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+Project Gutenberg’s Ernest Maltravers, 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.org
+
+
+Title: Ernest Maltravers, Complete
+
+Author: Edward Bulwer-Lytton
+
+Release Date: March 16, 2009 [EBook #7649]
+Last Updated: August 28, 2016
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ERNEST MALTRAVERS, COMPLETE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger and Dagny
+
+
+
+
+
+ERNEST MALTRAVERS
+
+By Edward Bulwer Lytton
+
+(Lord Lytton)
+
+
+
+DEDICATION:
+
+   TO
+   THE GREAT GERMAN PEOPLE,
+   A race of thinkers and of critics;
+   A foreign but familiar audience,
+   Profound in judgment, candid in reproof, generous in appreciation,
+   This work is dedicated
+   By an English Author.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1840.
+
+HOWEVER numerous the works of fiction with which, my dear Reader, I
+have trespassed on your attention, I have published but three, of any
+account, in which the plot has been cast amidst the events, and coloured
+by the manner, of our own times. The first of these, _Pelham_, composed
+when I was little more than a boy, has the faults, and perhaps the
+merits, natural to a very early age,--when the novelty itself of
+life quickens the observation,--when we see distinctly, and represent
+vividly, what lies upon the surface of the world,--and when, half
+sympathising with the follies we satirise, there is a gusto in our
+paintings which atones for their exaggeration. As we grow older we
+observe less, we reflect more; and, like Frankenstein, we dissect in
+order to create.
+
+The second novel of the present day,* which, after an interval of some
+years, I submitted to the world, was one I now, for the first time,
+acknowledge, and which (revised and corrected) will be included in this
+series, viz., _Godolphin_;--a work devoted to a particular portion
+of society, and the development of a peculiar class of character. The
+third, which I now reprint, is _Ernest Maltravers_,** the most mature,
+and, on the whole, the most comprehensive of all that I have hitherto
+written.
+
+* For _The Disowned_ is cast in the time of our grandfathers, and _The
+Pilgrims of the Rhine_ had nothing to do with actual life, and is not,
+therefore, to be called a novel.
+
+** At the date of this preface _Night and Morning_ had not appeared.
+
+For the original idea, which, with humility, I will venture to call the
+philosophical design of a moral education or apprenticeship, I have left
+it easy to be seen that I am indebted to Goethe’s _Wilhelm Meister_.
+But, in _Wilhelm Meister_, the apprenticeship is rather that of
+theoretical art. In the more homely plan that I set before myself, the
+apprenticeship is rather that of practical life. And, with this view,
+it has been especially my study to avoid all those attractions lawful in
+romance, or tales of pure humour or unbridled fancy, attractions
+that, in the language of reviewers, are styled under the head of “most
+striking descriptions,” “scenes of extraordinary power,” etc.; and are
+derived from violent contrasts and exaggerations pushed into caricature.
+It has been my aim to subdue and tone down the persons introduced, and
+the general agencies of the narrative, into the lights and shadows of
+life as it is. I do not mean by “life as it is,” the vulgar and the
+outward life alone, but life in its spiritual and mystic as well as
+its more visible and fleshly characteristics. The idea of not only
+describing, but developing character under the ripening influences
+of time and circumstance, is not confined to the apprenticeship of
+Maltravers alone, but pervades the progress of Cesarini, Ferrers, and
+Alice Darvil.
+
+The original conception of Alice is taken from real life--from a person
+I never saw but twice, and then she was no longer young--but whose
+history made on me a deep impression. Her early ignorance and home--her
+first love--the strange and affecting fidelity that she maintained, in
+spite of new ties--her final re-meeting, almost in middle-age, with one
+lost and adored almost in childhood--all this, as shown in the novel, is
+but the imperfect transcript of the true adventures of a living woman.
+
+In regard to Maltravers himself, I must own that I have but inadequately
+struggled against the great and obvious difficulty of representing an
+author living in our own times, with whose supposed works or alleged
+genius and those of any one actually existing, the reader can establish
+no identification, and he is therefore either compelled constantly to
+humour the delusion by keeping his imagination on the stretch, or lazily
+driven to confound the Author _in_ the Book with the Author _of_ the
+Book.* But I own, also, I fancied, while aware of this objection, and
+in spite of it, that so much not hitherto said might be conveyed with
+advantage through the lips or in the life of an imaginary writer of
+our own time, that I was contented, on the whole, either to task the
+imagination, or submit to the suspicions of the reader. All that my
+own egotism appropriates in the book are some occasional remarks, the
+natural result of practical experience. With the life or the character,
+the adventures or the humours, the errors or the good qualities, of
+Maltravers himself, I have nothing to do, except as the narrator and
+inventor.
+
+* In some foreign journal I have been much amused by a credulity of this
+latter description, and seen the various adventures of Mr. Maltravers
+gravely appropriated to the embellishment of my own life, including the
+attachment to the original of poor Alice Darvil; who now, by the way,
+must be at least seventy years of age, with a grandchild nearly as old
+as myself.
+
+E. B. L.
+
+
+
+
+A WORD TO THE READER PREFIXED TO THE FIRST EDITION OF 1837.
+
+THOU must not, my old and partial friend, look into this work for
+that species of interest which is drawn from stirring adventures and
+a perpetual variety of incident. To a Novel of the present day are
+necessarily forbidden the animation, the excitement, the bustle, the
+pomp, and the stage effect which History affords to Romance. Whatever
+merits, in thy gentle eyes, _Rienzi_, or _The Last Days of Pompeii_, may
+have possessed, this Tale, if it please thee at all, must owe that happy
+fortune to qualities widely different from those which won thy favour
+to pictures of the Past. Thou must sober down thine imagination,
+and prepare thyself for a story not dedicated to the narrative of
+extraordinary events--nor the elucidation of the characters of great
+men. Though there is scarcely a page in this work episodical to the main
+design, there may be much that may seem to thee wearisome and prolix,
+if thou wilt not lend thyself, in a kindly spirit, and with a generous
+trust, to the guidance of the Author. In the hero of this tale thou wilt
+find neither a majestic demigod, nor a fascinating demon. He is a man
+with the weaknesses derived from humanity, with the strength that
+we inherit from the soul; not often obstinate in error, more often
+irresolute in virtue; sometimes too aspiring, sometimes too despondent;
+influenced by the circumstances to which he yet struggles to be
+superior, and changing in character with the changes of time and fate;
+but never wantonly rejecting those great principles by which alone we
+can work the Science of Life--a desire for the Good, a passion for the
+Honest, a yearning after the True. From such principles, Experience,
+that severe Mentor, teaches us at length the safe and practical
+philosophy which consists of Fortitude to bear, Serenity to enjoy, and
+Faith to look beyond!
+
+It would have led, perhaps, to more striking incidents, and have
+furnished an interest more intense, if I had cast Maltravers, the Man
+of Genius, amidst those fierce but ennobling struggles with poverty and
+want to which genius is so often condemned. But wealth and lassitude
+have their temptations as well as penury and toil. And for the rest--I
+have taken much of my tale and many of my characters from real life, and
+would not unnecessarily seek other fountains when the Well of Truth was
+in my reach.
+
+The Author has said his say, he retreats once more into silence and into
+shade; he leaves you alone with the creations he has called to life--the
+representatives of his emotions and his thoughts--the intermediators
+between the individual and the crowd. Children not of the clay, but of
+the spirit, may they be faithful to their origin!--so should they be
+monitors, not loud but deep, of the world into which they are cast,
+struggling against the obstacles that will beset them, for the heritage
+of their parent--the right to survive the grave!
+
+LONDON, August 12th, 1837.
+
+
+
+
+ERNEST MALTRAVERS.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK I.
+
+ “Youth pastures in a valley of its own:
+  The glare of noon--the rains and winds of heaven
+  Mar not the calm yet virgin of all care.
+  But ever with sweet joys it buildeth up
+  The airy halls of life.”
+    SOPH. _Trachim_. 144-147.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+ “My meaning in’t, I protest, was very honest in the behalf of the
+  maid * * * * yet, who would have suspected an ambush where I was
+  taken?”
+    _All’s Well that Ends Well_, Act iv. Sc. 3.
+
+SOME four miles distant from one of our northern manufacturing towns, in
+the year 18--, was a wide and desolate common; a more dreary spot it is
+impossible to conceive--the herbage grew up in sickly patches from the
+midst of a black and stony soil. Not a tree was to be seen in the whole
+of the comfortless expanse. Nature herself had seemed to desert the
+solitude, as if scared by the ceaseless din of the neighbouring forges;
+and even Art, which presses all things into service, had disdained to
+cull use or beauty from these unpromising demesnes. There was something
+weird and primeval in the aspect of the place; especially when in the
+long nights of winter you beheld the distant fires and lights which give
+to the vicinity of certain manufactories so preternatural an appearance,
+streaming red and wild over the waste. So abandoned by man appeared the
+spot, that you found it difficult to imagine that it was only from human
+fires that its bleak and barren desolation was illumined. For miles
+along the moor you detected no vestige of any habitation; but as you
+approached the verge nearest to the town, you could just perceive at a
+little distance from the main road, by which the common was intersected,
+a small, solitary, and miserable hovel.
+
+Within this lonely abode, at the time in which my story opens, were
+seated two persons. The one was a man of about fifty years of age, and
+in a squalid and wretched garb, which was yet relieved by an affectation
+of ill-assorted finery. A silk handkerchief, which boasted the ornament
+of a large brooch of false stones, was twisted jauntily round a muscular
+but meagre throat; his tattered breeches were also decorated by buckles,
+one of pinchbeck, and one of steel. His frame was lean, but broad
+and sinewy, indicative of considerable strength. His countenance was
+prematurely marked by deep furrows, and his grizzled hair waved over
+a low, rugged, and forbidding brow, on which there hung an everlasting
+frown that no smile from the lips (and the man smiled often) could chase
+away. It was a face that spoke of long-continued and hardened vice--it
+was one in which the Past had written indelible characters. The brand
+of the hangman could not have stamped it more plainly, nor have more
+unequivocally warned the suspicion of honest or timid men.
+
+He was employed in counting some few and paltry coins, which, though an
+easy matter to ascertain their value, he told and retold, as if the act
+could increase the amount. “There must be some mistake here, Alice,” he
+said in a low and muttered tone: “we can’t be so low--you know I had two
+pounds in the drawer but Monday, and now--Alice, you must have stolen
+some of the money--curse you.”
+
+The person thus addressed sat at the opposite side of the smouldering
+and sullen fire; she now looked quietly up, and her face singularly
+contrasted that of the man.
+
+She seemed about fifteen years of age, and her complexion was remarkably
+pure and delicate, even despite the sunburnt tinge which her habits of
+toil had brought it. Her auburn hair hung in loose and natural curls
+over her forehead, and its luxuriance was remarkable even in one so
+young. Her countenance was beautiful, nay, even faultless, in its
+small and child-like features, but the expression pained you--it was so
+vacant. In repose it was almost the expression of an idiot--but when she
+spoke or smiled, or even moved a muscle, the eyes, colour, lips, kindled
+into a life, which proved that the intellect was still there, though but
+imperfectly awakened.
+
+“I did not steal any, father,” she said in a quiet voice; “but I should
+like to have taken some, only I knew you would beat me if I did.”
+
+“And what do you want money for?”
+
+“To get food when I’m hungered.”
+
+“Nothing else?”
+
+“I don’t know.”
+
+The girl paused.--“Why don’t you let me,” she said, after a while, “why
+don’t you let me go and work with the other girls at the factory? I
+should make money there for you and me both.”
+
+The man smiled--such a smile--it seemed to bring into sudden play all
+the revolting characteristics of his countenance. “Child,” he said, “you
+are just fifteen, and a sad fool you are: perhaps if you went to the
+factory, you would get away from me; and what should I do without you?
+No, I think, as you are so pretty, you might get more money another
+way.”
+
+The girl did not seem to understand this allusion: but repeated,
+vacantly, “I should like to go to the factory.”
+
+“Stuff!” said the man, angrily; “I have three minds to--”
+
+Here he was interrupted by a loud knock at the door of the hovel.
+
+The man grew pale. “What can that be?” he muttered. “The hour is
+late--near eleven. Again--again! Ask who knocks, Alice.”
+
+The girl stood for a moment or so at the door; and as she stood, her
+form, rounded yet slight, her earnest look, her varying colour, her
+tender youth, and a singular grace of attitude and gesture, would have
+inspired an artist with the very ideal of rustic beauty.
+
+After a pause, she placed her lips to a chink in the door, and repeated
+her father’s question.
+
+“Pray pardon me,” said a clear, loud, yet courteous voice, “but seeing
+a light at your window, I have ventured to ask if any one within will
+conduct me to ------; I will pay the service handsomely.”
+
+“Open the door, Alley,” said the owner of the hut.
+
+The girl drew a large wooden bolt from the door; and a tall figure
+crossed the threshold.
+
+The new-comer was in the first bloom of youth, perhaps about eighteen
+years of age, and his air and appearance surprised both sire and
+daughter. Alone, on foot, at such an hour, it was impossible for any one
+to mistake him for other than a gentleman; yet his dress was plain
+and somewhat soiled by dust, and he carried a small knapsack on his
+shoulder. As he entered, he lifted his hat with somewhat of foreign
+urbanity, and a profusion of fair brown hair fell partially over a
+high and commanding forehead. His features were handsome, without being
+eminently so, and his aspect was at once bold and prepossessing.
+
+“I am much obliged by your civility,” he said, advancing carelessly
+and addressing the man, who surveyed him with a scrutinising eye;
+“and trust, my good fellow, that you will increase the obligation by
+accompanying me to ------.”
+
+“You can’t miss well your way,” said the man surlily: “the lights will
+direct you.”
+
+“They have rather misled me, for they seem to surround the whole common,
+and there is no path across it that I can see; however, if you will put
+me in the right road, I will not trouble you further.”
+
+“It is very late,” replied the churlish landlord, equivocally.
+
+“The better reason why I should be at ------. Come, my good friend, put
+on your hat, and I will give you half a guinea for your trouble.”
+
+The man advanced, then halted; again surveyed his guest, and said, “Are
+you quite alone, sir?”
+
+“Quite.”
+
+“Probably you are known at ------?”
+
+“Not I. But what matters that to you? I am a stranger in these parts.”
+
+“It is full four miles.”
+
+“So far, and I am fearfully tired already!” exclaimed the young man with
+impatience. As he spoke he drew out his watch. “Past eleven too!”
+
+The watch caught the eye of the cottager; that evil eye sparkled. He
+passed his hand over his brow. “I am thinking, sir,” he said in a more
+civil tone than he had yet assumed, “that as you are so tired and the
+hour is so late, you might almost as well--”
+
+“What?” exclaimed the stranger, stamping somewhat petulantly.
+
+“I don’t like to mention it; but my poor roof is at your service, and I
+would go with you to ------ at daybreak to-morrow.”
+
+The stranger stared at the cottager, and then at the dingy walls of the
+hut. He was about, very abruptly, to reject the hospitable proposal,
+when his eye rested suddenly on the form of Alice, who stood eager-eyed
+and open-mouthed, gazing on the handsome intruder. As she caught his
+eye, she blushed deeply and turned aside. The view seemed to change the
+intentions of the stranger. He hesitated a moment, then muttered between
+his teeth: and sinking his knapsack on the ground, he cast himself into
+a chair beside the fire, stretched his limbs, and cried gaily, “So be
+it, my host: shut up your house again. Bring me a cup of beer, and a
+crust of bread, and so much for supper! As for bed, this chair will do
+vastly well.”
+
+“Perhaps we can manage better for you than that chair,” answered the
+host. “But our best accommodation must seem bad enough to a gentleman:
+we are very poor people--hard-working, but very poor.”
+
+“Never mind me,” answered the stranger, busying himself in stirring the
+fire; “I am tolerably well accustomed to greater hardships than sleeping
+on a chair in an honest man’s house; and though you are poor, I will
+take it for granted you are honest.”
+
+The man grinned: and turning to Alice, bade her spread what their
+larder would afford. Some crusts of bread, some cold potatoes, and some
+tolerably strong beer, composed all the fare set before the traveller.
+
+Despite his previous boasts, the young man made a wry face at these
+Socratic preparations, while he drew his chair to the board. But his
+look grew more gay as he caught Alice’s eye; and as she lingered by the
+table, and faltered out some hesitating words of apology, he seized
+her hand, and pressing it tenderly--“Prettiest of lasses,” said he--and
+while he spoke he gazed on her with undisguised admiration--“a man who
+has travelled on foot all day, through the ugliest country within the
+three seas, is sufficiently refreshed at night by the sight of so fair a
+face.”
+
+Alice hastily withdrew her hand, and went and seated herself in a corner
+of the room, when she continued to look at the stranger with her usual
+vacant gaze, but with a half-smile upon her rosy lips.
+
+Alice’s father looked hard first at one, then at the other.
+
+“Eat, sir,” said he, with a sort of chuckle, “and no fine words; poor
+Alice is honest, as you said just now.”
+
+“To be sure,” answered the traveller, employing with great zeal a set
+of strong, even, and dazzling teeth at the tough crusts; “to be sure
+she is. I did not mean to offend you; but the fact is, that I am half a
+foreigner; and abroad, you know, one may say a civil thing to a pretty
+girl without hurting her feelings, or her father’s either.”
+
+“Half a foreigner! why, you talk English as well as I do,” said the
+host, whose intonation and words were, on the whole, a little above his
+station.
+
+The stranger smiled. “Thank you for the compliment,” said he. “What I
+meant was, that I have been a great deal abroad; in fact, I have just
+returned from Germany. But I am English born.”
+
+“And going home?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Far from hence?”
+
+“About thirty miles, I believe.”
+
+“You are young, sir, to be alone.”
+
+The traveller made no answer, but finished his uninviting repast and
+drew his chair again to the fire. He then thought he had sufficiently
+ministered to his host’s curiosity to be entitled to the gratification
+of his own.
+
+“You work at the factories, I suppose?” said he.
+
+“I do, sir. Bad times.”
+
+“And your pretty daughter?”
+
+“Minds the house.”
+
+“Have you no other children?”
+
+“No; one mouth besides my own is as much as I can feed, and that
+scarcely. But you would like to rest now; you can have my bed, sir; I
+can sleep here.”
+
+“By no means,” said the stranger, quickly; “just put a few more coals on
+the fire, and leave me to make myself comfortable.”
+
+The man rose, and did not press his offer, but left the room for a
+supply of fuel. Alice remained in her corner.
+
+“Sweetheart,” said the traveller, looking round and satisfying himself
+that they were alone: “I should sleep well if I could get one kiss from
+those coral lips.”
+
+Alice hid her face with her hands.
+
+“Do I vex you?”
+
+“Oh no, sir.”
+
+At this assurance the traveller rose, and approached Alice softly. He
+drew away her hands from her face, when she said gently, “Have you much
+money about you?”
+
+“Oh, the mercenary baggage!” said the traveller to himself; and then
+replied aloud, “Why, pretty one? Do you sell your kisses so high then?”
+
+Alice frowned and tossed the hair from her brow. “If you have money,”
+ she said, in a whisper, “don’t say so to father. Don’t sleep if you can
+help it. I’m afraid--hush--he comes!”
+
+The young man returned to his seat with an altered manner. And as his
+host entered, he for the first time surveyed him closely. The imperfect
+glimmer of the half-dying and single candle threw into strong lights and
+shades the marked, rugged, and ferocious features of the cottager; and
+the eye of the traveller, glancing from the face to the limbs and frame,
+saw that whatever of violence the mind might design, the body might well
+execute.
+
+The traveller sank into a gloomy reverie. The wind howled--the rain
+beat--through the casement shone no solitary star--all was dark and
+sombre. Should he proceed alone--might he not suffer a greater danger
+upon that wide and desert moor--might not the host follow--assault him
+in the dark? He had no weapon save a stick. But within he had at least
+a rude resource in the large kitchen poker that was beside him. At all
+events it would be better to wait for the present. He might at any time,
+when alone, withdraw the bolt from the door, and slip out unobserved.
+Such was the fruit of his meditations while his host plied the fire.
+
+“You will sleep sound to-night,” said his entertainer, smiling.
+
+“Humph! Why, I am _over_-fatigued; I dare say it will be an hour or two
+before I fall asleep; but when I once am asleep, I sleep like a rock!”
+
+“Come, Alice,” said her father, “let us leave the gentleman. Goodnight,
+sir.”
+
+“Good night--good night,” returned the traveller, yawning.
+
+The father and daughter disappeared through a door in the corner of the
+room. The guest heard them ascend the creaking stairs--all was still.
+
+“Fool that I am,” said the traveller to himself, “will nothing teach
+me that I am no longer a student at Gottingen, or cure me of these
+pedestrian adventures? Had it not been for that girl’s big blue eyes, I
+should be safe at ------ by this time, if, indeed, the grim father
+had not murdered me by the road. However, we’ll baulk him yet: another
+half-hour, and I am on the moor: we must give him time. And in the
+meanwhile here is the poker. At the worst it is but one to one; but the
+churl is strongly built.”
+
+Although the traveller thus endeavoured to cheer his courage, his heart
+beat more loudly than its wont. He kept his eyes stationed on the door
+by which the cottagers had vanished, and his hand on the massive poker.
+
+While the stranger was thus employed below, Alice, instead of turning to
+her own narrow cell, went into her father’s room.
+
+The cottager was seated at the foot of his bed muttering to himself, and
+with eyes fixed on the ground.
+
+The girl stood before him, gazing on his face, and with her arms lightly
+crossed above her bosom.
+
+“It must be worth twenty guineas,” said the host, abruptly to himself.
+
+“What is it to you, father, what the gentleman’s watch is worth?”
+
+The man started.
+
+“You mean,” continued Alice, quietly, “you mean to do some injury to
+that young man; but you shall not.”
+
+The cottager’s face grew black as night. “How,” he began in a loud
+voice, but suddenly dropped the tone into a deep growl--“how dare you
+talk to me so?--go to bed--go to bed.”
+
+“No, father.”
+
+“No?”
+
+“I will not stir from this room until daybreak.”
+
+“We will soon see that,” said the man, with an oath.
+
+“Touch me, and I will alarm the gentleman, and tell him that--”
+
+“What?”
+
+The girl approached her father, placed her lips to his ear, and
+whispered, “That you intend to murder him.”
+
+The cottager’s frame trembled from head to foot; he shut his eyes,
+and gasped painfully for breath. “Alice,” said he, gently, after a
+pause--“Alice, we are often nearly starving.”
+
+“_I_ am--_you_ never!”
+
+“Wretch, yes, if I do drink too much one day, I pinch for it the next.
+But go to bed, I say--I mean no harm to the young man. Think you I would
+twist myself a rope?--no, no; go along, go along.”
+
+Alice’s face, which had before been earnest and almost intelligent, now
+relapsed into its wonted vacant stare.
+
+“To be sure, father, they would hang you if you cut his throat. Don’t
+forget that;--good night;” and so saying, she walked to her own opposite
+chamber.
+
+Left alone, the host pressed his hand tightly to his forehead, and
+remained motionless for nearly half an hour.
+
+“If that cursed girl would but sleep,” he muttered at last, turning
+round, “it might be done at once. And there’s the pond behind, as deep
+as a well; and I might say at daybreak that the boy had bolted. He seems
+quite a stranger here--nobody’ll miss him. He must have plenty of blunt
+to give half a guinea to a guide across a common! I want money, and I
+won’t work--if I can help it, at least.”
+
+While he thus soliloquised the air seemed to oppress him; he opened the
+window, he leant out--the rain beat upon him. He closed the window with
+an oath; took off his shoes, stole to the threshold, and, by the candle,
+which he shaded with his hand, surveyed the opposite door. It was
+closed. He then bent anxiously forward and listened.
+
+“All’s quiet,” thought he, “perhaps he sleeps already. I will steal
+down. If Jack Walters would but come tonight, the job would be done
+charmingly.”
+
+With that he crept gently down the stairs. In a corner, at the foot
+of the staircase, lay sundry matters, a few faggots, and a cleaver. He
+caught up the last. “Aha,” he muttered; “and there’s the sledge-hammer
+somewhere for Walters.” Leaning himself against the door, he then
+applied his eye to a chink which admitted a dim view of the room within,
+lighted fitfully by the fire.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+ “What have we here?
+  A carrion death!”
+    _Merchant of Venice_, Act ii. Sc. 7.
+
+IT was about this time that the stranger deemed it advisable to commence
+his retreat. The slight and suppressed sound of voices, which at first
+he had heard above in the conversation of the father and child, had died
+away. The stillness at once encouraged and warned him. He stole to the
+front door, softly undid the bolt, and found the door locked, and the
+key missing. He had not observed that during his repast, and ere
+his suspicions had been aroused, his host, in replacing the bar, and
+relocking the entrance, had abstracted the key. His fears were now
+confirmed. His next thought was the window--the shutter only protected
+it half-way, and was easily removed; but the aperture of the lattice,
+which only opened in part like most cottage casements, was far too small
+to admit his person. His only means of escape was in breaking the whole
+window; a matter not to be effected without noise and consequent risk.
+
+He paused in despair. He was naturally of a strong-nerved and gallant
+temperament, nor unaccustomed to those perils of life and limb which
+German students delight to brave; but his heart well-nigh failed him at
+that moment. The silence became distinct and burdensome to him, and a
+chill moisture gathered to his brow. While he stood irresolute and in
+suspense, striving to collect his thoughts, his ear, preternaturally
+sharpened by fear, caught the faint muffled sound of creeping
+footsteps--he heard the stairs creak. The sound broke the spell. The
+previous vague apprehension gave way, when the danger became actually at
+hand. His presence of mind returned at once. He went back quickly to the
+fireplace, seized the poker, and began stirring the fire, and coughing
+loud, and indicating as vigorously as possible that he was wide awake.
+
+He felt that he was watched--he felt that he was in momently peril. He
+felt that the appearance of slumber would be the signal for a mortal
+conflict. Time passed, all remained silent; nearly half an hour had
+elapsed since he had heard the steps upon the stairs. His situation
+began to prey upon his nerves, it irritated them--it became intolerable.
+It was not now fear that he experienced, it was the overwrought sense of
+mortal enmity--the consciousness that a man may feel who knows that the
+eye of a tiger is on him, and who, while in suspense he has regained
+his courage, foresees that sooner or later the spring must come; the
+suspense itself becomes an agony, and he desires to expedite the deadly
+struggle he cannot shun.
+
+Utterly incapable any longer to bear his own sensations, the traveller
+rose at last, fixed his eyes upon the fatal door, and was about to
+cry aloud to the listener to enter, when he heard a slight tap at
+the window; it was twice repeated; and at the third time a low voice
+pronounced the name of Darvil. It was clear, then, that accomplices had
+arrived; it was no longer against one man that he would have to contend.
+He drew his breath hard, and listened with throbbing ears. He heard
+steps without upon the plashing soil; they retired--all was still.
+
+He paused a few minutes, and walked deliberately and firmly to the inner
+door, at which he fancied his host stationed; with a steady hand he
+attempted to open the door; it was fastened on the opposite side. “So!”
+ said he, bitterly, and grinding his teeth, “I must die like a rat in a
+cage. Well, I’ll die biting.”
+
+He returned to his former post, drew himself up to his full height,
+and stood grasping his homely weapon, prepared for the worst, and
+not altogether unelated with a proud consciousness of his own natural
+advantages of activity, stature, strength and daring. Minutes rolled on;
+the silence was broken by some one at the inner door; he heard the bolt
+gently withdrawn. He raised his weapon with both hands; and started to
+find the intruder was only Alice. She came in with bare feet, and pale
+as marble, her finger on her lips.
+
+She approached--she touched him.
+
+“They are in the shed behind,” she whispered, “looking for the
+sledge-hammer--they mean to murder you; get you gone--quick.”
+
+“How?--the door is locked.”
+
+“Stay. I have taken the key from his room.”
+
+She gained the door, applied the key--the door yielded. The traveller
+threw his knapsack once more over his shoulder, and made but one stride
+to the threshold. The girl stopped him. “Don’t say anything about it; he
+is my father, they would hang him.”
+
+“No, no. But you?--are safe, I trust?--depend on my gratitude.--I shall
+be at ------ to-morrow--the best inn--seek me if you can. Which way
+now?”
+
+“Keep to the left.”
+
+The stranger was already several paces distant; through the darkness,
+and in the midst of the rain, he fled on with the speed of youth.
+The girl lingered an instant, sighed, then laughed aloud; closed and
+re-barred the door, and was creeping back, when from the inner entrance
+advanced the grim father, and another man, of broad, short, sinewy
+frame, his arms bare, and wielding a large hammer.
+
+“How?” asked the host; “Alice here, and--hell and the devil! have you
+let him go?”
+
+“I told you that you should not harm him.”
+
+With a violent oath the ruffian struck his daughter to the ground,
+sprang over her body, unbarred the door, and, accompanied by his
+comrade, set off in vague pursuit of his intended victim.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+ “You knew--none so well, of my daughter’s flight.”
+    _Merchant of Venice_, Act iii. Sc. 1.
+
+THE day dawned; it was a mild, damp, hazy morning; the sod sank deep
+beneath the foot, the roads were heavy with mire, and the rain of the
+past night lay here and there in broad shallow pools. Towards the town,
+waggons, carts, pedestrian groups were already moving; and, now and
+then, you caught the sharp horn of some early coach, wheeling its
+be-cloaked outside and be-nightcapped inside passengers along the
+northern thoroughfare.
+
+A young man bounded over a stile into the road just opposite to the
+milestone, that declared him to be one mile from ------.
+
+“Thank Heaven!” he said, almost aloud. “After spending the night
+wandering about morasses like a will-o’-the-wisp, I approach a town at
+last. Thank Heaven again, and for all its mercies this night! I breathe
+freely. I AM SAFE.”
+
+He walked on somewhat rapidly; he passed a slow waggon---he passed a
+group of mechanics--he passed a drove of sheep, and now he saw walking
+leisurely before him a single figure. It was a girl, in a worn and
+humble dress, who seemed to seek her weary way with pain and languor.
+He was about also to pass her, when he heard a low cry. He turned, and
+beheld in the wayfarer his preserver of the previous night.
+
+“Heavens! is it indeed you? Can I believe my eyes?”
+
+“I was coming to seek you, sir,” said the girl, faintly. “I too have
+escaped; I shall never go back to father; I have no roof to cover my
+head now.”
+
+“Poor child! but how is this? Did they ill use you for releasing me?”
+
+“Father knocked me down, and beat me again when he came back; but that
+is not all,” she added, in a very low tone.
+
+“What else?”
+
+The girl grew red and white by turns. She set her teeth rigidly, stopped
+short, and then walking on quicker than before, replied: “It don’t
+matter; I will never go back--I’m alone now. What, what shall I do?” and
+she wrung her hands.
+
+The traveller’s pity was deeply moved. “My good girl,” said he,
+earnestly, “you have saved my life, and I am not ungrateful. Here” (and
+he placed some gold in her hand), “get yourself a lodging, food and
+rest; you look as if you wanted them; and see me again this evening when
+it is dark and we can talk unobserved.”
+
+The girl took the money passively, and looked up in his face while he
+spoke; the look was so unsuspecting, and the whole countenance was so
+beautifully modest and virgin-like, that had any evil passion prompted
+the traveller’s last words, it must have fled scared and abashed as he
+met the gaze.
+
+“My poor girl,” said he, embarrassed, and after a short pause; “you are
+very young, and very, very pretty. In this town you will be exposed to
+many temptations: take care where you lodge; you have, no doubt, friends
+here?”
+
+“Friends?--what are friends?” answered Alice.
+
+“Have you no relations?--no _mother’s kin_?”
+
+“None.”
+
+“Do you know where to ask shelter?”
+
+“No, sir; for I can’t go where father goes, lest he should find me out.”
+
+“Well, then, seek some quiet inn, and meet me this evening just here,
+half a mile from the town, at seven. I will try and think of something
+for you in the meanwhile. But you seem tired, you walk with pain;
+perhaps it will fatigue you to come--I mean, you had rather perhaps rest
+another day.”
+
+“Oh no, no! it will do me good to see you again, sir.”
+
+The young man’s eyes met hers, and hers were not withdrawn; their soft
+blue was suffused with tears--they penetrated his soul. He turned
+away hastily, and saw that they were already the subject of curious
+observation to the various passengers that overtook them. “Don’t
+forget!” he whispered, and strode on with a pace that soon brought him
+to the town.
+
+He inquired for the principal hotel--entered it with an air that bespoke
+that nameless consciousness of superiority which belongs to those
+accustomed to purchase welcome wherever welcome is bought and sold--and
+before a blazing fire and no unsubstantial breakfast, forgot all the
+terrors of the past night, or rather felt rejoiced to think he had
+added a new and strange hazard to the catalogue of adventures already
+experienced by Ernest Maltravers.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+ “Con una Dama tenia
+  Un galan conversacion.” *
+   MORATIN: _El Teatro Espanol_.--Num. 15.
+
+* With a dame he held a gallant conversation.
+
+MALTRAVERS was first at the appointed place. His character was in
+most respects singularly energetic, decided, and premature in its
+development; but not so in regard to women: with them he was the
+creature of the moment; and, driven to and fro by whatever impulse, or
+whatever passion, caught the caprice of a wild, roving, and all-poetical
+imagination, Maltravers was, half unconsciously, a poet--a poet of
+action, and woman was his muse.
+
+He had formed no plan of conduct towards the poor girl he was to meet.
+He meant no harm to her. If she had been less handsome, he would have
+been equally grateful; and her dress, and youth, and condition, would
+equally have compelled him to select the hour of dusk for an interview.
+
+He arrived at the spot. The winter night had already descended; but a
+sharp frost had set in: the air was clear, the stars were bright, and
+the long shadows slept, still and calm, along the broad road, and the
+whitened fields beyond.
+
+He walked briskly to and fro, without much thought of the interview, or
+its object, half chanting old verses, German and English, to himself,
+and stopping to gaze every moment at the silent stars.
+
+At length he saw Alice approach: she came up to him timidly and gently.
+His heart beat more quickly; he felt that he was young and alone
+with beauty. “Sweet girl,” he said, with involuntary and mechanical
+compliment, “how well this light becomes you. How shall I thank you for
+not forgetting me?”
+
+Alice surrendered her hand to his without a struggle.
+
+“What is your name?” said he, bending his face down to hers.
+
+“Alice Darvil.”
+
+“And your terrible father,--_is_ he, in truth, your father?”
+
+“Indeed he is my father and mother too!”
+
+“What made you suspect his intention to murder me? Has he ever attempted
+the like crime?”
+
+“No; but lately he has often talked of robbery. He is very poor, sir.
+And when I saw his eye, and when afterwards, while your back was turned,
+he took the key from the door, I felt that--that you were in danger.”
+
+“Good girl--go on.”
+
+“I told him so when we went up-stairs. I did not know what to believe,
+when he said he would not hurt you; but I stole the key of the front
+door, which he had thrown on the table, and went to my room. I listened
+at my door; I heard him go down the stairs--he stopped there for some
+time; and I watched him from above. The place where he was opened to the
+field by the back-way. After some time, I heard a voice whisper him; I
+knew the voice, and then they both went out by the back-way; so I stole
+down, and went out and listened; and I knew the other man was John
+Walters. I’m afraid of _him_, sir. And then Walters said, says he, ‘I
+will get the hammer, and, sleep or wake, we’ll do it.’ And father
+said, ‘It’s in the shed.’ So I saw there was no time to be lost, sir,
+and--and--but you know all the rest.”
+
+“But how did you escape?”
+
+“Oh, my father, after talking to Walters, came to my room, and beat
+and--and--frightened me; and when he was gone to bed, I put on my
+clothes, and stole out; it was just light; and I walked on till I met
+you.”
+
+“Poor child, in what a den of vice you have been brought up!”
+
+“Anan, sir.”
+
+“She don’t understand me. Have you been taught to read and write?”
+
+“Oh no!”
+
+“But I suppose you have been taught, at least, to say your
+catechism--and you pray sometimes?”
+
+“I have prayed to father not to beat me.”
+
+“But to God?”
+
+“God, sir--what is that?” *
+
+* This ignorance--indeed the whole sketch of Alice--is from the life;
+nor is such ignorance, accompanied by what almost seems an instinctive
+or intuitive notion of right or wrong, very uncommon, as our police
+reports can testify. In the _Examiner_ for, I think, the year 1835,
+will be found the case of a young girl ill-treated by her father, whose
+answers to the interrogatories of the magistrate are very similar to
+those of Alice to the questions of Maltravers.
+
+Maltravers drew back, shocked and appalled. Premature philosopher as he
+was, this depth of ignorance perplexed his wisdom. He had read all the
+disputes of schoolmen, whether or not the notion of a Supreme Being is
+innate; but he had never before been brought face to face with a living
+creature who was unconscious of a God.
+
+After a pause, he said: “My poor girl, we misunderstand each other. You
+know that there is a God?”
+
+“No, sir.”
+
+“Did no one ever tell you who made the stars you now survey--the earth
+on which you tread?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“And have you never thought about it yourself?”
+
+“Why should I? What has that to do with being cold and hungry?”
+
+Maltravers looked incredulous. “You see that great building, with the
+spire rising in the starlight?”
+
+“Yes, sir, sure.”
+
+“What is it called?”
+
+“Why, a church.”
+
+“Did you never go into it?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“What do people do there?”
+
+“Father says one man talks nonsense, and the other folk listen to him.”
+
+“Your father is--no matter. Good heavens! what shall I do with this
+unhappy child?”
+
+“Yes, sir, I am very unhappy,” said Alice, catching at the last words;
+and the tears rolled silently down her cheeks.
+
+Maltravers never was more touched in his life. Whatever thoughts of
+gallantry might have entered his young head, had he found Alice such as
+he might reasonably have expected, he now felt that there was a kind
+of sanctity in her ignorance; and his gratitude and kindly sentiment
+towards her took almost a brotherly aspect.--“You know, at least, what
+school is?” he asked.
+
+“Yes, I have talked with girls who go to school.”
+
+“Would you like to go there, too?”
+
+“Oh, no, sir, pray not!”
+
+“What should you like to do, then? Speak out, child. I owe you so much,
+that I should be too happy to make you comfortable and contented in your
+own way.”
+
+“I should like to live with you, sir.” Maltravers started, and half
+smiled, and coloured. But looking on her eyes, which were fixed
+earnestly on his, there was so much artlessness in their soft,
+unconscious gaze, that he saw she was wholly ignorant of the
+interpretation that might be put upon so candid a confession.
+
+I have said that Maltravers was a wild, enthusiastic, odd being--he was,
+in fact, full of strange German romance and metaphysical speculations.
+He had once shut himself up for months to study astrology--and been even
+suspected of a serious hunt after the philosopher’s stone; another time
+he had narrowly escaped with life and liberty from a frantic conspiracy
+of the young republicans of his university, in which, being bolder and
+madder than most of them, he had been an active ringleader; it was,
+indeed, some such folly that had compelled him to quit Germany sooner
+than himself or his parents desired. He had nothing of the sober
+Englishman about him. Whatever was strange and eccentric had an
+irresistible charm for Ernest Maltravers. And agreeably to this
+disposition, he now revolved an idea that enchanted his mobile and
+fantastic philosophy. He himself would educate this charming girl--he
+would write fair and heavenly characters upon this blank page--he would
+act the Saint Preux to this Julie of Nature. Alas, he did not think of
+the result which the parallel should have suggested. At that age, Ernest
+Maltravers never damped the ardour of an experiment by the anticipation
+of consequences.
+
+“So,” he said, after a short reverie, “so you would like to live with
+me? But, Alice, we must not fall in love with each other.”
+
+“I don’t understand, sir.”
+
+“Never mind,” said Maltravers, a little disconcerted.
+
+“I always wished to go into service.”
+
+“Ha!”
+
+“And you would be a kind master.”
+
+Maltravers was half disenchanted.
+
+“No very flattering preference,” thought he: “so much the safer for us.
+Well, Alice, it shall be as you wish. Are you comfortable where you are,
+in your new lodgings?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Why, they do not insult you?”
+
+“No; but they make a noise, and I like to be quiet to think of you.”
+
+The young philosopher was reconciled again to his scheme.
+
+“Well, Alice--go back--I will take a cottage to-morrow, and you shall be
+my servant, and I will teach you to read and write and say your prayers,
+and know that you have a Father above who loves you better than he
+below. Meet me again at the same hour to-morrow. Why do you cry, Alice?
+why do you cry?”
+
+“Because--because,” sobbed the girl, “I am so happy, and I shall live
+with you and see you.”
+
+“Go, child--go, child,” said Maltravers, hastily; and he walked away
+with a quicker pulse than became his new character of master and
+preceptor.
+
+He looked back, and saw the girl gazing at him; he waved his hand, and
+she moved on and followed him slowly back to the town.
+
+Maltravers, though not an elder son, was the heir of affluent fortunes;
+he enjoyed a munificent allowance that sufficed for the whims of a youth
+who had learned in Germany none of the extravagant notions common to
+young Englishmen of similar birth and prospects. He was a spoiled child,
+with no law but his own fancy,--his return home was not expected,--there
+was nothing to prevent the indulgence of his new caprice. The next day
+he hired a cottage in the neighbourhood, which was one of those pretty
+thatched edifices, with verandas and monthly roses, a conservatory and a
+lawn, which justify the English proverb about a cottage and love. It
+had been built by a mercantile bachelor for some Fair Rosamond, and did
+credit to his taste. An old woman, let with the house, was to cook and
+do the work. Alice was but a nominal servant. Neither the old woman nor
+the landlord comprehended the Platonic intentions of the young stranger.
