairs and tables, took
+up a great part of the space.  De Montaigne searched behind and amidst
+this litter with trembling haste,--no trace of secreted murder was
+visible.  He returned to the bedroom with a satisfied and relieved
+expression of countenance.  He then compelled himself to approach the
+body, from which he had hitherto recoiled.
+
+"Sir," said he, almost harshly, as he turned to the surgeon, "what idle
+doubts are these?  Cannot men die in their beds, of sudden death, no
+blood to stain their pillows, no loop-hole for crime to pass through, but
+we must have science itself startling us with silly terrors?  As for the
+servant, I will answer for his innocence; his manner, his voice attest
+it."  The surgeon drew back, abashed and humbled, and began to apologize,
+to qualify, when Lord Doltimore abruptly entered.
+
+"Good heavens!" said he, "what is this?  What do I hear?  Is it possible?
+Dead!  So suddenly!"  He cast a hurried glance at the body, shivered, and
+sickened, and threw himself into a chair, as if to recover the shock.
+When again he removed his hand from his face, he saw lying before him on
+the table an open note.  The character was familiar; his own name struck
+his eye,--it was the note which Caroline had sent the day before.  As no
+one heeded him, Lord Doltimore read on, and possessed himself of the
+proof of his wife's guilt unseen.
+
+The surgeon, now turning from De Montaigne, who had been rating him
+soundly for the last few moments, addressed himself to Lord Doltimore.
+"Your lordship," said he, "was, I hear, Lord Vargrave's most intimate
+friend at Paris."
+
+"I _his_ intimate friend?" said Doltimore, colouring highly, and in a
+disdainful accent.  "Sir, you are misinformed."
+
+"Have you no orders to give, then, my lord?"
+
+"None, sir.  My presence here is quite useless.  Good-day to you,
+gentlemen."
+
+"With whom, then, do the last duties rest?" said the surgeon, turning to
+Maltravers and De Montaigne.  "With the late lord's secretary?--I expect
+him every moment; and here he is, I suppose,"--as Mr. Howard, pale, and
+evidently overcome by his agitation, entered the apartment.  Perhaps, of
+all the human beings whom the ambitious spirit of that senseless clay had
+drawn around it by the webs of interest, affection, or intrigue, that
+young man, whom it had never been a temptation to Vargrave to deceive or
+injure, and who missed only the gracious and familiar patron, mourned
+most his memory, and defended most his character.  The grief of the poor
+secretary was now indeed overmastering.  He sobbed and wept like a child.
+
+When Maltravers retired from the chamber of death, De Montaigne
+accompanied him; but soon quitting him again, as Ernest bent his way to
+Evelyn, he quietly rejoined Mr. Howard, who readily grasped at his offers
+of aid in the last melancholy duties and directions.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+  IF we do meet again, why, we shall smile.--_Julius Caesar_.
+
+THE interview with Evelyn was long and painful.  It was reserved for
+Maltravers to break to her the news of the sudden death of Lord Vargrave,
+which shocked her unspeakably; and this, which made their first topic,
+removed much constraint and deadened much excitement in those which
+followed.
+
+Vargrave's death served also to relieve Maltravers from a most anxious
+embarrassment.  He need no longer fear that Alice would be degraded in
+the eyes of Evelyn.  Henceforth the secret that identified the erring
+Alice Darvil with the spotless Lady Vargrave was safe, known only to Mrs.
+Leslie and to Aubrey.  In the course of nature, all chance of its
+disclosure must soon die with them; and should Alice at last become his
+wife, and should Cleveland suspect (which was not probable) that
+Maltravers had returned to his first love, he knew that he might depend
+on the inviolable secrecy of his earliest friend.
+
+The tale that Vargrave had told to Evelyn of his early--but, according to
+that tale, guiltless--passion for Alice, he tacitly confirmed; and he
+allowed that the recollection of her virtues, and the intelligence of her
+sorrows and unextinguishable affection, had made him recoil from a
+marriage with her supposed daughter.  He then proceeded to amaze his
+young listener with the account of the mode in which he had discovered
+her real parentage, of which the banker had left it to Alice's discretion
+to inform her, after she had attained the age of eighteen.  And then,
+simply, but with manly and ill-controlled emotion, he touched upon the
+joy of Alice at beholding him again, upon the endurance and fervour of
+her love, upon her revulsion of feeling at learning that, in her
+unforgotten lover, she beheld the recent suitor of her adopted child.
+
+"And now," said Maltravers, in conclusion, "the path to both of us
+remains the same.  To Alice is our first duty.  The discovery I have made
+of your real parentage does not diminish the claims which Alice has on
+me, does not lessen the grateful affection that is due to her from
+yourself.  Yes, Evelyn, we are not the less separated forever.  But when
+I learned the wilful falsehood which the unhappy man, now hurried to his
+last account, to whom your birth was known, had imposed upon me,--namely,
+that you were the child of Alice,--and when I learned also that you had
+been hurried into accepting his hand, I trembled at your union with one
+so false and base.  I came hither resolved to frustrate his schemes and
+to save you from an alliance, the motives of which I foresaw, and to
+which my own letter, my own desertion, had perhaps urged you.  New
+villanies on the part of this most perverted man came to my ear: but he
+is dead; let us spare his memory.  For you--oh, still let me deem myself
+your friend,--your more than brother; let me hope now that I have planted
+no thorn in that breast, and that your affection does not shrink from the
+cold word of friendship."
+
+"Of all the wonders that you have told me," answered Evelyn, as soon as
+she could recover the power of words, "my most poignant sorrow is, that I
+have no rightful claim to give a daughter's love to her whom I shall ever
+idolize as my mother.  Oh, now I see why I thought her affection measured
+and lukewarm.  And have I--I destroyed her joy at seeing you again?  But
+you--you will hasten to console, to reassure her!  She loves you
+still,--she will be happy at last; and that--that thought--oh, that
+thought compensates for all!"
+
+There was so much warmth and simplicity in Evelyn's artless manner, it
+was so evident that her love for him had not been of that ardent nature
+which would at first have superseded every other thought in the anguish
+of losing him forever, that the scale fell from the eyes of Maltravers,
+and he saw at once that his own love had blinded him to the true
+character of hers.  He was human; and a sharp pang shot across his
+breast.  He remained silent for some moments; and then resumed,
+compelling himself as he spoke to fix his eyes steadfastly on hers.
+
+"And now, Evelyn--still may I so call you?--I have a duty to discharge to
+another.  You are loved"--and he smiled, but the smile was sad--"by a
+younger and more suitable lover than I am.  From noble and generous
+motives he suppressed that love,--he left you to a rival; the rival
+removed, dare he venture to explain to you his own conduct, and plead his
+own motives?  George Legard--"  Maltravers paused.  The cheek on which he
+gazed was tinged with a soft blush, Evelyn's eyes were downcast, there
+was a slight heaving beneath the robe.
+
+Maltravers suppressed a sigh and continued.  He narrated his interview
+with Legard at Dover; and, passing lightly over what had chanced at
+Venice, dwelt with generous eloquence on the magnanimity with which his
+rival's gratitude had been displayed.  Evelyn's eyes sparkled, and the
+smile just visited the rosy lips and vanished again.  The worst because
+it was the least selfish fear of Maltravers was gone, and no vain doubt
+of Evelyn's too keen regret remained to chill his conscience in obeying
+its earliest and strongest duties.
+
+"Farewell!" he said, as he rose to depart; "I will at once return to
+London, and assist in the effort to save your fortune from this general
+wreck: LIFE calls us back to its cares and business--farewell, Evelyn!
+Aubrey will, I trust, remain with you still."
+
+"Remain!  Can I not return then to my--to her--yes, let me call her
+_mother_ still?"
+
+"Evelyn," said Maltravers, in a very low voice, "spare me, spare her that
+pain!  Are we yet fit to--" He paused; Evelyn comprehended him, and
+hiding her face with her hands, burst into tears.
+
+When Maltravers left the room, he was met by Aubrey, who, drawing him
+aside, told him that Lord Doltimore had just informed him that it was not
+his intention to remain at Paris, and had more than delicately hinted at
+a wish for the departure of Miss Cameron.  In this emergency, Maltravers
+bethought himself of Madame de Ventadour.