+But he paid his rent in advance, and they were not particular. He,
+however, thought it prudent to conceal his name. It was one sure to be
+known in a town not very distant from the residence of his father, a
+wealthy and long-descended country gentleman. He adopted, therefore, the
+common name of Butler; which, indeed, belonged to one of his maternal
+connections, and by that name alone was he known in the neighbourhood
+and to Alice. From her he would not have sought concealment,--but
+somehow or other no occasion ever presented itself to induce him to talk
+much to her of his parentage or birth.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+ “Thought would destroy their Paradise.”--GRAY.
+
+MALTRAVERS found Alice as docile a pupil as any reasonable preceptor
+might have desired. But still, reading and writing--they are very
+uninteresting elements! Had the groundwork been laid, it might have been
+delightful to raise the fairy palace of knowledge; but the digging the
+foundations and the constructing the cellars is weary labour. Perhaps he
+felt it so; for in a few days Alice was handed over to the very oldest
+and ugliest writing-master that the neighbouring town could afford.
+The poor girl at first wept much at the exchange; but the grave
+remonstrances and solemn exhortations of Maltravers reconciled her
+at last, and she promised to work hard and pay every attention to her
+lessons. I am not sure, however, that it was the tedium of the work that
+deterred the idealist--perhaps he felt its danger--and at the bottom of
+his sparkling dreams and brilliant follies lay a sound, generous, and
+noble heart. He was fond of pleasure, and had been already the darling
+of the sentimental German ladies. But he was too young and too vivid,
+and too romantic, to be what is called a sensualist. He could not look
+upon a fair face, and a guileless smile, and all the ineffable symmetry
+of a woman’s shape, with the eye of a man buying cattle for base uses.
+He very easily fell in love, or fancied he did, it is true,--but then he
+could not separate desire from fancy, or calculate the game of passion
+without bringing the heart or the imagination into the matter. And
+though Alice was very pretty and very engaging, he was not yet in love
+with her, and he had no intention of becoming so.
+
+He felt the evening somewhat long, when for the first time Alice
+discontinued her usual lesson; but Maltravers had abundant resources in
+himself. He placed Shakespeare and Schiller on his table, and lighted
+his German meerschaum--he read till he became inspired, and then he
+wrote--and when he had composed a few stanzas he was not contented till
+he had set them to music, and tried their melody with his voice. For
+he had all the passion of a German for song, and music--that wild
+Maltravers!--and his voice was sweet, his taste consummate, his
+science profound. As the sun puts out a star, so the full blaze of his
+imagination, fairly kindled, extinguished for the time his fairy fancy
+for his beautiful pupil.
+
+It was late that night when Maltravers went to bed--and as he passed
+through the narrow corridor that led to his chamber he heard a light
+step flying before him, and caught the glimpse of a female figure
+escaping through a distant door. “The silly child,” thought he, at once
+divining the cause; “she has been listening to my singing. I shall scold
+her.” But he forgot that resolution.
+
+The next day, and the next, and many days passed, and Maltravers saw but
+little of the pupil for whose sake he had shut himself up in a country
+cottage, in the depth of winter. Still he did not repent his purpose,
+nor was he in the least tired of his seclusion--he would not inspect
+Alice’s progress, for he was certain he should be dissatisfied with its
+slowness--and people, however handsome, cannot learn to read and write
+in a day. But he amused himself, notwithstanding. He was glad of an
+opportunity to be alone with his own thoughts, for he was at one of
+those periodical epochs of life when we like to pause and breathe a
+while, in brief respite from that methodical race in which we run to the
+grave. He wished to re-collect the stores of his past experience, and
+repose on his own mind, before he started afresh upon the active world.
+The weather was cold and inclement; but Ernest Maltravers was a hardy
+lover of nature, and neither snow nor frost could detain him from
+his daily rambles. So, about noon, he regularly threw aside books
+and papers, took his hat and staff, and went whistling or humming his
+favourite airs through the dreary streets, or along the bleak waters, or
+amidst the leafless woods, just as the humour seized him; for he was not
+an Edwin or Harold, who reserved speculation only for lonely brooks and
+pastoral hills. Maltravers delighted to contemplate nature in men as
+well as in sheep or trees. The humblest alley in a crowded town had
+something poetical for him; he was ever ready to mix in a crowd, if it
+were only gathered round a barrel-organ or a dog-fight, and listen to
+all that was said and notice all that was done. And this I take to be
+the true poetical temperament essential to every artist who aspires to
+be something more than a scene-painter. But, above all things, he was
+most interested in any display of human passions or affections; he
+loved to see the true colours of the heart, where they are most
+transparent--in the uneducated and poor--for he was something of an
+optimist, and had a hearty faith in the loveliness of our nature.
+Perhaps, indeed, he owed much of the insight into and mastery over
+character that he was afterwards considered to display, to his disbelief
+that there is any wickedness so dark as not to be susceptible of
+the light in some place or another. But Maltravers had his fits of
+unsociability, and then nothing but the most solitary scenes delighted
+him. Winter or summer, barren waste or prodigal verdure, all had beauty
+in his eyes; for their beauty lay in his own soul, through which he
+beheld them. From these walks he would return home at dusk, take his
+simple meal, rhyme or read away the long evenings with such alternation
+as music or the dreamy thoughts of a young man with gay life before him
+could afford. Happy Maltravers!--youth and genius have luxuries all
+the Rothschilds cannot purchase! And yet, Maltravers, you are
+ambitious!--life moves too slowly for you!--you would push on the
+wheels of the clock!--Fool--brilliant fool!--you are eighteen, and a
+poet!--What more can you desire?--Bid Time stop for ever!
+
+One morning Ernest rose earlier than his wont, and sauntered carelessly
+through the conservatory which adjoined his sitting-room; observing the
+plants with placid curiosity (for besides being a little of a botanist,
+he had odd visionary notions about the life of plants, and he saw in
+them a hundred mysteries which the herbalists do not teach us), when
+he heard a low and very musical voice singing at a little distance. He
+listened, and recognised, with surprise, words of his own, which he had
+lately set to music, and was sufficiently pleased with to sing nightly.
+
+When the song ended, Maltravers stole softly through the conservatory,
+and as he opened the door which led into the garden, he saw at the open
+window of a little room which was apportioned to Alice, and jutted out
+from the building in the fanciful irregularity common to ornamental
+cottages, the form of his discarded pupil. She did not observe him, and
+it was not till he twice called her by name, that she started from her
+thoughtful and melancholy posture.
+
+“Alice,” said he, gently, “put on your bonnet, and walk with me in the
+garden: you look pale, child; the fresh air will do you good.”
+
+Alice coloured and smiled, and in a few moments was by his side.
+Maltravers, meanwhile, had gone in and lighted his meerschaum, for it
+was his great inspirer whenever his thoughts were perplexed, or he felt
+his usual fluency likely to fail him, and such was the case now. With
+this faithful ally he awaited Alice in the little walk that circled the
+lawn, amidst shrubs and evergreens.
+
+“Alice,” said he after a pause; but he stopped short.
+
+Alice looked up at him with grave respect.
+
+“Tush!” said Maltravers; “perhaps the smoke is unpleasant to you. It is
+a bad habit of mine.”
+
+“No, sir,” answered Alice; and she seemed disappointed. Maltravers
+paused, and picked up a snowdrop.
+
+“It is pretty,” he said; “do you love flowers?”
+
+“Oh, dearly,” answered Alice, with some enthusiasm; “I never saw many
+till I came here.”
+
+“Now then I can go on,” thought Maltravers; why, I cannot say, for I do
+not see the _sequitur_; but on he went _in medias res_. “Alice, you sing
+charmingly.”
+
+“Ah! sir, you--you--” she stopped abruptly, and trembled visibly.
+
+“Yes, I overheard you, Alice.”
+
+“And you are angry?”
+
+“I!--Heaven forbid! It is a _talent_--but you don’t know what that is;
+I mean it is an excellent thing to have an ear; and a voice, and a heart
+for music; and you have all three.”
+
+He paused, for he felt his hand touched; Alice suddenly clasped and
+kissed it. Maltravers thrilled through his whole frame; but there was
+something in the girl’s look that showed she was wholly unaware that she
+had committed an unmaidenly or forward action.
+
+“I was so afraid you would be angry,” she said, wiping her eyes as she
+dropped his hand; “and now I suppose you know all.”
+
+“All!”
+
+“Yes; how I listened to you every evening, and lay awake the whole night
+with the music ringing in my ears, till I tried to go over it myself;
+and so at last I ventured to sing aloud. I like that much better than
+learning to read.”
+
+All this was delightful to Maltravers: the girl had touched upon one of
+his weak points; however, he remained silent. Alice continued:
+
+“And now, sir, I hope you will let me come and sit outside the door
+every evening and hear you; I will make no noise--I will be so quiet.”
+
+“What, in that cold corridor, these bitter nights?”
+
+“I am used to cold, sir. Father would not let me have a fire when he was
+not at home.”
+
+“No, Alice, but you shall come into the room while I play, and I will
+give you a lesson or two. I am glad you have so good an ear; it may be a
+means of your earning your own honest livelihood when you leave me.”
+
+“When I--but I never intend to leave you, sir!” said Alice, beginning
+fearfully and ending calmly.
+
+Maltravers had recourse to the meerschaum.
+
+Luckily, perhaps, at this time, they were joined by Mr. Simcox, the old
+writing-master. Alice went in to prepare her books; but Maltravers laid
+his hand upon the preceptor’s shoulder.
+
+“You have a quick pupil, I hope, sir?” said he.
+
+“Oh, very, very, Mr. Butler. She comes on famously. She practises a
+great deal when I am away, and I do my best.”
+
+“And,” asked Maltravers, in a grave tone, “have you succeeded in
+instilling into the poor child’s mind some of those more sacred notions
+of which I spoke to you at our first meeting?”
+
+“Why, sir, she was indeed quite a heathen--quite a Mahometan, I may say;
+but she is a little better now.”
+
+“What have you taught her?”
+
+“That God made her.”
+
+“That is a great step.”
+
+“And that He loves good girls, and will watch over them.”
+
+“Bravo! You beat Plato.”
+
+“No, sir, I never beat any one, except little Jack Turner; but he is a
+dunce.”
+
+“Bah! What else do you teach her?”
+
+“That the devil runs away with bad girls, and--”
+
+“Stop there, Mr. Simcox. Never mind the devil yet a while. Let her first
+learn to do good, that God may love her; the rest will follow. I would
+rather make people religious through their best feelings than their
+worst,--through their gratitude and affections, rather than their fears
+and calculations of risk and punishment.”
+
+Mr. Simcox stared.
+
+“Does she say her prayers?”
+
+“I have taught her a short one.”
+
+“Did she learn it readily?”
+
+“Lord love her, yes! When I told her she ought to pray to God to bless
+her benefactor, she would not rest till I had repeated a prayer out of
+our Sunday School book, and she got it by heart at once.”
+
+“Enough, Mr. Simcox. I will not detain you longer.”
+
+Forgetful of his untasted breakfast, Maltravers continued his meerschaum
+and his reflections: he did not cease, till he had convinced himself
+that he was but doing his duty to Alice, by teaching her to cultivate
+the charming talent she evidently possessed, and through which she might
+secure her own independence. He fancied that he should thus relieve
+himself of a charge and responsibility which often perplexed him. Alice
+would leave him, enabled to walk the world in an honest professional
+path. It was an excellent idea. “But there is danger,” whispered
+Conscience. “Ay,” answered Philosophy and Pride, those wise dupes that
+are always so solemn and always so taken in; “but what is virtue without
+trial?”
+
+And now every evening, when the windows were closed, and the hearth
+burnt clear, while the winds stormed, and the rain beat without, a lithe
+and lovely shape hovered about the student’s chamber; and his wild songs
+were sung by a voice which Nature had made even sweeter than his own.
+
+Alice’s talent for music was indeed surprising; enthusiastic and quick
+as he himself was in all he undertook, Maltravers was amazed at her
+rapid progress. He soon taught her to play by ear; and Maltravers could
+not but notice that her hand, always delicate in shape, had lost the
+rude colour and roughness of labour. He thought of that pretty hand more
+often than he ought to have done, and guided it over the keys when it
+could have found its way very well without him.
+
+On coming to the cottage he had directed the old servant to provide
+suitable and proper clothes for Alice; but now that she was admitted “to
+sit with the gentleman,” the crone had the sense, without waiting for
+new orders, to buy the “pretty young woman” garments, still indeed
+simple, but of better materials and less rustic fashion; and Alice’s
+redundant tresses were now carefully arranged into orderly and glossy
+curls, and even the texture was no longer the same; and happiness and
+health bloomed on her downy cheeks, and smiled from the dewy lips,
+which never quite closed over the fresh white teeth, except when she was
+sad--but that seemed never, now she was not banished from Maltravers.
+
+To say nothing of the unusual grace and delicacy of Alice’s form and
+features, there is nearly always something of Nature’s own gentility
+in very young women (except, indeed, when they get together and fall
+a-giggling); it shames us men to see how much sooner they are polished
+into conventional shape than our rough, masculine angles. A vulgar boy
+requires Heaven knows what assiduity to make three steps--I do not say
+like a gentleman, but like a body that has a soul in it; but give the
+least advantage of society or tuition to a peasant girl, and a hundred
+to one but she will glide into refinement before the boy can make a
+bow without upsetting the table. There is sentiment in all women, and
+sentiment gives delicacy to thought, and tact to manner. But sentiment
+with men is generally acquired, an offspring of the intellectual
+quality, not, as with the other sex, of the moral.
+
+In the course of his musical and vocal lessons, Maltravers gently took
+the occasion to correct poor Alice’s frequent offences against grammar
+and accent: and her memory was prodigiously quick and retentive. The
+very tones of her voice seemed altered in the ear of Maltravers; and,
+somehow or other, the time came when he was no longer sensible of the
+difference in their rank.
+
+The old woman-servant, when she had seen how it would be from the
+first, and taken a pride in her own prophecy, as she ordered Alice’s new
+dresses, was a much better philosopher than Maltravers; though he was
+already up to his ears in the moonlit abyss of Plato, and had filled a
+dozen commonplace books with criticisms on Kant.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+ “Young man, I fear thy blood is rosy red,
+  Thy heart is soft.”
+    D’AGUILAR’S _Fiesco_, Act iii. Sc. 1.
+
+As education does not consist in reading and writing only, so Alice,
+while still very backward in those elementary arts, forestalled some of
+their maturest results in her intercourse with Maltravers. Before the
+inoculation took effect, she caught knowledge in the natural way. For
+the refinement of a graceful mind and a happy manner is very contagious.
+And Maltravers was encouraged by her quickness in music to attempt
+such instruction in other studies as conversation could afford. It is a
+better school than parents and masters think for: there was a time when
+all information was given orally; and probably the Athenians learned
+more from hearing Aristotle than we do from reading him. It was a
+delicious revival of Academe--in the walks, or beneath the rustic
+porticoes of that little cottage--the romantic philosopher and the
+beautiful disciple! And his talk was much like that of a sage of the
+early world, with some wistful and earnest savage for a listener: of the
+stars and their courses--of beasts, and birds, and fishes, and plants,
+and flowers--the wide family of Nature--of the beneficence and power of
+God;--of the mystic and spiritual history of Man.
+
+Charmed by her attention and docility, Maltravers at length diverged
+from lore into poetry; he would repeat to her the simplest and most
+natural passages he could remember in his favourite poets; he would
+himself compose verses elaborately adapted to her understanding; she
+liked the last the best, and learned them the easiest. Never had young
+poet a more gracious inspiration, and never did this inharmonious world
+more complacently resolve itself into soft dreams, as if to humour
+the novitiate of the victims it must speedily take into its joyless
+priesthood. And Alice had now quietly and insensibly carved out her own
+avocations--the tenor of her service. The plants in the conservatory
+had passed under her care, and no one else was privileged to touch
+Maltravers’s books, or arrange the sacred litter of a student’s
+apartment. When he came down in the morning, or returned from his walks,
+everything was in order, yet, by a kind of magic, just as he wished it;
+the flowers he loved best bloomed, fresh-gathered, on his table; the
+very position of the large chair, just in that corner by the fireplace,
+whence, on entering the roof, its hospitable arms opened with the most
+cordial air of welcome, bespoke the presiding genius of a woman; and
+then, precisely as the clock struck eight, Alice entered, so pretty and
+smiling, and happy-looking, that it was no wonder the single hour at
+first allotted to her extended into three.
+
+Was Alice in love with Maltravers?--she certainly did not exhibit
+the symptoms in the ordinary way--she did not grow more reserved, and
+agitated, and timid--there was no worm in the bud of her damask check:
+nay, though from the first she had been tolerably bold; she was more
+free and confidential, more at her ease every day; in fact, she never
+for a moment suspected that she ought to be otherwise; she had not the
+conventional and sensitive delicacy of girls who, whatever their rank of
+life, have been taught that there is a mystery and a peril in love; she
+had a vague idea about girls going wrong, but she did not know that love
+had anything to do with it; on the contrary, according to her father,
+it had connection with money, not love; all that she felt was so natural
+and so very sinless. Could she help being so delighted to listen to
+him, and so grieved to depart? What thus she felt she expressed, no less
+simply and no less guilelessly: candour sometimes completely blinded and
+misled him. No, she could not be in love, or she could not so frankly
+own that she loved him--it was a sisterly and grateful sentiment.
+
+“The dear girl--I am rejoiced to think so,” said Maltravers to himself;
+“I knew there would be no danger.”
+
+Was he not in love himself?--The reader must decide.
+
+“Alice,” said Maltravers, one evening after a long pause of thought and
+abstraction on his side, while she was unconsciously practising her last
+lesson on the piano--“Alice,--no, don’t turn round--sit where you are,
+but listen to me. We cannot live always in this way.”
+
+Alice was instantly disobedient--she did turn round, and those great
+blue eyes were fixed on his own with such anxiety and alarm, that he had
+no resource but to get up and look round for the meerschaum. But Alice,
+who divined by an instinct his lightest wish, brought it to him, while
+he was yet hunting, amidst the further corners of the room, in places
+where it was certain not to be. There it was, already filled with the
+fragrant Salonica glittering with the gilt pastile, which, not too
+healthfully, adulterates the seductive weed with odours that pacify the
+repugnant censure of the fastidious--for Maltravers was an epicurean
+even in his worst habits;--there it was, I say, in that pretty hand
+which he had to touch as he took it; and while he lit the weed he had
+again to blush and shrink beneath those great blue eyes.
+
+“Thank you, Alice,” he said; “thank you. Do sit down there--out of the
+draught. I am going to open the window, the night is so lovely.”
+
+He opened the casement overgrown with creepers, and the moonlight lay
+fair and breathless upon the smooth lawn. The calm and holiness of the
+night soothed and elevated his thoughts; he had cut himself off from the
+eyes of Alice, and he proceeded with a firm, though gentle voice:
+
+“My dear Alice, we cannot always live together in this way; you are now
+wise enough to understand me, so listen patiently. A young woman never
+wants a fortune so long as she has a good character; she is always poor
+and despised without one. Now a good character in this world is lost
+as much by imprudence as guilt; and if you were to live with me much
+longer, it would be imprudent, and your character would suffer so much
+that you would not be able to make your own way in the world; far, then,
+from doing you a service, I should have done you a deadly injury, which
+I could not atone for: besides, Heaven knows what may happen worse than
+imprudence; for, I am very sorry to say,” added Maltravers, with great
+gravity, “that you are much too pretty and engaging to--to--in short, it
+won’t do. I must go home; my friends will have a right to complain of me
+if I remain thus lost to them many weeks longer. And you, my dear Alice,
+are now sufficiently advanced to receive better instruction than I
+or Mr. Simcox can give you. I therefore propose to place you in some
+respectable family, where you will have more comfort and a higher
+station than you have here. You can finish your education, and, instead
+of being taught, you will be thus enabled to become a teacher to others.
+With your beauty, Alice” (and Maltravers sighed), “and natural talents,
+and amiable temper, you have only to act well and prudently to secure at
+last a worthy husband and a happy home. Have you heard me, Alice? Such
+is the plan I have formed for you.”
+
+The young man thought as he spoke, with honest kindness and upright
+honour; it was a bitterer sacrifice than perhaps the reader thinks for.
+But Maltravers, if he had an impassioned, had not a selfish heart; and
+he felt, to use his own expression, more emphatic than eloquent, that
+“it would not do” to live any longer alone with this beautiful girl,
+like the two children whom the good Fairy kept safe from sin and the
+world in the Pavilion of Roses.
+
+But Alice comprehended neither the danger to herself nor the temptations
+that Maltravers, if he could not resist, desired to shun. She rose, pale
+and trembling--approached Maltravers and laid her hand gently on his
+arm.
+
+“I will go away, when and where you wish--the sooner the
+better--to-morrow--yes, to-morrow; you are ashamed of poor Alice; and
+it has been very silly in me to be so happy.” (She struggled with her
+emotion for a moment, and went on.) “You know Heaven can hear me, even
+when I am away from you, and when I know more I can pray better; and
+Heaven will bless you, sir, and make you happy, for I never can pray for
+anything else.”
+
+With these words she turned away, and walked proudly towards the door.
+But when she reached the threshold, she stopped and looked round, as
+if to take a last farewell. All the associations and memories of that
+beloved spot rushed upon her--she gasped for breath,--tottered,--and
+fell to the ground insensible.
+
+Maltravers was already by her side; he lifted her light weight in his
+arms; he uttered wild and impassioned exclamations--“Alice, beloved
+Alice--forgive me; we will never part!” He chafed her hands in his own,
+while her head lay on his bosom, and he kissed again and again those
+beautiful eyelids, till they opened slowly upon him, and the tender arms
+tightened round him involuntarily.
+
+“Alice,” he whispered--“Alice, dear Alice, I love thee.” Alas, it was
+true: he loved--and forgot all but that love. He was eighteen.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+ “How like a younker or a prodigal,
+  The scarfed bark puts from her native bay!”
+    _Merchant of Venice_.
+
+WE are apt to connect the voice of Conscience with the stillness of
+midnight. But I think we wrong that innocent hour. It is that terrible
+“NEXT MORNING,” when reason is wide awake, upon which remorse fastens
+its fangs. Has a man gambled away his all, or shot his friend in a
+duel--has he committed a crime or incurred a laugh--it is the _next
+morning_, when the irretrievable Past rises before him like a spectre;
+then doth the churchyard of memory yield up its grisly dead--then is the
+witching hour when the foul fiend within us can least tempt perhaps, but
+most torment. At night we have one thing to hope for, one refuge to fly
+to--oblivion and sleep! But at morning, sleep is over, and we are called
+upon coldly to review, and re-act, and live again the waking bitterness
+of self-reproach. Maltravers rose a penitent and unhappy man--remorse
+was new to him, and he felt as if he had committed a treacherous and
+fraudulent as well as guilty deed. This poor girl, she was so innocent,
+so confiding, so unprotected, even by her own sense of right. He went
+down-stairs listless and dispirited. He longed yet dreaded to encounter
+Alice. He heard her step in the conservatory--paused, irresolute, and at
+length joined her. For the first time she blushed and trembled, and her
+eyes shunned his. But when he kissed her hand in silence, she whispered,
+“And am I now to leave you?” And Maltravers answered fervently, “Never!”
+ and then her face grew so radiant with joy that Maltravers was comforted
+despite himself. Alice knew no remorse, though she felt agitated and
+ashamed; as she had not comprehended the danger, neither was she aware
+of the fall. In fact, she never thought of herself. Her whole soul was
+with him; she gave him back in love the spirit she had caught from him
+in knowledge.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+And they strolled together through the garden all that day, and
+Maltravers grew reconciled to himself. He had done wrong, it is true;
+but then perhaps Alice had already suffered as much as she could in the
+world’s opinion, by living with him alone, though innocent, so long.
+And now she had an everlasting claim to his protection--she should never
+know shame or want. And the love that had led to the wrong should, by
+fidelity and devotion, take from it the character of sin.
+
+Natural and commonplace sophistries! _L’homme se pique!_ as old
+Montaigne said; Man is his own sharper! The conscience is the most
+elastic material in the world. To-day you cannot stretch it over a
+mole-hill, to-morrow it hides a mountain.
+
+O how happy they were now--that young pair! How the days flew like
+dreams! Time went on, winter passed away, and the early spring, with its
+flowers and sunshine, was like a mirror to their own youth. Alice never
+accompanied Maltravers in his walks abroad, partly because she feared to
+meet her father, and partly because Maltravers himself was fastidiously
+averse to all publicity. But then they had all that little world of
+three acres--lawn and fountain, shrubbery and terrace, to themselves,
+and Alice never asked if there was any other world without. She was now
+quite a scholar, as Mr. Simcox himself averred. She could read aloud
+and fluently to Maltravers, and copied out his poetry in a small,
+fluctuating hand, and he had no longer to chase throughout his
+vocabulary for short Saxon monosyllables to make the bridge of
+intercourse between their ideas. Eros and Psyche are ever united, and
+Love opens all the petals of the soul. On one subject alone, Maltravers
+was less eloquent than of yore. He had not succeeded as a moralist, and
+he thought it hypocritical to preach what he did not practise. But Alice
+was gentler and purer, and as far as she knew, sweet fool! better than
+ever--she had invented a new prayer for herself; and she prayed as
+regularly and as fervently as if she were doing nothing amiss. But the
+code of Heaven is gentler than that of earth, and does not declare that
+ignorance excuseth not the crime.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+ “Some clouds sweep on as vultures for their prey.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+  No azure more shall robe the firmament,
+  Nor spangled stars be glorious.”
+    BYRON, _Heaven and Earth_.
+
+IT was a lovely evening in April, the weather was unusually mild and
+serene for the time of year, in the northern districts of our isle, and
+the bright drops of a recent shower sparkled upon the buds of the lilac
+and laburnum that clustered round the cottage of Maltravers. The little
+fountain that played in the centre of a circular basin, on whose clear
+surface the broad-leaved water-lily cast its fairy shadow, added to the
+fresh green of the lawn;
+
+ “And softe as velvet the yonge grass,”
+
+on which the rare and early flowers were closing their heavy lids. That
+twilight shower had given a racy and vigorous sweetness to the air
+which stole over many a bank of violets, and slightly stirred the golden
+ringlets of Alice as she sate by the side of her entranced and silent
+lover. They were seated on a rustic bench just without the cottage, and
+the open window behind them admitted the view of that happy room--with
+its litter of books and musical instruments--eloquent of the POETRY of
+HOME.
+
+Maltravers was silent, for his flexile and excitable fancy was conjuring
+up a thousand shapes along the transparent air, or upon those shadowy
+violet banks. He was not thinking, he was imagining. His genius reposed
+dreamily upon the calm, but exquisite sense of his happiness. Alice
+was not absolutely in his thoughts, but unconsciously she coloured them
+all--if she had left his side, the whole charm would have been broken.
+But Alice, who was not a poet or a genius, _was_ thinking, and thinking
+only of Maltravers.... His image was “the broken mirror” multiplied in a
+thousand faithful fragments over everything fair and soft in that lovely
+microcosm before her. But they were both alike in one thing--they were
+not with the Future, they were sensible of the Present--the sense of the
+actual life, the enjoyment of the breathing time was strong within them.
+Such is the privilege of the extremes of our existence--Youth and Age.
+Middle life is never with to-day, its home is in to-morrow... anxious,
+and scheming, and desiring, and wishing this plot ripened, and that hope
+fulfilled, while every wave of the forgotten Time brings it nearer and
+nearer to the end of all things. Half our life is consumed in longing to
+be nearer death.
+
+“Alice,” said Maltravers, waking at last from his reverie, and drawing
+that light, childlike form nearer to him, “you enjoy this hour as much
+as I do.”
+
+“Oh, much more!”
+
+“More! and why so?”
+
+“Because I am thinking of you, and perhaps you are not thinking of
+yourself.”
+
+Maltravers smiled and stroked those beautiful ringlets, and kissed that
+smooth, innocent forehead, and Alice nestled herself in his breast.
+
+“How young you look by this light, Alice!” said he, tenderly looking
+down.
+
+“Would you love me less if I were old?” asked Alice.
+
+“I suppose I should never have loved you in the same way if you had been
+old when I first saw you.”
+
+“Yet I am sure I should have felt the same for you if you had been--oh!
+ever so old!”
+
+“What, with wrinkled cheeks, and palsied head, and a brown wig, and no
+teeth, like Mr. Simcox?”
+
+“Oh, but you could never be like that! You would always look young--your
+heart would be always in your face. That clear smile--ah, you would look
+beautiful to the last!”
+
+“But Simcox, though not very lovely now, has been, I dare say, handsomer
+than I am, Alice; and I shall be contented to look as well when I am as
+old!”
+
+“I should never know you were old, because I can see you just as I
+please. Sometimes, when you are thoughtful, your brows meet, and you
+look so stern that I tremble; but then I think of you when you last
+smiled, and look up again, and though you are frowning still, you seem
+to smile. I am sure you are different to other eyes than to mine... and
+time must kill _me_ before, in my sight, it could alter _you_.”
+
+“Sweet Alice, you talk eloquently, for you talk love.”
+
+“My heart talks to you. Ah! I wish it could say all I felt. I wish it
+could make poetry like you, or that words were music--I would never
+speak to you in anything else. I was so delighted to learn music,
+because when I played I seemed to be talking to you. I am sure that
+whoever invented music did it because he loved dearly and wanted to say
+so. I said ‘_he_,’ but I think it was a woman. Was it?”
+
+“The Greeks I told you of, and whose life was music, thought it was a
+god.”
+
+“Ah, but you say the Greeks made Love a god. Were they wicked for it?”
+
+“Our own God above is Love,” said Ernest, seriously, “as our own poets
+have said and sung. But it is a love of another nature--divine, not
+human. Come, we will go within, the air grows cold for you.”
+
+They entered, his arm round her waist. The room smiled upon them its
+quiet welcome; and Alice, whose heart had not half vented its fulness,
+sat down to the instrument still to “talk love” in her own way.
+
+But it was Saturday evening. Now every Saturday, Maltravers received
+from the neighbouring town the provincial newspaper--it was his only
+medium of communication with the great world. But it was not for that
+communication that he always seized it with avidity, and fed on it with
+interest. The county in which his father resided bordered on the shire
+in which Ernest sojourned, and the paper included the news of that
+familiar district in its comprehensive columns. It therefore satisfied
+Ernest’s conscience and soothed his filial anxieties to read from time
+to time that “Mr. Maltravers was entertaining a distinguished party of
+friends at his noble mansion of Lisle Court;” or that “Mr. Maltravers’s
+foxhounds had met on such a day at something copse;” or that, “Mr.
+Maltravers, with his usual munificence, had subscribed twenty guineas
+to the new county gaol.”... And as now Maltravers saw the expected paper
+laid beside the hissing urn, he seized it eagerly, tore the envelope,
+and hastened to the well-known corner appropriated to the paternal
+district. The very first words that struck his eye were these:
+
+
+   ALARMING ILLNESS OF MR. MALTRAVERS.
+
+“We regret to state that this exemplary and distinguished gentleman was
+suddenly seized on Wednesday night with a severe spasmodic affection.
+Dr. ------ was immediately sent for, who pronounced it to be gout in the
+stomach. The first medical assistance from London has been summoned.
+
+“Postscript.--We have just learned, in answer to our inquiries at Lisle
+Court, that the respected owner is considerably worse: but slight hopes
+are entertained of his recovery. Captain Maltravers, his eldest son and
+heir, is at Lisle Court. An express has been despatched in search of
+Mr. Ernest Maltravers, who, involved by his high English spirit in some
+dispute with the authorities of a despotic government, had suddenly
+disappeared from Gottingen, where his extraordinary talents had highly
+distinguished him. He is supposed to be staying at Paris.”
+
+
+The paper dropped on the floor. Ernest threw himself back on the chair,
+and covered his face with his hands.
+
+Alice was beside him in a moment. He looked up, and caught her wistful
+and terrified gaze. “Oh, Alice!” he cried, bitterly, and almost pushing
+her away, “if you could but guess my remorse!” Then springing on his
+feet, he hurried from the room.
+
+Presently the whole house was in commotion. The gardener, who was always
+in the house about supper-time, flew to the town for post-horses. The
+old woman was in despair about the laundress, for her first and only
+thought was for “master’s shirts.” Ernest locked himself in his room.
+Alice! poor Alice!
+
+In little more than twenty minutes, the chaise was at the door: and
+Ernest, pale as death, came into the room where he had left Alice.
+
+She was seated on the floor, and the fatal paper was on her lap. She
+had been endeavouring, in vain, to learn what had so sensibly affected
+Maltravers, for, as I said before, she was unacquainted with his real
+name, and therefore the ominous paragraph did not even arrest her eye.
+
+He took the paper from her, for he wanted again and again to read it:
+some little word of hope or encouragement must have escaped him. And
+then Alice flung herself on his breast. “Do not weep,” said he; “Heaven
+knows I have sorrow enough of my own! My father is dying! So kind, so
+generous, so indulgent! O God, forgive me! Compose yourself, Alice. You
+will hear from me in a day or two.”
+
+He kissed her, but the kiss was cold and forced. He hurried away. She
+heard the wheels grate on the pebbles. She rushed to the window; but
+that beloved face was not visible. Maltravers had drawn the blinds, and
+thrown himself back to indulge his grief. A moment more, and even the
+vehicle that bore him away was gone. And before her were the flowers,
+and the starlit lawn, and the playful fountain, and the bench where they
+had sat in such heartfelt and serene delight. He was gone; and often,
+oh, how often, did Alice remember that his last words had been uttered
+in estranged tones--that his last embrace had been without love!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+    “Thy due from me
+  Is tears: and heavy sorrows of the blood,
+  Which nature, love, and filial tenderness
+  Shall, O dear father, pay thee plenteously!”
+    _Second Part of Henry IV._, Act iv. Sc. 4.
+
+IT was late at night when the chaise that bore Maltravers stopped at the
+gates of a park lodge. It seemed an age before the peasant within was
+aroused from the deep sleep of labour-loving health. “My father,” he
+cried, while the gate creaked on its hinges; “my father--is he better?
+Is he alive?”
+
+“Oh, bless your heart, Master Ernest, the squire was a little better
+this evening.”
+
+“Thank Heaven!--On--on!”
+
+The horses smoked and galloped along a road that wound through venerable
+and ancient groves. The moonlight slept soft upon the sward, and the
+cattle, disturbed from their sleep, rose lazily up, and gazed upon the
+unseasonable intruder.
+
+It is a wild and weird scene, one of those noble English parks at
+midnight, with its rough forest-ground broken into dell and valley, its
+never-innovated and mossy grass, overrun with fern, and its immemorial
+trees, that have looked upon the birth, and look yet upon the graves,
+of a hundred generations. Such spots are the last proud and melancholy
+trace of Norman knighthood and old romance left to the laughing
+landscapes of cultivated England. They always throw something of shadow
+and solemn gloom upon minds that feels their associations, like that
+which belongs to some ancient and holy edifice. They are the cathedral
+aisles of Nature with their darkened vistas, and columned trunks, and
+arches of mighty foliage. But in ordinary times the gloom is pleasing,
+and more delightful than all the cheerful lawns and sunny slopes of the
+modern taste. _Now_ to Maltravers it was ominous and oppressive: the
+darkness of death seemed brooding in every shadow, and its warning voice
+moaning in every breeze.
+
+The wheels stopped again. Lights flitted across the basement story; and
+one above, more dim than the rest, shone palely from the room in which
+the sick man slept. The bell rang shrilly out from amidst the dark ivy
+that clung around the porch. The heavy door swung back--Maltravers was
+on the threshold. His father lived--was better--was awake. The son was
+in the father’s arms.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+    “The guardian oak
+  Mourn’d o’er the roof it shelter’d: the thick air
+  Labour’d with doleful sounds.”
+    ELLIOTT of _Sheffield_.
+
+MANY days had passed, and Alice was still alone; but she had heard twice
+from Maltravers. The letters were short and hurried. One time his father
+was better, and there were hopes; another time, and it was not expected
+that he could survive the week. They were the first letters Alice had
+ever received from him. Those _first_ letters are an event in a girl’s
+life--in Alice’s life they were a very melancholy one. Ernest did not
+ask her to write to him; in fact, he felt, at such an hour, a repugnance
+to disclose his real name, and receive the letters of clandestine love
+in the house in which a father lay in death. He might have given the
+feigned address he had previously assumed, at some distant post-town,
+where his person was not known. But, then, to obtain such letters, he
+must quit his father’s side for hours. The thing was impossible. These
+difficulties Maltravers did not explain to Alice.
+
+She thought it singular he did not wish to hear from her; but Alice
+was humble. What could she say worth troubling him with, and at such an
+hour? But how kind in him to write! how precious those letters! and
+yet they disappointed her, and cost her floods of tears: they were so
+short--so full of sorrow--there was so little love in them; and “dear,”
+ or even “_dearest_ Alice,” that uttered by the voice was so tender,
+looked cold upon the lifeless paper. If she but knew the exact spot
+where he was it would be some comfort; but she only knew that he was
+away, and in grief; and though he was little more than thirty miles
+distant, she felt as if immeasurable space divided them. However, she
+consoled herself as she could; and strove to shorten the long miserable
+day by playing over all the airs he liked, and reading all the passages
+he had commended. She should be so improved when he returned; and how
+lovely the garden would look; for every day its trees and bouquets
+caught a new smile from the deepening spring. Oh, they would be so happy
+once more! Alice _now_ learned the life that lies in the future; and her
+young heart had not, as yet, been taught that of that future there is
+any prophet but Hope!
+
+Maltravers, on quitting the cottage, had forgotten that Alice was
+without money, and now that he found his stay would be indefinitely
+prolonged, he sent a remittance. Several bills were unpaid--some portion
+of the rent was due; and Alice, as she was desired, intrusted the old
+servant with a bank note, with which she was to discharge these petty
+debts. One evening, as she brought Alice the surplus, the good dame
+seemed greatly discomposed. She was pale and agitated; or, as she
+expressed it, “had a terrible fit of the shakes.”
+
+“What is the matter, Mrs. Jones? you have no news of him--of--of my--of
+your master?”
+
+“Dear heart, miss--no,” answered Mrs. Jones; “how should I? But I’m sure
+I don’t wish to frighten you; there has been two sich robberies in the
+neighbourhood!”
+
+“Oh, thank Heaven that’s all!” exclaimed Alice.
+
+“Oh, don’t go for to thank Heaven for that, miss; it’s a shocking thing
+for two lone females like us, and them ‘ere windows all open to
+the ground! You sees, as I was taking the note to be changed at Mr.
+Harris’s, the great grocer’s shop, where all the poor folk was a-buying
+agin to-morrow” (for it was Saturday night, the second Saturday after
+Ernest’s departure; from that Hegira Alice dated all her chronology),
+“and everybody was a-talking about the robberies last night. La, miss,
+they bound old Betty--you know Betty--a most respectable ‘oman, who
+has known sorrows, and drinks tea with me once a week. Well, miss, they
+(only think!) bound Betty to the bedpost, with nothing on her but her
+shift--poor old soul! And as Mr. Harris gave me the change (please to
+see, miss, it’s all right), and I asked for half gould, miss, it’s more
+convenient, sich an ill-looking fellow was by me, a-buying o’ baccy, and
+he did so stare at the money, that I vows I thought he’d have rin away
+with it from the counter; so I grabbled it up and went away. But, would
+you believe, miss, just as I got into the lane, afore you turns through
+the gate, I chanced to look back, and there, sure enough, was that ugly
+fellow close behind, a-running like mad. Oh, I set up such a screetch;
+and young Dobbins was a-taking his cow out of the field, and he perked
+up over the hedge when he heard me; and the cow, too, with her horns,
+Lord bless her! So the fellow stopped, and I bustled through the gate,
+and got home. But la, miss, if we are all robbed and murdered?”
+
+Alice had not heard much of this harangue; but what she did hear very
+slightly affected her strong, peasant-born nerves; not half so much
+indeed, as the noise Mrs. Jones made in double-locking all the doors,
+and barring, as well as a peg and a rusty inch of chain would allow, all
+the windows--which operation occupied at least an hour and a half.
+
+All at last was still. Mrs. Jones had gone to bed--in the arms of
+sleep she had forgotten her terrors--and Alice had crept up-stairs, and
+undressed, and said her prayers, and wept a little; and, with the tears
+yet moist upon her dark eyelashes, had glided into dreams of Ernest.
+Midnight was passed--the stroke of one sounded unheard from the clock
+at the foot of the stars. The moon was gone--a slow, drizzling rain was
+falling upon the flowers, and cloud and darkness gathered fast and thick
+around the sky.
+
+About this time, a low, regular, grating sound commenced at the thin
+shutters of the sitting-room below, preceded by a very faint noise,
+like the tinkling of small fragments of glass on the gravel without. At
+length it ceased, and the cautious and partial gleam of a lanthorn fell
+along the floor; another moment, and two men stood in the room.
+
+“Hush, Jack!” whispered one: “hang out the glim, and let’s look about
+us.”
+
+The dark-lanthorn, now fairly unmuffled, presented to the gaze of the
+robbers nothing that could gratify their cupidity.
+
+Books and music, chairs, tables, carpet, and fire-irons, though valuable
+enough in a house-agent’s inventory, are worthless to the eyes of a
+housebreaker. They muttered a mutual curse.
+
+“Jack,” said the former speaker, “we must make a dash at the spoons
+and forks, and then hey for the money. The old girl had thirty shiners,
+besides flimsies.”