+
+No house in Paris was a more eligible refuge, no friend more zealous; no
+protector would be more kind, no adviser more sincere.  To her then he
+hastened.  He briefly informed her of Vargrave's sudden death; and
+suggested that for Evelyn to return at once to a sequestered village in
+England might be a severe trial to spirits already broken; and declared
+truly, that though his marriage with Evelyn was broken off, her welfare
+was no less dear to him than heretofore.  At his first hint, Valerie, who
+took a cordial interest in Evelyn for her own sake, ordered her carriage,
+and drove at once to Lady Doltimore's.  His lordship was out, her
+ladyship was ill, in her own room, could see no one, not even her guest.
+Evelyn in vain sent up to request an interview; and at last, contenting
+herself with an affectionate note of farewell, accompanied Aubrey to the
+home of her new hostess.
+
+Gratified at least to know her with one who would be sure to win her
+affection and soothe her spirits, Maltravers set out on his solitary
+return to England.
+
+Whatever suspicious circumstances might or might not have attended the
+death of Lord Vargrave, certain it is that no evidence confirmed and no
+popular rumour circulated them.  His late illness, added to the supposed
+shock of the loss of the fortune he had anticipated with Miss Cameron,
+aided by the simultaneous intelligence of the defeat of the party with
+whom it was believed he had indissolubly entwined his ambition, sufficed
+to account satisfactorily enough for the melancholy event.  De Montaigne,
+who had been long, though not intimately, acquainted with the deceased,
+took upon himself all the necessary arrangements, and superintended the
+funeral; after which ceremony, Howard returned to London; and in Paris,
+as in the grave, all things are forgotten!  But still in De Montaigne's
+breast there dwelt a horrible fear.  As soon as he had learned from
+Maltravers the charge the maniac brought against Vargrave, there came
+upon him the recollection of that day when Cesarini had attempted De
+Montaigne's life, evidently mistaking him in his delirium for
+another,--and the sullen, cunning, and ferocious character which the
+insanity had ever afterwards assumed.  He had learned from Howard that
+the outer door had been left ajar when Lord Vargrave was with Maltravers.
+The writing on the panel, the name of Vargrave, would have struck
+Castruccio's eye as he descended the stairs; the servant was from home,
+the apartments deserted; he might have won his way into the bedchamber,
+concealed himself in the _armoire_, and in the dead of the night, and in
+the deep and helpless sleep of his victim, have done the deed.  What need
+of weapons--the suffocating pillows would stop speech and life.  What so
+easy as escape,--to pass into the anteroom; to unbolt the door; to
+descend into the courtyard; to give the signal to the porter in his
+lodge, who, without seeing him, would pull the _cordon_, and give him
+egress unobserved?
+
+All this was so possible, so probable.
+
+De Montaigne now withdrew all inquiry for the unfortunate; he trembled at
+the thought of discovering him, of verifying his awful suspicions, of
+beholding a murderer in the brother of his wife!  But he was not doomed
+long to entertain fear for Cesarini; he was not fated ever to change
+suspicion into certainty.  A few days after Lord Vargrave's burial, a
+corpse was drawn from the Seine.  Some tablets in the pockets, scrawled
+over with wild, incoherent verses, gave a clew to the discovery of the
+dead man's friends: and, exposed at the Morgue, in that bleached and
+altered clay, De Montaigne recognized the remains of Castruccio Cesarini.
+"He died and made no sign!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+  SINGULA quaeque locum teneant sortita.*--HORACE: _Ars Poetica_.
+
+  * "To each lot its appropriate place."
+
+MALTRAVERS and the lawyers were enabled to save from the insolvent bank
+but a very scanty portion of that wealth in which Richard Templeton had
+rested so much of pride.  The title extinct, the fortune gone--so does
+Fate laugh at our posthumous ambition!  Meanwhile Mr. Douce, with
+considerable plunder, had made his way to America: the bank owed nearly
+half a million; the purchase money for Lisle Court, which Mr. Douce had
+been so anxious to get into his clutches, had not sufficed to stave off
+the ruin,--but a great part of it sufficed to procure competence for
+himself.  How inferior in wit, in acuteness, in stratagem, was Douce to
+Vargrave; and yet Douce had gulled him like a child!  Well said the
+shrewd small philosopher of France--"On peut etre plus fin qu'un autre,
+mais pas plus fin que tous les autres."*
+
+  * One may be more sharp than one's neighbour, but one can't be
+    sharper than all one's neighbours.--ROCHEFOUCAULD.
+
+To Legard, whom Maltravers had again encountered at Dover, the latter
+related the downfall of Evelyn's fortunes; and Maltravers loved him when
+he saw that, far from changing his affection, the loss of wealth seemed
+rather to raise his hopes.  They parted; and Legard set out for Paris.
+
+But was Maltravers all the while forgetful of Alice?  He had not been
+twelve hours in London before he committed to a long and truthful letter
+all his thoughts, his hopes, his admiring and profound gratitude.  Again,
+and with solemn earnestness, he implored her to accept his hand, and to
+confirm at the altar the tale which had been told to Evelyn.  Truly he
+said that the shock which his first belief in Vargrave's falsehood had
+occasioned, his passionate determination to subdue all trace of a love
+then associated with crime and horror, followed so close by his discovery
+of Alice's enduring faith and affection, had removed the image of Evelyn
+from the throne it had hitherto held in his desires and thoughts; truly
+he said that he was now convinced that Evelyn would soon be consoled for
+his loss by another, with whom she would be happier than with him; truly
+and solemnly he declared that if Alice rejected him still, if even Alice
+were no more, his suit to Evelyn never could be renewed, and Alice's
+memory would usurp the place of all living love!
+
+Her answer came: it pierced him to the heart.  It was so humble, so
+grateful, so tender still.  Unknown to herself, love yet coloured every
+word; but it was love pained, galled, crushed, and trampled on; it was
+love, proud from its very depth and purity.  His offer was refused.
+
+Months passed away.  Maltravers yet trusted to time.  The curate had
+returned to Brook-Green, and his letters fed Ernest's hopes and assured
+his doubts.  The more leisure there was left him for reflection, the
+fainter became those dazzling and rainbow hues in which Evelyn had been
+robed and surrounded, and the brighter the halo that surrounded his
+earliest love.  The more he pondered on Alice's past history, and the
+singular beauty of her faithful attachment, the more he was impressed
+with wonder and admiration, the more anxious to secure to his side one to
+whom Nature had been so bountiful in all the gifts that make woman the
+angel and star of life.
+
+Months passed.  From Paris the news that Maltravers received confirmed
+all his expectations,--the suit of Legard had replaced his own.  It was
+then that Maltravers began to consider how far the fortune of Evelyn and
+her destined husband was such as to preclude all anxiety for their future
+lot.  Fortune is so indeterminate in its gauge and measurement.  Money,
+the most elastic of materials, falls short or exceeds, according to the
+extent of our wants and desires.  With all Legard's good qualities he was
+constitutionally careless and extravagant; and Evelyn was too
+inexperienced, and too gentle, perhaps, to correct his tendencies.
+Maltravers learned that Legard's income was one that required an economy
+which he feared that, in spite of all his reformation, Legard might not
+have the self-denial to enforce.  After some consideration, he resolved
+to add secretly to the remains of Evelyn's fortune such a sum as might,
+being properly secured to herself and children, lessen whatever danger
+could arise from the possible improvidence of her husband, and guard
+against the chance of those embarrassments which are among the worst
+disturbers of domestic peace.  He was enabled to effect this generosity
+unknown to both of them, as if the sum bestowed were collected from the
+wrecks of Evelyn's own wealth and the profits of the sale of the houses
+in C-----, which of course had not been involved in Douce's bankruptcy.
+And then if Alice were ever his, her jointure, which had been secured on
+the property appertaining to the villa at Fulham, would devolve upon
+Evelyn.  Maltravers could never accept what Alice owed to another.  Poor
+Alice!  No! not that modest wealth which you had looked upon complacently
+as one day or other to be his.
+
+Lord Doltimore is travelling in the East,--Lady Doltimore, less
+adventurous, has fixed her residence in Rome.  She has grown thin, and
+taken to antiquities and rouge.  Her spirits are remarkably high--not an
+uncommon effect of laudanum.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THE LAST.