+
+The accomplice nodded consent; the lanthorn was again partially shaded,
+and with noiseless and stealthy steps the men quitted the apartment.
+Several minutes elapsed, when Alice was awakened from her slumber by a
+loud scream she started, all was again silent: she must have dreamt it:
+her little heart beat violently at first, but gradually regained its
+tenor. She rose, however, and the kindness of her nature being more
+susceptible than her fear, she imagined Mrs. Jones might be ill--she
+would go to her. With this idea she began partially dressing herself,
+when she distinctly heard heavy footsteps and a strange voice in the
+room beyond. She was now thoroughly alarmed--her first impulse was to
+escape from the house--her next to bolt the door, and call aloud for
+assistance. But who would hear her cries? Between the two purposes, she
+halted irresolute... and remained, pale and trembling, seated at the
+foot of the bed, when a broad light streamed through the chinks of the
+door--an instant more, and a rude hand seized her.
+
+“Come, mem, don’t be fritted, we won’t harm you; but where’s the
+gold-dust--where’s the money?--the old girl says you’ve got it. Fork it
+over.”
+
+“O mercy, mercy! John Walters, is that you?”
+
+“Damnation!” muttered the man, staggering back; “so you knows me then;
+but you sha’n’t peach; you sha’n’t scrag me, b---t you.”
+
+While he spoke, he again seized Alice, held her forcibly down with one
+hand, while with the other he deliberately drew from a side pouch a long
+case-knife. In that moment of deadly peril, the second ruffian, who had
+been hitherto delayed in securing the servant, rushed forward. He had
+heard the exclamation of Alice, he heard the threat of his comrade; he
+darted to the bedside, cast a hurried gaze upon Alice, and hurled the
+intended murderer to the other side of the room.
+
+“What, man, art mad?” he growled between his teeth. “Don’t you know her?
+It is Alice;--it is my daughter.”
+
+Alice had sprung up when released from the murderer’s knife, and now,
+with eyes strained and starting with horror, gazed upon the dark and
+evil face of her deliverer.
+
+“O God, it is--it is my father!” she muttered, and fell senseless.
+
+“Daughter or no daughter,” said John Walters, “I shall not put my scrag
+in her power; recollect how she fritted us before, when she run away.”
+
+Darvil stood thoughtful and perplexed; and his associate approached
+doggedly with a look of such settled ferocity as it was impossible for
+even Darvil to contemplate without a shudder.
+
+“You say right,” muttered the father, after a pause, but fixing his
+strong gripe on his comrade’s shoulder,--“the girl must not be left
+here--the cart has a covering. We are leaving the country; I have
+a right to my daughter--she shall go with us. There, man, grab the
+money--it’s on the table;.... you’ve got the spoons. Now then--” as
+Darvil spoke he seized his daughter in his arms; threw over her a shawl
+and a cloak that lay at hand, and was already on the threshold.
+
+“I don’t half like it,” said Walters, grumblingly--“it been’t safe.”
+
+“At least it is as safe as murder!” answered Darvil, turning round, with
+a ghastly grin. “Make haste.”
+
+When Alice recovered her senses, the dawn was breaking slowly along
+desolate and sullen hills. She was lying upon rough straw--the cart was
+jolting over the ruts of a precipitous, lonely road,--and by her side
+scowled the face of that dreadful father.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+ “Yet he beholds her with the eyes of mind--
+  He sees the form which he no more shall meet;
+  She like a passionate thought is come and gone,
+  While at his feet the bright rill bubbles on.”
+    ELLIOTT _of Sheffield_.
+
+IT was a little more than three weeks after that fearful night, when the
+chaise of Maltravers stopped at the cottage door--the windows were shut
+up; no one answered the repeated summons of the post-boy. Maltravers
+himself, alarmed and amazed, descended from the vehicle: he was in
+deep mourning. He went impatiently to the back entrance; that also was
+locked; round to the French windows of the drawing-room, always hitherto
+half-opened, even in the frosty days of winter,--they were now closed
+like the rest. He shouted in terror, “Alice, Alice!”--no sweet voice
+answered in breathless joy, no fairy step bounded forward in welcome.
+At this moment, however, appeared the form of the gardener coming across
+the lawn. The tale was soon told; the house had been robbed--the old
+woman at morning found gagged and fastened to her bed-post--Alice flown.
+A magistrate had been applied to,--suspicion fell upon the fugitive.
+None knew anything of her origin or name, not even the old woman.
+Maltravers had naturally and sedulously ordained Alice to preserve that
+secret, and she was too much in fear of being detected and claimed by
+her father not to obey the injunction with scrupulous caution. But it
+was known, at least, that she had entered the house a poor peasant girl;
+and what more common than for ladies of a certain description to run
+away from their lover, and take some of his property by mistake? And
+a poor girl like Alice, what else could be expected? The magistrate
+smiled, and the constables laughed. After all, it was a good joke at
+the young gentleman’s expense! Perhaps, as they had no orders from
+Maltravers, and they did not know where to find him, and thought he
+would be little inclined to prosecute, the search was not very rigorous.
+But two houses had been robbed the night before. Their owners were more
+on the alert. Suspicion fell upon a man of infamous character, John
+Walters; he had disappeared from the place. He had been last seen with
+an idle, drunken fellow, who was said to have known better days, and who
+at one time had been a skilful and well-paid mechanic, till his habits
+of theft and drunkenness threw him out of employ; and he had been since
+accused of connection with a gang of coiners--tried--and escaped from
+want of sufficient evidence against him. That man was Luke Darvil. His
+cottage was searched; but he also had fled. The trace of cart-wheels by
+the gate of Maltravers gave a faint clue to pursuit; and after an
+active search of some days, persons answering to the description of the
+suspected burglars--with a young female in their company--were tracked
+to a small inn, notorious as a resort for smugglers, by the sea-coast.
+But there every vestige of their supposed whereabouts disappeared.
+
+And all this was told to the stunned Maltravers; the garrulity of the
+gardener precluded the necessity of his own inquiries, and the name
+of Darvil explained to him all that was dark to others. And Alice
+was suspected of the basest and the blackest guilt! Obscure, beloved,
+protected as she had been, she could not escape the calumny from which
+he had hoped everlastingly to shield her. But did _he_ share that
+hateful thought? Maltravers was too generous and too enlightened.
+
+“Dog!” said he, grinding his teeth, and clenching his hands, at the
+startled menial, “dare to utter a syllable of suspicion against her, and
+I will trample the breath out of your body!”
+
+The old woman, who had vowed that for the ‘varsal world she would not
+stay in the house after such a “night of shakes,” had now learned the
+news of her master’s return, and came hobbling up to him. She arrived in
+time to hear his menace to her fellow-servant.
+
+“Ah, that’s right; give it him, your honour; bless your good
+heart!--that’s what I says. Miss rob the house! says I--Miss run away.
+Oh no--depend on it they have murdered her and buried the body.”
+
+Maltravers gasped for breath, but without uttering another word he
+re-entered the chaise and drove to the house of the magistrate. He found
+that functionary a worthy and intelligent man of the world. To him
+he confided the secret of Alice’s birth and his own. The magistrate
+concurred with him in believing that Alice had been discovered
+and removed by her father. New search was made--gold was lavished.
+Maltravers himself headed the search in person. But all came to the
+same result as before, save that by the descriptions he heard of the
+person--the dress--the tears, of the young female who had accompanied
+the men supposed to be Darvil and Walters, he was satisfied that Alice
+yet lived; he hoped she might yet escape and return. In that hope he
+lingered for weeks--for months, in the neighbourhood; but time passed
+and no tidings.... He was forced at length to quit a neighbourhood
+at once so saddened and endeared. But he secured a friend in the
+magistrate, who promised to communicate with him if Alice returned, or
+her father was discovered. He enriched Mrs. Jones for life, in gratitude
+for her vindication of his lost and early love; he promised the amplest
+rewards for the smallest clue. And with a crushed and desponding spirit,
+he obeyed at last the repeated and anxious summons of the guardian to
+whose care, until his majority was attained, the young orphan was now
+entrusted.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+ “Sure there are poets that did never dream
+  Upon Parnassus.”--DENHAM.
+
+ “Walk sober off, before a sprightlier age
+  Come tittering on, and shove you from the stage.”--POPE.
+
+ “Hence to repose your trust in me was wise.”
+    DRYDEN’S _Absalom and Achitophel_.
+
+MR. FREDERICK CLEVELAND, a younger son of the Earl of Byrneham, and
+therefore entitled to the style and distinction of “Honourable,” was the
+guardian of Ernest Maltravers. He was now about the age of forty-three;
+a man of letters and a man of fashion, if the last half-obsolete
+expression be permitted to us, as being at least more classical and
+definite than any other which modern euphuism has invented to convey the
+same meaning. Highly educated, and with natural abilities considerably
+above mediocrity, Mr. Cleveland early in life had glowed with the
+ambition of an author.... He had written well and gracefully--but his
+success, though respectable, did not satisfy his aspirations. The
+fact is, that a new school of literature ruled the public, despite the
+critics--a school very different from that in which Mr. Cleveland formed
+his unimpassioned and polished periods. And as that old Earl, who in the
+time of Charles the First was the reigning wit of the court, in the time
+of Charles the Second was considered too dull even for a butt, so
+every age has its own literary stamp and coinage, and consigns the
+old circulation to its shelves and cabinets as neglected curiosities.
+Cleveland could not become the fashion with the public as an author,
+though the coteries cried him up and the reviewers adored him--and
+the ladies of quality and the amateur dilettanti bought and bound his
+volumes of careful poetry and cadenced prose. But Cleveland had high
+birth and a handsome competence--his manners were delightful, his
+conversation fluent--and his disposition was as amiable as his mind was
+cultured. He became, therefore, a man greatly sought after in society
+both respected and beloved. If he had not genius, he had great good
+sense; he did not vex his urbane temper and kindly heart with walking
+after a vain shadow, and disquieting himself in vain. Satisfied with an
+honourable and unenvied reputation, he gave up the dream of that higher
+fame which he clearly saw was denied to his aspirations--and maintained
+his good-humour with the world, though in his secret soul he thought
+it was very wrong in its literary caprices. Cleveland never married: he
+lived partly in town, but principally at Temple Grove, a villa not far
+from Richmond. Here, with an excellent library, beautiful grounds, and
+a circle of attached and admiring friends, which comprised all the more
+refined and intellectual members of what is termed, by emphasis, _Good
+Society_--this accomplished and elegant person passed a life perhaps
+much happier than he would have known had his young visions been
+fulfilled, and it had become his stormy fate to lead the rebellious and
+fierce Democracy of Letters.
+
+Cleveland was indeed, if not a man of high and original genius, at
+least very superior to the generality of patrician authors. In retiring,
+himself, from frequent exercise in the arena, he gave up his mind
+with renewed zest to the thoughts and masterpieces of others. From a
+well-read man, he became a deeply instructed one. Metaphysics, and some
+of the material sciences, added new treasures to information more light
+and miscellaneous, and contributed to impart weight and dignity to a
+mind that might otherwise have become somewhat effeminate and frivolous.
+His social habits, his clear sense, and benevolence of judgment, made
+him also an exquisite judge of all those indefinable nothings, or little
+things, that, formed into a total, become knowledge of the Great World.
+I say the Great World--for of the world without the circle of the great,
+Cleveland naturally knew but little. But of all that related to that
+subtle orbit in which gentlemen and ladies move in elevated and ethereal
+order, Cleveland was a profound philosopher. It was the mode with many
+of his admirers to style him the Horace Walpole of the day. But though
+in some of the more external and superficial points of character they
+were alike, Cleveland had considerably less cleverness, and infinitely
+more heart.
+
+The late Mr. Maltravers, a man not indeed of literary habits but an
+admirer of those who were--an elegant, high-bred, hospitable
+_seigneur de province_--had been one of the earliest of Cleveland’s
+friends--Cleveland had been his fag at Eton--and he found Hal
+Maltravers--(Handsome Hal!) had become the darling of the clubs, when he
+made his own _debut_ in society. They were inseparable for a season or
+two--and when Mr. Maltravers married, and enamoured of country pursuits,
+proud of his old hall, and sensibly enough conceiving that he was a
+greater man in his own broad lands than in the republican aristocracy
+of London, settled peaceably at Lisle Court, Cleveland corresponded with
+him regularly, and visited him twice a year. Mrs. Maltravers died in
+giving birth to Ernest, her second son. Her husband loved her tenderly,
+and was long inconsolable for her loss. He could not bear the sight
+of the child that had cost him so dear a sacrifice. Cleveland and his
+sister, Lady Julia Danvers, were residing with him at the time of this
+melancholy event; and with judicious and delicate kindness, Lady Julia
+proposed to place the unconscious offender amongst her own children for
+some months. The proposition was accepted, and it was two years before
+the infant Ernest was restored to the paternal mansion. During the
+greater part of that time, he had gone through all the events and
+revolutions of baby life under the bachelor roof of Frederick Cleveland.
+
+The result of this was, that the latter loved the child like a father.
+Ernest’s first intelligible word hailed Cleveland as “papa;” and when
+the urchin was at length deposited at Lisle Court, Cleveland talked
+all the nurses out of breath with admonitions, and cautions, and
+injunctions, and promises, and threats, which might have put many a
+careful mother to the blush. This circumstance formed a new tie between
+Cleveland and his friend. Cleveland’s visits were now three times a
+year instead of twice. Nothing was done for Ernest without Cleveland’s
+advice. He was not even breeched till Cleveland gave his grave consent.
+Cleveland chose his school, and took him to it,--and he spent a week of
+every vacation in Cleveland’s house. The boy never got into a scrape,
+or won a prize, or wanted _a tip_, or coveted a book, but what Cleveland
+was the first to know of it. Fortunately, too, Ernest manifested by
+times tastes which the graceful author thought similar to his own. He
+early developed very remarkable talents, and a love for learning--though
+these were accompanied with a vigour of life and soul--an energy--a
+daring--which gave Cleveland some uneasiness, and which did not appear
+to him at all congenial with the moody shyness of an embryo genius, or
+the regular placidity of a precocious scholar. Meanwhile the relation
+between father and son was rather a singular one. Mr. Maltravers had
+overcome his first, not unnatural, repugnance to the innocent cause of
+his irremediable loss. He was now fond and proud of his boy--as he was
+of all things that belonged to him. He spoiled and petted him even more
+than Cleveland did. But he interfered very little with his education or
+pursuits. His eldest son, Cuthbert, did not engross all his heart, but
+occupied all his care. With Cuthbert he connected the heritage of his
+ancient name, and the succession of his ancestral estates. Cuthbert
+was not a genius, nor intended to be one; he was to be an accomplished
+gentleman, and a great proprietor. The father understood Cuthbert, and
+could see clearly both his character and career. He had no scruple in
+managing his education, and forming his growing mind. But Ernest puzzled
+him. Mr. Maltravers was even a little embarrassed in the boy’s society;
+he never quite overcame that feeling of strangeness towards him which he
+had experienced when he first received him back from Cleveland, and took
+Cleveland’s directions about his health and so forth. It always seemed
+to him as if his friend shared his right to the child; and he thought
+it a sort of presumption to scold Ernest, though he very often swore
+at Cuthbert. As the younger son grew up, it certainly was evident that
+Cleveland did understand him better than his own father did; and so, as
+I have before said, on Cleveland the father was not displeased passively
+to shift the responsibility of the rearing.
+
+Perhaps Mr. Maltravers might not have been so indifferent, had Ernest’s
+prospects been those of a younger son in general. If a profession had
+been necessary for him, Mr. Maltravers would have been naturally anxious
+to see him duly fitted for it. But from a maternal relation Ernest
+inherited an estate of about four thousand pounds a year; and he was
+thus made independent of his father. This loosened another tie between
+them; and so by degrees Mr. Maltravers learned to consider Ernest less
+as his own son, to be advised or rebuked, praised or controlled, than
+as a very affectionate, promising, engaging boy, who, somehow or other,
+without any trouble on his part, was very likely to do great credit to
+his family, and indulge his eccentricities upon four thousand pounds a
+year. The first time that Mr. Maltravers was seriously perplexed about
+him was when the boy, at the age of sixteen, having taught himself
+German, and intoxicated his wild fancies with _Werter_ and _The
+Robbers_, announced his desire, which sounded very like a demand, of
+going to Gottingen instead of to Oxford. Never were Mr. Maltravers’s
+notions of a proper and gentlemanlike finish to education more
+completely and rudely assaulted. He stammered out a negative, and
+hurried to his study to write a long letter to Cleveland, who, himself
+an Oxford prize-man, would, he was persuaded, see the matter in the same
+light. Cleveland answered the letter in person: listened in silence to
+all the father had to say, and then strolled through the park with
+the young man. The result of the latter conference was, that Cleveland
+declared in favour of Ernest.
+
+“But, my dear Frederick,” said the astonished father, “I thought the boy
+was to carry off all the prizes at Oxford?”
+
+“I carried off some, Maltravers; but I don’t see what good they did me.”
+
+“Oh, Cleveland!”
+
+“I am serious.”
+
+“But it is such a very odd fancy.”
+
+“Your son is a very odd young man.”
+
+“I fear he is so--I fear he is, poor fellow! But what will he learn at
+Gottingen?”
+
+“Languages and Independence,” said Cleveland.
+
+“And the classics--the classics--you are such an excellent Grecian!”
+
+“There are great Grecians in Germany,” answered Cleveland; “and Ernest
+cannot well unlearn what he knows already. My dear Maltravers, the boy
+is not like most clever young men. He must either go through action, and
+adventure, and excitement in his own way, or he will be an idle dreamer,
+or an impracticable enthusiast all his life. Let him alone.--So Cuthbert
+is gone into the Guards?”
+
+“But he went first to Oxford.”
+
+“Humph! What a fine young man he is!”
+
+“Not so tall as Ernest, but--”
+
+“A handsome face,” said Cleveland. “He is a son to be proud of in one
+way, as I hope Ernest will be in another. Will you show me your new
+hunter?”
+
+ * * * * *
+
+It was to the house of this gentleman, so judiciously made his guardian,
+that the student of Gottingen now took his melancholy way.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+ “But if a little exercise you choose,
+   Some zest for ease, ‘tis not forbidden here;
+  Amid the groves you may indulge the Muse,
+   Or tend the blooms and deck the vernal year.”
+      _Castle of Indolence_.
+
+THE house of Mr. Cleveland was an Italian villa adapted to an English
+climate. Through an Ionic arch you entered a domain of some eighty or a
+hundred acres in extent, but so well planted and so artfully disposed,
+that you could not have supposed the unseen boundaries inclosed no
+ampler a space. The road wound through the greenest sward, in which
+trees of venerable growth were relieved by a profusion of shrubs, and
+flowers gathered into baskets intertwined with creepers, or blooming
+from classic vases, placed with a tasteful care in such spots as
+required the _filling up_, and harmonised well with the object chosen.
+Not an old ivy-grown pollard, not a modest and bending willow, but
+was brought out, as it were, into a peculiar feature by the art of the
+owner. Without being overloaded, or too minutely elaborate (the common
+fault of the rich man’s villa), the whole place seemed one diversified
+and cultivated garden; even the air almost took a different odour from
+different vegetation, with each winding of the road; and the colours of
+the flowers and foliage varied with every view.
+
+At length, when, on a lawn sloping towards a glassy lake overhung by
+limes and chestnuts, and backed by a hanging wood, the house itself came
+in sight, the whole prospect seemed suddenly to receive its finishing
+and crowning feature. The house was long and low. A deep peristyle that
+supported the roof extended the whole length, and being raised above
+the basement had the appearance of a covered terrace; broad flights
+of steps, with massive balustrades, supporting vases of aloes and
+orange-trees, led to the lawn; and under the peristyle were ranged
+statues, Roman antiquities and rare exotics. On this side the lake
+another terrace, very broad, and adorned, at long intervals, with urns
+and sculpture, contrasted the shadowy and sloping bank beyond; and
+commanded, through unexpected openings in the trees, extensive views
+of the distant landscape, with the stately Thames winding through the
+midst. The interior of the house corresponded with the taste without.
+All the principal rooms, even those appropriated to sleep, were on the
+same floor. A small but lofty and octagonal hall conducted to a suite of
+four rooms. At one extremity was a moderately-sized dining-room with
+a ceiling copied from the rich and gay colours of Guido’s “Hours;” and
+landscapes painted by Cleveland himself, with no despicable skill, were
+let into the walls. A single piece of sculpture copied from the Piping
+Faun, and tinged with a flesh-like glow by purple and orange draperies
+behind it, relieved without darkening the broad and arched window which
+formed its niche. This communicated with a small picture-room, not
+indeed rich with those immortal gems for which princes are candidates;
+for Cleveland’s fortune was but that of a private gentleman, though,
+managed with a discreet if liberal economy, it sufficed for all his
+elegant desires. But the pictures had an interest beyond that of art,
+and their subjects were within the reach of a collector of ordinary
+opulence. They made a series of portraits--some originals, some copies
+(and the copies were often the best) of Cleveland’s favourite authors.
+And it was characteristic of the man, that Pope’s worn and thoughtful
+countenance looked down from the central place of honour. Appropriately
+enough, this room led into the library, the largest room in the house,
+the only one indeed that was noticeable from its size, as well as its
+embellishments. It was nearly sixty feet in length. The bookcases were
+crowned with bronze busts, while at intervals statues, placed in open
+arches, backed with mirrors, gave the appearance of galleries, opening
+from the book-lined walls, and introduced an inconceivable air of
+classic lightness and repose into the apartment; with these arches the
+windows harmonised so well, opening on the peristyle, and bringing into
+delightful view the sculpture, the flowers, the terraces, and the lake
+without, that the actual prospects half seduced you into the belief that
+they were designs by some master-hand of the poetical gardens that yet
+crown the hills of Rome. Even the colouring of the prospects on a sunny
+day favoured the delusion, owing to the deep, rich hues of the simple
+draperies, and the stained glass of which the upper panes of the windows
+were composed. Cleveland was especially fond of sculpture; he was
+sensible, too, of the mighty impulse which that art has received in
+Europe within the last half century. He was even capable of asserting
+the doctrine, not yet sufficiently acknowledged in this country, that
+Flaxman surpassed Canova. He loved sculpture, too, not only for its own
+beauty, but for the beautifying and intellectual effect that it produces
+wherever it is admitted. It is a great mistake, he was wont to say,
+in collectors of statues, to arrange them _pele mele_ in one long
+monotonous gallery. The single relief, or statue, or bust, or simple
+urn, introduced appropriately in the smallest apartment we inhabit,
+charms us infinitely more than those gigantic museums, crowded into
+rooms never entered but for show, and without a chill, uncomfortable
+shiver. Besides, this practice of galleries, which the herd consider
+orthodox, places sculpture out of the patronage of the public. There
+are not a dozen people who can afford galleries. But very moderately
+affluent gentlemen can afford a statue or a bust. The influence, too,
+upon a man’s mind and taste, created by the constant and habitual view
+of monuments of the only imperishable art which resorts to physical
+materials, is unspeakable. Looking upon the Greek marble, we become
+acquainted, almost insensibly, with the character of the Greek life and
+literature. That Aristides, that Genius of Death, that fragment of the
+unrivalled Psyche, are worth a thousand Scaligers!
+
+“Do you ever look at the Latin translation when you read Aeschylus?”
+ said a schoolboy once to Cleveland.
+
+“That is my Latin translation,” said Cleveland, pointing to the Laocoon.
+
+The library opened at the extreme end to a small cabinet for curiosities
+and medals, which, still in a straight line, conducted to a long
+belvidere, terminating in a little circular summer-house, that, by a
+sudden wind of the lake below, hung perpendicularly over its transparent
+tide, and, seen from the distance, appeared almost suspended on air, so
+light were its slender columns and arching dome. Another door from
+the library opened upon a corridor which conducted to the principal
+sleeping-chambers; the nearest door was that of Cleveland’s private
+study communicating with his bedroom and dressing-closet. The other
+rooms were appropriated to, and named after, his several friends.
+
+Mr. Cleveland had been advised by a hasty line of the movements of his
+ward, and he received the young man with a smile of welcome, though
+his eyes were moist and his lips trembled--for the boy was like his
+father!--a new generation had commenced for Cleveland!
+
+“Welcome, my dear Ernest,” said he; “I am so glad to see you, that I
+will not scold you for your mysterious absence. This is your room, you
+see your name over the door; it is a larger one than you used to have,
+for you are a man now; and there is your German sanctum adjoining--for
+Schiller and the meerschaum!--a bad habit that, the meerschaum! but
+not worse than the Schiller, perhaps. You see you are in the peristyle
+immediately. The meerschaum is good for flowers, I fancy, so have no
+scruple. Why, my dear boy, how pale you are! Be cheered--be cheered.
+Well, I must go myself, or you will infect me.”
+
+Cleveland hurried away; he thought of his lost friend. Ernest sank upon
+the first chair, and buried his face in his hands. Cleveland’s valet
+entered, and bustled about and unpacked the portmanteau, and arranged
+the evening dress. But Ernest did not look up nor speak; the first
+bell sounded; the second tolled unheard upon his ear. He was thoroughly
+overcome by his emotions. The first notes of Cleveland’s kind voice had
+touched upon a soft chord, that months of anxiety and excitement had
+strained to anguish, but had never woke to tears. His nerves were
+shattered--those strong young nerves! He thought of his dead father when
+he first saw Cleveland; but when he glanced round the room prepared for
+him, and observed the care for his comfort, and the tender recollection
+of his most trifling peculiarities everywhere visible, Alice, the
+watchful, the humble, the loving, the lost Alice rose before him.
+Surprised at his ward’s delay, Cleveland entered the room; there sat
+Ernest still, his face buried in his hands. Cleveland drew them gently
+away, and Maltravers sobbed like an infant. It was an easy matter
+to bring tears to the eyes of that young man: a generous or a tender
+thought, an old song, the simplest air of music, sufficed for that touch
+of the mother’s nature. But the vehement and awful passion which belongs
+to manhood when thoroughly unmanned--this was the first time in which
+the relief of that stormy bitterness was known to him!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+ “Musing full sadly in his sullen mind.”--SPENSER.
+
+ “There forth issued from under the altar-smoke
+  A dreadful fiend.”--_Ibid. on Superstition_.
+
+NINE times out of ten it is over the Bridge of Sighs that we pass the
+narrow gulf from Youth to Manhood. That interval is usually occupied
+by an ill-placed or disappointed affection. We recover, and we find
+ourselves a new being. The intellect has been hardened by the fire
+through which it has passed. The mind profits by the wrecks of every
+passion, and we may measure our road to wisdom by the sorrows we have
+undergone.
+
+But Maltravers was yet on the bridge, and, for a time, both mind
+and body were prostrate and enfeebled. Cleveland had the sagacity to
+discover that the affections had their share in the change that he
+grieved to witness, but he had also the delicacy not to force himself
+into the young man’s confidence. But by little and little his kindness
+so completely penetrated the heart of his ward, that Ernest one evening
+told his whole tale. As a man of the world, Cleveland perhaps rejoiced
+that it was no worse, for he had feared some existing entanglement
+perhaps with a married woman. But as a man who was better than the
+world in general, he sympathised with the unfortunate girl whom Ernest
+pictured to him in faithful and unflattered colours, and he long forbore
+consolations which he foresaw would be unavailing. He felt, indeed,
+that Ernest was not a man “to betray the noon of manhood to a
+myrtle-shade:”--that with so sanguine, buoyant, and hardy a temperament,
+he would at length recover from a depression which, if it could bequeath
+a warning, might as well not be wholly divested of remorse. And he also
+knew that few become either great authors or great men (and he fancied
+Ernest was born to be one or the other) without the fierce emotions and
+passionate struggles, through which the Wilhelm Meister of real life
+must work out his apprenticeship, and attain the Master Rank. But at
+last he had serious misgivings about the health of his ward. A constant
+and spectral gloom seemed bearing the young man to the grave. It was
+in vain that Cleveland, who secretly desired him to thirst for a public
+career, endeavoured to arouse his ambition--the boy’s spirit seemed
+quite broken--and the visit of a political character, the mention of a
+political work, drove him at once into his solitary chamber. At length
+his mental disease took a new turn. He became, of a sudden, most
+morbidly and fanatically--I was about to say religious: but that is
+not the word; let me call it pseudo-religious. His strong sense and
+cultivated taste did not allow him to delight in the raving tracts of
+illiterate fanatics--and yet out of the benign and simple elements of
+the Scripture he conjured up for himself a fanaticism quite as gloomy
+and intense. He lost sight of God the Father, and night and day dreamed
+only of God the Avenger. His vivid imagination was perverted to raise
+out of its own abyss phantoms of colossal terror. He shuddered aghast
+at his own creations, and earth and heaven alike seemed black with
+the everlasting wrath. These symptoms completely baffled and perplexed
+Cleveland. He knew not what remedy to administer--and to his unspeakable
+grief and surprise he found that Ernest, in the true spirit of his
+strange bigotry, began to regard Cleveland--the amiable, the benevolent
+Cleveland--as one no less out of the pale of grace than himself. His
+elegant pursuits, his cheerful studies, were considered by the young but
+stern enthusiast as the miserable recreations of Mammon and the world.
+There seemed every probability that Ernest Maltravers would die in a
+madhouse or, at best, succeed to the delusions without the cheerful
+intervals of Cowper.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+ “Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit,
+  Restless--unfixed in principles and place.”--DRYDEN.
+
+ “Whoever acquires a very great number of ideas interesting to
+  the society in which he lives, will be regarded in that society
+  as a man of abilities.”--HELVETIUS.
+
+IT was just when Ernest Maltravers was so bad that he could not be worse
+that a young man visited Temple Grove. The name of this young man was
+Lumley Ferrers, his age was about twenty-six, his fortune about eight
+hundred a year--he followed no profession. Lumley Ferrers had not what
+is usually called genius; that is, he had no enthusiasm; and if the word
+talent be properly interpreted as meaning the talent of doing something
+better than others, Ferrers had not much to boast of on that score. He
+had no talent for writing, nor for music, nor painting, nor the ordinary
+round of accomplishments; neither at present had he displayed much of
+the hard and useful talent for action and business. But Ferrers had what
+is often better than either genius or talent; he had a powerful and most
+acute mind.
+
+He had, moreover, great animation of manner, high physical spirits,
+a witty, odd, racy vein of conversation, determined assurance, and
+profound confidence in his own resources. He was fond of schemes,
+stratagems, and plots--they amused and excited him--his power of
+sarcasm, and of argument, too, was great, and he usually obtained an
+astonishing influence over those with whom he was brought in contact.
+His high spirits and a most happy frankness of bearing carried off and
+disguised his leading vices of character, which were callousness to
+whatever was affectionate and insensibility to whatever was moral.
+Though less learned than Maltravers, he was on the whole a very
+instructed man. He mastered the surfaces of many sciences, became
+satisfied of their general principles, and threw the study aside never
+to be forgotten (for his memory was like a vice), but never to be
+prosecuted any further. To this he added a general acquaintance with
+whatever is most generally acknowledged as standard in ancient or modern
+literature. What is admired only by a few, Lumley never took the trouble
+to read. Living amongst trifles, he made them interesting and novel
+by his mode of viewing and treating them. And here indeed was _a_
+talent--it was the talent of social life--the talent of enjoyment to the
+utmost with the least degree of trouble to himself. Lumley Ferrers was
+thus exactly one of those men whom everybody calls exceedingly clever,
+and yet it would puzzle one to say in what he was so clever. It was,
+indeed, that nameless power which belongs to ability, and which makes
+one man superior, on the whole, to another, though in many details by
+no means remarkable. I think it is Goethe who says somewhere that, in
+reading the life of the greatest genius, we always find that he was
+acquainted with some men superior to himself, who yet never attained to
+general distinction. To the class of these mystical superior men Lumley
+Ferrers might have belonged; for though an ordinary journalist would
+have beaten him in the arts of composition, few men of genius, however
+eminent, could have felt themselves above Ferrers in the ready grasp and
+plastic vigour of natural intellect. It only remains to be said of this
+singular young man, whose character as yet was but half developed, that
+he had seen a great deal of the world, and could live at ease and in
+content with all tempers and ranks; fox-hunters or scholars, lawyers or
+poets, patricians or _parvenus_, it was all one to Lumley Ferrers.
+
+Ernest was, as usual, in his own room, when he heard, along the corridor
+without, all that indefinable bustling noise which announces an arrival.
+Next came a most ringing laugh, and then a sharp, clear, vigorous voice,
+that ran through his ears like a dagger. Ernest was immediately aroused
+to all the majesty of indignant sullenness. He walked out on the terrace
+of the portico, to avoid the repetition of the disturbance: and once
+more settled back into his broken and hypochondriacal reveries. Pacing
+to and fro that part of the peristyle which occupied the more retired
+wing of the house, with his arms folded, his eyes downcast, his brows
+knit, and all the angel darkened on that countenance which formerly
+looked as if, like truth, it could shame the devil and defy the world,
+Ernest followed the evil thought that mastered him, through the Valley
+of the Shadow. Suddenly he was aware of something--some obstacle which
+he had not previously encountered. He started, and saw before him
+a young man, of plain dress, gentlemanlike appearance, and striking
+countenance.
+
+“Mr. Maltravers, I think,” said the stranger, and Ernest recognised the
+voice that had so disturbed him: “this is lucky; we can now introduce
+ourselves, for I find Cleveland means us to be intimate. Mr. Lumley
+Ferrers, Mr. Ernest Maltravers. There now, I am the elder, so I first
+offer my hand, and grin properly. People always grin when they make a
+new acquaintance! Well, that’s settled. Which way are you walking?”
+
+Maltravers could, when he chose it, be as stately as if he had never
+been out of England. He now drew himself up in displeased astonishment;
+extricated his hand from the gripe of Ferrers, and saying, very coldly,
+“Excuse me, sir, I am busy,” stalked back to his chamber. He threw
+himself into his chair, and was presently forgetful of his late
+annoyance, when, to his inexpressible amazement and wrath, he heard
+again the sharp, clear voice close at his elbow.
+
+Ferrers had followed him through the French casement into the room.
+“You are busy, you say, my dear fellow. I want to write some letters:
+we sha’n’t interrupt each other--don’t disturb yourself:” and Ferrers
+seated himself at the writing-table, dipped a pen into the ink, arranged
+blotting-book and paper before him in due order, and was soon employed
+in covering page after page with the most rapid and hieroglyphical
+scrawl that ever engrossed a mistress or perplexed a dun.
+
+“The presuming puppy!” growled Maltravers, half audibly, but effectually
+roused from himself; and examining with some curiosity so cool an
+intruder, he was forced to own that the countenance of Ferrers was not
+that of a puppy.
+
+A forehead compact and solid as a block of granite, overhung small,
+bright, intelligent eyes of a light hazel; the features were handsome,
+yet rather too sharp and fox-like; the complexion, though not highly
+coloured, was of that hardy, healthy hue which generally betokens a
+robust constitution, and high animal spirits; the jaw was massive, and,
+to a physiognomist, betokened firmness and strength of character; but
+the lips, full and large, were those of a sensualist, and their restless
+play, an habitual half smile, spoke of gaiety and humour, though when in
+repose there was in them something furtive and sinister.
+
+Maltravers looked at him in grave silence; but when Ferrers, concluding
+his fourth letter before another man would have got through his
+first page, threw down the pen, and looked full at Maltravers, with a
+good-humoured but penetrating stare, there was something so whimsical in
+the intruder’s expression of face, and indeed in the whole scene, that
+Maltravers bit his lip to restrain a smile, the first he had known for
+weeks.
+
+“I see you read, Maltravers,” said Ferrers, carelessly turning over the
+volumes on the table. “All very right: we should begin life with books;
+they multiply the sources of employment; so does capital;--but capital
+is of no use, unless we live on the interest,--books are waste paper,
+unless we spend in action the wisdom we get from thought. Action,
+Maltravers, action; that is the life for us. At our age we have passion,
+fancy, sentiment; we can’t read them away, or scribble them away;--we
+must live upon them generously, but economically.”
+
+Maltravers was struck; the intruder was not the empty bore he had
+chosen to fancy him. He roused himself languidly to reply. “Life, _Mr._
+Ferrers--”
+
+“Stop, _mon cher_, stop; don’t call me Mister; we are to be friends; I
+hate delaying that which _must be_, even by a superfluous dissyllable;
+you are Maltravers, I am Ferrers. But you were going to talk about life.
+Suppose we _live_ a little while, instead of talking about it? It wants
+an hour to dinner; let us stroll into the grounds; I want to get an
+appetite;--besides, I like nature when there are no Swiss mountains to
+climb before one can arrive at a prospect. _Allons_!”
+
+“Excuse--” again began Maltravers, half interested, half annoyed.
+
+“I’ll be shot if I do. Come.”
+
+Ferrers gave Maltravers his hat, wound his arm into that of his new
+acquaintance, and they were on the broad terrace by the lake before
+Ernest was aware of it.
+
+How animated, how eccentric, how easy was Ferrers’ talk (for talk it
+was, rather than conversation, since he had the ball to himself); books,
+and men, and things; he tossed them about and played with them like
+shuttlecocks; and then his egotistical narrative of half a hundred
+adventures, in which he had been the hero, told so, that you laughed at
+him and laughed with him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+ “Now the bright morning star, day’s harbinger,
+  Comes dancing from the east.”--MILTON.
+
+HITHERTO Ernest had never met with any mind that had exercised a strong
+influence over his own. At home, at school, at Gottingen, everywhere,
+he had been the brilliant and wayward leader of others, persuading or
+commanding wiser and older heads than his own: even Cleveland always
+yielded to him, though not aware of it. In fact, it seldom happens that
+we are very strongly influenced by those much older than ourselves. It
+is the senior, of from two to ten years, that most seduces and enthrals
+us. He has the same pursuits--views, objects, pleasures, but more art
+and experience in them all. He goes with us in the path we are ordained
+to tread, but from which the elder generation desires to warn us off.
+There is very little influence where there is not great sympathy. It
+was now an epoch in the intellectual life of Maltravers. He met for the
+first time with a mind that controlled his own. Perhaps the physical
+state of his nerves made him less able to cope with the half-bullying,
+but thoroughly good-humoured imperiousness of Ferrers. Every day this
+stranger became more and more potential with Maltravers. Ferrers,
+who was an utter egotist, never asked his new friend to give him his
+confidence; he never cared three straws about other people’s secrets,
+unless useful to some purpose of his own. But he talked with so much
+zest about himself--about women and pleasure, and the gay, stirring life
+of cities--that the young spirit of Maltravers was roused from its dark
+lethargy without an effort of its own. The gloomy phantoms vanished
+gradually--his sense broke from its cloud--he felt once more that God
+had given the sun to light the day, and even in the midst of darkness
+had called up the host of stars.
+
+Perhaps no other person could have succeeded so speedily in curing
+Maltravers of his diseased enthusiasm: a crude or sarcastic unbeliever
+he would not have listened to; a moderate and enlightened divine he
+would have disregarded, as a worldly and cunning adjuster of laws
+celestial with customs earthly. But Lumley Ferrers, who, when he argued,
+never admitted a sentiment or a simile in reply, who wielded his plain
+iron logic like a hammer, which, though its metal seemed dull, kindled
+the ethereal spark with every stroke--Lumley Ferrers was just the man to
+resist the imagination, and convince the reason, of Maltravers; and the
+moment the matter came to argument, the cure was soon completed: for,
+however we may darken and puzzle ourselves with fancies and visions,
+and the ingenuities of fanatical mysticism, no man can mathematically or
+syllogistically contend that the world which a God made, and a Saviour
+visited, was designed to be damned.
+
+And Ernest Maltravers one night softly stole to his room and opened the
+New Testament, and read its heavenly moralities with purged eyes; and
+when he had done, he fell upon his knees, and prayed the Almighty
+to pardon the ungrateful heart that, worse than the Atheist’s, had
+confessed His existence, but denied His goodness. His sleep was sweet
+and his dreams were cheerful. Did he rise to find that the penitence
+which had shaken his reason would henceforth suffice to save his life
+from all error? Alas! remorse overstrained has too often reactions as
+dangerous; and homely Luther says well, that “the mind, like the drunken
+peasant on horseback, when propped on the one side, nods and falls on
+the other.”--All that can be said is, that there are certain crises in
+life which leave us long weaker; from which the system recovers with
+frequent revulsion and weary relapse,--but from which, looking back,
+after years have passed on, we date the foundation of strength or the
+cure of disease. It is not to mean souls that creation is darkened by a
+fear of the anger of Heaven.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+ “There are times when we are diverted out of errors, but could
+  not be preached out of them.--There are practitioners who can cure
+  us of one disorder, though, in ordinary cases, they be but poor
+  physicians--nay, dangerous quacks.”--STEPHEN MONTAGUE.
+
+LUMLEY FERRERS had one rule in life; and it was this: to make all things
+and all persons subservient to himself. And Ferrers now intended to go
+abroad for some years. He wanted a companion, for he disliked solitude:
+besides, a companion shared the expenses; and a man of eight hundred a
+year, who desires all the luxuries of life, does not despise a partner
+in the taxes to be paid for them. Ferrers, at this period, rather liked
+Ernest than not: it was convenient to choose friends from those richer
+than himself, and he resolved, when he first came to Temple Grove, that
+Ernest should be his travelling companion. This resolution formed, it
+was very easy to execute it.