+
+            ARRIVED at last
+  Unto the wished haven.--SHAKSPEARE.
+
+IN the August of that eventful year a bridal party were assembled at the
+cottage of Lady Vargrave.  The ceremony had just been performed, and
+Ernest Maltravers had bestowed upon George Legard the hand of Evelyn
+Templeton.
+
+If upon the countenance of him who thus officiated as a father to her he
+had once wooed as a bride an observant eye might have noted the trace of
+mental struggles, it was the trace of struggles past; and the calm had
+once more settled over the silent deeps.  He saw from the casement the
+carriage that was to bear away the bride to the home of another,--the gay
+faces of the village group, whose intrusion was not forbidden, and to
+whom that solemn ceremonial was but a joyous pageant; and when he turned
+once more to those within the chamber, he felt his hand clasped in
+Legard's.
+
+"You have been the preserver of my life, you have been the dispenser of
+my earthly happiness; all now left to me to wish for is, that you may
+receive from Heaven the blessings you have given to others!"
+
+"Legard, never let her know a sorrow that you can guard her from; and
+believe that the husband of Evelyn will be dear to me as a brother!"
+
+And as a brother blesses some younger and orphan sister bequeathed and
+intrusted to a care that should replace a father's, so Maltravers laid
+his hand lightly on Evelyn's golden tresses, and his lips moved in
+prayer.  He ceased; he pressed his last kiss upon her forehead, and
+placed her hand in that of her young husband.  There was silence; and
+when to the ear of Maltravers it was broken, it was by the wheels of the
+carriage that bore away the wife of George Legard!
+
+The spell was dissolved forever.  And there stood before the lonely man
+the idol of his early youth, Alice,--still, perhaps, as fair, and once
+young and passionate, as Evelyn; pale, changed, but lovelier than of old,
+if heavenly patience and holy thought, and the trials that purify and
+exalt, can shed over human features something more beautiful than bloom.
+
+The good curate alone was present, besides these two survivors of the
+error and the love that make the rapture and the misery of so many of our
+kind; and the old man, after contemplating them a moment, stole
+unperceived away.
+
+"Alice," said Maltravers, and his voice trembled, "hitherto, from motives
+too pure and too noble for the practical affections and ties of life, you
+have rejected the hand of the lover of your youth.  Here again I implore
+you to be mine!  Give to my conscience the balm of believing that I can
+repair to you the evils and the sorrows I have brought upon you.  Nay,
+weep not; turn not away.  Each of us stands alone; each of us needs the
+other.  In your heart is locked up all my fondest associations, my
+brightest memories.  In you I see the mirror of what I was when the world
+was new, ere I had found how Pleasure palls upon us, and Ambition
+deceives!  And me, Alice--ah, you love me still!  Time and absence have
+but strengthened the chain that binds us.  By the memory of our early
+love, by the grave of our lost child that, had it lived, would have
+united its parents, I implore you to be mine!"
+
+"Too generous!" said Alice, almost sinking beneath the emotions that
+shook that gentle spirit and fragile form, "how can I suffer your
+_compassion_--for it is but compassion--to deceive yourself?  You are of
+another station than I believed you.  How can you raise the child of
+destitution and guilt to your own rank?  And shall I--I--who, Heaven
+knows! would save you from all regret--bring to you now, when years have
+so changed and broken the little charm I could ever have possessed, this
+blighted heart and weary spirit?  Oh, no, no!" and Alice paused abruptly,
+and the tears rolled down her cheeks.
+
+"Be it as you will," said Maltravers, mournfully; "but, at least, ground
+your refusal upon better motives.  Say that now, independent in fortune,
+and attached to the habits you have formed, you would not hazard your
+happiness in my keeping,--perhaps you are right.  To _my_ happiness you
+would indeed contribute; your sweet voice might charm away many a memory
+and many a thought of the baffled years that have intervened since we
+parted; your image might dissipate the solitude which is closing round
+the Future of a disappointed and anxious life.  With you, and with you
+alone, I might yet find a home, a comforter, a charitable and soothing
+friend.  This you could give to me; and with a heart and a form alike
+faithful to a love that deserved not so enduring a devotion.  But I--what
+can I bestow on you?  Your station is equal to my own; your fortune
+satisfies your simple wants.  'Tis true the exchange is not equal, Alice.