+
+Maltravers was now warmly attached to his new friend, and eager for
+change. Cleveland was sorry to part with him; but he dreaded a relapse,
+if the young man were again left upon his hands. Accordingly, the
+guardian’s consent was obtained; a travelling carriage was bought, and
+fitted up with every imaginable imperial and _malle_. A Swiss (half
+valet and half courier) was engaged, one thousand a year was allowed
+to Maltravers;--and one soft and lovely morning, towards the close of
+October, Ferrers and Maltravers found themselves midway on the road to
+Dover.
+
+“How glad I am to get out of England,” said Ferrers: “it is a famous
+country for the rich; but here, eight hundred a year, without a
+profession, save that of pleasure, goes upon pepper and salt; it is a
+luxurious competence abroad.”
+
+“I think I have heard Cleveland say that you will be rich some day or
+other.”
+
+“O yes: I have what are called expectations! You must know that I have
+a kind of settlement on two stools, the Well-born and the Wealthy;
+but between two stools--you recollect the proverb! The present Lord
+Saxingham, once plain Frank Lascelles, and my father, Mr. Ferrers, were
+first cousins. Two or three relations good-naturedly died, and Frank
+Lascelles became an earl; the lands did not go with the coronet; he was
+poor, and married an heiress. The lady died; her estate was settled
+on her only child, the handsomest little girl you ever saw. Pretty
+Florence, I often wish I could look up to you! Her fortune will be
+nearly all at her own disposal, too, when she comes of age; now she is
+in the nursery, ‘eating bread and honey.’ My father, less lucky and less
+wise than his cousin, thought fit to marry a Miss Templeton--a nobody.
+The Saxingham branch of the family politely dropped the acquaintance.
+Now, my mother had a brother, a clever, plodding fellow, in what is
+called ‘business:’ he became richer and richer: but my father and mother
+died, and were never the better for it. And I came of age, and
+_worth_ (I like that expression) not a farthing more or less than this
+often-quoted eight hundred pounds a year. My rich uncle is married, but
+has no children. I am, therefore, heir-presumptive,--but he is a saint,
+and close, though ostentatious. The quarrel between Uncle Templeton
+and the Saxinghams still continues. Templeton is angry if I see the
+Saxinghams and the Saxinghams--my Lord, at least--is by no means so sure
+that I shall be Templeton’s heir as not to feel a doubt lest I should
+some day or other sponge upon his lordship for a place. Lord Saxingham
+is in the administration, you know. Somehow or other I have an equivocal
+amphibious kind of place in London society, which I don’t like; on one
+side I am a patrician connection, whom the _parvenu_ branches always
+incline lovingly to--and on the other side I am a half-dependent cadet,
+whom the noble relations look civilly shy at. Some day, when I grow
+tired of travel and idleness, I shall come back and wrestle with these
+little difficulties, conciliate my methodistical uncle, and grapple with
+my noble cousin. But now I am fit for something better than getting on
+in the world. Dry chips, not green wood, are the things for making a
+blaze! How slow this fellow drives! Hollo, you sir! get on! mind, twelve
+miles to the hour! You shall have sixpence a mile. Give me your purse,
+Maltravers; I may as well be cashier, being the elder and the wiser man;
+we can settle accounts at the end of the journey. By Jove, what a pretty
+girl!”
+
+
+
+
+BOOK II.
+
+ “He, of wide-blooming youth’s fair flower possest,
+  Owns the vain thoughts--the heart that cannot rest!”
+    SIMONIDES, _in Tit. Hum_.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+ “Il y eut certainement quelque chose de singulier dans mes
+  sentimens pour cette charmante femme.” *--ROUSSEAU.
+
+* There certainly was something singular in my sentiments for this
+charming woman.
+
+IT was a brilliant ball at the Palazzo of the Austrian embassy at
+Naples: and a crowd of those loungers, whether young or old, who
+attach themselves to the reigning beauty, was gathered round Madame de
+Ventadour. Generally speaking, there is more caprice than taste in
+the election of a beauty to the Italian throne. Nothing disappoints a
+stranger more than to see for the first time the woman to whom the
+world has given the golden apple. Yet he usually falls at last into the
+popular idolatry, and passes with inconceivable rapidity from indignant
+scepticism into superstitious veneration. In fact, a thousand things
+beside mere symmetry of feature go to make up the Cytherea of the
+hour.--tact in society--the charm of manner--nameless and piquant
+brilliancy. Where the world find the Graces they proclaim the Venus.
+Few persons attain pre-eminent celebrity for anything, without some
+adventitious and extraneous circumstances which have nothing to do
+with the thing celebrated. Some qualities or some circumstances throw a
+mysterious or personal charm about them. “Is Mr. So-and-So really such
+a genius?” “Is Mrs. Such-a-One really such a beauty?” you ask
+incredulously. “Oh, yes,” is the answer. “Do you know all about him or
+her? Such a thing is said, or such a thing has happened.” The idol is
+interesting in itself, and therefore its leading and popular attribute
+is worshipped.
+
+Now Madame de Ventadour was at this time the beauty of Naples: and
+though fifty women in the room were handsomer, no one would have dared
+to say so. Even the women confessed her pre-eminence--for she was
+the most perfect dresser that even France could exhibit. And to no
+pretensions do ladies ever concede with so little demur, as those which
+depend upon that feminine art which all study, and in which few excel.
+Women never allow beauty in a face that has an odd-looking bonnet
+above it, nor will they readily allow any one to be ugly whose caps are
+unexceptionable. Madame de Ventadour had also the magic that results
+from intuitive high breeding, polished by habit to the utmost. She
+looked and moved the _grande dame_, as if Nature had been employed by
+Rank to make her so. She was descended from one of the most illustrious
+houses of France; had married at sixteen a man of equal birth, but old,
+dull, and pompous--a caricature rather than a portrait of that great
+French _noblesse_, now almost if not wholly extinct. But her virtue was
+without a blemish--some said from pride, some said from coldness. Her
+wit was keen and court-like--lively, yet subdued; for her French
+high breeding was very different from the lethargic and taciturn
+imperturbability of the English. All silent people can seem
+conventionally elegant. A groom married a rich lady; he dreaded the
+ridicule of the guests whom his new rank assembled at his table--an
+Oxford clergyman gave him this piece of advice, “Wear a black coat and
+hold your tongue!” The groom took the hint, and is always considered
+one of the most gentlemanlike fellows in the county. Conversation is the
+touchstone of the true delicacy and subtle grace which make the ideal
+of the moral mannerism of a court. And there sat Madame de Ventadour,
+a little apart from the dancers, with the silent English dandy Lord
+Taunton, exquisitely dressed and superbly tall, bolt upright behind
+her chair; and the sentimental German Baron von Schomberg, covered with
+orders, whiskered and wigged to the last hair of perfection, sighing at
+her left hand; and the French minister, shrewd, bland, and eloquent, in
+the chair at her right; and round on all sides pressed, and bowed, and
+complimented, a crowd of diplomatic secretaries and Italian princes,
+whose bank is at the gaming-table, whose estates are in their galleries,
+and who sell a picture, as English gentlemen cut down a wood, whenever
+the cards grow gloomy. The charming De Ventadour! she had attraction for
+them all! smiles for the silent, badinage for the gay, politics for the
+Frenchman, poetry for the German, the eloquence of loveliness for all!
+She was looking her best--the slightest possible tinge of rouge gave
+a glow to her transparent complexion, and lighted up those large dark
+sparkling eyes (with a latent softness beneath the sparkle) seldom seen
+but in the French--and widely distinct from the unintellectual languish
+of the Spaniard, or the full and majestic fierceness of the Italian
+gaze. Her dress of black velvet, and graceful hat with its princely
+plume, contrasted the alabaster whiteness of her arms and neck. And what
+with the eyes, the skin, the rich colouring of the complexion, the
+rosy lips and the small ivory teeth, no one would have had the cold
+hypercriticism to observe that the chin was too pointed, the mouth too
+wide, and the nose, so beautiful in the front face, was far from perfect
+in the profile.
+
+“Pray was Madame in the Strada Nuova to-day?” asked the German, with as
+much sweetness in his voice as if he had been vowing eternal love.
+
+“What else have we to do with our mornings, we women?” replied Madame de
+Ventadour. “Our life is a lounge from the cradle to the grave; and
+our afternoons are but the type of our career. A promenade and
+a crowd,--_voila tout_! We never see the world except in an open
+carriage.”
+
+“It is the pleasantest way of seeing it,” said the Frenchman, drily.
+
+“I doubt it; the worst fatigue is that which comes without exercise.”
+
+“Will you do me the honour to waltz?” said the tall English lord, who
+had a vague idea that Madame de Ventadour meant she would rather dance
+than sit still. The Frenchman smiled.
+
+“Lord Taunton enforces your own philosophy,” said the minister.
+
+Lord Taunton smiled because every one else smiled; and, besides, he had
+beautiful teeth: but he looked anxious for an answer.
+
+“Not to-night,--I seldom dance. Who is that very pretty woman? What
+lovely complexions the English have! And who,” continued Madame de
+Ventadour, without waiting for an answer to the first question, “who is
+that gentleman,--the young one I mean,--leaning against the door?”
+
+“What, with the dark moustache?” said Lord Taunton. “He is a cousin of
+mine.”
+
+“Oh, no; not Colonel Bellfield; I know him--how amusing he is!--no; the
+gentleman I mean wears no moustache.”
+
+“Oh, the tall Englishman with the bright eyes and high forehead,” said
+the French minister. “He is just arrived--from the East, I believe.”
+
+“It is a striking countenance,” said Madame de Ventadour; “there is
+something chivalrous in the turn of the head. Without doubt, Lord
+Taunton, he is ‘_noble_’?”
+
+“He is what you call ‘_noble_,’” replied Lord Taunton--“that is, what we
+call a ‘gentleman;’ his name is Maltravers. He lately came of age; and
+has, I believe, rather a good property.”
+
+“Monsieur Maltravers; only Monsieur?” repeated Madame de Ventadour.
+
+“Why,” said the French minister, “you understand that the English
+_gentilhomme_ does not require a De or a title to distinguish him from
+the _roturier_.”
+
+“I know that; but he has an air above a simple _gentilhomme_. There
+is something _great_ in his look; but it is not, I must own, the
+conventional greatness of rank: perhaps he would have looked the same
+had he been born a peasant.”
+
+“You don’t think him handsome?” said Lord Taunton, almost angrily (for
+he was one of the Beauty-men, and Beauty-men are sometimes jealous).
+
+“Handsome! I did not say that,” replied Madame de Ventadour, smiling;
+“it is rather a fine head than a handsome face. Is he clever, I
+wonder?--but all you English, milord, are well educated.”
+
+“Yes, profound--profound: we are profound, not superficial,” replied
+Lord Taunton, drawing down his wrist-bands.
+
+“Will Madame de Ventadour allow me to present to her one of my
+countrymen?” said the English minister approaching--“Mr. Maltravers.”
+
+Madame de Ventadour half smiled and half blushed, as she looked up, and
+saw bent admiringly upon her the proud and earnest countenance she had
+remarked.
+
+The introduction made--a few monosyllables exchanged. The French
+diplomatist rose and walked away with the English one. Maltravers
+succeeded to the vacant chair.
+
+“Have you been long abroad?” asked Madame de Ventadour.
+
+“Only four years; yet long enough to ask whether I should not be most
+abroad in England.”
+
+“You have been in the East--I envy you. And Greece, and Egypt,--all the
+associations! You have travelled back into the Past; you have escaped,
+as Madame D’Epinay wished, out of civilisation and into romance.”
+
+“Yet Madame D’Epinay passed her own life in making pretty romances out
+of a very agreeable civilisation,” said Maltravers, smiling.
+
+“You know her Memoirs, then,” said Madame de Ventadour, slightly
+colouring. “In the current of a more exciting literature few have had
+time for the second-rate writings of a past century.”
+
+“Are not those second-rate performances often the most charming,” said
+Maltravers, “when the mediocrity of the intellect seems almost as if it
+were the effect of a touching, though too feeble, delicacy of sentiment?
+Madame D’Epinay’s Memoirs are of this character. She was not a virtuous
+woman--but she felt virtue and loved it; she was not a woman of
+genius--but she was tremblingly alive to all the influences of genius.
+Some people seem born with the temperament and the tastes of genius
+without its creative power; they have its nervous system, but something
+is wanting in the intellectual. They feel acutely, yet express tamely.
+These persons always have in their character an unspeakable kind of
+pathos--a court civilisation produces many of them--and the French
+memoirs of the last century are particularly fraught with such examples.
+This is interesting--the struggle of sensitive minds against the
+lethargy of a society, dull, yet brilliant, that _glares_ them, as it
+were, to sleep. It comes home to us; for,” added Maltravers, with a
+slight change of voice, “how many of us fancy we see our own image in
+the mirror!”
+
+And where was the German baron?--flirting at the other end of the room.
+And the English lord?--dropping monosyllables to dandies by the doorway.
+And the minor satellites?--dancing, whispering, making love, or sipping
+lemonade. And Madame de Ventadour was alone with the young stranger in
+a crowd of eight hundred persons; and their lips spoke of sentiment, and
+their eyes involuntarily applied it!
+
+While they were thus conversing, Maltravers was suddenly startled by
+hearing close behind him, a sharp, significant voice, saying in French,
+“Hein, hein! I’ve my suspicions--I’ve my suspicions.”
+
+Madame de Ventadour looked round with a smile. “It is only my husband,”
+ said she, quietly; “let me introduce him to you.”
+
+Maltravers rose and bowed to a little thin man, most elaborately
+dressed, and with an immense pair of spectacles upon a long sharp nose.
+
+“Charmed to make your acquaintance, sir!” said Monsieur de Ventadour.
+“Have you been long in Naples?... Beautiful weather--won’t last
+long--hein, hein, I’ve my suspicions! No news as to your parliament--be
+dissolved soon! Bad opera in London this year!--hein, hein--I’ve my
+suspicions.”
+
+This rapid monologue was delivered with appropriate gesture. Each
+new sentence Mons. de Ventadour began with a sort of bow, and when
+it dropped in the almost invariable conclusion affirmative of his
+shrewdness and incredulity, he made a mystical sign with his forefinger
+by passing it upward in a parallel line with his nose, which at the
+same time performed its own part in the ceremony by three convulsive
+twitches, that seemed to shake the bridge to its base.
+
+Maltravers looked with mute surprise upon the connubial partner of the
+graceful creature by his side, and Mons. de Ventadour, who had said as
+much as he thought necessary, wound up his eloquence by expressing the
+rapture it would give him to see Mons. Maltravers at his hotel. Then,
+turning to his wife, he began assuring her of the lateness of the hour,
+and the expediency of departure. Maltravers glided away, and as he
+regained the door was seized by our old friend, Lumley Ferrers. “Come,
+my dear fellow,” said the latter; “I have been waiting for you this half
+hour. _Allons_. But, perhaps, as I am dying to go to bed, you have
+made up your mind to stay supper. Some people have no regard for other
+people’s feelings.”
+
+“No, Ferrers, I’m at your service;” and the young man descended the
+stairs and passed along the Chiaja towards their hotel. As they gained
+the broad and open space on which it stood, with the lovely sea before
+them, sleeping in the arms of the curving shore, Maltravers, who had
+hitherto listened in silence to the volubility of his companion, paused
+abruptly.
+
+“Look at that sea, Ferrers.... What a scene!--what delicious air! How
+soft this moonlight! Can you not fancy the old Greek adventurers,
+when they first colonised this divine Parthenope--the darling of the
+ocean--gazing along those waves, and pining no more for Greece?”
+
+“I cannot fancy anything of the sort,” said Ferrers.... “And, depend
+upon it, the said gentlemen, at this hour of the night, unless they were
+on some piratical excursion--for they were cursed ruffians, those old
+Greek colonists--were fast asleep in their beds.”
+
+“Did you ever write poetry, Ferrers?”
+
+“To be sure; all clever men have written poetry once in their
+lives--small-pox and poetry--they are our two juvenile diseases.”
+
+“And did you ever _feel_ poetry!”
+
+“Feel it!”
+
+“Yes, if you put the moon into your verses, did you first feel it
+shining into your heart?”
+
+“My dear Maltravers, if I put the moon into my verses, in all
+probability it was to rhyme to noon. ‘The night was at her noon’--is a
+capital ending for the first hexameter--and the moon is booked for the
+next stage. Come in.”
+
+“No, I shall stay out.”
+
+“Don’t be nonsensical.”
+
+“By moonlight there is no nonsense like common sense.”
+
+“What! we--who have climbed the Pyramids, and sailed up the Nile, and
+seen magic at Cairo, and been nearly murdered, bagged, and Bosphorized
+at Constantinople, is it for us, who have gone through so many
+adventures, looked on so many scenes, and crowded into four years events
+that would have satisfied the appetite of a cormorant in romance, if it
+had lived to the age of a phoenix;--is it for us to be doing the pretty
+and sighing to the moon, like a black-haired apprentice without a
+neckcloth on board of the Margate hoy? Nonsense, I say--we have lived
+too much not to have lived away our green sickness of sentiment.”
+
+“Perhaps you are right, Ferrers,” said Maltravers, smiling. “But I can
+still enjoy a beautiful night.”
+
+“Oh, if you like flies in your soup, as the man said to his guest, when
+he carefully replaced those entomological blackamoors in the tureen,
+after helping himself--if you like flies in your soup, well and
+good--_buona notte_.”
+
+Ferrers certainly was right in his theory, that when we have known real
+adventures we grow less morbidly sentimental. Life is a sleep in which
+we dream most at the commencement and the close--the middle part absorbs
+us too much for dreams. But still, as Maltravers said, we can enjoy a
+fine night, especially on the shores of Naples.
+
+Maltravers paced musingly to and fro for some time. His heart was
+softened--old rhymes rang in his ear--old memories passed through
+his brain. But the sweet dark eyes of Madame de Ventadour shone forth
+through every shadow of the past. Delicious intoxication--the draught of
+the rose-coloured phial--which is fancy, but seems love!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+ “Then ‘gan the Palmer thus--‘Most wretched man
+  That to affections dost the bridle lend:
+  In their beginnings they are weak and wan,
+  But soon, through suffrance, growe to fearfull end;
+  While they are weak, betimes with them contend.’”
+    SPENSER.
+
+MALTRAVERS went frequently to the house of Madame de Ventadour--it was
+open twice a week to the world, and thrice a week to friends. Maltravers
+was soon of the latter class. Madame de Ventadour had been in England
+in her childhood, for her parents had been _emigres_. She spoke English
+well and fluently, and this pleased Maltravers; for though the French
+language was sufficiently familiar to him, he was like most who are more
+vain of the mind than the person, and proudly averse to hazarding his
+best thoughts in the domino of a foreign language. We don’t care
+how faulty the accent, or how incorrect the idiom, in which we talk
+nothings; but if we utter any of the poetry within us, we shudder at the
+risk of the most trifling solecism.
+
+This was especially the case with Maltravers; for, besides being now
+somewhat ripened from his careless boyhood into a proud and fastidious
+man, he had a natural love for the Becoming. This love was unconsciously
+visible in trifles: it is the natural parent of Good Taste. And it was
+indeed an inborn good taste which redeemed Ernest’s natural carelessness
+in those personal matters in which young men usually take a pride. An
+habitual and soldier-like neatness, and a love of order and symmetry,
+stood with him in the stead of elaborate attention to equipage and
+dress.
+
+Maltravers had not thought twice in his life whether he was handsome or
+not; and, like most men who have a knowledge of the gentler sex, he knew
+that beauty had little to do with engaging the love of women. The air,
+the manner, the tone, the conversation, the something that interests,
+and the something to be proud of--these are the attributes of the man
+made to be loved. And the Beauty-man is, nine times out of ten, little
+more than the oracle of his aunts, and the “_Sich_ a love!” of the
+housemaids!
+
+To return from this digression, Maltravers was glad that he could talk
+in his own language to Madame de Ventadour; and the conversation between
+them generally began in French, and glided away into English. Madame
+de Ventadour was eloquent, and so was Maltravers; yet a more complete
+contrast in their mental views and conversational peculiarities can
+scarcely be conceived. Madame de Ventadour viewed everything as a woman
+of the world: she was brilliant, thoughtful, and not without delicacy
+and tenderness of sentiment; still all was cast in a worldly mould. She
+had been formed by the influences of society, and her mind betrayed its
+education. At once witty and melancholy (no uncommon union), she was a
+disciple of the sad but caustic philosophy produced by _satiety_. In the
+life she led, neither her heart nor her head was engaged; the faculties
+of both were irritated, not satisfied or employed. She felt somewhat too
+sensitively the hollowness of the great world, and had a low opinion
+of human nature. In fact, she was a woman of the French memoirs--one of
+those charming and _spirituelles_ Aspasias of the boudoir, who
+interest us by their subtlety, tact, and grace, their exquisite tone of
+refinement, and are redeemed from the superficial and frivolous, partly
+by a consummate knowledge of the social system in which they move, and
+partly by a half-concealed and touching discontent of the trifles on
+which their talents and affections are wasted. These are the women
+who, after a youth of false pleasure, often end by an old age of false
+devotion. They are a class peculiar to those ranks and countries in
+which shines and saddens that gay and unhappy thing--_a woman without a
+home_!
+
+Now this was a specimen of life--this Valerie de Ventadour--that
+Maltravers had never yet contemplated, and Maltravers was perhaps
+equally new to the Frenchwoman. They were delighted with each other’s
+society, although it so happened that they never agreed.
+
+Madame de Ventadour rode on horseback, and Maltravers was one of her
+usual companions. And oh, the beautiful landscapes through which their
+daily excursions lay!
+
+Maltravers was an admirable scholar. The stores of the immortal dead
+were as familiar to him as his own language. The poetry, the philosophy,
+the manner of thought and habits of life--of the graceful Greek and the
+luxurious Roman--were a part of knowledge that constituted a common and
+household portion of his own associations and peculiarities of thought.
+He had saturated his intellect with the Pactolus of old--and the
+grains of gold came down from the classic Tmolus with every tide. This
+knowledge of the dead, often so useless, has an inexpressible charm when
+it is applied to the places where the dead lived. We care nothing about
+the ancients on Highgate Hill--but at Baiae, Pompeii, by the Virgilian
+Hades, the ancients are society with which we thirst to be familiar.
+To the animated and curious Frenchwoman what a cicerone was Ernest
+Maltravers! How eagerly she listened to accounts of a life more elegant
+than that of Paris!--of a civilisation which the world never can know
+again! So much the better;--for it was rotten at the core, though most
+brilliant in the complexion. Those cold names and unsubstantial shadows
+which Madame de Ventadour had been accustomed to yawn over in skeleton
+histories, took from the eloquence of Maltravers the breath of
+life--they glowed and moved--they feasted and made love--were wise
+and foolish, merry and sad, like living things. On the other hand,
+Maltravers learned a thousand new secrets of the existing and actual
+world from the lips of the accomplished and observant Valerie. What a
+new step in the philosophy of life does a young man of genius make, when
+he first compares his theories and experience with the intellect of a
+clever woman of the world! Perhaps it does not elevate him, but how it
+enlightens and refines!--what numberless minute yet important mysteries
+in human character and practical wisdom does he drink unconsciously from
+the sparkling _persiflage_ of such a companion! Our education is hardly
+ever complete without it.
+
+“And so you think these stately Romans were not, after all, so
+dissimilar to ourselves?” said Valerie, one day, as they looked over the
+same earth and ocean along which had roved the eyes of the voluptuous
+but august Lucullus.
+
+“In the last days of their Republic, a _coup-d’oeil_ of their social
+date might convey to us a general notion of our own. Their system, like
+ours--a vast aristocracy heaved and agitated, but kept ambitious and
+intellectual, by the great democratic ocean which roared below and
+around it. An immense distinction between rich and poor--a nobility
+sumptuous, wealthy, cultivated, yet scarcely elegant or refined; a
+people with mighty aspirations for more perfect liberty, but always
+liable, in a crisis, to be influenced and subdued by a deep-rooted
+veneration for the very aristocracy against which they struggled;--a
+ready opening through all the walls of custom and privilege, for every
+description of talent and ambition; but so strong and universal a
+respect for wealth, that the finest spirit grew avaricious, griping, and
+corrupt, almost unconsciously; and the man who rose from the people did
+not scruple to enrich himself out of the abuses he affected to lament;
+and the man who would have died for his country could not help thrusting
+his hands into her pockets. Cassius, the stubborn and thoughtful
+patriot, with his heart of iron, had, you remember, an itching palm.
+Yet, what a blow to all the hopes and dreams of a world was the
+overthrow of the free party after the death of Caesar! What generations
+of freemen fell at Philippi! In England, perhaps, we may have ultimately
+the same struggle; in France, too (perhaps a larger stage, with far more
+inflammable actors), we already perceive the same war of elements which
+shook Rome to her centre, which finally replaced the generous Julius
+with the hypocritical Augustus, which destroyed the colossal patricians
+to make way for the glittering dwarfs of a court, and cheated the people
+out of the substance with the shadow of liberty. How it may end in
+the modern world, who shall say? But while a nation has already a fair
+degree of constitutional freedom, I believe no struggle so perilous and
+awful as that between the aristocratic and the democratic principle.
+A people against a despot--_that_ contest requires no prophet; but the
+change from an aristocratic to a democratic commonwealth is indeed the
+wide, unbounded prospect upon which rest shadows, clouds, and darkness.
+If it fail--for centuries is the dial-hand of Time put back; if it
+succeed--”
+
+Maltravers paused.
+
+“And if it succeed?” said Valerie.
+
+“Why, then, man will have colonised Utopia!” replied Maltravers.
+
+“But at least, in modern Europe,” he continued, “there will be fair room
+for the experiment. For we have not that curse of slavery which, more
+than all else, vitiated every system of the ancients, and kept the rich
+and the poor alternately at war; and we have a press, which is not only
+the safety-valve of the passions of every party, but the great note-book
+of the experiments of every hour--the homely, the invaluable ledger of
+losses and of gains. No; the people who keep that tablet well, never
+can be bankrupt. And the society of those old Romans; their daily
+passions--occupations--humours!--why, the satire of Horace is the glass
+of our own follies! We may fancy his easy pages written in the Chaussee
+d’Antin, or Mayfair; but there was one thing that will ever keep the
+ancient world dissimilar from the modern.”
+
+“And what is that?”
+
+“The ancients knew not that delicacy in the affections which
+characterises the descendants of the Goths,” said Maltravers, and his
+voice slightly trembled; “they gave up to the monopoly of the senses
+what ought to have had an equal share in the reason and the imagination.
+Their love was a beautiful and wanton butterfly; but not the butterfly
+which is the emblem of the soul.”
+
+Valerie sighed. She looked timidly into the face of the young
+philosopher, but his eyes were averted.
+
+“Perhaps,” she said, after a short pause, “we pass our lives more
+happily without love than with it. And in our modern social system” (she
+continued, thoughtfully, and with profound truth, though it is scarcely
+the conclusion to which a woman often arrives) “I think we have pampered
+Love to too great a preponderance over the other excitements of life.
+As children, we are taught to dream of it; in youth, our books, our
+conversation, our plays, are filled with it. We are trained to consider
+it the essential of life; and yet, the moment we come to actual
+experience, the moment we indulge this inculcated and stimulated
+craving, nine times out of ten we find ourselves wretched and undone.
+Ah, believe me, Mr. Maltravers, this is not a world in which we should
+preach up too far the philosophy of Love!”
+
+“And does Madame de Ventadour speak from experience?” asked Maltravers,
+gazing earnestly upon the changing countenance of his companion.
+
+“No; and I trust that I never may!” said Valerie, with great energy.
+
+Ernest’s lip curled slightly, for his pride was touched.
+
+“I could give up many dreams of the future,” said he, “to hear Madame de
+Ventadour revoke that sentiment.”
+
+“We have outridden our companions, Mr. Maltravers,” said Valerie,
+coldly, and she reined in her horse. “Ah, Mr. Ferrers,” she continued,
+as Lumley and the handsome German baron now joined her, “you are too
+gallant; I see you imply a delicate compliment to my horsemanship, when
+you wish me to believe you cannot keep up with me: Mr. Maltravers is not
+so polite.”
+
+“Nay,” returned Ferrers, who rarely threw away a compliment without a
+satisfactory return, “Nay, you and Maltravers appeared lost among the
+old Romans; and our friend the baron took that opportunity to tell me of
+all the ladies who adored him.”
+
+“Ah, Monsieur Ferrare, _que vous etes malin_!” said Schomberg, looking
+very much confused.
+
+“_Malin_! no; I spoke from no envy: _I_ never was adored, thank Heaven!
+What a bore it must be!”
+
+“I congratulate you on the sympathy between yourself and Ferrers,”
+ whispered Maltravers to Valerie.
+
+Valerie laughed; but during the rest of the excursion she remained
+thoughtful and absent, and for some days their rides were discontinued.
+Madame de Ventadour was not well.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+ “O Love, forsake me not;
+  Mine were a lone dark lot
+  Bereft of thee.”
+    HEMANS, _Genius singing to Love_.
+
+I FEAR that as yet Ernest Maltravers had gained little from Experience,
+except a few current coins of worldly wisdom (and not very valuable
+those!) while he has lost much of that nobler wealth with which youthful
+enthusiasm sets out on the journey of life. Experience is an open giver,
+but a stealthy thief. There is, however, this to be said in her favour,
+that we retain her gifts; and if ever we demand restitution in earnest,
+‘tis ten to one but what we recover her thefts. Maltravers had lived in
+lands where public opinion is neither strong in its influence, nor rigid
+in its canons; and that does not make a man better. Moreover, thrown
+headlong amidst the temptations that make the first ordeal of youth,
+with ardent passions and intellectual superiority, he had been led by
+the one into many errors, from the consequences of which the other
+had delivered him; the necessity of roughing it through the world--of
+resisting fraud to-day, and violence to-morrow,--had hardened over the
+surface of his heart, though at bottom the springs were still fresh and
+living. He had lost much of his chivalrous veneration for women, for he
+had seen them less often deceived than deceiving. Again, too, the
+last few years had been spent without any high aims or fixed pursuits.
+Maltravers had been living on the capital of his faculties and
+affections in a wasteful, speculating spirit. It is a bad thing for a
+clever and ardent man not to have from the onset some paramount object
+of life.
+
+All this considered, we can scarcely wonder that Maltravers should have
+fallen into an involuntary system of pursuing his own amusements and
+pursuits, without much forethought of the harm or the good they were to
+do to others or himself. The moment we lose forethought, we lose sight
+of duty; and though it seems like a paradox, we can seldom be careless
+without being selfish.
+
+In seeking the society of Madame de Ventadour, Maltravers obeyed but the
+mechanical impulse that leads the idler towards the companionship which
+most pleases his leisure. He was interested and excited; and Valerie’s
+manners, which to-day flattered, and to-morrow piqued him, enlisted
+his vanity and pride on the side of his fancy. But although Monsieur
+de Ventadour, a frivolous and profligate Frenchman, seemed utterly
+indifferent as to what his wife chose to do--and in the society in which
+Valerie lived, almost every lady had her cavalier,--yet Maltravers would
+have started with incredulity or dismay had any one accused him of a
+systematic design on her affections. But he was living with the world,
+and the world affected him as it almost always does every one else.
+Still he had, at times, in his heart, the feeling that he was not
+fulfilling his proper destiny and duties; and when he stole from the
+brilliant resorts of an unworthy and heartless pleasure, he was ever
+and anon haunted by his old familiar aspirations for the Beautiful, the
+Virtuous, and the Great. However, hell is paved with good intentions;
+and so, in the meanwhile, Ernest Maltravers surrendered himself to the
+delicious presence of Valerie de Ventadour.
+
+One evening, Maltravers, Ferrers, the French minister, a pretty Italian,
+and the Princess di ------, made the whole party collected at Madame
+de Ventadour’s. The conversation fell upon one of the tales of scandal
+relative to English persons, so common on the Continent.
+
+“Is it true, Monsieur,” said the French minister, gravely, to Lumley,
+“that your countrymen are much more immoral than other people? It is
+very strange, but in every town I enter, there is always some story
+in which _les Anglais_ are the heroes. I hear nothing of French
+scandal--nothing of Italian--_toujours les Anglais_.”
+
+“Because we are shocked at these things, and make a noise about them,
+while you take them quietly. Vice is our episode--your epic.”
+
+“I suppose it is so,” said the Frenchman, with affected seriousness. “If
+we cheat at play, or flirt with a fair lady, we do it with decorum,
+and our neighbours think it no business of theirs. But you treat every
+frailty you find in your countrymen as a public concern, to be discussed
+and talked over, and exclaimed against, and told to all the world.”
+
+“I like the system of scandal,” said Madame de Ventadour, abruptly; “say
+what you will, the policy of fear keeps many of us virtuous. Sin
+might not be odious, if we did not tremble at the consequence even of
+appearances.”
+
+“Hein, hein,” grunted Monsieur de Ventadour, shuffling into the room.
+“How are you?--how are you? Charmed to see you. Dull night--I suspect
+we shall have rain. Hein, hein. Aha, Monsieur Ferrers, _comment ca
+va-t-il_? Will you give me my revenge at _ecarte_? I have my suspicions
+that I am in luck to-night. Hein, hein.”
+
+“_Ecarte_!--well, with pleasure,” said Ferrers.
+
+Ferrers played well.
+
+The conversation ended in a moment. The little party gathered round the
+table--all, except Valerie and Maltravers. The chairs that were vacated
+left a kind of breach between them; but still they were next to each
+other, and they felt embarrassed, for they felt alone.
+
+“Do you never play?” asked Madame de Ventadour, after a pause.
+
+“I _have_ played,” said Maltravers, “and I know the temptation. I dare
+not play now. I love the excitement, but I have been humbled at the
+debasement: it is a moral drunkenness that is worse than the physical.”
+
+“You speak warmly.”
+
+“Because I feel keenly. I once won of a man I respected, who was poor.
+His agony was a dreadful lesson to me. I went home, and was terrified to
+think I had felt so much pleasure in the pain of another. I have never
+played since that night.”
+
+“So young and so resolute!” said Valerie, with admiration in her voice
+and eyes; “you are a strange person. Others would have been cured by
+losing, you were cured by winning. It is a fine thing to have principle
+at your age, Mr. Maltravers.”
+
+“I fear it was rather pride than principle,” said Maltravers. “Error is
+sometimes sweet; but there is no anguish like an error of which we feel
+ashamed. I cannot submit to blush for myself.”
+
+“Ah!” muttered Valerie; “this is the echo of my own heart!” She rose
+and went to the window. Maltravers paused a moment, and followed her.
+Perhaps he half thought there was an invitation in the movement.
+
+There lay before them the still street, with its feeble and unfrequent
+lights; beyond, a few stars, struggling through an atmosphere unusually
+clouded, brought the murmuring ocean partially into sight. Valerie
+leaned against the wall, and the draperies of the window veiled her from
+all the guests, save Maltravers; and between her and himself was a large
+marble vase filled with flowers; and by that uncertain light Valerie’s
+brilliant cheek looked pale, and soft, and thoughtful. Maltravers never
+before felt so much in love with the beautiful Frenchwoman.
+
+“Ah, madam!” said he, softly; “there is one error, if it be so, that
+never can cost me shame.”
+
+“Indeed!” said Valerie with an unaffected start, for she was not aware
+he was so near her. As she spoke she began plucking (it is a common
+woman’s trick) the flowers from the vase between her and Ernest. That
+small, delicate, almost transparent hand!--Maltravers gazed upon the
+hand, then on the countenance, then on the hand again. The scene swam
+before him, and, involuntarily and as by an irresistible impulse, the
+next moment that hand was in his own.
+
+“Pardon me--pardon me,” said he, falteringly; “but that error is in the
+feelings that I know for you.”
+
+Valerie lifted on him her large and radiant eyes, and made no answer.
+
+Maltravers went on. “Chide me, scorn me, hate me if you will. Valerie, I
+love you.”
+
+Valerie drew away her hand, and still remained silent.
+
+“Speak to me,” said Ernest, leaning forward; “one word, I implore
+you--speak to me!”
+
+He paused,--still no reply; he listened breathlessly--he heard her
+sob. Yes; that proud, that wise, that lofty woman of the world, in that
+moment, was as weak as the simplest girl that ever listened to a lover.
+But how different the feelings that made her weak!--what soft and what
+stern emotions were blent together!
+
+“Mr. Maltravers,” she said, recovering her voice, though it sounded
+hollow, yet almost unnaturally firm and clear”--the die is cast, and I
+have lost for ever the friend for whose happiness I cannot live, but for
+whose welfare I would have died; I should have foreseen this, but I was
+blind. No more--no more; see me to-morrow, and leave me now!”
+
+“But, Valerie--”
+
+“Ernest Maltravers,” said she, laying her hand lightly on his own;
+“_there is no anguish, like an error of which we feel ashamed_!”
+
+Before he could reply to this citation from his own aphorism, Valerie
+had glided away; and was already seated at the card-table, by the side
+of the Italian princess.
+
+Maltravers also joined the group. He fixed his eyes on Madame
+de Ventadour, but her face was calm--not a trace of emotion was
+discernible. Her voice, her smile, her charming and courtly manner, all
+were as when he first beheld her.
+
+“These women--what hypocrites they are!” muttered Maltravers to himself;
+and his lip writhed into a sneer, which had of late often forced away
+the serene and gracious expression of his earlier years, ere he knew
+what it was to despise. But Maltravers mistook the woman he dared to
+scorn.
+
+He soon withdrew from the palazzo, and sought his hotel. There, while
+yet musing in his dressing-room, he was joined by Ferrers. The time had
+passed when Ferrers had exercised an influence over Maltravers; the
+boy had grown up to be the equal of the man, in the exercise of that
+two-edged sword--the reason. And Maltravers now felt, unalloyed, the
+calm consciousness of his superior genius. He could not confide to
+Ferrers what had passed between him and Valerie. Lumley was too _hard_
+for a confidant in matters where the heart was at all concerned. In
+fact, in high spirits, and in the midst of frivolous adventures, Ferrers
+was charming. But in sadness, or in the moments of deep feeling, Ferrers
+was one whom you would wish out of the way.
+
+“You are sullen to-eight, _mon cher_,” said Lumley, yawning; “I suppose
+you want to go to bed--some persons are so ill-bred, so selfish, they
+never think of their friends. Nobody asks me what I won at _ecarte_.
+Don’t be late to-morrow--I hate breakfasting alone, and I am never later
+than a quarter before nine--I hate egotistical, ill-mannered people.
+Good night.”
+
+With this, Ferrers sought his own room; there, as he slowly undressed,
+he thus soliloquised: “I think I have put this man to all the use I can
+make of him. We don’t pull well together any longer; perhaps I myself
+am a little tired of this sort of life. That is not right. I shall grow
+ambitious by and by; but I think it a bad calculation not to make the
+most of youth. At four or five-and-thirty it will be time enough to
+consider what one ought to be at fifty.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+     “Most dangerous
+  Is that temptation that does goad us on
+  To sin in loving virtue.”--_Measure for Measure_.
+
+“SEE her to-morrow!--that morrow is come!” thought Maltravers, as he
+rose the next day from a sleepless couch. Ere yet he had obeyed the
+impatient summons of Ferrers, who had thrice sent to say that “_he_
+never kept people waiting,” his servant entered with a packet from
+England, that had just arrived by one of those rare couriers who
+sometimes honour that Naples, which _might_ be so lucrative a mart
+to English commerce, if Neapolitan kings cared for trade, or English
+senators for “foreign politics.” Letters from stewards and bankers were
+soon got through; and Maltravers reserved for the last an epistle from
+Cleveland. There was much in it that touched him home. After some dry
+details about the property to which Maltravers had now succeeded, and
+some trifling comments upon trifling remarks in Ernest’s former letters,
+Cleveland went on thus:
+
+“I confess, my dear Ernest, that I long to welcome you back to England.
+You have been abroad long enough to see other countries; do not stay
+long enough to prefer them to your own. You are at Naples, too--I
+tremble for you. I know well that delicious, dreaming, holiday-life of
+Italy, so sweet to men of learning and imagination--so sweet, too, to
+youth--so sweet to pleasure! But, Ernest, do you not feel already how it
+enervates?--how the luxurious _far niente_ unfits us for grave exertion?
+Men may become too refined and too fastidious for useful purposes; and
+nowhere can they become so more rapidly than in Italy. My dear Ernest,
+I know you well; you are not made to sink down into a virtuoso, with a
+cabinet full of cameos and a head full of pictures; still less are you
+made to be an indolent _cicisbeo_ to some fair Italian, with one passion
+and two ideas: and yet I have known men as clever as you, whom that
+bewitching Italy has sunk into one or other of these insignificant
+beings. Don’t run away with the notion that you have plenty of time
+before you. You have no such thing. At your age, and with your fortune
+(I wish you were not so rich), the holiday of one year becomes the
+custom of the next. In England, to be a useful or a distinguished man,
+you must labour. Now, labour itself is sweet, if we take to it early.
+We are a hard race, but we are a manly one; and our stage is the most
+exciting in Europe for an able and an honest ambition. Perhaps you will
+tell me you are not ambitious now; very possibly--but ambitious you
+will be; and, believe me, there is no unhappier wretch than a man who is
+ambitious but disappointed,--who has the desire for fame, but has lost
+the power to achieve it--who longs for the goal, but will not, and
+cannot, put away his slippers to walk to it. What I most fear for you is
+one of these two evils--an early marriage or a fatal _liaison_ with some
+married woman. The first evil is certainly the least, but for you it
+would still be a great one. With your sensitive romance, with your
+morbid cravings for the ideal, domestic happiness would soon grow trite
+and dull. You would demand new excitement, and become a restless and
+disgusted man. It is necessary for you to get rid of all the false fever
+of life, before you settle down to everlasting ties. You do not yet
+know your own mind; you would choose your partner from some visionary
+caprice, or momentary impulse, and not from the deep and accurate
+knowledge of those qualities which would most harmonize with your own
+character. People, to live happily with each other, must _fit in_, as it
+were--the proud be mated with the meek, the irritable with the gentle,
+and so forth. No, my dear Maltravers, do not think of marriage yet a
+while; and if there is any danger of it, come over to me immediately.