+Adieu!"
+
+"Cruel!" said Alice, approaching him with timid steps.  "If I could--I,
+so untutored, so unworthy--if I could comfort you in a single care!"
+
+She said no more, but she had said enough; and Maltravers, clasping her
+to his bosom, felt once more that heart which never, even in thought, had
+swerved from its early worship, beating against his own!
+
+He drew her gently into the open air.  The ripe and mellow noonday of the
+last month of summer glowed upon the odorous flowers, and the broad sea,
+that stretched beyond and afar, wore upon its solemn waves a golden and
+happy smile.
+
+"And ah," murmured Alice, softly, as she looked up from his breast, "I
+ask not if you have loved others since we parted--man's faith is so
+different from ours--I only ask if you love me now?"
+
+"More! oh, immeasurably more, than in our youngest days!" cried
+Maltravers, with fervent passion.  "More fondly, more reverently, more
+trustfully, than I ever loved living being!--even her, in whose youth and
+innocence I adored the memory of thee!  Here have I found that which
+shames and bankrupts the Ideal!  Here have I found a virtue, that, coming
+at once from God and Nature, has been wiser than all my false philosophy
+and firmer than all my pride!  You, cradled by misfortune,--your
+childhood reared amidst scenes of fear and vice, which, while they seared
+back the intellect, had no pollution for the soul,--your very parent your
+tempter and your foe; you, only not a miracle and an angel by the stain
+of one soft and unconscious error,--you, alike through the equal trials
+of poverty and wealth, have been destined to rise above all triumphant;
+the example of the sublime moral that teaches us with what mysterious
+beauty and immortal holiness the Creator has endowed our human nature
+when hallowed by our human affections!  You alone suffice to shatter into
+dust the haughty creeds of the Misanthrope and Pharisee!  And your
+fidelity to my erring self has taught me ever to love, to serve, to
+compassionate, to respect the community of God's creatures to
+which--noble and elevated though you are--you yet belong!"
+
+He ceased, overpowered with the rush of his own thoughts.  And Alice was
+too blessed for words.  But in the murmur of the sunlit leaves, in the
+breath of the summer air, in the song of the exulting birds, and the deep
+and distant music of the heaven-surrounded seas, there went a melodious
+voice that seemed as if Nature echoed to his words, and blest the reunion
+of her children.
+
+Maltravers once more entered upon the career so long suspended.  He
+entered with an energy more practical and steadfast than the fitful
+enthusiasm of former years; and it was noticeable amongst those who knew
+him well, that while the firmness of his mind was not impaired, the
+haughtiness of his temper was subdued.  No longer despising Man as he is,
+and no longer exacting from all things the ideal of a visionary standard,
+he was more fitted to mix in the living World, and to minister usefully
+to the great objects that refine and elevate our race.  His sentiments
+were, perhaps, less lofty, but his actions were infinitely more
+excellent, and his theories infinitely more wise.
+
+Stage after stage we have proceeded with him through the MYSTERIES OF
+LIFE.  The Eleusinia are closed, and the crowning libation poured.
+
+And Alice!--Will the world blame us if you are left happy at the last?
+We are daily banishing from our law-books the statutes that disproportion
+punishment to crime.  Daily we preach the doctrine that we demoralize
+wherever we strain justice into cruelty.  It is time that we should apply
+to the Social Code the Wisdom we recognize in Legislation!  It is time
+that we should do away with the punishment of death for inadequate
+offences, even in books; it is time that we should allow the morality of
+atonement, and permit to Error the right to hope, as the reward of
+submission to its suffering.  Nor let it be thought that the close to
+Alice's career can offer temptation to the offence of its commencement.
+Eighteen years of sadness, a youth consumed in silent sorrow over the
+grave of Joy, have images that throw over these pages a dark and warning
+shadow that will haunt the young long after they turn from the tale that
+is about to close!  If Alice had died of a broken heart, if her
+punishment had been more than she could bear, _then_, as in real life,
+you would have justly condemned my moral; and the human heart, in its
+pity for the victim, would have lost all recollection of the error.--My
+tale is done.