+But if I warn you against a lawful tie, how much more against an illicit
+one? You are precisely at the age, and of the disposition, which render
+the temptation so strong and so deadly. With you it might not be the
+sin of an hour, but the bondage of a life. I know your chivalric
+honour--your tender heart; I know how faithful you would be to one who
+had sacrificed for you. But that fidelity, Maltravers, to what a life
+of wasted talent and energies would it not compel you! Putting aside
+for the moment (for that needs no comment) the question of the grand
+immorality--what so fatal to a bold and proud temper, as to be at war
+with society at the first entrance into life? What so withering to manly
+aims and purposes, as the giving into the keeping of a woman, who has
+interest in your love, and interest against your career which might part
+you at once from her side--the control of your future destinies? I
+could say more, but I trust what I have said is superfluous; if so, pray
+assure me of it. Depend upon this, Ernest Maltravers, that if you do
+not fulfil what nature intended for your fate, you will be a morbid
+misanthrope, or an indolent voluptuary--wrenched and listless in
+manhood, repining and joyless in old age. But if you do fulfil your
+fate, you must enter soon into your apprenticeship. Let me see you
+labour and aspire--no matter what in--what to. Work, work--that is all I
+ask of you!
+
+“I wish you would see your old country-house; it has a venerable and
+picturesque look, and during your minority they have let the ivy cover
+three sides of it. Montaigne might have lived there.
+
+   “Adieu, dearest Ernest,
+     “Your anxious and affectionate guardian,
+        “FREDERICK CLEVELAND.
+
+“P. S.--I am writing a book--it shall last me ten years--it occupies me,
+but does not fatigue. Write a book yourself.”
+
+ * * * * *
+
+Maltravers had just finished this letter when Ferrers entered
+impatiently. “Will you ride out?” said he. “I have sent the breakfast
+away; I saw that breakfast was a vain hope to-day--indeed, my appetite
+is gone.”
+
+“Pshaw!” said Maltravers.
+
+“Pshaw! Humph! for my part I like well-bred people.”
+
+“I have had a letter from Cleveland.”
+
+“And what the deuce has that got to do with the chocolate?”
+
+“Oh, Lumley, you are insufferable; you think of nothing but yourself,
+and self with you means nothing that is not animal.”
+
+“Why, yes; I believe I have some sense,” replied Ferrers, complacently.
+“I know the philosophy of life. All unfledged bipeds are animals, I
+suppose. If Providence had made me graminivorous, I should have eaten
+grass; if ruminating, I should have chewed the cud; but as it has made
+me a carnivorous, culinary, and cachinnatory animal, I eat a cutlet,
+scold about the sauce, and laugh at you; and this is what you call being
+selfish!”
+
+It was late at noon when Maltravers found himself at the palazzo of
+Madame de Ventadour. He was surprised, but agreeably so, that he was
+admitted, for the first time, into that private sanctum which bears
+the hackneyed title of boudoir. But there was little enough of the fine
+lady’s boudoir in the simple morning-room of Madame de Ventadour. It was
+a lofty apartment, stored with books, and furnished, not without claim
+to grace, but with very small attention to luxury.
+
+Valerie was not there, and Maltravers, left alone, after a hasty glance
+around the chamber, leaned abstractedly against the wall, and forgot,
+alas! all the admonitions of Cleveland. In a few moments the door
+opened, and Valerie entered. She was unusually pale, and Maltravers
+thought her eyelids betrayed the traces of tears. He was touched, and
+his heart smote him.
+
+“I have kept you waiting, I fear,” said Valerie, motioning him to a seat
+at a little distance from that on which she placed herself; “but you
+will forgive me,” she added, with a slight smile. Then, observing he was
+about to speak, she went on rapidly; “Hear me, Mr. Maltravers--before
+you speak, hear me! You uttered words last night that ought never to
+have been addressed to me. You professed to--love me.”
+
+“Professed!”
+
+“Answer me,” said Valerie, with abrupt energy, “not as man to woman, but
+as one human creature to another. From the bottom of your heart, from
+the core of your conscience, I call on you to speak the honest and the
+simple truth. Do you love me as your heart, your genius, must be capable
+of loving?”
+
+“I love you truly--passionately!” said Maltravers, surprised and
+confused, but still with enthusiasm in his musical voice and earnest
+eyes. Valerie gazed upon him as if she sought to penetrate into his
+soul. Maltravers went on. “Yes, Valerie, when we first met, you aroused
+a long dormant and delicious sentiment. But, since then, what deep
+emotions has that sentiment called forth? Your graceful intellect--your
+lovely thoughts, wise yet womanly--have completed the conquest your face
+and voice began. Valerie, I love you. And you--you, Valerie--ah! I do
+not deceive myself--you also--”
+
+“Love!” interrupted Valerie, deeply blushing, but in a calm voice.
+“Ernest Maltravers, I do not deny it; honestly and frankly I confess the
+fault. I have examined my heart during the whole of the last sleepless
+night, and I confess that I love you. Now, then, understand me--we meet
+no more.”
+
+“What!” said Maltravers, falling involuntarily at her feet, and seeking
+to detain her hand, which he seized. “What! now, when you have given
+life a new charm, will you as suddenly blast it? No, Valerie; no, I will
+not listen to you.”
+
+Madame de Ventadour rose and said, with a cold dignity: “Hear me calmly,
+or I quit the room; and all I would now say rests for ever unspoken.”
+
+Maltravers rose also, folded his arms haughtily, bit his lips, and stood
+erect, and confronting Valerie rather in the attitude of an accuser than
+a suppliant.
+
+“Madame,” said he, gravely, “I will offend no more; I will trust to your
+manner, since I may not believe your words.”
+
+“You are cruel,” said Valerie, smiling mournfully; “but so are all
+men. Now let me make myself understood. I was betrothed to Monsieur
+de Ventadour in my childhood. I did not see him till a month before we
+married. I had no choice. French girls have none. We were wed. I had
+formed no other attachment. I was proud and vain: wealth, ambition, and
+social rank for a time satisfied my faculties and my heart. At length
+I grew restless and unhappy. I felt that something of life was wanting.
+Monsieur de Ventadour’s sister was the first to recommend me to the
+common resource of our sex--at least, in France--a lover. I was shocked
+and startled, for I belong to a family in which women are chaste and men
+brave. I began, however, to look around me, and examine the truth of the
+philosophy of vice. I found that no woman, who loved honestly and deeply
+an illicit lover was happy. I found, too, the hideous profundity of
+Rochefoucauld’s maxim that a woman--I speak of French women--may live
+without a lover; but, a lover once admitted, she never goes through
+life with only one. She is deserted; she cannot bear the anguish and the
+solitude; she fills up the void with a second idol. For her there is no
+longer a fall from virtue: it is a gliding and involuntary descent
+from sin to sin, till old age comes on and leaves her without love and
+without respect. I reasoned calmly, for my passions did not blind my
+reason. I could not love the egotists around me. I resolved upon my
+career; and now, in temptation, I will adhere to it. Virtue is my lover,
+my pride, my comfort, my life of life. Do you love me, and will you rob
+me of this treasure? I saw you, and for the first time I felt a vague
+and intoxicating interest in another; but I did not dream of danger. As
+our acquaintance advanced I formed to myself a romantic and delightful
+vision. I would be your firmest, your truest friend; your confidant,
+your adviser--perhaps, in some epochs of life, your inspiration and your
+guide. I repeat that I foresaw no danger in your society. I felt myself
+a nobler and a better being. I felt more benevolent, more tolerant, more
+exalted. I saw life through the medium of purifying admiration for a
+gifted nature, and a profound and generous soul. I fancied we might be
+ever thus--each to each;--one strengthened, assured, supported by the
+other. Nay, I even contemplated with pleasure the prospect of your
+future marriage with another--of loving your wife--of contributing with
+her to your happiness--my imagination made me forget that we are made
+of clay. Suddenly all these visions were dispelled--the fairy palace was
+overthrown, and I found myself awake, and on the brink of the abyss--you
+loved me, and in the moment of that fatal confession, the mask dropped
+from my soul, and I felt that you had become too dear to me. Be
+silent still, I implore you. I do not tell you of the emotions, of the
+struggles, through which I have passed the last few hours--the crisis of
+a life. I tell you only of the resolution I formed. I thought it due
+to you, nor unworthy to myself, to speak the truth. Perhaps it might be
+more womanly to conceal it; but my heart has something masculine in
+its nature. I have a great faith in your nobleness. I believe you can
+sympathise with whatever is best in human weakness. I tell you that I
+love you--I throw myself upon your generosity. I beseech you to assist
+my own sense of right--to think well of me, to honour me--and to leave
+me!”
+
+During the last part of this strange and frank avowal, Valerie’s voice
+had grown inexpressibly touching: her tenderness forced itself into her
+manner; and when she ceased, her lip quivered; her tears, repressed by
+a violent effort, trembled in her eyes--her hands were clasped--her
+attitude was that of humility, not pride.
+
+Maltravers stood perfectly spell-bound. At length he advanced; dropped
+on one knee, kissed her hand with an aspect and air of reverential
+homage, and turned to quit the room in silence; for he would not dare to
+trust himself to speak.
+
+Valerie gazed at him in anxious alarm. “O no, no!” she exclaimed, “do
+not leave me yet; this is our last meeting our last. Tell me, at least,
+that you understand me; that you see, if I am no weak fool, I am also
+no heartless coquette; tell me that you see I am not as hard as I have
+seemed; that I have not knowingly trifled with your happiness; that
+even now I am not selfish. Your love,--I ask it no more! But your
+esteem--your good opinion. Oh, speak--speak, I implore you!”
+
+“Valerie,” said Maltravers, “if I was silent, it was because my heart
+was too full for words. You have raised all womanhood in my eyes. I did
+love you--I now venerate and adore. Your noble frankness, so unlike the
+irresolute frailty, the miserable wiles of your sex, has touched a chord
+in my heart that has been mute for years. I leave you to think better
+of human nature. Oh!” he continued, “hasten to forget all of me that can
+cost you a pang. Let me still, in absence and in sadness, think that I
+retain in your friendship--let it be friendship only--the inspiration,
+the guide of which you spoke; and if, hereafter, men shall name me with
+praise and honour, feel, Valerie, feel that I have comforted myself
+for the loss of your love by becoming worthy of your confidence--your
+esteem. Oh, that we had met earlier, when no barrier was between us!”
+
+“Go, go, _now_,” faltered Valerie, almost choked with her emotions; “may
+Heaven bless you! Go!”
+
+Maltravers muttered a few inaudible and incoherent words, and quitted
+the apartment.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+ “The men of sense, those idols of the shallow, are very inferior
+  to the men of Passions. It is the strong passions which, rescuing
+  us from sloth, can alone impart to us that continuous and earnest
+  attention necessary to great intellectual efforts.”--HELVETIUS.
+
+WHEN Ferrers returned that day from his customary ride, he was surprised
+to see the lobbies and hall of the apartment which he occupied in common
+with Maltravers, littered with bags and _malles_, boxes and books,
+and Ernest’s Swiss valet directing porters and waiters in a mosaic of
+French, English, and Italian.
+
+“Well!” said Lumley, “and what is all this?”
+
+“Il signore va partir, sare, ah! mon Dieu!--_tout_ of a sudden.”
+
+“O-h! and where is he now!”
+
+“In his room, sare.”
+
+Over the chaos strode Ferrers, and opening the door of his friend’s
+dressing-room without ceremony, he saw Maltravers buried in a fauteuil,
+with his hands drooping on his knees, his head bent over his breast, and
+his whole attitude expressive of dejection and exhaustion.
+
+“What is the matter, my dear Ernest? You have not killed a man in a
+duel?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“What then? Why are you going away, and whither?”
+
+“No matter; leave me in peace.”
+
+“Friendly!” said Ferrers; “very friendly! And what is to become of
+me--what companion am I to have in this cursed resort of antiquarians
+and lazzaroni? You have no feeling, Mr. Maltravers!”
+
+“Will you come with me, then?” said Maltravers, in vain endeavouring to
+rouse himself.
+
+“But where are you going?”
+
+“Anywhere; to Paris--to London.”
+
+“No; I have arranged my plans for the summer. I am not so rich as some
+people. I hate change: it is so expensive.”
+
+“But, my dear fellow--”
+
+“Is this fair dealing with me?” continued Lumley, who, for once in his
+life, was really angry. “If I were an old coat you had worn for five
+years you could not throw me off with more nonchalance.”
+
+“Ferrers, forgive me. My honour is concerned. I must leave this place. I
+trust you will remain my guest here, though in the absence of your host.
+You know that I have engaged the apartment for the next three months.”
+
+“Humph!” said Ferrers, “as that is the case I may as well stay here.
+But why so secret? Have you seduced Madame de Ventadour, or has her wise
+husband his suspicions? Hein, hein!”
+
+Maltravers smothered his disgust at this coarseness; and, perhaps, there
+is no greater trial of temper than in a friend’s gross remarks upon the
+connection of the heart.
+
+“Ferrers,” said he, “if you care for me, breathe not a word
+disrespectful to Madame de Ventadour: she is an angel!”
+
+“But why leave Naples?”
+
+“Trouble me no more.”
+
+“Good day, sir,” said Ferrers, highly offended, and he stalked out of
+the chamber; nor did Ernest see him again before his departure.
+
+It was late that evening when Maltravers found himself alone in his
+carriage, pursuing by starlight the ancient and melancholy road to Mola
+di Gaeta.
+
+His solitude was a luxury to Maltravers; he felt an inexpressible sense
+of relief to be freed from Ferrers. The hard sense, the unpliant, though
+humorous imperiousness, the animal sensuality of his companion would
+have been torture to him in his present state of mind.
+
+The next morning, when he rose, the orange blossoms of Mola di Gaeta
+were sweet beneath the window of the inn where he rested. It was now the
+early spring, and the freshness of the odour, the breathing health of
+earth and air, it is impossible to describe. Italy itself boasts few
+spots more lovely than that same Mola di Gaeta--nor does that halcyon
+sea wear, even at Naples or Sorrento, a more bland and enchanting smile.
+
+So, after a hasty and scarcely-tasted breakfast, Maltravers strolled
+through the orange groves, and gained the beach; and there, stretched at
+idle length by the murmuring waves, he resigned himself to thought,
+and endeavoured, for the first time since his parting with Valerie, to
+collect and examine the state of his mind and feelings. Maltravers, to
+his own surprise, did not find himself so unhappy as he had expected. On
+the contrary, a soft and almost delicious sentiment, which he could not
+well define, floated over all his memories of the beautiful Frenchwoman.
+Perhaps the secret was, that while his pride was not mortified, his
+conscience was not galled--perhaps, also, he had not loved Valerie so
+deeply as he had imagined. The confession and the separation had happily
+come before her presence had grown--_the want of a life_. As it was,
+he felt as if, by some holy and mystic sacrifice, he had been made
+reconciled to himself and mankind. He woke to a juster and higher
+appreciation of human nature, and of woman’s nature in especial. He
+had found honesty and truth where he might least have expected it--in
+a woman of a court--in a woman surrounded by vicious and frivolous
+circles--in a woman who had nothing in the opinion of her friends, her
+country, her own husband, the social system in which she moved, to keep
+her from the concessions of frailty--in a woman of the world--a woman of
+Paris!--yes, it was his very disappointment that drove away the fogs and
+vapours that, arising from the marshes of the great world, had gradually
+settled round his soul. Valerie de Ventadour had taught him not to
+despise her sex, not to judge by appearances, not to sicken of a low and
+a hypocritical world. He looked in his heart for the love of Valerie,
+and he found there the love of virtue. Thus, as he turned his eyes
+inward, did he gradually awaken to a sense of the true impressions
+engraved there. And he felt the bitterest drop of the fountains was not
+sorrow for himself, but for her. What pangs must that high spirit have
+endured ere it could have submitted to the avowal it had made! Yet, even
+in this affliction he found at last a solace. A mind so strong could
+support and heal the weakness of the heart. He felt that Valerie de
+Ventadour was not a woman to pine away in the unresisted indulgence of
+morbid and unholy emotions. He could not flatter himself that she would
+not seek to eradicate a love she repented; and he sighed with a natural
+selfishness, when he owned also that sooner or later she would succeed.
+“But be it so,” said he, half aloud--“I will prepare my heart to rejoice
+when I learn that she remembers me only as a friend. Next to the bliss
+of her love is the pride of her esteem.”
+
+Such was the sentiment with which his reveries closed--and with
+every league that bore him further from the south, the sentiment grew
+strengthened and confirmed.
+
+Ernest Maltravers felt there is in the affections themselves so much
+to purify and exalt, that even an erring love, conceived without a cold
+design, and (when its nature is fairly understood) wrestled against with
+a noble spirit, leaves the heart more tolerant and tender, and the mind
+more settled and enlarged. The philosophy limited to the reason puts
+into motion the automata of the closet--but to those who have the world
+for a stage, and who find their hearts are the great actors, experience
+and wisdom must be wrought from the Philosophy of the Passions.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK III.
+
+ “Not to all men Apollo shows himself--
+  Who sees him--_he_ is great!”
+    CALLIM. _Ex Hymno in Apollinon_.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+ “Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music
+  Creep in our ears--soft stillness and the night
+  Become the touches of sweet harmony.”
+    SHAKESPEARE.
+
+
+BOAT SONG ON THE LAKE OF COMO.
+
+     I.
+
+     The Beautiful Clime!--the Clime of Love!
+      Thou beautiful Italy!
+     Like a mother’s eyes, the earnest skies
+      Ever have smiles for thee!
+     Not a flower that blows, not a beam that glows,
+      But what is in love with thee!
+
+     II.
+
+     The beautiful lake, the Larian lake!*
+      Soft lake like a silver sea,
+     The Huntress Queen, with her nymphs of sheen,
+      Never had bath like thee.
+     See, the Lady of night and her maids of light,
+      Even now are mid-deep in thee!
+
+     * The ancient name of Como.
+
+     III.
+
+     Beautiful child of the lonely hills,
+      Ever blest may thy slumbers be!
+     No mourner should tread by thy dreamy bed,
+      No life bring a care to thee--
+     Nay, soft to thy bed, let the mourner tread--
+      And life be a dream like thee!
+
+
+Such, though uttered in the soft Italian tongue, and now imperfectly
+translated--such were the notes that floated one lovely evening in
+summer along the lake of Como. The boat, from which came the song,
+drifted gently down the sparkling waters, towards the mossy banks of a
+lawn, whence on a little eminence gleamed the white walls of a villa,
+backed by vineyards. On that lawn stood a young and handsome woman,
+leaning on the arm of her husband, and listening to the song. But her
+delight was soon deepened into one of more personal interest, as the
+boatmen, nearing the banks, changed their measure, and she felt that the
+minstrelsy was in honour of herself.
+
+
+SERENADE TO THE SONGSTRESS.
+
+    I.
+
+    CHORUS.
+
+    Softly--oh, soft! let us rest on the oar,
+    And vex not a billow that sighs to the shore:--
+    For sacred the spot where the starry waves meet
+    With the beach, where the breath of the citron is sweet.
+    There’s a spell on the waves that now waft us along
+    To the last of our Muses, the Spirit of Song.
+
+    RECITATIVE.
+
+      The Eagle of old renown,
+      And the Lombard’s iron crown
+    And Milan’s mighty name are ours no more;
+      But by this glassy water,
+      Harmonia’s youngest daughter,
+    Still from the lightning saves one laurel to our shore.
+
+    II.
+
+    CHORUS.
+
+    They heard thee, Teresa, the Teuton, the Gaul,
+    Who have raised the rude thrones of the North on our fall;
+    They heard thee, and bow’d to the might of thy song;
+    Like love went thy steps o’er the hearts of the strong;
+    As the moon to the air, as the soul to the clay,
+    To the void of this earth was the breath of thy lay.
+
+    RECITATIVE.
+
+      Honour for aye to her
+      The bright interpreter
+    Of Art’s great mysteries to the enchanted throng;
+      While tyrants heard thy strains,
+      Sad Rome forgot her chains;
+    The world the sword had lost was conquer’d back by song!
+
+
+“Thou repentest, my Teresa, that thou hast renounced thy dazzling career
+for a dull home, and a husband old enough to be thy father,” said the
+husband to the wife, with a smile that spoke confidence in the answer.
+
+“Ah, no! even this homage would have no music to me if thou didst not
+hear it.”
+
+She was a celebrated personage in Italy--the Signora Cesarini, now
+Madame de Montaigne. Her earlier youth had been spent upon the stage,
+and her promise of vocal excellence had been most brilliant. But after
+a brief though splendid career, she married a French gentleman of
+good birth and fortune, retired from the stage, and spent her life
+alternately in the gay saloons of Paris and upon the banks of the dreamy
+Como, on which her husband had purchased a small but beautiful villa.
+She still, however, exercised in private her fascinating art; to
+which--for she was a woman of singular accomplishment and talent--she
+added the gift of the improvvisatrice. She had just returned for the
+summer to this lovely retreat, and a party of enthusiastic youths
+from Milan had sought the lake of Como to welcome her arrival with the
+suitable homage of song and music. It is a charming relic, that custom
+of the brighter days of Italy; and I myself have listened, on the still
+waters of the same lake, to a similar greeting to a greater genius--the
+queenlike and unrivalled Pasta--the Semiramis of Song! And while my boat
+paused, and I caught something of the enthusiasm of the serenaders, the
+boatman touched me, and, pointing to a part of the lake on which the
+setting sun shed its rosiest smile, he said, “There, Signor, was drowned
+one of your countrymen ‘bellissimo uomo! che fu bello!’”--yes, there,
+in the pride of his promising youth, of his noble and almost godlike
+beauty, before the very windows--the very eyes--of his bride--the waves
+without a frown had swept over the idol of many hearts--the graceful and
+gallant Locke.* And above his grave was the voluptuous sky, and over
+it floated the triumphant music. It was as the moral of the Roman
+poets--calling the living to a holiday over the oblivion of the dead.
+
+* Captain William Locke of the Life Guards (the only son of the
+accomplished Mr. Locke of Norbury Park), distinguished by a character
+the most amiable, and by a personal beauty that certainly equalled,
+perhaps surpassed, the highest masterpiece of Grecian sculpture. He was
+returning in a boat from the town of Como to his villa on the banks
+of the lake, when the boat was upset by one of the mysterious
+under-currents to which the lake is dangerously subjected; and he was
+drowned in sight of his bride, who was watching his return from the
+terrace or balcony of their home.
+
+As the boat now touched the bank, Madame de Montaigne accosted the
+musicians, thanked them with a sweet and unaffected earnestness for the
+compliment so delicately offered, and invited them ashore. The Milanese,
+who were six in number, accepted the invitation, and moored their boat
+to the jutting shore. It was then that Monsieur de Montaigne pointed out
+to the notice of his wife a boat, that had lingered under the shadow
+of a bank, tenanted by a young man, who had seemed to listen with rapt
+attention to the music, and who had once joined in the chorus (as it was
+twice repeated), with a voice so exquisitely attuned, and so rich in its
+deep power, that it had awakened the admiration even of the serenaders
+themselves.
+
+“Does not that gentleman belong to your party?” De Montaigne asked of
+the Milanese.
+
+“No, Signor, we know him not,” was the answer; “his boat came unawares
+upon us as we were singing.”
+
+While this question and answer were going on, the young man had quitted
+his station, and his oars cut the glassy surface of the lake, just
+before the place where De Montaigne stood. With the courtesy of his
+country, the Frenchman lifted his hat; and, by his gesture, arrested the
+eye and oar of the solitary rower. “Will you honour us,” he said, “by
+joining our little party?”
+
+“It is a pleasure I covet too much to refuse,” replied the boatman, with
+a slight foreign accent, and in another moment he was on shore. He was
+one of remarkable appearance. His long hair floated with a careless
+grace over a brow more calm and thoughtful than became his years; his
+manner was unusually quiet and self-collected, and not without a certain
+stateliness, rendered more striking by the height of his stature,
+a lordly contour of feature, and a serene but settled expression of
+melancholy in his eyes and smile. “You will easily believe,” said he,
+“that, cold as my countrymen are esteemed (for you must have discovered
+already that I am an Englishman), I could not but share in the
+enthusiasm of those about me, when loitering near the very ground sacred
+to the inspiration. For the rest, I am residing for the present in
+yonder villa, opposite to your own; my name is Maltravers, and I am
+enchanted to think that I am no longer a personal stranger to one whose
+fame has already reached me.” Madame de Montaigne was flattered by
+something in the manner and tone of the Englishman, which said a great
+deal more than his words; and in a few minutes, beneath the influence of
+the happy continental ease, the whole party seemed as if they had
+known each other for years. Wines, and fruits, and other simple and
+unpretending refreshments, were brought out and ranged on a rude table
+upon the grass, round which the guests seated themselves with their
+host and hostess, and the clear moon shone over them, and the lake slept
+below in silver. It was a scene for a Boccaccio or a Claude.
+
+The conversation naturally fell upon music; it is almost the only thing
+which Italians in general can be said to know--and even that knowledge
+comes to them, like Dogberry’s reading and writing, by nature--for of
+music, as an _art_, the unprofessional amateurs know but little. As vain
+and arrogant of the last wreck of their national genius as the Romans
+of old were of the empire of all arts and arms, they look upon the
+harmonies of other lands as barbarous; nor can they appreciate or
+understand appreciation of the mighty German music, which is the proper
+minstrelsy of a nation of men--a music of philosophy, of heroism, of the
+intellect and the imagination; beside which, the strains of modern Italy
+are indeed effeminate, fantastic, and artificially feeble. Rossini is
+the Canova of music, with much of the pretty, with nothing of the grand!
+
+The little party talked, however, of music, with an animation and gusto
+that charmed the melancholy Maltravers, who for weeks had known no
+companion save his own thoughts, and with whom, at all times, enthusiasm
+for any art found a ready sympathy. He listened attentively, but said
+little; and from time to time, whenever the conversation flagged,
+amused himself by examining his companions. The six Milanese had nothing
+remarkable in their countenances or in their talk; they possessed the
+characteristic energy and volubility of their countrymen, with something
+of the masculine dignity which distinguishes the Lombard from the
+Southern, and a little of the French polish, which the inhabitants of
+Milan seldom fail to contract. Their rank was evidently that of the
+middle class; for Milan has a middle class, and one which promises great
+results hereafter. But they were noways distinguished from a thousand
+other Milanese whom Maltravers had met with in the walks and cafes of
+their noble city. The host was somewhat more interesting. He was a
+tall, handsome man, of about eight-and-forty, with a high forehead, and
+features strongly impressed with the sober character of thought. He had
+but little of the French vivacity in his manner; and without looking at
+his countenance, you would still have felt insensibly that he was the
+eldest of the party. His wife was at least twenty years younger than
+himself, mirthful and playful as a child, but with a certain feminine
+and fascinating softness in her unrestrained gestures and sparkling
+gaiety, which seemed to subdue her natural joyousness into the form and
+method of conventional elegance. Dark hair carelessly arranged, an open
+forehead, large black laughing eyes, a small straight nose, a complexion
+just relieved from the olive by an evanescent, yet perpetually recurring
+blush; a round dimpled cheek, an exquisitely-shaped mouth with small
+pearly teeth, and a light and delicate figure a little below the
+ordinary standard, completed the picture of Madame de Montaigne.
+
+“Well,” said Signor Tirabaloschi, the most loquacious and sentimental of
+the guests, filling his glass, “these are hours to think of for the rest
+of life. But we cannot hope the Signora will long remember what we never
+can forget. Paris, says the French proverb, _est le paradis des femmes_:
+and in Paradise, I take it for granted, we recollect very little of what
+happened on earth.”
+
+“Oh,” said Madame de Montaigne, with a pretty musical laugh, “in Paris
+it is the rage to despise the frivolous life of cities, and to affect
+_des sentimens romanesques_. This is precisely the scene which our fine
+ladies and fine writers would die to talk of and to describe. Is it not
+so, _mon ami_?” and she turned affectionately to De Montaigne.
+
+“True,” replied he; “but you are not worthy of such a scene--you laugh
+at sentiment and romance.”
+
+“Only at French sentiment and the romance of the Chaussee d’Antin. You
+English,” she continued, shaking her head at Maltravers, “have spoiled
+and corrupted us; we are not content to imitate you, we must excel you;
+we out-horror horror, and rush from the extravagant into the frantic!”
+
+“The ferment of the new school is, perhaps, better than the stagnation
+of the old,” said Maltravers. “Yet even you,” addressing himself to
+the Italians, “who first in Petrarch, in Tasso, and in Ariosto, set to
+Europe the example of the Sentimental and the Romantic; who built among
+the very ruins of the classic school, amidst its Corinthian columns and
+sweeping arches, the spires and battlements of the Gothic--even you are
+deserting your old models and guiding literature into newer and wilder
+paths. ‘Tis the way of the world--eternal progress is eternal change.”
+
+“Very possibly,” said Signor Tirabaloschi, who understood nothing of
+what was said. “Nay, it is extremely profound; on reflection, it is
+beautiful--superb! you English are so--so--in short, it is admirable.
+Ugo Foscolo is a great genius--so is Monti; and as for Rossini,--you
+know his last opera--_cosa stupenda_!”
+
+Madame de Montaigne glanced at Maltravers, clapped her little hands, and
+laughed outright. Maltravers caught the contagion, and laughed also.
+But he hastened to repair the pedantic error he had committed of talking
+over the heads of the company. He took up the guitar, which, among their
+musical instruments, the serenaders had brought, and after touching its
+chords for a few moments, said: “After all, Madame, in your society,
+and with this moonlit lake before us, we feel as if music were our best
+medium of conversation. Let us prevail upon these gentlemen to delight
+us once more.”
+
+“You forestall what I was going to ask,” said the ex-singer; and
+Maltravers offered the guitar to Tirabaloschi, who was in fact dying to
+exhibit his powers again. He took the instrument with a slight grimace
+of modesty, and then saying to Madame de Montaigne, “There is a song
+composed by a young friend of mine, which is much admired by the ladies;
+though to me it seems a little too sentimental,” sang the following
+stanzas (as good singers are wont to do) with as much feeling as if he
+could understand them!
+
+
+NIGHT AND LOVE.
+
+When stars are in the quiet skies,  Then most I pine for thee;
+Bend on me, then, thy tender eyes!  As stars look on the sea!
+
+For thoughts, like waves that glide by night,  Are stillest where they shine;
+Mine earthly love lies hushed in light  Beneath the heaven of thine.
+
+There is an hour when angels keep  Familiar watch on men;
+When coarser souls are wrapt in sleep,--  Sweet spirit, meet me then.
+
+There is an hour when holy dreams  Through slumber fairest glide;
+And in that mystic hour it seems  Thou shouldst be by my side.
+
+     The thoughts of thee too sacred are
+       For daylight’s common beam;--
+     I can but know thee as my star,
+       My angel, and my dream!
+
+
+And now, the example set, and the praises of the fair hostess exciting
+general emulation, the guitar circled from hand to hand, and each of the
+Italians performed his part; you might have fancied yourself at one
+of the old Greek feasts, with the lyre and the myrtle-branch going the
+round.
+
+But both the Italians and the Englishman felt the entertainment would be
+incomplete without hearing the celebrated vocalist and improvvisatrice
+who presided over the little banquet; and Madame de Montaigne, with a
+woman’s tact, divined the general wish, and anticipated the request
+that was sure to be made. She took the guitar from the last singer, and
+turning to Maltravers, said, “You have heard, of course, some of our
+more eminent improvvisatori, and therefore if I ask you for a subject it
+will only be to prove to you that the talent is not general amongst the
+Italians.”
+
+“Ah,” said Maltravers, “I have heard, indeed, some ugly old gentlemen
+with immense whiskers, and gestures of the most alarming ferocity, pour
+out their vehement impromptus; but I have never yet listened to a young
+and a handsome lady. I shall only believe the inspiration when I hear it
+direct from the Muse.”
+
+“Well, I will do my best to deserve your compliments--you must give me
+the theme.”
+
+Maltravers paused a moment, and suggested the Influence of Praise on
+Genius.
+
+The improvvisatrice nodded assent, and after a short prelude broke forth
+into a wild and varied strain of verse, in a voice so exquisitely sweet,
+with a taste so accurate, and a feeling so deep that the poetry sounded
+to the enchanted listeners like the language that Armida might have
+uttered. Yet the verses themselves, like all extemporaneous effusions,
+were of a nature both to pass from the memory and to defy transcription.
+
+When Madame de Montaigne’s song ceased, no rapturous plaudits
+followed--the Italians were too affected by the science, Maltravers by
+the feeling, for the coarseness of ready praise;--and ere that delighted
+silence which made the first impulse was broken, a new comer, descending
+from the groves that clothed the ascent behind the house, was in the
+midst of the party.
+
+“Ah, my dear brother,” cried Madame Montaigne, starting up, and banging
+fondly on the arm of the stranger, “why have you lingered so long in the
+wood? You, so delicate! And how are you? How pale you seem!”
+
+“It is but the reflection of the moonlight, Teresa,” said the intruder;
+“I feel well.” So saying, he scowled on the merry party, and turned as
+if to slink away.
+
+“No, no,” whispered Teresa, “you must stay a moment and be presented
+to my guests: there is an Englishman here whom you will like--who will
+_interest_ you.”
+
+With that she almost dragged him forward, and introduced him to her
+guests. Signor Cesarini returned their salutations with a mixture of
+bashfulness and _hauteur_, half-awkward and half-graceful, and muttering
+some inaudible greeting, sank into a seat and appeared instantly lost
+in reverie. Maltravers gazed upon him, and was pleased with his
+aspect--which, if not handsome, was strange and peculiar. He was
+extremely slight and thin--his cheeks hollow and colourless, with
+a profusion of black silken ringlets that almost descended to his
+shoulders. His eyes, deeply sunk into his head, were large and intensely
+brilliant; and a thin moustache, curling downwards, gave an additional
+austerity to his mouth, which was closed with gloomy and half-sarcastic
+firmness. He was not dressed as people dress in general, but wore a
+frock of dark camlet, with a large shirt-collar turned down, and a
+narrow slip of black silk twisted rather than tied round his throat; his
+nether garments fitted tight to his limbs, and a pair of half-hessians
+completed his costume. It was evident that the young man (and he was
+very young--perhaps about nineteen or twenty) indulged that coxcombry of
+the Picturesque which is the sign of a vainer mind than is the commoner
+coxcombry of the _Mode_.
+
+It is astonishing how frequently it happens, that the introduction of
+a single intruder upon a social party is sufficient to destroy all the
+familiar harmony that existed there before. We see it even when the
+intruder is agreeable and communicative--but in the present instance, a
+ghost could scarcely have been a more unwelcoming or unwelcome visitor.
+The presence of this shy, speechless, supercilious-looking man threw a
+damp over the whole group. The gay Tirabaloschi immediately discovered
+that it was time to depart--it had not struck any one before, but it
+certainly _was_ late. The Italians began to bustle about, to collect
+their music, to make fine speeches and fine professions--to bow and to
+smile--to scramble into their boat, and to push towards the inn at Como,
+where they had engaged their quarters for the night. As the boat glided
+away, and while two of them were employed at the oar, the remaining
+four took up their instruments and sang a parting glee. It was quite
+midnight--the hush of all things around had grown more intense and
+profound--there was a wonderful might of silence in the shining air and
+amidst the shadows thrown by the near banks and the distant hills over
+the water. So that as the music chiming in with the oars grew fainter
+and fainter, it is impossible to describe the thrilling and magical
+effect it produced.
+
+The party ashore did not speak; there was a moisture, a grateful one,
+in the bright eyes of Teresa, as she leant upon the manly form of De
+Montaigne, for whom her attachment was, perhaps, yet more deep and
+pure for the difference of their ages. A girl who once loves a man, not
+indeed old, but much older than herself, loves him with such a _looking
+up_ and venerating love! Maltravers stood a little apart from the
+couple, on the edge of the shelving bank, with folded arms and
+thoughtful countenance. “How is it,” said he, unconscious that he was
+speaking half aloud, “that the commonest beings of the world should be
+able to give us a pleasure so unworldly? What a contrast between those
+musicians and this music. At this distance their forms are dimly seen,
+one might almost fancy the creators of those sweet sounds to be of
+another mould from us. Perhaps even thus the poetry of the Past rings
+on our ears--the deeper and the diviner, because removed from the clay
+which made the poets. O Art, Art! how dost thou beautify and exalt us;
+what is nature without thee!”
+
+“You are a poet, Signor,” said a soft clear voice beside the
+soliloquist; and Maltravers started to find that he had had unknowingly
+a listener in the young Cesarini.
+
+“No,” said Maltravers; “I cull the flowers, I do not cultivate the
+soil.”
+
+“And why not?” said Cesarini, with abrupt energy; “you are an
+Englishman--_you_ have a public--you have a country--you have a living
+stage, a breathing audience; we, Italians, have nothing but the dead.”
+
+As he looked on the young man, Maltravers was surprised to see the
+sudden animation which glowed upon his pale features.
+
+“You asked me a question I would fain put to you,” said the Englishman,
+after a pause. “_You_, methinks, are a poet?”
+
+“I have fancied that I might be one. But poetry with us is a bird in the
+wilderness--it sings from an impulse--the song dies without a listener.
+Oh that I belonged to a _living_ country,--France, England, Germany,
+Arnerica,--and not to the corruption of a dead giantess--for such is now
+the land of the ancient lyre.”
+
+“Let us meet again, and soon,” said Maltravers, holding out his hand.
+
+Cesarini hesitated a moment, and then accepted and returned the
+proffered salutation. Reserved as he was, something in Maltravers
+attracted him; and, indeed, there was that in Ernest which fascinated
+most of those unhappy eccentrics who do not move in the common orbit of
+the world.
+
+In a few moments more the Englishman had said farewell to the owner of
+the villa, and his light boat skimmed rapidly over the tide.
+
+“What do you think of the _Inglese_?” said Madame de Montaigne to her
+husband, as they turned towards the house. (They said not a word about
+the Milanese.)
+
+“He has a noble bearing for one so young,” said the Frenchman; “and
+seems to have seen the world, and both to have profited and to have
+suffered by it.”
+
+“He will prove an acquisition to our society here,” returned Teresa; “he
+interests me; and you, Castruccio?” turning to seek for her brother; but
+Cesarini had already, with his usual noiseless step, disappeared within
+the house.
+
+“Alas, my poor brother!” she said, “I cannot comprehend him. What does
+he desire?”
+
+“Fame!” replied De Montaigne, calmly. “It is a vain shadow; no wonder
+that he disquiets himself in vain.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+ “Alas! what boots it with incessant care
+  To strictly meditate the thankless Muse;
+  Were I not better done as others use,
+  To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,
+  Or with the tangles of Neaera’s hair?”
+    MILTON’S _Lycidas_.
+
+THERE is nothing more salutary to active men than occasional intervals
+of repose,--when we look within, instead of without, and examine almost
+_insensibly_ (for I hold strict and conscious self-scrutiny a thing much
+rarer than we suspect)--what we have done--what we are capable of doing.
+It is settling, as it were, a debtor and creditor account with the past,
+before we plunge into new speculations. Such an interval of repose
+did Maltravers now enjoy. In utter solitude, so far as familiar
+companionship is concerned, he had for several weeks been making himself
+acquainted with his own character and mind. He read and thought much,
+but without any exact or defined object. I think it is Montaigne who
+says somewhere: “People talk about thinking--but for my part I never
+think, except when I sit down to write.” I believe this is not a very
+common case, for people who don’t write think as well as people who do;
+but connected, severe, well-developed thought, in contradistinction to
+vague meditation, must be connected with some tangible plan or object;
+and therefore we must be either writing men or acting men, if we desire
+to test the logic, and unfold into symmetrical design the fused colours
+of our reasoning faculty. Maltravers did not yet feel this, but he was
+sensible of some intellectual want. His ideas, his memories, his dreams
+crowded thick and confused upon him; he wished to arrange them in order,
+and he could not. He was overpowered by the unorganised affluence of his
+own imagination and intellect. He had often, even as a child, fancied
+that he was formed to do something in the world, but he had never
+steadily considered what it was to be, whether he was to become a man
+of books or a man of deeds. He had written poetry when it poured
+irresistibly from the fount of emotion within, but looked at his
+effusions with a cold and neglectful eye when the enthusiasm had passed
+away.
+
+Maltravers was not much gnawed by the desire of fame--perhaps few men of
+real genius are, until artificially worked up to it. There is in a
+sound and correct intellect, with all its gifts fairly balanced, a calm
+consciousness of power, a certainty that when its strength is fairly
+put out, it must be to realise the usual result of strength. Men
+of second-rate faculties, on the contrary, are fretful and nervous,
+fidgeting after a celebrity which they do not estimate by their own
+talents, but by the talents of some one else. They see a tower, but
+are occupied only with measuring its shadow, and think their own height
+(which they never calculate) is to cast as broad a one over the earth.
+It is the short man who is always throwing up his chin, and is as erect
+as a dart. The tall man stoops, and the strong man is not always using
+the dumb-bells.
+
+Maltravers had not yet, then, the keen and sharp yearning for
+reputation; he had not, as yet, tasted its sweets and bitters--fatal
+draught, which _once_ tasted, begets too often an insatiable thirst!
+neither had he enemies and decriers whom he was desirous of abashing by
+merit. And that is a very ordinary cause for exertion in proud minds. He
+was, it is true, generally reputed clever, and fools were afraid of
+him: but as he actively interfered with no man’s pretensions, so no man
+thought it necessary to call him a blockhead. At present, therefore, it
+was quietly and naturally that his mind was working its legitimate way
+to its destiny of exertion. He began idly and carelessly to note down
+his thoughts and impressions; what was once put on the paper, begot
+new matter; his ideas became more lucid to himself; and the page grew
+a looking-glass, which presented the likeness of his own features. He
+began by writing with rapidity, and without method. He had no object but
+to please himself, and to find a vent for an overcharged spirit; and,
+like most writings of the young, the matter was egotistical. We commence
+with the small nucleus of passion and experience, to widen the circle
+afterwards; and, perhaps, the most extensive and universal masters of
+life and character have begun by being egotists. For there is in a man
+that has much in him a wonderfully acute and sensitive perception of his
+own existence. An imaginative and susceptible person has, indeed, ten
+times as much life as a dull fellow, “an he be Hercules.” He multiplies
+himself in a thousand objects, associates each with his own identity,
+lives in each, and almost looks upon the world with its infinite objects
+as a part of his individual being. Afterwards, as he tames down, he
+withdraws his forces into the citadel, but he still has a knowledge of,
+and an interest in, the land they once covered. He understands
+other people, for he has lived in other people--the dead and the
+living;--fancied himself now Brutus and now Caesar, and thought how _he_
+should act in almost every imaginable circumstance of life.
+
+Thus, when he begins to paint human characters, essentially different
+from his own, his knowledge comes to him almost intuitively. It is as if
+he were describing the mansions in which he himself has formerly
+lodged, though for a short time. Hence in great writers of History--of
+Romance--of the Drama--the _gusto_ with which they paint their
+personages; their creations are flesh and blood, not shadows or
+machines.
+
+Maltravers was at first, then, an egotist, in the matter of his rude and
+desultory sketches--in the manner, as I said before, he was careless and
+negligent, as men will be who have not yet found that expression is
+an art. Still those wild and valueless essays--those rapt and secret
+confessions of his own heart--were a delight to him. He began to taste
+the transport, the intoxication of an author. And, oh, what a luxury
+is there in that first love of the Muse! that process by which we give
+palpable form to the long-intangible visions which have flitted across
+us;--the beautiful ghost of the Ideal within us, which we invoke in the
+Gadara of our still closets, with the wand of the simple pen!
+
+It was early noon, the day after he had formed his acquaintance with the
+De Montaignes, that Maltravers sat in his favourite room;--the one
+he had selected for his study from the many chambers of his large and
+solitary habitation. He sat in a recess by the open window, which looked
+on the lake; and books were scattered on his table, and Maltravers
+was jotting down his criticisms on what he read, mingled with
+his impressions on what he saw. It is the pleasantest kind of
+composition--the note-book of a man who studies in retirement, who
+observes in society, who in all things can admire and feel. He was yet
+engaged in this easy task, when Cesarini was announced, and the young
+brother of the fair Teresa entered his apartment.
+
+“I have availed myself soon of your invitation,” said the Italian.
+
+“I acknowledge the compliment,” replied Maltravers, pressing the hand
+shyly held out to him.
+
+“I see you have been writing--I thought you were attached to literature.
+I read it in your countenance, I heard it in your voice,” said Cesarini,
+seating himself.
+
+“I have been idly beguiling a very idle leisure, it is true,” said
+Maltravers.
+
+“But you do not write for yourself alone--you have an eye to the great
+tribunals--Time and the Public.”
+
+“Not so, I assure you honestly,” said Maltravers, smiling. “If you
+look at the books on my table, you will see that they are the great
+masterpieces of ancient and modern lore--these are studies that
+discourage tyros--”
+
+“But inspire them.”
+
+“I do not think so. Models may form our taste as critics, but do not
+excite us to be authors. I fancy that our own emotions, our own sense
+of our destiny, make the great lever of the inert matter we accumulate.
+‘Look in thy heart and write,’ said an old English writer,* who did not,
+however, practise what he preached. And you, Signor--”
+
+* Sir Philip Sidney.
+
+“Am nothing, and would be something,” said the young man, shortly and
+bitterly.
+
+“And how does that wish not realise its object?”
+
+“Merely because I am Italian,” said Cesarini. “With us there is no
+literary public--no vast reading class--we have dilettanti and literati,
+and students, and even authors; but these make only a coterie, not a
+public. I have written, I have published; but no one listened to me. I
+am an author without readers.”
+
+“It is no uncommon case in England,” said Maltravers.
+
+The Italian continued: “I thought to live in the mouths of men--to stir
+up thoughts long dumb--to awaken the strings of the old lyre! In vain.
+Like the nightingale, I sing only to break my heart with a false and
+melancholy emulation of other notes.”
+
+“There are epochs in all countries,” said Maltravers, gently, “when
+peculiar veins of literature are out of vogue, and when no genius
+can bring them into public notice. But you wisely said there were two
+tribunals--the Public and Time. You have still the last to appeal to.
+Your great Italian historians wrote for the unborn--their works not even
+published till their death. That indifference to living reputation has
+in it, to me, something of the sublime.”
+
+“I cannot imitate them--and they were not poets,” said Cesarini,
+sharply. “To poets, praise is a necessary aliment; neglect is death.”
+
+“My dear Signor Cesarini,” said the Englishman, feelingly, “do not give
+way to these thoughts. There ought to be in a healthful ambition the
+stubborn stuff of persevering longevity; it must live on, and hope
+for the day which comes slow or fast, to all whose labours deserve the
+goal.”
+
+“But perhaps mine do not. I sometimes fear so--it is a horrid thought.”
+
+“You are very young yet,” said Maltravers; “how few at your age ever
+sicken for fame! That first step is, perhaps, the half way to the
+prize.”
+
+I am not sure that Ernest thought exactly as he spoke; but it was the
+most delicate consolation to offer to a man whose abrupt frankness
+embarrassed and distressed him. The young man shook his head
+despondingly. Maltravers tried to change the subject--he rose and moved
+to the balcony, which overhung the lake--he talked of the weather--he
+dwelt on the exquisite scenery--he pointed to the minute and more latent
+beauties around, with the eye and taste of one who had looked at Nature
+in her details. The poet grew more animated and cheerful; he became even
+eloquent; he quoted poetry and he talked it. Maltravers was more and
+more interested in him. He felt a curiosity to know if his talents
+equalled his aspirations: he hinted to Cesarini his wish to see his
+compositions--it was just what the young man desired. Poor Cesarini!
+It was much to him to get a new listener, and he fondly imagined every
+honest listener must be a warm admirer. But with the coyness of his
+caste, he affected reluctance and hesitation; he dallied with his own
+impatient yearnings. And Maltravers, to smooth his way, proposed an
+excursion on the lake.
+
+“One of my men shall row,” said he; “you shall recite to me, and I will
+be to you what the old housekeeper was to Moliere.”
+
+Maltravers had deep good-nature where he was touched, though he had not
+a superfluity of what is called good-humour, which floats on the surface
+and smiles on all alike. He had much of the milk of human kindness, but
+little of its oil.
+
+The poet assented, and they were soon upon the lake. It was a sultry
+day, and it was noon; so the boat crept slowly along by the shadow of
+the shore, and Cesarini drew from his breast-pocket some manuscripts of
+small and beautiful writing. Who does not know the pains a young poet
+takes to bestow a fair dress on his darling rhymes!
+
+Cesarini read well and feelingly. Everything was in favour of the
+reader. His own poetical countenance--his voice, his enthusiasm,
+half-suppressed--the pre-engaged interest of the auditor--the dreamy
+loveliness of the hour and scene--(for there is a great deal as to time
+in these things). Maltravers listened intently. It is very difficult to
+judge of the exact merit of poetry in another language even when we
+know that language well--so much is there in the untranslatable magic of
+expression, the little subtleties of style. But Maltravers, fresh, as
+he himself had said, from the study of great and original writers,
+could not but feel that he was listening to feeble though melodious
+mediocrity. It was the poetry of words, not things. He thought it cruel,
+however, to be hypercritical, and he uttered all the commonplaces of
+eulogium that occurred to him. The young man was enchanted: “And yet,”
+ said he with a sigh, “I have no Public. In England they would appreciate
+me.” Alas! in England, at that moment, there were five hundred poets as
+young, as ardent, and yet more gifted, whose hearts beat with the same
+desire--whose nerves were broken by the same disappointments.
+
+Maltravers found that his young friend would not listen to any judgment
+not purely favourable. The archbishop in _Gil Blas_ was not more touchy
+upon any criticism that was not panegyric. Maltravers thought it a bad
+sign, but he recollected Gil Blas, and prudently refrained from bringing
+on himself the benevolent wish of “beaucoup de bonheur et un peu, plus
+de bon gout.” When Cesarini had finished his MS., he was anxious to
+conclude the excursion--he longed to be at home, and think over the
+admiration he had excited. But he left his poems with Maltravers, and
+getting on shore by the remains of Pliny’s villa, was soon out of sight.
+
+Maltravers that evening read the poems with attention. His first opinion
+was confirmed. The young man wrote without knowledge. He had never felt
+the passions he painted, never been in the situations he described.
+There was no originality in him, for there was no experience; it was
+exquisite mechanism, his verse,--nothing more. It might well deceive
+him, for it could not but flatter his ear--and Tasso’s silver march rang
+not more musically than did the chiming stanzas of Castruccio Cesarini.
+
+The perusal of this poetry, and his conversation with the poet, threw
+Maltravers into a fit of deep musing. “This poor Cesarini may warn me
+against myself!” thought he. “Better hew wood and draw water than attach
+ourselves devotedly to an art in which we have not the capacity to
+excel.... It is to throw away the healthful objects of life for a
+diseased dream,--worse than the Rosicrucians, it is to make a sacrifice
+of all human beauty for the smile of a sylphid that never visits us but
+in visions.” Maltravers looked over his own compositions, and thrust
+them into the fire. He slept ill that night. His pride was a little
+dejected. He was like a beauty who has seen a caricature of herself.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+ “Still follow SENSE, of every art the Soul.”
+    POPE: _Moral Essays_--Essay iv.
+
+ERNEST MALTRAVERS spent much of his time with the family of De
+Montaigne. There is no period of life in which we are more accessible
+to the sentiment of friendship than in the intervals of moral exhaustion
+which succeed to the disappointments of the passions. There is, then,
+something inviting in those gentler feelings which keep alive, but do
+not fever, the circulation of the affections. Maltravers looked with
+the benevolence of a brother upon the brilliant, versatile, and restless
+Teresa. She was the last person in the world he could have been in
+love with--for his nature, ardent, excitable, yet fastidious, required
+something of repose in the manners and temperament of the woman whom he
+could love, and Teresa scarcely knew what repose was. Whether playing
+with her children (and she had two lovely ones--the eldest six years
+old), or teasing her calm and meditative husband, or pouring out
+extempore verses, or rattling over airs which she never finished, on
+the guitar or piano--or making excursions on the lake--or, in short, in
+whatever occupation she appeared as the Cynthia of the minute, she was
+always gay and mobile--never out of humour, never acknowledging a
+single care or cross in life--never susceptible of grief, save when her
+brother’s delicate health or morbid temper saddened her atmosphere
+of sunshine. Even then, the sanguine elasticity of her mind and
+constitution quickly recovered from the depression; and she persuaded
+herself that Castruccio would grow stronger every year, and ripen into
+a celebrated and happy man. Castruccio himself lived what romantic
+poetasters call the “life of a poet.” He loved to see the sun rise over
+the distant Alps--or the midnight moon sleeping on the lake. He spent
+half the day, and often half the night, in solitary rambles, weaving his
+airy rhymes, or indulging his gloomy reveries, and he thought loneliness
+made the element of a poet. Alas! Dante, Alfieri, even Petrarch might
+have taught him, that a poet must have intimate knowledge of men as well
+as mountains, if he desire to become the CREATOR. When Shelley, in one
+of his prefaces, boasts of being familiar with Alps and glaciers, and
+Heaven knows what, the critical artist cannot help wishing that he had
+been rather familiar with Fleet Street or the Strand. Perhaps, then,
+that remarkable genius might have been more capable of realizing
+characters of flesh and blood, and have composed corporeal and
+consummate wholes, not confused and glittering fragments.
+
+Though Ernest was attached to Teresa and deeply interested in
+Castruccio, it was De Montaigne for whom he experienced the higher and
+graver sentiment of esteem. This Frenchman was one acquainted with a
+much larger world than that of the Coteries. He had served in the army,
+had been employed with distinction in civil affairs, and was of that
+robust and healthful moral constitution which can bear with every
+variety of social life, and estimate calmly the balance of our moral
+fortunes. Trial and experience had left him that true philosopher who
+is too wise to be an optimist, too just to be a misanthrope. He enjoyed
+life with sober judgment, and pursued the path most suited to himself,
+without declaring it to be the best for others. He was a little hard,
+perhaps, upon the errors that belong to weakness and conceit--not to
+those that have their source in great natures or generous thoughts.
+Among his characteristics was a profound admiration for England. His own
+country he half loved, yet half disdained. The impetuosity and levity of
+his compatriots displeased his sober and dignified notions. He could
+not forgive them (he was wont to say) for having made the two grand
+experiments of popular revolution and military despotism in vain. He
+sympathised neither with the young enthusiasts who desired a republic,
+without well knowing the numerous strata of habits and customs upon
+which that fabric, if designed for permanence, should be built--nor with
+the uneducated and fierce chivalry that longed for a restoration of the
+warrior empire--nor with the dull and arrogant bigots who connected all
+ideas of order and government with the ill-starred and worn-out dynasty
+of the Bourbons. In fact, GOOD SENSE was with him the _principium et
+fons_ of all theories and all practice. And it was this quality that
+attached him to the English. His philosophy on this head was rather
+curious.
+
+“Good sense,” said he one day to Maltravers, as they were walking to and
+fro at De Montaigne’s villa, by the margin of the lake, “is not a merely
+intellectual attribute. It is rather the result of a just equilibrium
+of all our faculties, spiritual and moral. The dishonest, or the toys of
+their own passions, may have genius; but they rarely, if ever, have good
+sense in the conduct of life. They may often win large prizes, but it is
+by a game of chance, not skill. But the man whom I perceive walking an
+honourable and upright career--just to others, and also to himself
+(for we owe justice to ourselves--to the care of our fortunes, our
+character--to the management of our passions)--is a more dignified
+representative of his Maker than the mere child of genius. Of such a man
+we say he has GOOD SENSE; yes, but he has also integrity, self-respect,
+and self-denial. A thousand trials which his sense raves and conquers,
+are temptations also to his probity--his temper--in a word, to all the
+many sides of his complicated nature. Now, I do not think he will have
+this _good sense_ any more than a drunkard will have strong nerves,
+unless he be in the constant habit of keeping his mind clear from the
+intoxication of envy, vanity, and the various emotions that dupe and
+mislead us. Good sense is not, therefore, an abstract quality or a
+solitary talent; but it is the natural result of the habit of thinking
+justly, and therefore seeing clearly, and is as different from the
+sagacity that belongs to a diplomatist or attorney, as the philosophy of
+Socrates differed from the rhetoric of Gorgias. As a mass of individual
+excellences make up this attribute in a man, so a mass of such men thus
+characterised give a character to a nation. Your England is, therefore,
+renowned for its good sense, but it is renowned also for the excellences
+which accompany strong sense in an individual--high honesty and faith
+in its dealings, a warm love of justice and fair play, a general freedom
+from the violent crimes common on the Continent, and the energetic
+perseverance in enterprise once commenced, which results from a bold and
+healthful disposition.”
+
+“Our wars, our debt--” began Maltravers.
+
+“Pardon me,” interrupted De Montaigne, “I am speaking of your
+people, not of your government. A government is often a very unfair
+representative of a nation. But even in the wars you allude to, if you
+examine, you will generally find them originate in the love of justice,
+which is the basis of good sense, not from any insane desire of conquest
+or glory. A man, however sensible, must have a heart in his bosom, and
+a great nation cannot be a piece of selfish clockwork. Suppose you and
+I are sensible, prudent men, and we see in a crowd one violent fellow
+unjustly knocking another on the head, we should be brutes, not men, if
+we did not interfere with the savage; but if we thrust ourselves into a
+crowd with a large bludgeon, and belabour our neighbours, with the hope
+that the spectators would cry, ‘See what a bold, strong fellow that
+is!’--then we should be only playing the madman from the motive of the
+coxcomb. I fear you will find in the military history of the French and
+English the application of my parable.”
+
+“Yet still, I confess, there is a gallantry, and a noblemanlike and
+Norman spirit in the whole French nation, which make me forgive many
+of their excesses, and think they are destined for great purposes, when
+experience shall have sobered their hot blood. Some nations, as some
+men, are slow in arriving at maturity; others seem men in their
+cradle. The English, thanks to their sturdy Saxon origin, elevated, not
+depressed, by the Norman infusion, never were children. The difference
+is striking, when you regard the representatives of both in their great
+men--whether writers or active citizens.”
+
+“Yes,” said De Montaigne, “in Milton and Cromwell there is nothing of
+the brilliant child. I cannot say as much for Voltaire or Napoleon.
+Even Richelieu, the manliest of our statesmen, had so much of the French
+infant in him as to fancy himself a _beau garcon_, a gallant, a wit, and
+a poet. As for the Racine school of writers, they were not out of the
+leading-strings of imitation--cold copyists of a pseudo-classic, in
+which they saw the form, and never caught the spirit. What so little
+Roman, Greek, Hebrew, as their Roman, Greek, and Hebrew dramas?
+Your rude Shakespeare’s _Julius Caesar_--even his _Troilus and
+Cressida_--have the ancient spirit, precisely as they are imitations of
+nothing ancient. But our Frenchmen copied the giant images of old just
+as the school-girl copies a drawing, by holding it up to the window, and
+tracing the lines on silver paper.”
+
+“But your new writers--De Stael--Chateaubriand?” *
+
+* At the time of this conversation the later school, adorned by Victor
+Hugo, who, with notions of art elaborately wrong, is still a man
+of extraordinary genius, had not risen into its present equivocal
+reputation.
+
+“I find no fault with the sentimentalists,” answered the severe critic,
+“but that of exceeding feebleness. They have no bone and muscle in their
+genius--all is flaccid and rotund in its feminine symmetry. They seem to
+think that vigour consists in florid phrases and little aphorisms, and
+delineate all the mighty tempests of the human heart with the polished
+prettiness of a miniature-painter on ivory. No!--these two are children
+of another kind--affected, tricked-out, well-dressed children--very
+clever, very precocious--but children still. Their whinings, and their
+sentimentalities, and their egotism, and their vanity, cannot interest
+masculine beings who know what life and its stern objects are.”
+
+“Your brother-in-law,” said Maltravers with a slight smile, “must find
+in you a discouraging censor.”
+
+“My poor Castruccio,” replied De Montaigne, with a half-sigh; “he is one
+of those victims whom I believe to be more common than we dream of--men
+whose aspirations are above their powers. I agree with a great German
+writer, that in the first walks of Art no man has a right to enter,
+unless he is convinced that he has strength and speed for the goal.
+Castruccio might be an amiable member of society, nay, an able and
+useful man, if he would apply the powers he possesses to the rewards
+they may obtain. He has talent enough to win him reputation in any
+profession but that of a poet.”
+
+“But authors who obtain immortality are not always first-rate.”
+
+“First-rate in their way, I suspect; even if that way be false or
+trivial. They must be connected with the _history_ of their literature;
+you must be able to say of them, ‘In this school, be it bad or good,
+they exerted such and such an influence;’ in a word, they must form a
+link in the great chain of a nation’s authors, which may be afterwards
+forgotten by the superficial, but without which the chain would be
+incomplete. And thus, if not first-rate for all time, they have
+been first-rate in their own day. But Castruccio is only the echo of
+others--he can neither found a school nor ruin one. Yet this” (again
+added De Montaigne after a pause)--“this melancholy malady in my
+brother-in-law would cure itself, perhaps, if he were not Italian. In
+your animated and bustling country, after sufficient disappointment as a
+poet, he would glide into some other calling, and his vanity and craving
+for effect would find a rational and manly outlet. But in Italy, what
+can a clever man do, if he is not a poet or a robber? If he love his
+country, that crime is enough to unfit him for civil employment, and
+his mind cannot stir a step in the bold channels of speculation without
+falling foul of the Austrian or the Pope. No; the best I can hope for
+Castruccio is, that he will end in an antiquary, and dispute about ruins
+with the Romans. Better that than mediocre poetry.”
+
+Maltravers was silent and thoughtful. Strange to say, De Montaigne’s
+views did not discourage his own new and secret ardour for intellectual
+triumphs; not because he felt that he was now able to achieve them, but
+because he felt the iron of his own nature, and knew that a man who
+has iron in his nature must ultimately hit upon some way of shaping the
+metal into use.
+
+The host and guest were now joined by Castruccio himself--silent and
+gloomy as indeed he usually was, especially in the presence of De
+Montaigne, with whom he felt his “self-love” wounded; for though he
+longed to despise his hard brother-in-law, the young poet was compelled
+to acknowledge that De Montaigne was not a man to be despised.
+
+Maltravers dined with the De Montaignes, and spent the evening with
+them. He could not but observe that Castruccio, who affected in his
+verses the softest sentiments--who was, indeed, by original nature,
+tender and gentle--had become so completely warped by that worst of all
+mental vices--the eternally pondering on his own excellences, talents,
+mortifications, and ill-usage, that he never contributed to the
+gratification of those around him; he had none of the little arts of
+social benevolence, none of the playful youth of disposition
+which usually belongs to the good-hearted, and for which men of a
+master-genius, however elevated their studies, however stern or reserved
+to the vulgar world, are commonly noticeable amidst the friends they
+love or in the home they adorn. Occupied with one dream, centred
+in self, the young Italian was sullen and morose to all who did
+not sympathise with his own morbid fancies. From the children--the
+sister--the friend--the whole living earth, he fled to a poem on
+Solitude, or stanzas upon Fame. Maltravers said to himself, “I will
+never be an author--I will never sigh for renown--if I am to purchase
+shadows at such a price!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+ “It cannot be too deeply impressed on the mind, that application
+  is the price to be paid for mental acquisitions, and that it is
+  as absurd to expect them without it as to hope for a harvest
+  where we have not sown the seed.
+
+ “In everything we do, we may be possibly laying a train of
+  consequences, the operation of which may terminate only with
+  our existence.”
+
+   BAILEY: _Essays on the Formation and Publication of Opinions_.
+
+TIME passed, and autumn was far advanced towards winter; still
+Maltravers lingered at Como. He saw little of any other family than that
+of the De Montaignes, and the greater part of his time was necessarily
+spent alone. His occupation continued to be that of making experiments
+of his own powers, and these gradually became bolder and more
+comprehensive. He took care, however, not to show his “Diversions of
+Como” to his new friends: he wanted no audience--he dreamt of no Public;
+he desired merely to practise his own mind. He became aware, of his own
+accord, as he proceeded, that a man can neither study with such depth,
+nor compose with much art, unless he has some definite object before
+him; in the first, some one branch of knowledge to master; in the last,
+some one conception to work out. Maltravers fell back upon his boyish
+passion for metaphysical speculation; but with what different
+results did he now wrestle with the subtle schoolmen, now that he had
+practically known mankind. How insensibly new lights broke in upon him,
+as he threaded the labyrinth of cause and effect, by which we seek to
+arrive at that curious and biform monster--our own nature. His
+mind became saturated, as it were, with these profound studies and
+meditations; and when at length he paused from them, he felt as if
+he had not been living in solitude, but had gone through a process of
+action in the busy world: so much juster, so much clearer, had become
+his knowledge of himself and others. But though these researches
+coloured, they did not limit his intellectual pursuits. Poetry and the
+lighter letters became to him not merely a relaxation, but a critical
+and thoughtful study. He delighted to penetrate into the causes that
+have made the airy webs spun by men’s fancies so permanent and powerful
+in their influence over the hard, work-day world. And what a lovely
+scene--what a sky--what an air wherein to commence the projects of that
+ambition which seeks to establish an empire in the hearts and memories
+of mankind! I believe it has a great effect on the future labours of
+a writer,--the place where he first dreams that it is his destiny to
+write!
+
+From these pursuits Ernest was aroused by another letter from Cleveland.
+His kind friend had been disappointed and vexed that Maltravers did not
+follow his advice, and return to England. He had shown his displeasure
+by not answering Ernest’s letter of excuses; but lately he had been
+seized with a dangerous illness which reduced him to the brink of the
+grave; and with a heart softened by the exhaustion of the frame, he now
+wrote in the first moments of convalescence to Maltravers, informing
+him of his attack and danger, and once more urging him to return. The
+thought that Cleveland--the dear, kind gentle guardian of his youth--had
+been near unto death, that he might never more have hung upon that
+fostering hand, nor replied to that paternal voice, smote Ernest with
+terror and remorse. He resolved instantly to return to England, and made
+his preparations accordingly.
+
+He went to take leave of the De Montaignes. Teresa was trying to teach
+her first-born to read; and seated by the open window of the villa, in
+her neat, not precise, _dishabille_--with the little boy’s delicate, yet
+bold and healthy countenance looking up fearlessly at hers, while she
+was endeavouring to initiate him--half gravely, half laughingly--into
+the mysteries of monosyllables, the pretty boy and the fair young mother
+made a delightful picture. De Montaigne was reading the Essays of his
+celebrated namesake, in whom he boasted, I know not with what justice,
+to claim an ancestor. From time to time he looked from the page to take
+a glance at the progress of his heir, and keep up with the march of
+intellect. But he did not interfere with the maternal lecture; he was
+wise enough to know that there is a kind of sympathy between a child and
+a mother, which is worth all the grave superiority of a father in making
+learning palatable to young years. He was far too clever a man not to
+despise all the systems of forcing infants under knowledge-frames, which
+are the present fashion. He knew that philosophers never made a greater
+mistake than in insisting so much upon beginning abstract education
+from the cradle. It is quite enough to attend to an infant’s temper, and
+correct that cursed predilection for telling fibs which falsifies all
+Dr. Reid’s absurd theory about innate propensities to truth, and makes
+the prevailing epidemic of the nursery. Above all, what advantage ever
+compensates for hurting a child’s health or breaking his spirit? Never
+let him learn, more than you can help it, the crushing bitterness of
+fear. A bold child who looks you in the face, speaks the truth, and
+shames the devil; that is the stuff of which to make good and brave--ay,
+and wise men!
+
+Maltravers entered, unannounced, into this charming family party, and
+stood unobserved for a few moments, by the open door. The little pupil
+was the first to perceive him, and, forgetful of monosyllables, ran
+to greet him; for Maltravers, though gentle rather than gay, was a
+favourite with children, and his fair, calm, gracious countenance did
+more for him with them than if, like Goldsmith’s Burchell, his pockets
+had been filled with gingerbread and apples. “Ah, fie on you, Mr.
+Maltravers!” cried Teresa, rising; “you have blown away all the
+characters I have been endeavouring this last hour to imprint upon
+sand.”
+
+“Not so, Signora,” said Maltravers, seating himself, and placing the
+child on his knee; “my young friend will set to work again with a
+greater gusto after this little break in upon his labours.”
+
+“You will stay with us all day, I hope?” said De Montaigne.
+
+“Indeed,” said Maltravers, “I am come to ask permission to do so, for
+to-morrow I depart for England.”
+
+“Is it possible?” cried Teresa. “How sudden! How we shall miss you! Oh!
+don’t go. But perhaps you have bad news from England?”
+
+“I have news that summon me hence,” replied Maltravers; “my guardian
+and second father has been dangerously ill. I am uneasy about him,
+and reproach myself for having forgotten him so long in your seductive
+society.”
+
+“I am really sorry to lose you,” said De Montaigne, with greater warmth
+in his tone than in his words. “I hope heartily we shall meet again
+soon: you will come, perhaps, to Paris?”
+
+“Probably,” said Maltravers; “and you, perhaps, to England?”
+
+“Ah, how I should like it!” exclaimed Teresa.
+
+“No, you would not,” said her husband; “you would not like England
+at all; you would call it _triste_ beyond measure. It is one of those
+countries of which a native should be proud, but which has no amusement
+for a stranger, precisely because full of such serious and stirring
+occupations to the citizens. The pleasantest countries for strangers are
+the worst countries for natives (witness Italy), and _vice versa_.”
+
+Teresa shook her dark curls, and would not be convinced.
+
+“And where is Castruccio?” asked Maltravers.
+
+“In his boat on the lake,” replied Teresa. “He will be inconsolable
+at your departure: you are the only person he can understand, or who
+understand him; the only person in Italy--I had almost said in the whole
+world.”
+
+“Well, we shall meet at dinner,” said Ernest; “meanwhile let me prevail
+on you to accompany me to the _Pliniana_. I wish to say farewell to that
+crystal spring.”
+
+Teresa, delighted at any excursion, readily consented.
+
+“And I too, mamma,” cried the child; “and my little sister?”
+
+“Oh, certainly,” said Maltravers, speaking for the parents.
+
+So the party was soon ready, and they pushed off in the clear genial
+noontide (for November in Italy is as early as September in the North)
+across the sparkling and dimpled waters. The children prattled, and the
+grown-up people talked on a thousand matters. It was a pleasant day,
+that last day at Como! For the farewells of friendship have indeed
+something of the melancholy, but not the anguish, of those of love.
+Perhaps it would be better if we could get rid of love altogether. Life
+would go on smoother and happier without it. Friendship is the wine of
+existence, but love is the dram-drinking.
+
+When they returned, they found Castruccio seated on the lawn. He did not
+appear so much dejected at the prospect of Ernest’s departure as Teresa
+had anticipated; for Castruccio Cesarini was a very jealous man, and he
+had lately been chagrined and discontented with seeing the delight that
+the De Montaignes took in Ernest’s society.
+
+“Why is this?” he often asked himself; “why are they more pleased with
+this stranger’s society than mine? My ideas are as fresh, as original;
+I have as much genius, yet even my dry brother-in-law allows _his_
+talents, and predicts that _he_ will be an eminent man! while
+_I_--No!--one is not a prophet in one’s own country!”
+
+Unhappy man! his mind bore all the rank weeds of the morbid poetical
+character, and the weeds choked up the flowers that the soil, properly
+cultivated, should alone bear. Yet that crisis in life awaited
+Castruccio, in which a sensitive and poetical man is made or marred; the
+crisis in which a sentiment is replaced by the passions--in which love
+for some real object gathers the scattered rays of the heart into a
+focus: out of that ordeal he might pass a purer and manlier being--so
+Maltravers often hoped. Maltravers then little thought how closely
+connected with his own fate was to be that passage in the history of the
+Italian. Castruccio contrived to take Maltravers aside, and as he led
+the Englishman through the wood that backed the mansion, he said, with
+some embarrassment, “You go, I suppose, to London?”
+
+“I shall pass through it--can I execute any commission for you?”
+
+“Why, yes; my poems!--I think of publishing them in England: your
+aristocracy cultivate the Italian letters; and, perhaps, I may be read
+by the fair and noble--_that_ is the proper audience of poets. For the
+vulgar herd--I disdain it!”
+
+“My dear Castruccio, I will undertake to see your poems published in
+London, if you wish it; but do not be sanguine. In England we read
+little poetry, even in our own language, and we are shamefully
+indifferent to foreign literature.”
+
+“Yes, foreign literature generally, and you are right; but my poems
+are of another kind. They must command attention in a polished and
+intelligent circle.”
+
+“Well! let the experiment be tried; you can let me have the poems when
+we part.”
+
+“I thank you,” said Castruccio, in a joyous tone, pressing his friend’s
+hand; and for the rest of that evening, he seemed an altered being; he
+even caressed the children, and did not sneer at the grave conversation
+of his brother-in-law.
+
+When Maltravers rose to depart, Castruccio gave him the packet; and
+then, utterly engrossed with his own imagined futurity of fame,
+vanished from the room to indulge his reveries. He cared no longer
+for Maltravers--he had put him to use--he could not be sorry for his
+departure, for that departure was the Avatar of His appearance to a new
+world.
+
+A small dull rain was falling, though, at intervals, the stars broke
+through the unsettled clouds, and Teresa did not therefore venture from
+the house; she presented her smooth cheek to the young guest to salute,
+pressed him by the hand, and bade him adieu with tears in her eyes.
+“Ah!” said she, “when we meet again I hope you will be married--I shall
+love your wife dearly. There is no happiness like marriage and home!”
+ and she looked with ingenuous tenderness at De Montaigne.
+
+Maltravers sighed;--his thoughts flew back to Alice. Where now was that
+lone and friendless girl, whose innocent love had once brightened a
+home for _him_? He answered by a vague and mechanical commonplace, and
+quitted the room with De Montaigne, who insisted on seeing him depart.
+As they neared the lake, De Montaigne broke the silence.
+
+“My dear Maltravers,” he said, with a serious and thoughtful affection
+in his voice, “we may not meet again for years. I have a warm interest
+in your happiness and career--yes, _career_--I repeat the word. I do not
+habitually seek to inspire young men with ambition. Enough for most
+of them to be good and honourable citizens. But in your case it is
+different. I see in you the earnest and meditative, not rash and
+overweening youth, which is usually productive of a distinguished
+manhood. Your mind is not yet settled, it is true; but it is fast
+becoming clear and mellow from the first ferment of boyish dreams
+and passions. You have everything in your favour,--competence, birth,
+connections; and, above all, you are an Englishman! You have a mighty
+stage, on which, it is true, you cannot establish a footing without
+merit and without labour--so much the better; in which strong and
+resolute rivals will urge you on to emulation, and then competition will
+task your keenest powers. Think what a glorious fate it is, to have
+an influence on the vast, but ever-growing mind of such a country,--to
+feel, when you retire from the busy scene, that you have played an
+unforgotten part--that you have been the medium, under God’s great will,
+of circulating new ideas throughout the world--of upholding the glorious
+priesthood of the Honest and the Beautiful. This is the true ambition;
+the desire of mere personal notoriety is vanity, not ambition. Do not
+then be lukewarm or supine. The trait I have observed in you,” added
+the Frenchman, with a smile, “most prejudicial to your chances of
+distinction is, that you are _too_ philosophical, too apt to _cui
+bono_ all the exertions that interfere with the indolence of cultivated
+leisure. And you must not suppose, Maltravers, that an active career
+will be a path of roses. At present you have no enemies; but the moment
+you attempt distinction, you will be abused; calumniated, reviled.
+You will be shocked at the wrath you excite, and sigh for your old
+obscurity, and consider, as Franklin has it, that ‘you have paid too
+dear for your whistle.’ But in return for individual enemies, what a
+noble recompense to have made the Public itself your friend; perhaps
+even Posterity your familiar! Besides,” added De Montaigne, with almost
+a religious solemnity in his voice, “there is a conscience of the head
+as well as of the heart, and in old age we feel as much remorse if
+we have wasted our natural talents as if we had perverted our natural
+virtues. The profound and exultant satisfaction with which a man who
+knows that he has not lived in vain--that he has entailed on the
+world an heirloom of instruction or delight--looks back upon departed
+struggles, is one of the happiest emotions of which the conscience can
+be capable. What, indeed, are the petty faults we commit as individuals,
+affecting but a narrow circle, ceasing with our own lives, to the
+incalculable and everlasting good we may produce as public men by one
+book or by one law? Depend upon it that the Almighty, who sums up all
+the good and all the evil done by His creatures in a just balance, will
+not judge the august benefactors of the world with the same severity
+as those drones of society, who have no great services to show in the
+eternal ledger, as a set-off to the indulgence of their small vices.
+These things rightly considered, Maltravers, you will have every
+inducement that can tempt a lofty mind and a pure ambition to awaken
+from the voluptuous indolence of the literary Sybarite, and contend
+worthily in the world’s wide Altis for a great prize.”
+
+Maltravers never before felt so flattered--so stirred into high
+resolves. The stately eloquence, the fervid encouragement of this man,
+usually so cold and fastidious, roused him like the sound of a trumpet.
+He stopped short, his breath heaved thick, his cheek flushed. “De
+Montaigne,” said he, “your words have cleared away a thousand doubts
+and scruples--they have gone right to my heart. For the first time I
+understand what fame is--what the object, and what the reward of labour!
+Visions, hopes, aspirations I may have had before--for months a new
+spirit has been fluttering within me. I have felt the wings breaking
+from the shell, but all was confused, dim, uncertain. I doubted the
+wisdom of effort, with life so short, and the pleasures of youth so
+sweet. I now look no longer on life but as a part of the eternity to
+which I _feel_ we were born; and I recognise the solemn truth that our
+objects, to be worthy life, should be worthy of creatures in whom the
+living principle never is extinct. Farewell! come joy or sorrow, failure
+or success, I will struggle to deserve your friendship.”
+
+Maltravers sprang into his boat, and the shades of night soon snatched
+him from the lingering gaze of De Montaigne.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK IV.
+
+ “Strange is the land that holds thee,--and thy couch
+  is widow’d of the loved one.”
+    EURIP. _Med._ 442
+    Translation by R. G.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+        “I, alas!
+  Have lived but on this earth a few sad years;
+  And so my lot was ordered, that a father
+  First turned the moments of awakening life
+  To drops, each poisoning youth’s sweet hope.”
+    “_Cenci_.”
+
+FROM accompanying Maltravers along the noiseless progress of mental
+education, we are now called awhile to cast our glances back at the
+ruder and harsher ordeal which Alice Darvil was ordained to pass. Along
+her path poetry shed no flowers, nor were her lonely steps towards the
+distant shrine at which her pilgrimage found its rest lighted by the
+mystic lamp of science, or guided by the thousand stars which are never
+dim in the heavens for those favoured eyes from which genius and fancy
+have removed many of the films of clay. Not along the aerial and exalted
+ways that wind far above the homes and business of common men--the
+solitary Alps of Spiritual Philosophy--wandered the desolate steps of
+the child of poverty and sorrow. On the beaten and rugged highways of
+common life, with a weary heart, and with bleeding feet, she went her
+melancholy course. But the goal which is the great secret of life, the
+_summum arcanum_ of all philosophy, whether the Practical or the Ideal,
+was, perhaps, no less attainable for that humble girl than for the
+elastic step and aspiring heart of him who thirsted after the Great, and
+almost believed in the Impossible.
+
+We return to that dismal night in which Alice was torn from the roof of
+her lover. It was long before she recovered her consciousness of what
+had passed, and gained a full perception of the fearful revolution which
+had taken place in her destinies. It was then a grey and dreary morning
+twilight; and the rude but covered vehicle which bore her was rolling
+along the deep ruts of an unfrequented road, winding among the
+uninclosed and mountainous wastes that, in England, usually betoken the
+neighbourhood of the sea. With a shudder Alice looked round: Walters,
+her father’s accomplice, lay extended at her feet, and his heavy
+breathing showed that he was fast asleep. Darvil himself was urging on
+the jaded and sorry horse, and his broad back was turned towards Alice;
+the rain, from which, in his position, he was but ill protected by the
+awning, dripped dismally from his slouched hat; and now, as he turned
+round, and his sinister and gloomy gaze rested upon the face of Alice,
+his bad countenance, rendered more haggard by the cold raw light of the
+cheerless dawn, completed the hideous picture of unveiled and ruffianly
+wretchedness.
+
+“Ho, ho! Alley, so you are come to your senses,” said he, with a kind of
+joyless grin. “I am glad of it, for I can have no fainting fine ladies
+with me. You have had a long holiday, Alley; you must now learn once
+more to work for your poor father. Ah, you have been d----d sly; but
+never mind the past--I forgive it. You must not run away again without
+my leave; if you are fond of sweethearts, I won’t balk you--but your old
+father must go shares, Alley.”
+
+Alice could hear no more: she covered her face with the cloak that had
+been thrown about her, and though she did not faint, her senses seemed
+to be locked and paralysed. By and by Walters woke, and the two men,
+heedless of her presence, conversed upon their plans. By degrees she
+recovered sufficient self-possession to listen, in the instinctive hope
+that some plan of escape might be suggested to her. But from what she
+could gather of the incoherent and various projects they discussed,
+one after another--disputing upon each with frightful oaths and scarce
+intelligible slang, she could only learn that it was resolved at all
+events to leave the district in which they were--but whither seemed yet
+all undecided. The cart halted at last at a miserable-looking hut, which
+the signpost announced to be an inn that afforded good accommodation to
+travellers; to which announcement was annexed the following epigrammatic
+distich:
+
+ “Old Tom, he is the best of gin;
+  Drink him once, and you’ll drink him _agin_!”
+
+The hovel stood so remote from all other habitations, and the waste
+around was so bare of trees, and even shrubs, that Alice saw with
+despair that all hope of flight in such a place would be indeed a
+chimera. But to make assurance doubly sure, Darvil himself, lifting her
+from the cart, conducted her up a broken and unlighted staircase, into a
+sort of loft rather than a room, and, rudely pushing her in, turned the
+key upon her, and descended. The weather was cold, the livid damps hung
+upon the distained walls, and there was neither fire nor hearth; but
+thinly clad as she was--her cloak and shawl her principal covering--she
+did not feel the cold, for her heart was more chilly than the airs of
+heaven. At noon an old woman brought her some food, which, consisting of
+fish and poached game, was better than might have been expected in such
+a place, and what would have been deemed a feast under her father’s
+roof. With an inviting leer, the crone pointed to a pewter measure of
+raw spirits that accompanied the viands, and assured her, in a cracked
+and maudlin voice, that “‘Old Tom’ was a kinder friend than any of the
+young fellers!” This intrusion ended, Alice was again left alone till
+dusk, when Darvil entered with a bundle of clothes, such as are worn by
+the peasants of that primitive district of England.