+
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, ALICE BY LYTTON ***
+By Edward Bulwer Lytton
+
+** This file should be named b214w10.txt or b214w10.zip ***
+
+Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, b214w11.txt
+VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, b214w10a.txt
+
+Produced by Dagny, dagnypg@yahoo.com
+and David Widger, widger@cecomet.net
+
+Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we usually do not
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+We are now trying to release all our eBooks one year in advance
+of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing.
+Please be encouraged to tell us about any error or corrections,
+even years after the official publication date.
+
+Please note neither this listing nor its contents are final til
+midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement.
+The official release date of all Project Gutenberg eBooks is at
+Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month.  A
+preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment
+and editing by those who wish to do so.
+
+Most people start at our Web sites at:
+http://gutenberg.net or
+http://promo.net/pg
+
+These Web sites include award-winning information about Project
+Gutenberg, including how to donate, how to help produce our new
+eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter (free!).
+
+
+Those of you who want to download any eBook before announcement
+can get to them as follows, and just download by date.  This is
+also a good way to get them instantly upon announcement, as the
+indexes our cataloguers produce obviously take a while after an
+announcement goes out in the Project Gutenberg Newsletter.
+
+http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext03 or
+ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext03
+
+Or /etext02, 01, 00, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90
+
+Just search by the first five letters of the filename you want,
+as it appears in our Newsletters.
+
+
+Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)
+
+We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work.  The
+time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours
+to get any eBook selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright
+searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc.   Our
+projected audience is one hundred million readers.  If the value
+per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2
+million dollars per hour in 2002 as we release over 100 new text
+files per month:  1240 more eBooks in 2001 for a total of 4000+
+We are already on our way to trying for 2000 more eBooks in 2002
+If they reach just 1-2% of the world's population then the total
+will reach over half a trillion eBooks given away by year's end.
+
+The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away 1 Trillion eBooks!
+This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers,
+which is only about 4% of the present number of computer users.
+
+Here is the briefest record of our progress (* means estimated):
+
+eBooks Year Month
+
+    1  1971 July
+   10  1991 January
+  100  1994 January
+ 1000  1997 August
+ 1500  1998 October
+ 2000  1999 December
+ 2500  2000 December
+ 3000  2001 November
+ 4000  2001 October/November
+ 6000  2002 December*
+ 9000  2003 November*
+10000  2004 January*
+
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been created
+to secure a future for Project Gutenberg into the next millennium.
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+As of February, 2002, contributions are being solicited from people
+and organizations in: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut,
+Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois,
+Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts,
+Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New
+Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio,
+Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South
+Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West
+Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
+
+We have filed in all 50 states now, but these are the only ones
+that have responded.
+
+As the requirements for other states are met, additions to this list
+will be made and fund raising will begin in the additional states.
+Please feel free to ask to check the status of your state.
+
+In answer to various questions we have received on this:
+
+We are constantly working on finishing the paperwork to legally
+request donations in all 50 states.  If your state is not listed and
+you would like to know if we have added it since the list you have,
+just ask.
+
+While we cannot solicit donations from people in states where we are
+not yet registered, we know of no prohibition against accepting
+donations from donors in these states who approach us with an offer to
+donate.
+
+International donations are accepted, but we don't know ANYTHING about
+how to make them tax-deductible, or even if they CAN be made
+deductible, and don't have the staff to handle it even if there are
+ways.
+
+Donations by check or money order may be sent to:
+
+Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+PMB 113
+1739 University Ave.
+Oxford, MS 38655-4109
+
+Contact us if you want to arrange for a wire transfer or payment
+method other than by check or money order.
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been approved by
+the US Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(3) organization with EIN
+[Employee Identification Number] 64-622154.  Donations are
+tax-deductible to the maximum extent permitted by law.  As fund-raising
+requirements for other states are met, additions to this list will be
+made and fund-raising will begin in the additional states.
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+You can get up to date donation information online at:
+
+http://www.gutenberg.net/donation.html
+
+
+***
+
+If you can't reach Project Gutenberg,
+you can always email directly to:
+
+Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com>
+
+Prof. Hart will answer or forward your message.
+
+We would prefer to send you information by email.
+
+
+**The Legal Small Print**
+
+
+(Three Pages)
+
+***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS**START***
+Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers.