+
+“There, Alley,” said he, “put on this warm toggery; finery won’t do now.
+We must leave no scent in the track; the hounds are after us, my little
+blowen. Here’s a nice stuff gown for you, and a red cloak that would
+frighten a turkey-cock. As to the other cloak and shawl, don’t be
+afraid; they sha’n’t go to the pop-shop, but we’ll take care of them
+against we get to some large town where there are young fellows with
+blunt in their pockets; for you seem to have already found out that your
+face is your fortune, Alley. Come, make haste, we must be starting.
+I shall come up for you in ten minutes. Pish! don’t be faint hearted;
+here, take ‘Old Tom’--take it, I say. What, you won’t? Well, here’s to
+your health, and a better taste to you!”
+
+And now, as the door once more closed upon Darvil, tears for the
+first time came to the relief of Alice. It was a woman’s weakness that
+procured for her that woman’s luxury. Those garments--they were Ernest’s
+gift--Ernest’s taste; they were like the last relic of that delicious
+life which now seemed to have fled for ever. All traces of that life--of
+him, the loving, the protecting, the adored; all trace of herself, as
+she had been re-created by love, was to be lost to her for ever. It
+was (as she had read somewhere, in the little elementary volumes that
+bounded her historic lore) like that last fatal ceremony in which those
+condemned for life to the mines of Siberia are clothed with the slave’s
+livery, their past name and record eternally blotted out, and thrust
+into the vast wastes, from which even the mercy of despotism, should
+it ever re-awaken, cannot recall them; for all evidence of them--all
+individuality--all mark to distinguish them from the universal herd, is
+expunged from the world’s calendar. She was still sobbing in vehement
+and unrestrained passion, when Darvil re-entered. “What, not dressed
+yet?” he exclaimed, in a voice of impatient rage; “hark ye, this won’t
+do. If in two minutes you are not ready, I’ll send up John Walters to
+help you; and he is a rough hand, I can tell you.”
+
+This threat recalled Alice, to herself. “I will do as you wish,” said
+she meekly.
+
+“Well, then, be quick,” said Darvil; “they are now putting the horse
+to. And mark me, girl, your father is running away from the gallows,
+and that thought does not make a man stand upon scruples. If you once
+attempt to give me the slip, or do or say anything that can bring the
+bulkies upon us--by the devil in hell!--if, indeed, there be hell or
+devil--my knife shall become better acquainted with that throat--so look
+to it!”
+
+And this was the father--this the condition--of her whose ear had for
+months drunk no other sound than the whispers of flattering love--the
+murmurs of Passion from the lips of Poetry.
+
+They continued their journey till midnight; they then arrived at an inn,
+little different from the last; but here Alice was no longer consigned
+to solitude. In a long room, reeking with smoke, sat from twenty to
+thirty ruffians before a table on which mugs and vessels of strong
+potations were formidably interspersed with sabres and pistols. They
+received Walters and Darvil with a shout of welcome, and would have
+crowded somewhat unceremoniously round Alice, if her father, whose
+well-known desperate and brutal ferocity made him a man to be respected
+in such an assembly, had not said, sternly, “Hands off, messmates, and
+make way by the fire for my little girl--she is meat for your masters.”
+
+So saying, he pushed Alice down into a huge chair in the chimney-nook,
+and, seating himself near her, at the end of the table, hastened to turn
+the conversation.
+
+“Well, Captain,” said he, addressing a small thin man at the head of the
+table, “I and Walters have fairly cut and run--the land has a bad air
+for us, and we now want the sea-breeze to cure the rope fever. So,
+knowing this was your night, we have crowded sail, and here we are.
+You must give the girl there a lift, though I know you don’t like such
+lumber, and we’ll run ashore as soon as we can.”
+
+“She seems a quiet little body,” replied the captain; “and we would do
+more than that to oblige an old friend like you. In half an hour Oliver*
+puts on his nightcap, and we must then be off.”
+
+* The moon.
+
+“The sooner the better.”
+
+The men now appeared to forget the presence of Alice, who sat faint with
+fatigue and exhaustion, for she had been too sick at heart to touch the
+food brought to her at their previous halting-place, gazing abstractedly
+upon the fire. Her father, before their departure, made her swallow
+some morsels of sea-biscuit, though each seemed to choke her; and then,
+wrapped in a thick boat-cloak, she was placed in a small well-built
+cutter; and as the sea-winds whistled round her, the present cold
+and the past fatigues lulled her miserable heart into the arms of the
+charitable Sleep.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+ “You are once more a free woman;
+  Here I discharge your bonds.”
+    _The Custom of the Country_.
+
+AND many were thy trials, poor child; many that, were this book to
+germinate into volumes more numerous than monk ever composed upon the
+lives of saint or martyr (though a hundred volumes contained the record
+of two years only in the life of St. Anthony), it would be impossible
+to describe! We may talk of the fidelity of books, but no man ever
+wrote even his own biography without being compelled to omit at least
+nine-tenths of the most important materials. What are three--what six
+volumes? We live six volumes in a day! Thought, emotion, joy, sorrow,
+hope, fear, how prolix would they be if they might each tell their
+hourly tale! But man’s life itself is a brief epitome of that which
+is infinite and everlasting; and his most accurate confessions are a
+miserable abridgment of a hurried and confused compendium!
+
+It was about three months, or more, from the night in which Alice wept
+herself to sleep amongst those wild companions, when she contrived to
+escape from her father’s vigilant eye. They were then on the coast of
+Ireland. Darvil had separated himself from Walters--from his seafaring
+companions: he had run through the greater part of the money his crimes
+had got together; he began seriously to attempt putting into execution
+his horrible design of depending for support upon the sale of his
+daughter. Now Alice might have been moulded into sinful purposes
+before she knew Maltravers; but from that hour her very error made her
+virtuous--she had comprehended, the moment she loved, what was meant by
+female honour; and by a sudden revelation, she had purchased modesty,
+delicacy of thought and soul, in the sacrifice of herself. Much of our
+morality (prudent and right upon system) with respect to the first false
+step of women, leads us, as we all know, into barbarous errors as to
+individual exceptions. Where, from pure and confiding love, that first
+false step has been taken, many a woman has been saved in after life
+from a thousand temptations. The poor unfortunates who crowd our streets
+and theatres have rarely, in the first instances, been corrupted by
+love; but by poverty, and the contagion of circumstance and example. It
+is a miserable cant phrase to call them the victims of seduction;
+they have been the victims of hunger, of vanity, of curiosity, of evil
+_female_ counsels; but the seduction of love hardly ever conducts to
+a _life_ of vice. If a woman has once really loved, the beloved object
+makes an impenetrable barrier between her and other men; their advances
+terrify and revolt--she would rather die than be unfaithful even to a
+memory. Though man love the sex, woman loves only the individual; and
+the more she loves him, the more cold she is to the species. For the
+passion of woman is in the sentiment--the fancy--the heart. It rarely
+has much to do with the coarse images with which boys and old men--the
+inexperienced and the worn-out--connect it.
+
+But Alice, though her blood ran cold at her terrible father’s language,
+saw in his very design the prospect of escape. In an hour of drunkenness
+he thrust her from the house, and stationed himself to watch her--it was
+in the city of Cork. She formed her resolution instantly--turned up a
+narrow street, and fled at full speed. Darvil endeavoured in vain to
+keep pace with her--his eyes dizzy, his steps reeling with intoxication.
+She heard his last curse dying from a distance on the air, and her fear
+winged her steps: she paused at last, and found herself on the outskirts
+of the town. She paused, overcome, and deadly faint; and then, for the
+first time, she felt that a strange and new life was stirring within
+her own. She had long since known that she bore in her womb the unborn
+offspring of Maltravers, and that knowledge had made her struggle and
+live on. But now, the embryo had quickened into being--it moved--it
+appealed to her, a--thing unseen, unknown; but still it was a living
+creature appealing to a mother! Oh, the thrill, half of ineffable
+tenderness, half of mysterious terror, at that moment!--What a new
+chapter in the life of a woman did it not announce:--Now, then, she must
+be watchful over herself--must guard against fatigue--must wrestle with
+despair. Solemn was the trust committed to her--the life of another--the
+child of the Adored. It was a summer night--she sat on a rude stone,
+the city on one side, with its lights and lamps;--the whitened fields
+beyond, with the moon and the stars above; and _above_ she raised her
+streaming eyes, and she thought that God, the Protector, smiled upon her
+from the face of the sweet skies. So, after a pause and a silent prayer,
+she rose and resumed her way. When she was wearied she crept into a shed
+in a farmyard, and slept, for the first time for weeks, the calm sleep
+of security and hope.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+ “How like a prodigal doth she return,
+  With over-weathered ribs and ragged sails.”
+    _Merchant of Venice_.
+
+ “_Mer._ What are these?
+  _Uncle._ The tenants.”
+    BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.--_Wit without Money_.
+
+IT was just two years from the night in which Alice had been torn from
+the cottage: and at that time Maltravers was wandering amongst the ruins
+of ancient Egypt, when, upon the very lawn where Alice and her lover had
+so often loitered hand in hand, a gay party of children and young people
+were assembled. The cottage had been purchased by an opulent and
+retired manufacturer. He had raised the low thatched roof another story
+high--and blue slate had replaced the thatch--and the pretty verandahs
+overgrown with creepers had been taken down because Mrs. Hobbs thought
+they gave the rooms a dull look; and the little rustic doorway had
+been replaced by four Ionic pillars in stucco; and a new dining-room,
+twenty-two feet by eighteen, had been built out at one wing, and a
+new drawing-room had been built over the new dining-room. And the poor
+little cottage looked quite grand and villa-like. The fountain had been
+taken away, because it made the house damp; and there was such a broad
+carriage-drive from the gate to the house! The gate was no longer the
+modest green wooden gate, ever ajar with its easy latch; but a tall,
+cast-iron, well-locked gate, between two pillars to match the porch.
+And on one of the gates was a brass plate, on which was graven, “Hobbs’
+Lodge--Ring the bell.” The lesser Hobbses and the bigger Hobbses
+were all on the lawn--many of them fresh from school--for it was the
+half-holiday of a Saturday afternoon. There was mirth, and noise, and
+shouting and whooping, and the respectable old couple looked calmly
+on; Hobbs the father smoking his pipe (alas, it was not the dear
+meerschaum); Hobbs the mother talking to her eldest daughter (a fine
+young woman, three months married, for love, to a poor man), upon the
+proper number of days that a leg of mutton (weight ten pounds) should
+be made to last. “Always, my dear, have large joints, they are much the
+most saving. Let me see--what a noise the boys do make! No, my love, the
+ball’s not here.”
+
+“Mamma, it is under your petticoats.”
+
+“La, child, how naughty you are!”
+
+“Holla, you sir! it’s my turn to go in now. Biddy, wait,--girls have no
+innings--girls only fag out.”
+
+“Bob, you cheat.”
+
+“Pa, Ned says I cheat.”
+
+“Very likely, my dear, you are to be a lawyer.”
+
+“Where was I, my dear?” resumed Mrs. Hobbs, resettling herself, and
+readjusting the invaded petticoats. “Oh, about the leg of mutton!--yes,
+large joints are the best--the second day a nice hash, with dumplings;
+the third, broil the bone--your husband is sure to like broiled
+bones!--and then keep the scraps for Saturday’s pie;--you know, my dear,
+your father and I were worse off than you when we began. But now we have
+everything that is handsome about us--nothing like management. Saturday
+pies are very nice things, and then you start clear with your joint on
+Sunday. A good wife like you should never neglect the Saturday’s pie!”
+
+“Yes,” said the bride, mournfully; “but Mr. Tiddy does not like pies.”
+
+“Not like pies! that very odd--Mr. Hobbs likes pies--perhaps you don’t
+have the crust made thick eno’. How somever, you can make it up to him
+with a pudding. A wife should always study her husband’s tastes--what is
+a man’s home without love? Still a husband ought not to be aggravating,
+and dislike pie on a Saturday!”
+
+“Holla! I say, ma, do you see that ‘ere gipsy? I shall go and have my
+fortune told.”
+
+“And I--and I!”
+
+“Lor, if there ben’t a tramper!” cried Mr. Hobbs, rising indignantly;
+“what can the parish be about?”
+
+The object of these latter remarks, filial and paternal, was a young
+woman in a worn, threadbare cloak, with her face pressed to the openwork
+of the gate, and looking wistfully--oh, how wistfully!--within. The
+children eagerly ran up to her, but they involuntarily slackened their
+steps when they drew near, for she was evidently not what they had taken
+her for. No gipsy hues darkened the pale, thin, delicate cheek--no gipsy
+leer lurked in those large blue and streaming eyes--no gipsy effrontery
+bronzed that candid and childish brow. As she thus pressed her
+countenance with convulsive eagerness against the cold bars, the
+young people caught the contagion of inexpressible and half-fearful
+sadness--they approached almost respectfully--“Do you want anything
+here?” said the eldest and boldest of the boys.
+
+“I--I--surely this is Dale Cottage?”
+
+“It was Dale Cottage, it is Hobbs’ Lodge now; can’t you read?” said
+the heir of the Hobbs’s honours, losing, in contempt at the girl’s
+ignorance, his first impression of sympathy.
+
+“And--and--Mr. Butler, is he gone too?”
+
+Poor child! she spoke as if the cottage was gone, not improved; the
+Ionic portico had no charm for her!
+
+“Butler!--no such person lives here. Pa, do you know where Mr. Butler
+lives?”
+
+Pa was now moving up to the place of conference the slow artillery of
+his fair round belly and portly calves. “Butler, no--I know nothing
+of such a name--no Mr. Butler lives here. Go along with you--ain’t you
+ashamed to beg?”
+
+“No Mr. Butler!” said the girl, gasping for breath, and clinging to the
+gate for support. “Are you sure, sir?”
+
+“Sure, yes!--what do you want with him?”
+
+“Oh, papa, she looks faint!” said one of the _girls_ deprecatingly--“do
+let her have something to eat; I’m sure she’s hungry.”
+
+Mr. Hobbs looked angry; he had often been taken in, and no rich man
+likes beggars. Generally speaking, the rich man is in the right. But
+then Mr. Hobbs turned to the suspected tramper’s sorrowful face and then
+to his fair pretty child--and his good angel whispered something to Mr.
+Hobbs’s heart--and he said, after a pause, “Heaven forbid that we should
+not feel for a poor fellow-creature not so well to do as ourselves. Come
+in, my lass, and have a morsel to eat.”
+
+The girl did not seem to hear him, and he repeated the invitation,
+approaching to unlock the gate.
+
+“No, sir,” said she, then; “no, I thank you. I could not come in now.
+I could not eat here. But tell me, sir, I implore you, can you not even
+guess where I may find Mr. Butler?”
+
+“Butler!” said Mrs. Hobbs, whom curiosity had now drawn to the spot. “I
+remember that was the name of the gentleman who hired the place, and was
+robbed.”
+
+“Robbed!” said Mr. Hobbs, falling back and relocking the gate--“and the
+new tea-pot just come home,” he muttered inly. “Come, be off, child--be
+off; we know nothing of your Mr. Butlers.”
+
+The young woman looked wildly in his face, cast a hurried glance over
+the altered spot, and then, with a kind of shiver, as if the wind had
+smitten her delicate form too rudely, she drew her cloak more closely
+round her shoulders, and without saying another word, moved away. The
+party looked after her as, with trembling steps, she passed down the
+road, and all felt that pang of shame which is common to the human heart
+at the sight of a distress it has not sought to soothe. But this feeling
+vanished at once from the breast of Mrs. and Mr. Hobbs, when they saw
+the girl stop where a turn of the road brought the gate before her eyes;
+and for the first time, they perceived, what the worn cloak had hitherto
+concealed, that the poor young thing bore an infant in her arms. She
+halted, she gazed fondly back. Even at that instant the despair of her
+eyes was visible; and then, as she pressed her lips to the infant’s
+brow, they heard a convulsive sob--they saw her turn away, and she was
+gone!
+
+“Well, I declare!” said Mrs. Hobbs.
+
+“News for the parish,” said Mr. Hobbs; “and she so young too!--what a
+shame!”
+
+“The girls about here are very bad nowadays, Jenny,” said the mother to
+the bride.
+
+“I see now why she wanted Mr. Butler,” quoth Hobbs, with a knowing
+wink--“the slut has come to swear!”
+
+And it was for this that Alice had supported her strength--her
+courage-during the sharp pangs of childbirth; during a severe and
+crushing illness, which for months after her confinement had stretched
+her upon a peasant’s bed (the object of the rude but kindly charity
+of an Irish shealing)--for this, day after day, she had whispered to
+herself, “I shall get well, and I will beg my way to the cottage, and
+find him there still, and put my little one into his arms, and all will
+be bright again;”--for this, as soon as she could walk without aid, had
+she set out on foot from the distant land; for this, almost with a dog’s
+instinct (for she knew not what way to turn--what county the cottage was
+placed in; she only knew the name of the neighbouring town; and that,
+populous as it was, sounded strange to the ears of those she asked; and
+she had often and often been directed wrong),--for this, I say, almost
+with a dog’s faithful instinct, had she, in cold and heat, in hunger and
+in thirst, tracked to her old master’s home her desolate and lonely way!
+And thrice had she over-fatigued herself--and thrice again been indebted
+to humble pity for a bed whereon to lay a feverish and broken frame. And
+once, too, her baby--her darling, her life of life, had been ill--had
+been near unto death, and she could not stir till the infant (it was
+a girl) was well again, and could smile in her face and crow. And
+thus many, many months had elapsed, since the day she set out on her
+pilgrimage, to that on which she found its goal. But never, save when
+the child was ill, had she desponded or abated heart and hope. She
+should see him again, and he would kiss her child. And now--no--I cannot
+paint the might of that stunning blow! She knew not, she dreamed not, of
+the kind precautions Maltravers had taken; and he had not sufficiently
+calculated on her thorough ignorance of the world. How could she divine
+that the magistrate, not a mile distant from her, could have told her
+all she sought to know? Could she but have met the gardener--or the old
+woman-servant--all would have been well! These last, indeed, she had
+the forethought to ask for. But the woman was dead, and the gardener
+had taken a strange service in some distant county. And so died her last
+gleam of hope. If one person who remembered the search of Maltravers had
+but met and recognised her! But she had been seen by so few--and now the
+bright, fresh girl was so sadly altered! Her race was not yet run, and
+many a sharp wind upon the mournful seas had the bark to brave before
+its haven was found at last.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+        “Patience and sorrow strove
+  Which should express her goodliest.”--SHAKESPEARE.
+
+ “Je _la_ plains, je _la_ blame, et je suis son appui.” *-VOLTAIRE.
+
+* I pity her, I blame her, and am her support.
+
+AND now Alice felt that she was on the wide world alone, with her
+child--no longer to be protected, but to protect; and after the first
+few days of agony, a new spirit, not indeed of hope, but of endurance,
+passed within her. Her solitary wanderings, with God her only guide, had
+tended greatly to elevate and confirm her character. She felt a strong
+reliance on His mysterious mercy--she felt, too, the responsibility of
+a mother. Thrown for so many months upon her own resources, even for the
+bread of life, her intellect was unconsciously sharpened, and a habit
+of patient fortitude had strengthened a nature originally clinging and
+femininely soft. She resolved to pass into some other county, for she
+could neither bear the thoughts that haunted the neighbourhood around
+her, nor think, without a loathing horror, of the possibility of her
+father’s return. Accordingly, one day, she renewed her wanderings--and
+after a week’s travel, arrived at a small village. Charity is so common
+in England, it so spontaneously springs up everywhere, like the good
+seed by the roadside, that she had rarely wanted the bare necessaries of
+existence. And her humble manner, and sweet, well-tuned voice, so free
+from the professional whine of mendicancy, had usually its charm for the
+sternest. So she generally obtained enough to buy bread and a night’s
+lodging, and, if sometimes she failed, she could bear hunger, and was
+not afraid of creeping into some shed, or, when by the sea-shore, even
+into some sheltering cavern. Her child throve too--for God tempers the
+wind to the shorn lamb! But now, so far as physical privation went, the
+worst was over.
+
+It so happened that as Alice was drawing herself wearily along to the
+entrance of the village which was to bound her day’s journey, she was
+met by a lady, past middle age, in whose countenance compassion was so
+visible, that Alice would not beg, for she had a strange delicacy or
+pride, or whatever it may be called, and rather begged of the stern than
+of those who looked kindly at her--she did not like to lower herself in
+the eyes of the last.
+
+The lady stopped.
+
+“My poor girl, where are you going?”
+
+“Where God pleases, madam,” said Alice.
+
+“Humph! and is that your own child?--you are almost a child yourself.”
+
+“It is mine, madam,” said Alice, gazing fondly at the infant; “it is my
+all!”
+
+The lady’s voice faltered. “Are you married?” she asked.
+
+“Married!--Oh, no, madam!” replied Alice, innocently, yet without
+blushing, for she never knew that she had done wrong in loving
+Maltravers.
+
+The lady drew gently back, but not in horror--no, in still deeper
+compassion; for that lady had virtue, and she knew that the faults of
+her sex are sufficiently punished to permit Virtue to pity them without
+a sin.
+
+“I am sorry for it,” she said, however, with greater gravity. “Are you
+travelling to seek the father?”
+
+“Ah, madam! I shall never see him again!” And Alice wept.
+
+“What!--he has abandoned you--so young, so beautiful!” added the lady to
+herself.
+
+“Abandoned me!--no, madam; but it is a long tale. Good evening--I thank
+you kindly for your pity.”
+
+The lady’s eyes ran over.
+
+“Stay,” said she; “tell me frankly where you are going, and what is your
+object.”
+
+“Alas! madam, I am going anywhere, for I have no home; but I wish to
+live, and work for my living, in order that my child may not want for
+anything. I wish I could maintain myself--he used to say I could.”
+
+“He!--your language and manner are not those of a peasant. What can you
+do? What do you know?”
+
+“Music, and work, and--and--”
+
+“Music!--this is strange! What were your parents?”
+
+Alice shuddered, and hid her face with her hands.
+
+The lady’s interest was now fairly warmed in her behalf.
+
+“She has sinned,” said she to herself; “but at that age, how can one be
+harsh? She must not be thrown upon the world to make sin a habit.
+Follow me,” she said, after a little pause; “and think you have found a
+friend.”
+
+The lady then turned from the high-road down a green lane which led to a
+park lodge. This lodge she entered; and after a short conversation with
+the inmate, beckoned to Alice to join her.
+
+“Janet,” said Alice’s new protector to a comely and pleasant-eyed
+woman, “this is the young person--you will show her and the infant every
+attention. I shall send down proper clothing for her to-morrow, and I
+shall then have thought what will be best for her future welfare.”
+
+With that the lady smiled benignly upon Alice, whose heart was too full
+to speak; and the door of the cottage closed upon her, and Alice thought
+the day had grown darker.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+ “Believe me, she has won me much to pity her.
+  Alas! her gentle nature was not made
+  To buffet with adversity.”--ROWE.
+
+ “Sober he was, and grave from early youth,
+  Mindful of forms, but more intent on truth;
+  In a light drab he uniformly dress’d,
+  And look serene th’ unruffled mind express’d.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+ “Yet might observers in his sparkling eye
+  Some observation, some acuteness spy
+  The friendly thought it keen, the treacherous deem’d it sly;
+  Yet not a crime could foe or friend detect,
+  His actions all were like his speech correct--
+  Chaste, sober, solemn, and devout they named
+  Him who was this, and not of this ashamed.”--CRABBE.
+
+ “I’ll on and sound this secret.”--BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.
+
+MRS. LESLIE, the lady introduced to the reader in the last chapter, was
+a woman of the firmest intellect combined (no unusual combination) with
+the softest heart. She learned Alice’s history with admiration and
+pity. The natural innocence and honesty of the young mother spoke so
+eloquently in her words and looks, that Mrs. Leslie, on hearing her
+tale, found much less to forgive than she had anticipated. Still she
+deemed it necessary to enlighten Alice as to the criminality of the
+connection she had formed. But here Alice was singularly dull--she
+listened in meek patience to Mrs. Leslie’s lecture; but it evidently
+made but slight impression on her. She had not yet seen enough of the
+social state to correct the first impressions of the natural: and all
+she could say in answer to Mrs. Leslie was: “It may be all very true,
+madam, but I have been so much better since I knew him!”
+
+But though Alice took humbly any censure upon herself, she would not
+hear a syllable insinuated against Maltravers. When, in a very natural
+indignation, Mrs. Leslie denounced him as a destroyer of innocence--for
+Mrs. Leslie could not learn all that extenuated his offence--Alice
+started up with flashing eyes and heaving heart, and would have hurried
+from the only shelter she had in the wide world--she would sooner have
+died--she would sooner even have seen her child die, than done that
+idol of her soul, who, in her eyes, stood alone on some pinnacle between
+earth and heaven, the wrong of hearing him reviled. With difficulty Mrs.
+Leslie could restrain, with still more difficulty could she pacify and
+soothe her; and for the girl’s petulance, which others might have deemed
+insolent or ungrateful, the woman-heart of Mrs. Leslie loved her all
+the better. The more she saw of Alice, and the more she comprehended her
+story and her character, the more was she lost in wonder at the romance
+of which this beautiful child had been the heroine, and the more
+perplexed she was as to Alice’s future prospects.
+
+At length, however, when she became acquainted with Alice’s musical
+acquirements, which were, indeed, of no common order, a light broke in
+upon her. Here was the source of her future independence. Maltravers, it
+will be remembered, was a musician of consummate skill as well as taste,
+and Alice’s natural talent for the art had advanced her, in the space
+of months, to a degree of perfection which it cost others--which it had
+cost even the quick Maltravers--years to obtain. But we learn so rapidly
+when our teachers are those we love: and it may be observed that the
+less our knowledge, the less perhaps our genius in other things, the
+more facile are our attainments in music, which is a very jealous
+mistress of the mind. Mrs. Leslie resolved to have her perfected in this
+art, and so enable her to become a teacher to others. In the town of
+C------, about thirty miles from Mrs. Leslie’s house, though in the same
+county, there was no inconsiderable circle of wealthy and intelligent
+persons; for it was a cathedral town, and the resident clergy drew
+around them a kind of provincial aristocracy. Here, as in most rural
+towns in England, music was much cultivated, both among the higher
+and middle classes. There were amateur concerts, and glee-clubs, and
+subscriptions for sacred music; and once every five years there was the
+great C------ Festival. In this town Mrs. Leslie established Alice: she
+placed her under the roof of a _ci-devant_ music-master, who, having
+retired from his profession, was no longer jealous of rivals, but who,
+by handsome terms, was induced to complete the education of Alice. It
+was an eligible and comfortable abode, and the music-master and his wife
+were a good-natured easy old couple.
+
+Three months of resolute and unceasing perseverance, combined with the
+singular ductility and native gifts of Alice, sufficed to render her
+the most promising pupil the good musician had ever accomplished; and in
+three months more, introduced by Mrs. Leslie to many of the families in
+the place, Alice was established in a home of her own; and, what with
+regular lessons, and occasional assistance at musical parties, she
+was fairly earning what her tutor reasonably pronounced to be “a very
+genteel independence.”
+
+Now, in these arrangements (for we must here go back a little), there
+had been one gigantic difficulty of conscience in one party, of feeling
+in another, to surmount. Mrs. Leslie saw at once that unless Alice’s
+misfortune was concealed, all the virtues and all the talents in the
+world could not enable her to retrace the one false step. Mrs. Leslie
+was a woman of habitual truth and strict rectitude, and she was sorely
+perplexed between the propriety of candour and its cruelty. She felt
+unequal to take the responsibility of action on herself; and, after much
+meditation, she resolved to confide her scruples to one who, of all whom
+she knew, possessed the highest character for moral worth and religious
+sanctity. This gentleman, lately a widower, lived at the outskirts
+of the town selected for Alice’s future residence, and at that time
+happened to be on a visit in Mrs. Leslie’s neighbourhood. He was an
+opulent man, a banker; he had once represented the town in parliament,
+and retiring, from disinclination to the late hours and onerous fatigues
+even of an unreformed House of Commons, he still possessed an influence
+to return one, if not both, of the members for the city of C------. And
+that influence was always exerted so as best to secure his own interest
+with the powers that be, and advance certain objects of ambition (for
+he was both an ostentatious and ambitious man in his own way), which
+he felt he might more easily obtain by proxy than by his own votes and
+voice in parliament--an atmosphere in which his light did not shine.
+And it was with a wonderful address that the banker contrived at once to
+support the government, and yet, by the frequent expression of
+liberal opinions, to conciliate the Whigs and the Dissenters of his
+neighbourhood. Parties, political and sectarian, were not then so
+irreconcilable as they are now. In the whole county there was no one
+so respected as this eminent person, and yet he possessed no shining
+talents, though a laborious and energetic man of business. It was solely
+and wholly the force of moral character which gave him his position in
+society. He felt this; he was sensitively proud of it; he was painfully
+anxious not to lose an atom of a distinction that required to be
+vigilantly secured. He was a very _remarkable_, yet not (perhaps could
+we penetrate all hearts), a very _uncommon_ character--this banker!
+He had risen from, comparatively speaking, a low origin and humble
+fortunes, and entirely by the scrupulous and sedate propriety of his
+outward conduct. With such a propriety he, therefore, inseparably
+connected every notion of worldly prosperity and honour. Thus, though
+far from a bad man, he was forced into being something of a hypocrite.
+Every year he had grown more starch and more saintly. He was
+conscience-keeper to the whole town; and it is astonishing how many
+persons hardly dared to make a will or subscribe to a charity without
+his advice. As he was a shrewd man of this world, as well as an
+accredited guide to the next, his advice was precisely of a nature
+to reconcile the Conscience and the Interest; and he was a kind of
+negotiator in the reciprocal diplomacy of earth and heaven. But our
+banker was really a charitable man, and a benevolent man, and a sincere
+believer. How, then, was he a hypocrite? Simply because he professed to
+be far _more_ charitable, _more_ benevolent, and _more_ pious than he
+really was. His reputation had now arrived to that degree of immaculate
+polish that the smallest breath, which would not have tarnished the
+character of another man, would have fixed an indelible stain upon his.
+As he affected to be more strict than the churchman, and was a great
+oracle with all who regarded churchmen as lukewarm, so his conduct was
+narrowly watched by all the clergy of the orthodox cathedral, good men,
+doubtless, but not affecting to be saints, who were jealous at being so
+luminously outshone by a layman and an authority of the sectarians. On
+the other hand, the intense homage and almost worship he received from
+his followers kept his goodness upon a stretch, if not beyond all human
+power, certainly beyond his own. For “admiration” (as it is well said
+somewhere) “is a kind of superstition which expects miracles.” From
+nature this gentleman had received an inordinate share of animal
+propensities: he had strong passions, he was by temperament a
+sensualist. He loved good eating and good wine--he loved women. The
+two former blessings of the carnal life are not incompatible with
+canonisation; but St. Anthony has shown that women, however angelic, are
+not precisely that order of angels that saints may safely commune with.
+If, therefore, he ever yielded to temptations of a sexual nature, it was
+with profound secrecy and caution; nor did his right hand know what his
+left hand did.
+
+This gentleman had married a woman much older than himself, but her
+fortune had been one of the necessary stepping-stones in his career. His
+exemplary conduct towards this lady, ugly as well as old, had done much
+towards increasing the odour of his sanctity. She died of an ague, and
+the widower did not shock probabilities by affecting too severe a grief.
+
+“The Lord’s will be done!” said he; “she was a good woman, but we should
+not set our affections too much upon His perishable creatures!”
+
+This was all he was ever heard to say on the matter. He took an elderly
+gentlewoman, distantly related to him, to manage his house, and sit at
+the head of the table; and it was thought not impossible, though the
+widower was past fifty, that he might marry again.
+
+Such was the gentleman called in by Mrs. Leslie, who, of the same
+religious opinions, had long known and revered him, to decide the
+affairs of Alice and of Conscience.
+
+As this man exercised no slight or fugitive influence over Alice
+Darvil’s destinies, his counsels on the point in discussion ought to be
+fairly related.
+
+“And now,” said Mrs. Leslie, concluding the history, “you will perceive,
+my dear sir, that this poor young creature has been less culpable than
+she appears. From the extraordinary proficiency she has made in music,
+in a time that, by her own account, seems incredibly short; I
+should suspect her unprincipled betrayer must have been an artist--a
+professional man. It is just possible that they may meet again, and (as
+the ranks between them cannot be so very disproportionate) that he may
+marry her. I am sure that he could not do a better or a wiser thing, for
+she loves him too fondly, despite her wrongs. Under these circumstances,
+would it be a--a--a culpable disguise of truth to represent her as a
+married woman--separated from her husband--and give her the name of her
+seducer? Without such a precaution you will see, sir, that all hope
+of settling her reputably in life--all chance of procuring her any
+creditable independence, is out of the question. Such is my dilemma.
+What is your advice?--palatable or not, I shall abide by it.”
+
+The banker’s grave and saturnine countenance exhibited a slight degree
+of embarrassment at the case submitted to him. He began brushing away,
+with the cuff of his black coat, some atoms of dust that had settled
+on his drab small-clothes; and, after a slight pause, he replied, “Why,
+really, dear madam, the question is one of much delicacy--I doubt if
+men could be good judges upon it; your sex’s tact and instinct on these
+matters are better--much better than our sagacity. There is much in the
+dictates of your own heart; for to those who are in the grace of the
+Lord He vouchsafes to communicate His pleasure by spiritual hints and
+inward suggestions!”
+
+“If so, my dear sir, the matter is decided; for my heart whispers me
+that this slight deviation from truth would be a less culpable offence
+than turning so young and, I had almost said, so innocent a creature
+adrift upon the world. I may take your opinion as my sanction.”
+
+“Why, really, I can scarcely say so much as that,” said the banker, with
+a slight smile. “A deviation from truth cannot be incurred without some
+forfeiture of strict duty.”
+
+“Not in any case? Alas, I was afraid so!” said Mrs. Leslie,
+despondingly.
+
+“In any case! Oh, there _may_ be cases! But had I not better see the
+young woman, and ascertain that your benevolent heart has not deceived
+you?”
+
+“I wish you would,” said Mrs. Leslie; “she is now in the house. I will
+ring for her.”
+
+“Should we not be alone?”
+
+“Certainly; I will leave you together.”
+
+Alice was sent for, and appeared.
+
+“This pious gentleman,” said Mrs. Leslie, “will confer with you for a
+few moments, my child. Do not be afraid; he is the best of men.” With
+these words of encouragement the good lady vanished, and Alice saw
+before her a tall dark man, with a head bald in front, yet larger behind
+than before, with spectacles upon a pair of shrewd, penetrating eyes,
+and an outline of countenance that showed he must have been handsome in
+earlier manhood.
+
+“My young friend,” said the banker, seating himself, after a deliberate
+survey of the fair countenance that blushed beneath his gaze, “Mrs.
+Leslie and myself have been conferring upon your temporal welfare. You
+have been unfortunate, my child.”
+
+“Ah--yes.”
+
+“Well, well, you are very young; we must not be too severe upon youth.
+You will never do so again?”
+
+“Do what, please you, sir?”
+
+“What! Humph! I mean that you will be more rigid, more circumspect. Men
+are deceitful; you must be on your guard against them. You are handsome,
+child, very handsome--more’s the pity.” And the banker took Alice’s hand
+and pressed it with great unction. Alice looked at him gravely and drew
+the hand away instinctively.
+
+The banker lowered his spectacles, and gazed at her without their aid;
+his eyes were still fine and expressive. “What is your name?” he asked.
+
+“Alice--Alice Darvil, sir.”
+
+“Well, Alice, we have been considering what is best for you. You wish to
+earn your own livelihood, and perhaps marry some honest man hereafter.”
+
+“Marry, sir--never!” said Alice, with great earnestness, her eyes
+filling with tears.
+
+“And why?”
+
+“Because I shall never see _him_ on earth, and they do not marry in
+heaven, sir.”
+
+The banker was moved, for he was not worse than his neighbours, though
+trying to make them believe he was so much better.
+
+“Well, time enough to talk of that; but in the meanwhile you would
+support yourself?”
+
+“Yes, sir. His child ought to be a burden to none--nor I either. I once
+wished to die, but then who would love my little one? Now I wish to
+live.”
+
+“But what mode of livelihood would you prefer? Would you go into a
+family, in some capacity?--not that of a servant--you are too delicate
+for that.”
+
+“Oh, no--no!”
+
+“But, again, why?” asked the banker, soothingly, yet surprised.
+
+“Because,” said Alice, almost solemnly, “there are some hours when I
+feel I must be alone. I sometimes think I am not all right _here_,”
+ and she touched her forehead. “They called me an idiot before I knew
+_him_!--No, I could not live with others, for I can only cry when nobody
+but my child is with me.”
+
+This was said with such unconscious, and therefore with such pathetic,
+simplicity, that the banker was sensibly affected. He rose, stirred the
+fire, resettled himself, and, after a pause, said emphatically: “Alice,
+I will be your friend. Let me believe you will deserve it.”
+
+Alice bent her graceful head, and seeing that he had sunk into an
+abstracted silence, she thought it time for her to withdraw.
+
+“She is, indeed, beautiful,” said the banker, almost aloud, when he was
+alone; “and the old lady is right--she is as innocent as if she had not
+fallen. I wonder--” Here he stopped short, and walked to the glass over
+the mantelpiece, where he was still gazing on his own features, when
+Mrs. Leslie returned.
+
+“Well, sir,” said she, a little surprised at this seeming vanity in so
+pious a man.
+
+The banker started. “Madam, I honour your penetration as much as your
+charity; I think that there is so much to be feared in letting all
+the world know this young female’s past error, that, though I dare not
+advise, I cannot blame, your concealment of it.”
+
+“But, sir, your words have sunk deep into my thoughts; you said every
+deviation from truth was a forfeiture of duty.”
+
+“Certainly; but there are some exceptions. The world is a bad world, we
+are born in sin; and the children of wrath. We do not tell infants all
+the truth, when they ask us questions, the proper answers of which would
+mislead, not enlighten them. In some things the whole world are infants.
+The very science of government is the science of concealing truth--so
+is the system of trade. We could not blame the tradesman for not telling
+the public that if all his debts were called in he would be a bankrupt.”
+
+“And he may marry her after all--this Mr. Butler.”
+
+“Heaven forbid--the villain!--Well, madam, I will see to this poor young
+thing--she shall not want a guide.”
+
+“Heaven reward you! How wicked some people are to call you severe!”
+
+“I can bear _that_ blame with a meek temper, madam. Good day.”
+
+“Good day. You will remember how strictly confidential has been our
+conversation.”
+
+“Not a breath shall transpire. I will send you some tracts to-morrow--so
+comforting. Heaven bless you!”
+
+This difficulty smoothed, Mrs. Leslie, to her astonishment, found that
+she had another to contend with in Alice herself. For, first, Alice
+conceived that to change her name and keep her secret was to confess
+that she ought to be ashamed, rather than proud, of her love to Ernest,
+and she thought that so ungrateful to him!--and, secondly, to take his
+name, to pass for his wife--what presumption--he would certainly have a
+right to be offended! At these scruples Mrs. Leslie well-nigh lost all
+patience; and the banker, to his own surprise, was again called in. We
+have said that he was an experienced and skilful adviser, which implies
+the faculty of persuasion. He soon saw the handle by which Alice’s
+obstinacy might always be moved--her little girl’s welfare. He put this
+so forcibly before her eyes; he represented the child’s future fate as
+resting so much, not only on her own good conduct, but on her outward
+respectability, that he prevailed upon her at last; and, perhaps, one
+argument that he incidentally used, had as much effect on her as
+the rest. “This Mr. Butler, if yet in England, may pass through our
+town--may visit amongst us--may hear you spoken of by a name similar to
+his own, and curiosity would thus induce him to seek you. Take his name,
+and you will always bear an honourable index to your mutual discovery
+and recognition. Besides, when you are respectable, honoured, and
+earning an independence, he may not be too proud to marry you. But take
+your own name, avow your own history, and not only will your child be
+an outcast, yourself a beggar, or, at best, a menial dependant, but
+you lose every hope of recovering the object of your too-devoted
+attachment.”
+
+Thus Alice was convinced. From that time she became close and
+reserved in her communications. Mrs. Leslie had wisely selected a town
+sufficiently remote from her own abode to preclude any revelations of
+her domestics; and, as Mrs. Butler, Alice attracted universal sympathy
+and respect from the exercise of her talents, the modest sweetness of
+her manners, the unblemished propriety of her conduct. Somehow or other,
+no sooner did she learn the philosophy of concealment than she made a
+great leap in knowledge of the world. And, though flattered and courted
+by the young loungers of C------, she steered her course with so much
+address that she was never persecuted. For there are few men in the
+world who make advances where there is no encouragement.
+
+The banker observed her conduct with silent vigilance. He met her often,
+he visited her often. He was intimate at houses where she attended to
+teach or perform. He lent her good books--he advised her--he preached
+to her. Alice began to look up to him--to like him--to consider him as a
+village girl in Catholic countries may consider a benevolent and kindly
+priest. And he--what was his object?--at that time it is impossible to
+guess:--he became thoughtful and abstracted.