+They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with
+your copy of this eBook, even if you got it for free from
+someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our
+fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement
+disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how
+you may distribute copies of this eBook if you want to.
+
+*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS EBOOK
+By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
+eBook, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept
+this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive
+a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this eBook by
+sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person
+you got it from. If you received this eBook on a physical
+medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request.
+
+ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM EBOOKS
+This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBooks,
+is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor Michael S. Hart
+through the Project Gutenberg Association (the "Project").
+Among other things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright
+on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and
+distribute it in the United States without permission and
+without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth
+below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this eBook
+under the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.
+
+Please do not use the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark to market
+any commercial products without permission.
+
+To create these eBooks, the Project expends considerable
+efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain
+works. Despite these efforts, the Project's eBooks and any
+medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other
+things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
+intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged
+disk or other eBook medium, a computer virus, or computer
+codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.
+
+LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES
+But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below,
+[1] Michael Hart and the Foundation (and any other party you may
+receive this eBook from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook) disclaims
+all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including
+legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR
+UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT,
+INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE
+OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE
+POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
+
+If you discover a Defect in this eBook within 90 days of
+receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any)
+you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that
+time to the person you received it from. If you received it
+on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and
+such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement
+copy. If you received it electronically, such person may
+choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to
+receive it electronically.
+
+THIS EBOOK IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS
+TO THE EBOOK OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT
+LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A
+PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
+
+Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or
+the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the
+above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you
+may have other legal rights.
+
+INDEMNITY
+You will indemnify and hold Michael Hart, the Foundation,
+and its trustees and agents, and any volunteers associated
+with the production and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm
+texts harmless, from all liability, cost and expense, including
+legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the
+following that you do or cause:  [1] distribution of this eBook,
+[2] alteration, modification, or addition to the eBook,
+or [3] any Defect.
+
+DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm"
+You may distribute copies of this eBook electronically, or by
+disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this
+"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg,
+or:
+
+[1]  Only give exact copies of it.  Among other things, this
+     requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the
+     eBook or this "small print!" statement.  You may however,
+     if you wish, distribute this eBook in machine readable
+     binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form,
+     including any form resulting from conversion by word
+     processing or hypertext software, but only so long as
+     *EITHER*:
+
+     [*]  The eBook, when displayed, is clearly readable, and
+          does *not* contain characters other than those
+          intended by the author of the work, although tilde
+          (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may
+          be used to convey punctuation intended by the
+          author, and additional characters may be used to
+          indicate hypertext links; OR
+
+     [*]  The eBook may be readily converted by the reader at
+          no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent
+          form by the program that displays the eBook (as is
+          the case, for instance, with most word processors);
+          OR
+
+     [*]  You provide, or agree to also provide on request at
+          no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the
+          eBook in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC
+          or other equivalent proprietary form).
+
+[2]  Honor the eBook refund and replacement provisions of this
+     "Small Print!" statement.
+
+[3]  Pay a trademark license fee to the Foundation of 20% of the
+     gross profits you derive calculated using the method you
+     already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  If you
+     don't derive profits, no royalty is due.  Royalties are
+     payable to "Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation"
+     the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were
+     legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent
+     periodic) tax return.  Please contact us beforehand to
+     let us know your plans and to work out the details.
+
+WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?
+Project Gutenberg is dedicated to increasing the number of
+public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed
+in machine readable form.
+
+The Project gratefully accepts contributions of money, time,
+public domain materials, or royalty free copyright licenses.
+Money should be paid to the:
+"Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+If you are interested in contributing scanning equipment or
+software or other items, please contact Michael Hart at:
+hart@pobox.com
+
+[Portions of this eBook's header and trailer may be reprinted only
+when distributed free of all fees.  Copyright (C) 2001, 2002 by
+Michael S. Hart.  Project Gutenberg is a TradeMark and may not be
+used in any sales of Project Gutenberg eBooks or other materials be
+they hardware or software or any other related product without
+express permission.]
+
+*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS*Ver.02/11/02*END*
diff --git a/old/b214w10.zip b/old/b214w10.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e038a47
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/b214w10.zip