+
+One day an old maid and an old clergyman met in the High Street of
+C------.
+
+“And how do you do, ma’am?” said the clergyman; “how is the rheumatism?”
+
+“Better, thank you, sir. Any news?”
+
+The clergyman smiled, and something hovered on his lips, which he
+suppressed.
+
+“Were you,” the old maid resumed, “at Mrs. Macnab’s last night? Charming
+music?”
+
+“Charming! How pretty that Mrs. Butler is! and how humble! Knows her
+station--so unlike professional people.”
+
+“Yes, indeed!--What attention a certain banker paid her!”
+
+“He! he! he! yes; he is very fatherly--very!”
+
+“Perhaps he will marry again; he is always talking of the holy state
+of matrimony--a holy state it may be--but Heaven knows, his wife, poor
+woman, did not make it a pleasant one.”
+
+“There may be more causes for that than we guess of,” said the
+clergyman, mysteriously. “I would not be uncharitable, but--”
+
+“But what?”
+
+“Oh, when he was young, our great man was not so correct, I fancy, as he
+is now.”
+
+“So I have heard it whispered; but nothing against him was ever known.”
+
+“Hem--it is very odd!”
+
+“What’s very odd?”
+
+“Why, but it’s a secret--I dare say it’s all very right.”
+
+“Oh, I sha’n’t say a word. Are you going to the cathedral?--don’t let me
+keep you standing. Now, pray proceed!”
+
+“Well, then, yesterday I was doing duty in a village more than twenty
+miles hence, and I loitered in the village to take an early dinner; and,
+afterwards, while my horse was feeding, I strolled down the green.”
+
+“Well--well?”
+
+“And I saw a gentleman muffled carefully up, with his hat slouched over
+his face, at the door of a cottage, with a little child in his arms,
+and he kissed it more fondly than, be we ever so good, we generally kiss
+other people’s children; and then he gave it to a peasant woman standing
+near him, and mounted his horse, which was tied to the gate, and trotted
+past me; and who do you think this was?”
+
+“Patience me--I can’t guess!”
+
+“Why, our saintly banker. I bowed to him, and I assure you he turned as
+red, ma’am, as your waistband.”
+
+“My!”
+
+“I just turned into the cottage when he was out of sight, for I was
+thirsty, and asked for a glass of water, and I saw the child. I declare
+I would not be uncharitable, but I thought it monstrous like--you know
+whom!”
+
+“Gracious! you don’t say--”
+
+“I asked the woman ‘if it was hers?’ and she said ‘No,’ but was very
+short.”
+
+“Dear me, I must find this out! What is the name of the village?”
+
+“Covedale.”
+
+“Oh, I know--I know.”
+
+“Not a word of this; I dare say there is nothing in it. But I am not
+much in favour of your new lights.”
+
+“Nor I neither. What better than the good old Church of England?”
+
+“Madam, your sentiments do you honour; you’ll be sure not to say
+anything of our little mystery.”
+
+“Not a syllable.”
+
+Two days after this three old maids made an excursion to the village of
+Covedale, and lo! the cottage in question was shut up--the woman and the
+child were gone. The people in the village knew nothing about them--had
+seen nothing particular in the woman or child--had always supposed
+them mother and daughter; and the gentleman identified by the clerical
+inquisitor with the banker had never but once been observed in the
+place.
+
+“The vile old parson,” said the eldest of the old maids, “to take away
+so good a man’s character!--and the fly will cost one pound two, with
+the baiting!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+ “In this disposition was I, when looking out of my window one
+  day to take the air, I perceived a kind of peasant who looked
+  at me very attentively.”--GIL BLAS.
+
+A SUMMER’S evening in a retired country town has something melancholy
+in it. You have the streets of a metropolis without their animated
+bustle--you have the stillness of the country without its birds and
+flowers. The reader will please to bring before him a quiet street in
+the quiet country town of C------, in a quiet evening in quiet June; the
+picture is not mirthful--two young dogs are playing in the street, one
+old dog is watching by a newly-painted door. A few ladies of middle age
+move noiselessly along the pavement, returning home to tea: they wear
+white muslin dresses, green spencers a little faded, straw poke bonnets
+with green or coffee-coloured gauze veils. By twos and threes they have
+disappeared within the thresholds of small neat houses, with little
+railings, inclosing little green plots. Threshold, house, railing, and
+plot, each as like to the other as are those small commodities called
+“nest-tables,” which, “even as a broken mirror multiplies,” summon to
+the bewildered eye countless iterations of one four-legged individual.
+Paradise Place was a set of nest houses.
+
+A cow had passed through the streets with a milkwoman behind; two young
+and gay shopmen “looking after the gals,” had reconnoitred the street,
+and vanished in despair. The twilight advanced--but gently; and though a
+star or two were up, the air was still clear. At the open window of one
+of the tenements in this street sat Alice Darvil. She had been working
+(that pretty excuse to women for thinking), and as the thoughts grew
+upon her, and the evening waned, the work had fallen upon her knee,
+and her hands dropped mechanically on her lap. Her profile was turned
+towards the street; but without moving her head or changing her
+attitude, her eyes glanced from time to time to her little girl, who
+nestled on the ground beside her, tired with play; and wondering,
+perhaps, why she was not already in bed, seemed as tranquil as the young
+mother herself. And sometimes Alice’s eyes filled with tears--and
+then she sighed, as if to sigh the tears away. But poor Alice, if she
+grieved, hers was now a silent and a patient grief.
+
+The street was deserted of all other passengers, when a man passed along
+the pavement on the side opposite to Alice’s house. His garb was rude
+and homely, between that of a labourer and a farmer; but still there
+was an affectation of tawdry show about the bright scarlet handkerchief,
+tied, in a sailor or smuggler fashion, round the sinewy throat; the
+hat was set jauntily on one side, and, dangling many an inch from
+the gaily-striped waistcoat, glittered a watch-chain and seals, which
+appeared suspiciously out of character with the rest of his attire.
+The passenger was covered with dust; and as the street was in a suburb
+communicating with the high-road, and formed one of the entrances
+into the town, he had probably, after long day’s journey, reached
+his evening’s destination. The looks of this stranger wore anxious,
+restless, and perturbed. In his gait and swagger there was the
+recklessness of the professional blackguard; but in his vigilant,
+prying, suspicious eyes there was a hang-dog expression of apprehension
+and fear. He seemed a man upon whom Crime had set its significant
+mark--and who saw a purse with one eye and a gibbet with the other.
+Alice did not note the stranger, until she herself had attracted and
+centred all his attention. He halted abruptly as he caught a view of her
+face--shaded his eyes with his hands as if to gaze more intently--and
+at length burst into an exclamation of surprise and pleasure. At
+that instant Alice turned, and her gaze met that of the stranger. The
+fascination of the basilisk can scarcely more stun and paralyse its
+victim than the look of this stranger charmed, with the appalling
+glamoury of horror, the eye and soul of Alice Darvil. Her face became
+suddenly locked and rigid, her lips as white as marble, her eyes almost
+started from their sockets--she pressed her hands convulsively together,
+and shuddered--but still she did not move. The man nodded, and grinned,
+and then, deliberately crossing the street, gained the door, and knocked
+loudly. Still Alice did not stir--her senses seemed to have forsaken
+her. Presently the stranger’s loud, rough voice was heard below, in
+answer to the accents of the solitary woman-servant whom Alice kept in
+her employ; and his strong, heavy tread made the slight staircase creak
+and tremble. Then Alice rose as by an instinct, caught her child in her
+arms, and stood erect and motionless facing the door. It opened--and the
+FATHER and DAUGHTER were once more face to face within the same walls.
+
+“Well, Alley, how are you, my blowen?--glad to see your old dad again,
+I’ll be sworn. No ceremony, sit down. Ha, ha! snug here--very snug--we
+shall live together charmingly. Trade on your own account--eh?
+sly!--well, can’t desert your poor old father. Let’s have something to
+eat and drink.”
+
+So saying, Darvil threw himself at length upon the neat, prim little
+chintz sofa, with the air of a man resolved to make himself perfectly at
+home.
+
+Alice gazed, and trembled violently, but still said nothing--the power
+of voice had indeed left her.
+
+“Come, why don’t you stir your stumps? I suppose I must wait on
+myself--fine manners!--But, ho, ho--a bell, by gosh--mighty grand--never
+mind--I am used to call for my own wants.”
+
+A hearty tug at the frail bell-rope sent a shrill alarum half-way
+through the long lath-and-plaster row of Paradise Place, and left the
+instrument of the sound in the hand of its creator.
+
+Up came the maid-servant, a formal old woman, most respectable.
+
+“Hark ye, old girl!” said Darvil; “bring up the best you have to
+eat--not particular--let there be plenty. And I say--a bottle of brandy.
+Come, don’t stand there staring like a stuck pig. Budge! Hell and
+furies! don’t you hear me?”
+
+The servant retreated, as if a pistol had been put to her head, and
+Darvil, laughing loud, threw himself again upon the sofa. Alice looked
+at him, and, still without saying a word, glided from the room--her
+child in her arms. She hurried down-stairs, and in the hall met her
+servant. The latter, who was much attached to her mistress, was alarmed
+to see her about to leave the house.
+
+“Why, marm, where be you going? Dear heart, you have no bonnet on! What
+is the matter? Who is this?”
+
+“Oh!” cried Alice, in agony; “what shall I do?--where shall I fly?” The
+door above opened. Alice heard, started, and the next moment was in
+the street. She ran on breathlessly, and like one insane. Her mind was,
+indeed, for the time, gone; and had a river flowed before her way, she
+would have plunged into an escape from a world that seemed too narrow to
+hold a father and his child.
+
+But just as she turned the corner of a street that led into the more
+public thoroughfares, she felt her arm grasped, and a voice called out
+her name in surprised and startled accents.
+
+“Heavens, Mrs. Butler! Alice! What do I see? What is the matter?”
+
+“Oh, sir, save me!--you are a good man--a great man--save me--he is
+returned!”
+
+“He! who? Mr. Butler?” said the banker (for that gentleman it was) in a
+changed and trembling voice.
+
+“No, no--ah, not he!--I did not say _he_--I said my father--my,
+my--ah--look behind--look behind--is he coming?”
+
+“Calm yourself, my dear young friend--no one is near. I will go and
+reason with your father. No one shall harm you--I will protect you. Go
+back--go back, I will follow--we must not be seen together.” And the
+tall banker seemed trying to shrink into a nutshell.
+
+“No, no,” said Alice, growing yet paler, “I cannot go back.”
+
+“Well, then, just follow me to the door--your servant shall get you your
+bonnet, and accompany you to my house, where you can wait till I
+return. Meanwhile I will see your father, and rid you, I trust, of his
+presence.”
+
+The banker, who spoke in a very hurried and even impatient voice, waited
+for no reply, but took his way to Alice’s house. Alice herself did not
+follow, but remained in the very place where she was left, till joined
+by her servant, who then conducted her to the rich man’s residence...
+But Alice’s mind had not recovered its shock, and her thoughts wandered
+alarmingly.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+ “_Miramont._--Do they chafe roundly?
+  _Andrew._--As they were rubbed with soap, sir,
+  And now they swear aloud, now calm again
+  Like a ring of bells, whose sound the wind still utters,
+  And then they sit in council what to do,
+  And then they jar again what shall be done?”
+    BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.
+
+OH! what a picture of human nature it was when the banker and the
+vagabond sat together in that little drawing-room, facing each
+other,--one in the armchair, one on the sofa! Darvil was still employed
+on some cold meat, and was making wry faces at the very indifferent
+brandy which he had frightened the formal old servant into buying at
+the nearest public-house; and opposite sat the respectable--highly
+respectable man of forms and ceremonies, of decencies and quackeries,
+gazing gravely upon this low, daredevil ruffian:--the well-to-do
+hypocrite--the penniless villain;--the man who had everything to
+lose--the man who had nothing in the wide world but his own mischievous,
+rascally life, a gold watch, chain and seals, which he had stolen the
+day before, and thirteen shillings and threepence halfpenny in his left
+breeches pocket!
+
+The man of wealth was by no means well acquainted with the nature of
+the beast before him. He had heard from Mrs. Leslie (as we remember)
+the outline of Alice’s history, and ascertained that their joint
+_protegee’s_ father was a great blackguard; but he expected to find Mr.
+Darvil a mere dull, brutish villain--a peasant-ruffian--a blunt serf,
+without brains, or their substitute, effrontery. But Luke Darvil was a
+clever, half-educated fellow: he did not sin from ignorance, but had wit
+enough to have bad principles, and he was as impudent as if he had lived
+all his life in the best society. He was not frightened at the banker’s
+drab breeches and imposing air--not he! The Duke of Wellington would not
+have frightened Luke Darvil, unless his grace had had the constables for
+his _aides-de-camp_.
+
+The banker, to use a homely phrase, was “taken aback.”
+
+“Look you here, Mr. What’s-your-name!” said Darvil, swallowing a glass
+of the raw alcohol as if it had been water--“look you now--you can’t
+humbug me. What the devil do you care about my daughter’s respectability
+or comfort, or anything else, grave old dog as you are! It is my
+daughter herself you are licking your brown old chaps at!--and, ‘faith,
+my Alley is a very pretty girl--very--but queer as moonshine. You’ll
+drive a much better bargain with me than with her.”
+
+The banker coloured scarlet--he bit his lips and measured his companion
+from head to foot (while the latter lolled on the sofa), as if he were
+meditating the possibility of kicking him down-stairs. But Luke Darvil
+would have thrashed the banker and all his clerks into the bargain. His
+frame was like a trunk of thews and muscles, packed up by that careful
+dame, Nature, as tightly as possible; and a prizefighter would have
+thought twice before he had entered the ring against so awkward a
+customer. The banker was a man prudent to a fault, and he pushed his
+chair six inches back, as he concluded his survey.
+
+“Sir,” then said he, very quietly, “do not let us misunderstand each
+other. Your daughter is safe from your control--if you molest her, the
+law will protect--”
+
+“She is not of age,” said Darvil. “Your health, old boy.”
+
+“Whether she is of age or not,” returned the banker, unheeding the
+courtesy conveyed in the last sentence, “I do not care three straws--I
+know enough of the law to know that if she have rich friends in this
+town, and you have none, she will be protected and you will go to the
+treadmill.”
+
+“That is spoken like a sensible man,” said Darvil, for the first time
+with a show of respect in his manner; “you now take a practical view of
+matters, as we used to say at the spouting-club.”
+
+“If I were in your situation, Mr. Darvil, I tell you what I would do.
+I would leave my daughter and this town to-morrow morning, and I would
+promise never to return, and never to molest her, on condition she
+allowed me a certain sum from her earnings, paid quarterly.”
+
+“And if I preferred living with her?”
+
+“In that case, I, as a magistrate of this town, would have you sent away
+as a vagrant, or apprehended--”
+
+“Ha!”
+
+“Apprehended on suspicion of stealing that gold chain and seals which
+you wear so ostentatiously.”
+
+“By goles, but you’re a clever fellow,” said Darvil, involuntarily; “you
+know human natur.”
+
+The banker smiled: strange to say, he was pleased with the compliment.
+
+“But,” resumed Darvil, helping himself to another slice of beef, “you
+are in the wrong box--planted in Queer Street, as _we_ say in London;
+for if you care a d--n about my daughter’s respectability, you will
+never muzzle her father on suspicion of theft--and so there’s tit for
+tat, my old gentleman!”
+
+“I shall deny that you are her father, Mr. Darvil; and I think you will
+find it hard to prove the fact in any town where I am a magistrate.”
+
+“By goles, what a good prig you would have made! You are as sharp as a
+gimlet. Surely you were brought up at the Old Bailey!”
+
+“Mr. Darvil, be ruled. You seem a man not deaf to reason, and I ask
+you whether, in any town in this country, a poor man in suspicious
+circumstances can do anything against a rich man whose character is
+established? Perhaps you are right in the main: I have nothing to do
+with that. But I tell you that you shall quit this house in half an
+hour--that you shall never enter it again but at your peril; and if you
+do--within ten minutes from that time you shall be in the town gaol. It
+is no longer a contest between you and your defenceless daughter; it is
+a contest between--”
+
+“A tramper in fustian, and a gemman as drives a coach,” interrupted
+Darvil, laughing bitterly, yet heartily. “Good--good!”
+
+The banker rose. “I think you have made a very clever definition,” said
+he. “Half an hour--you recollect--good evening.”
+
+“Stay,” said Darvil; “you are the first man I have seen for many a year
+that I can take a fancy to. Sit down--sit down, I say, and talk a bit,
+and we shall come to terms soon, I dare say;--that’s right. Lord! how
+I should like to have you on the roadside instead of within these four
+gimcrack walls. Ha! ha! the argufying would be all in my favour then.”
+
+The banker was not a brave man, and his colour changed slightly at
+the intimation of this obliging wish. Darvil eyed him grimly and
+chucklingly.
+
+The rich man resumed: “That may or may not be, Mr. Darvil, according as
+I might happen or not to have pistols about me. But to the point. Quit
+this house without further debate, without noise, without mentioning to
+any one else your claim upon its owner--”
+
+“Well, and the return?”
+
+“Ten guineas now, and the same sum quarterly, as long as the young lady
+lives in this town, and you never persecute her by word or letter.”
+
+“That is forty guineas a year. I can’t live upon it.”
+
+“You will cost less in the House of Correction, Mr. Darvil.”
+
+“Come, make it a hundred: Alley is cheap at that.”
+
+“Not a farthing more,” said the banker, buttoning up his breeches
+pockets with a determined air.
+
+“Well, out with the shiners.”
+
+“Do you promise or not?”
+
+“I promise.”
+
+“There are your ten guineas. If in half an hour you are not gone--why,
+then--”
+
+“Then?”
+
+“Why, then you have robbed me of ten guineas, and must take the usual
+consequences of robbery.”
+
+Darvil started to his feet--his eyes glared--he grasped the
+carving-knife before him.
+
+“You are a bold fellow,” said the banker, quietly; “but it won’t do. It
+is not worth your while to murder me; and I am a man sure to be missed.”
+
+Darvil sank down, sullen and foiled. The respectable man was more than a
+match for the villain.
+
+“Had you been as poor as I,--Gad! what a rogue you would have been!”
+
+“I think not,” said the banker; “I believe roguery to be a very bad
+policy. Perhaps once I _was_ almost as poor as you are, but I never
+turned rogue.”
+
+“You never were in my circumstances,” returned Darvil, gloomily. “I
+was a gentleman’s son. Come, you shall hear my story. My father was
+well-born, but married a maid-servant when he was at college; his family
+disowned him, and left him to starve. He died in the struggle against
+a poverty he was not brought up to, and my dam went into service again;
+became housekeeper to an old bachelor--sent me to school--but mother
+had a family by the old bachelor, and I was taken from school and put to
+trade. All hated me--for I was ugly; damn them! Mother cut me--I wanted
+money--robbed the old bachelor--was sent to gaol, and learned there a
+lesson or two how to rob better in future. Mother died,--I was adrift on
+the world. The world was my foe--could not make it up with the world,
+so we went to war;--you understand, old boy? Married a poor woman and
+pretty;--wife made me jealous--had learned to suspect every one. Alice
+born--did not believe her mine: not like me--perhaps a gentleman’s
+child. I hate--I loathe gentlemen. Got drunk one night--kicked my wife
+in the stomach three weeks after her confinement. Wife died--tried
+for my life--got off. Went to another county--having had a sort of
+education, and being sharp eno’, got work as a mechanic. Hated work just
+as I hated gentlemen--for was I not by blood a gentleman? There was the
+curse. Alice grew up; never looked on her as my flesh and blood. Her
+mother was a w----! Why should not _she_ be one? There, that’s
+enough. Plenty of excuse, I think, for all I have ever done. Curse the
+world--curse the rich--curse the handsome--curse--curse all!”
+
+“You have been a very foolish man,” said the banker; “and seem to me to
+have had very good cards, if you had known how to play them. However,
+that is your lookout. It is not yet too late to repent; age is creeping
+on you.--Man, there is another world.”
+
+The banker said the last words with a tone of solemn and even dignified
+adjuration.
+
+“You think so--do you?” said Darvil, staring at him.
+
+“From my soul I do.”
+
+“Then you are not the sensible man I took you for,” replied Darvil,
+drily; “and I should like to talk to you on that subject.”
+
+But our Dives, however sincere a believer, was by no means one
+
+        “At whose control
+  Despair and anguish fled the struggling soul.”
+
+He had words of comfort for the pious, but he had none for the
+sceptic--he could soothe, but he could not convert. It was not in his
+way; besides, he saw no credit in making a convert of Luke Darvil.
+Accordingly, he again rose with some quickness, and said:
+
+“No, sir; that is useless, I fear, and I have no time to spare; and so
+once more good night to you.”
+
+“But you have not arranged where my allowance is to be sent.”
+
+“Ah! true; I will guarantee it. You will find my name sufficient
+security.”
+
+“At least, it is the best I can get,” returned Darvil, carelessly; “and
+after all, it is not a bad chance day’s work. But I’m sure I can’t say
+where the money shall be sent. I don’t know a man who would not grab
+it.”
+
+“Very well, then--the best thing (I speak as a man of business) will be
+to draw on me for ten guineas quarterly. Wherever you are staying,
+any banker can effect this for you. But mind, if ever you overdraw the
+account stops.”
+
+“I understand,” said Darvil; “and when I have finished the bottle I
+shall be off.”
+
+“You had better,” replied the banker, as he opened the door.
+
+The rich man returned home hurriedly. “So Alice, after all, has some
+gentle blood in her veins,” thought he. “But that father--no, it will
+never do. I wish he were hanged and nobody the wiser. I should
+very much like to arrange the matter without marrying; but
+then--scandal--scandal--scandal. After all, I had better give up all
+thoughts of her. She is monstrous handsome, and so--humph:--I shall
+never grow an old man.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+ “Began to bend down his admiring eyes
+  On all her touching looks and qualities,
+  Turning their shapely sweetness every way
+  Till ‘twas his food and habit day by day.”
+    LEIGH HUNT.
+
+THERE must have been a secret something about Alice Darvil singularly
+captivating, that (associated as she was with images of the most sordid
+and the vilest crimes) left her still pure and lovely alike in the eyes
+of a man as fastidious as Ernest Maltravers, and of a man as influenced
+by all the thoughts and theories of the world as the shrewd banker of
+C------. Amidst things foul and hateful had sprung up this beautiful
+flower, as if to preserve the inherent heavenliness and grace of human
+nature, and proclaim the handiwork of God in scenes where human nature
+had been most debased by the abuses of social art; and where the light
+of God Himself was most darkened and obscured. That such contrasts,
+though rarely and as by chance, are found, every one who has carefully
+examined the wastes and deserts of life must own. I have drawn Alice
+Darvil scrupulously from life, and I can declare that I have not
+exaggerated hue or lineament in the portrait. I do not suppose, with
+our good banker, that she owed anything, unless it might be a greater
+delicacy of form and feature, to whatever mixture of gentle blood was in
+her veins. But, somehow or other, in her original conformation there
+was the happy bias of the plantes towards the Pure and the Bright. For,
+despite Helvetius, a common experience teaches us that though education
+and circumstances may mould the mass, Nature herself sometimes forms the
+individual, and throws into the clay, or its spirit, so much of beauty
+or deformity, that nothing can utterly subdue the original elements of
+character. From sweets one draws poison--from poisons another extracts
+but sweets. But I, often deeply pondering over the psychological history
+of Alice Darvil, think that one principal cause why she escaped
+the early contaminations around her was in the slow and protracted
+development of her intellectual faculties. Whether or not the brutal
+violence of her father had in childhood acted through the nerves upon
+the brain, certain it is that until she knew Maltravers--until she
+loved--till she was cherished--her mind had seemed torpid and locked
+up. True, Darvil had taught her nothing, nor permitted her to be taught
+anything; but that mere ignorance would have been no preservation to
+a quick, observant mind. It was the bluntness of the senses themselves
+that operated tike an armour between her mind and the vile things around
+her. It was the rough, dull covering of the chrysalis, framed to bear
+rude contact and biting weather, that the butterfly might break forth,
+winged and glorious, in due season. Had Alice been a quick child, Alice
+would have probably grown up a depraved and dissolute woman; but she
+comprehended, she understood little or nothing, till she found an
+inspirer in that affection which inspires both beast and man; which
+makes the dog (in his natural state one of the meanest of the savage
+race) a companion, a guardian, a protector, and raises Instinct half-way
+to the height of Reason.
+
+The banker had a strong regard for Alice; and when he reached home,
+he heard with great pain that she was in a high state of fever. She
+remained beneath his roof that night, and the elderly gentlewoman, his
+relation and _gouvernante_, attended her. The banker slept but little;
+and the next morning his countenance was unusually pale. Towards
+daybreak Alice had fallen into a sound and refreshing sleep; and when,
+on waking, she found, by a note from her host, that her father had left
+her house, and she might return in safety and without fear, a violent
+flood of tears, followed by long and grateful prayer, contributed to
+the restoration of her mind and nerves. Imperfect as this young woman’s
+notions of abstract right and wrong still were, she was yet sensible
+to the claims of a father (no matter how criminal) upon his child: for
+feelings with her were so good and true, that they supplied in a great
+measure the place of principles. She knew that she could not have lived
+under the same roof with her dreadful parent; but she still felt
+an uneasy remorse at thinking he had been driven from that roof in
+destitution and want. She hastened to dress herself and seek an audience
+with her protector; and the latter found with admiration and pleasure
+that he had anticipated her own instantaneous and involuntary design
+in the settlement made upon Darvil. He then communicated to Alice the
+compact he had already formed with her father, and she wept and kissed
+his hand when she heard, and secretly resolved that she would work hard
+to be enabled to increase the sum allowed. Oh, if her labours could
+serve to retrieve a parent from the necessity of darker resources for
+support! Alas! when crime has become a custom, it is like gaming or
+drinking--the excitement is wanting; and had Luke Darvil been suddenly
+made inheritor of the wealth of a Rothschild, he would either still have
+been a villain in one way or the other; or _ennui_ would have awakened
+conscience, and he would have died of the change of habit.
+
+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, and he always gazed upon her with softer eyes when
+he saw her caressing or nursing the little fatherless creature, whose
+health was now delicate and precarious. It is difficult to say whether
+he was absolutely in love with Alice; the phrase is too strong, perhaps,
+to be applied to a man past fifty, who had gone through emotions and
+trials enough to wear away freshness from his heart. 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. He conducted Alice home that day; but
+he said little by the way, perhaps because his female relation, for
+appearance’ sake, accompanied them also. He, however, briefly cautioned
+Alice on no account to communicate to any one that it was her father
+who had been her visitor; and she still shuddered too much at the
+reminiscence to appear likely to converse on it. The banker also judged
+it advisable to be so far confidential with Alice’s servant as to take
+her aside, and tell her that the inauspicious stranger of the previous
+evening had been a very distant relation of Mrs. Butler, who, from a
+habit of drunkenness, had fallen into evil and disorderly courses. The
+banker added with a sanctified air that he trusted, by a little serious
+conversation, he had led the poor man to better notions, and that he had
+gone home with an altered mind to his family. “But, my good Hannah,” he
+concluded, “you know you are a superior person, and above the vulgar
+sin of indiscriminate gossip; therefore, mention what has occurred to no
+one; it can do no good to Mrs. Butler--it may hurt the man himself, who
+is well-to-do--better off than he seems; and who, I hope, with grace,
+may be a sincere penitent; and it will also--but that is nothing--very
+seriously displease me. By the by, Hannah, I shall be able to get your
+grandson into the Free School.”
+
+The banker was shrewd enough to perceive that he had carried his point;
+and he was walking home, satisfied, on the whole, with the way matters
+had been arranged, when he was met by a brother magistrate.
+
+“Ha!” said the latter, “and how are you, my good sir? Do you know that
+we have had the Bow Street officers here, in search of a notorious
+villain who has broken from prison? He is one of the most determined and
+dexterous burglars in all England, and the runners have hunted him into
+our town. His very robberies have tracked him by the way. He robbed a
+gentleman the day before yesterday of his watch, and left him for dead
+on the road--this was not thirty miles hence.”
+
+“Bless me!” said the banker, with emotion; “and what is the wretch’s
+name?”
+
+“Why, he has as many aliases as a Spanish grandee; but I believe the
+last name he has assumed is Peter Watts.”
+
+“Oh!” said our friend, relieved,--“well, have the runners found him?”
+
+“No, but they are on his scent. A fellow answering to his description
+was seen by the man at the toll-bar, at daybreak this morning, on the
+way to F------; the officers are after him.”
+
+“I hope he may meet with his deserts--and crime is never unpunished
+even in this world. My best compliments to your lady:--and how is little
+Jack?--Well! glad to hear it--fine boy, little Jack! good day.”
+
+“Good day, my dear sir. Worthy man, that!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+ “But who is this? thought he, a demon vile.
+  With wicked meaning and a vulgar style;
+  Hammond they call him--they can give the name
+  Of man to devils. Why am I so tame?
+  Why crush I not the viper? Fear replied,
+  Watch him a while, and let his strength be tried.”
+    CRABBE.
+
+THE next morning, after breakfast, the banker took his horse--a
+crop-eared, fast-trotting hackney--and merely leaving word that he was
+going upon business into the country, and should not return to dinner,
+turned his back on the spires of C------.
+
+He rode slowly, for the day was hot. The face of the country, which was
+fair and smiling, might have tempted others to linger by the way; but
+our hard and practical man of the world was more influenced by the
+weather than the loveliness of the scenery. He did not look upon Nature
+with the eye of imagination; perhaps a railroad, had it then and there
+existed, would have pleased him better than the hanging woods, the
+shadowy valleys, and the changeful river that from time to time
+beautified the landscape on either side the road. But, after all, there
+is a vast deal of hypocrisy in the affected admiration for Nature;--and
+I don’t think one person in a hundred cares for what lies by the side
+of a road, so long as the road itself is good, hills levelled, and
+turnpikes cheap.
+
+It was midnoon, and many miles had been passed, when the banker
+turned down a green lane and quickened his pace. At the end of about
+three-quarters of an hour, he arrived at a little solitary inn,
+called “The Angler,”--put up his horse, ordered his dinner at six
+o’clock--begged to borrow a basket to hold his fish--and it was then
+apparent that a longish cane he had carried with him was capable of
+being extended into a fishing-rod. He fitted in the various joints with
+care, as if to be sure no accident had happened to the implement by the
+journey--pried anxiously into the contents of a black case of lines and
+flies--slung the basket behind his back, and while his horse was putting
+down his nose and whisking about his tail, in the course of those
+nameless coquetries that horses carry on with hostlers--our worthy
+brother of the rod strode rapidly through some green fields, gained the
+riverside, and began fishing with much semblance of earnest interest
+in the sport. He had caught one trout, seemingly by accident--for the
+astonished fish was hooked up on the outside of its jaw--probably while
+in the act, not of biting, but of gazing at, the bait, when he grew
+discontented with the spot he had selected; and, after looking round
+as if to convince himself that he was not liable to be disturbed or
+observed (a thought hateful to the fishing fraternity), he stole quickly
+along the margin, and finally quitting the riverside altogether, struck
+into a path that, after a sharp walk of nearly all hour, brought him
+to the door of a cottage. He knocked twice, and then entered of his own
+accord--nor was it till the summer sun was near its decline that the
+banker regained his inn. His simple dinner, which they had delayed in
+wonder at the protracted absence of the angler, and in expectation of
+the fishes he was to bring back to be fried, was soon despatched; his
+horse was ordered to the door, and the red clouds in the west already
+betokened the lapse of another day, as he spurred from the spot on the
+fast-trotting hackney, fourteen miles an hour.
+
+“That ‘ere gemman has a nice bit of blood,” said the hostler, scratching
+his ear.
+
+“Oiy,--who be he?” said a hanger-on of the stables.
+
+“I dooan’t know. He has been here twice afoar, and he never cautches
+anything to sinnify--he be mighty fond of fishing, surely.”
+
+Meanwhile, away sped the banker--milestone on milestone glided by--and
+still, scarce turning a hair, trotted gallantly out the good hackney.
+But the evening grew darker, and it began to rain; a drizzling,
+persevering rain, that wets a man through ere he is aware of it. After
+his fiftieth year, a gentleman who has a tender regard for himself does
+not like to get wet; and the rain inspired the banker, who was subject
+to rheumatism, with the resolution to take a short cut along the fields.
+There were one or two low hedges by this short way, but the banker had
+been there in the spring, and knew every inch of the ground. The hackney
+leaped easily--and the rider had a tolerably practised seat--and two
+miles saved might just prevent the menaced rheumatism: accordingly, our
+friend opened a white gate, and scoured along the fields without any
+misgivings as to the prudence of his choice. He arrived at his first
+leap--there was the hedge, its summit just discernible in the dim
+light. On the other side, to the right was a haystack, and close by this
+haystack seemed the most eligible place for clearing the obstacle. Now
+since the banker had visited this place, a deep ditch, that served as a
+drain, had been dug at the opposite base of the hedge, of which neither
+horse nor man was aware, so that the leap was far more perilous than was
+anticipated. Unconscious of this additional obstacle, the rider set off
+in a canter. The banker was high in air, his loins bent back, his rein
+slackened, his right hand raised knowingly--when the horse took fright
+at an object crouched by the haystack--swerved, plunged midway into
+the ditch, and pitched its rider two or three yards over its head. The
+banker recovered himself sooner than might have been expected; and,
+finding himself, though bruised and shaken, still whole and sound,
+hastened to his horse. But the poor animal had not fared so well as its
+master, and its off-shoulder was either put out or dreadfully
+sprained. It had scrambled its way out of the ditch, and there it
+stood disconsolate by the hedge, as lame as one of the trees that, at
+irregular intervals, broke the symmetry of the barrier. On ascertaining
+the extent of his misfortune, the banker became seriously uneasy; the
+rain increased--he was several miles yet from home--he was in the midst
+of houseless fields, with another leap before him--the leap he had just
+passed behind--and no other egress that he knew of into the main road.
+While these thoughts passed through his brain, he became suddenly aware
+that he was not alone. The dark object that had frightened his horse
+rose slowly from the snug corner it had occupied by the haystack, and
+a gruff voice that made the banker thrill to the marrow of his bones,
+cried, “Holla, who the devil are you?”
+
+Lame as his horse was, the banker instantly put his foot into the
+stirrup; but before he could mount, a heavy gripe was laid on his
+shoulder--and turning round with as much fierceness as he could assume,
+he saw--what the tone of the voice had already led him to forebode--the
+ill-omened and cut-throat features of Luke Darvil.
+
+“Ha! ha! my old annuitant, my clever feelosofer--jolly old boy--how
+are you?--give us a fist. Who would have thought to meet you on a
+rainy night, by a lone haystack, with a deep ditch on one side, and
+no chimney-pot within sight? Why, old fellow, I, Luke Darvil,--I, the
+vagabond--I whom you would have sent to the treadmill for being poor,
+and calling on my own daughter--I am as rich as you are here--and as
+great, and as strong, and as powerful.”
+
+And while he spoke, Darvil, who was really an undersized man, seemed to
+swell and dilate, till he appeared half a head taller than the shrinking
+banker, who was five feet eleven inches without his shoes.
+
+“E-hem!” said the rich man, clearing his throat, which seemed to him
+uncommonly husky; “I do not know whether I insulted your poverty, my
+dear Mr. Darvil--I hope not; but this is hardly a time for talking--pray
+let me mount, and--”
+
+“Not a time for talking!” interrupted Darvil angrily; “it’s just the
+time to my mind: let me consider,--ay, I told you that whenever we met
+by the roadside it would be my turn to have the best of the argufying.”
+
+“I dare say--I dare say, my good fellow.”
+
+“Fellow not me!--I won’t be fellowed now. I say I have the best of it
+here--man to man--I am your match.”
+
+“But why quarrel with me?” said the banker, coaxingly; “I never meant
+you harm, and I am sure you cannot mean me harm.”
+
+“No!--and why?” asked Darvil, coolly;--“why do you think I can mean you
+no harm?”
+
+“Because your annuity depends on me.”
+
+“Shrewdly put--we’ll argufy that point. My life is a bad one, not worth
+more than a year’s purchase; now, suppose you have more than forty
+pounds about you--it may be better worth my while to draw my knife
+across your gullet than to wait for the quarter-day’s ten pounds a
+time. You see it’s all a matter of calculation, my dear, Mr.
+What’s-your-name!”
+
+“But,” replied the banker, and his teeth began to chatter, “I have not
+forty pounds about me.”
+
+“How do I know that?--you say so. Well, in the town yonder your word
+goes for more than mine; I never gainsaid you when you put that to me,
+did I? But here, by the haystack, my word is better than yours; and if
+I say you must and shall have forty pounds about you, let’s see whether
+you dare contradict me.”
+
+“Look you, Darvil,” said the banker, summoning up all his energy and
+intellect, for his moral power began now to back his physical cowardice,
+and he spoke calmly, and even bravely, though his heart throbbed
+aloud against his breast, and you might have knocked him down with a
+feather--“the London runners are even now hot after you.”
+
+“Ha!--you lie!”
+
+“Upon my honour I speak the truth; I heard the news last evening. They
+tracked you to C------; they tracked you out of the town; a word from me
+would have given you into their hands. I said nothing--you are safe--you
+may yet escape. I will even help you to fly the country, and live out
+your natural date of years, secure and in peace.”
+
+“You did not say that the other day in the snug drawing-room; you see I
+have the best of it now--own that.”
+
+“I do,” said the banker.
+
+Darvil chuckled, and rubbed his hands.
+
+The man of wealth once more felt his importance, and went on. “This is
+one side of the question. On the other, suppose you rob and murder me,
+do you think my death will lessen the heat of the pursuit against you?
+The whole country will be in arms, and before forty-eight hours are over
+you will be hunted down like a mad dog.”
+
+Darvil was silent, as if in thought; and after a pause, replied: “Well,
+you are a ‘cute one after all. What have you got about you? you know
+you drove a hard bargain the other day--now it’s my market--fustian has
+riz--kersey has fell.”
+
+“All I have about me shall be yours,” said the banker, eagerly.
+
+“Give it me, then.”
+
+“There!” said the banker, placing his purse and pocketbook into Darvil’s
+bands.
+
+“And the watch?”
+
+“The watch?--well there!”
+
+“What’s that?”
+
+The banker’s senses were sharpened by fear, but they were not so sharp
+as those of Darvil; he heard nothing but the rain pattering on the
+leaves, and the rush of water in the ditch at hand. Darvil stooped and
+listened--till, raising himself again, with a deep-drawn breath, he
+said, “I think there are rats in the haystack; they will be running over
+me in my sleep; but they are playful creturs, and I like ‘em. And now,
+my _dear_ sir, I am afraid I must put an end to you!”
+
+“Good Heavens, what do you mean? How?”
+
+“Man, there is another world!” quoth the ruffian, mimicking the banker’s
+solemn tone in their former interview. “So much the better for you! In
+that world they don’t tell tales.”
+
+“I swear I will never betray you.”
+
+“You do?--swear it, then.”
+
+“By all my hopes of earth and heaven!”
+
+“What a d-----d coward you be!” said Darvil, laughing scornfully.
+“Go--you are safe. I am in good humour with myself again. I crow over
+you, for no man can make me tremble. And villain as you think me, while
+you fear me you cannot despise--you respect me. Go, I say--go.”
+
+The banker was about to obey, when suddenly, from the haystack, a broad,
+red light streamed upon the pair, and the next moment Darvil was seized
+from behind, and struggling in the gripe of a man nearly as powerful
+as himself. The light, which came from a dark-lanthorn, placed on
+the ground, revealed the forms of a peasant in a smock-frock, and two
+stout-built, stalwart men, armed with pistols--besides the one engaged
+with Darvil.
+
+The whole of this scene was brought as by the trick of the stage--as
+by a flash of lightning--as by the change of a showman’s
+phantasmagoria--before the astonished eyes of the banker. He stood
+arrested and spell-bound, his hand on his bridle, his foot on his
+stirrup. A moment more and Darvil had clashed his antagonist on the
+ground; he stood at a little distance, his face reddened by the glare of
+the lanthorn and fronting his assailants--that fiercest of all beasts,
+a desperate man at bay! He had already succeeded in drawing forth his
+pistols, and he held one in each hand--his eyes flashing from beneath
+his bent brows and turning quickly from foe to foe! At last those
+terrible eyes rested on the late reluctant companion of his solitude.
+
+“So _you_ then betrayed me,” he said, very slowly, and directed his
+pistol to the head of the dismounted horseman.
+
+“No, no!” cried one of the officers, for such were Darvil’s assailants;
+“fire away in this direction, my hearty--we’re paid for it. The
+gentleman knew nothing at all about it.”
+
+“Nothing, by G--!” cried the banker, startled out of his sanctity.
+
+“Then I shall keep my shot,” said Darvil; “and mind, the first who
+approaches me is a dead man.”
+
+It so happened that the robber and the officers were beyond the distance
+which allows sure mark for a pistol-shot, and each party felt the
+necessity of caution.
+
+“Your time is up, my swell cove!” cried the head of the detachment; “you
+have had your swing, and a long one it seems to have been--you must now
+give in. Throw down your barkers, or we must make mutton of you, and rob
+the gallows.”
+
+Darvil did not reply, and the officers, accustomed to hold life cheap,
+moved on towards him--their pistols cocked and levelled.
+
+Darvil fired--one of the men staggered and fell. With a kind of instinct
+Darvil had singled out the one with whom he had before wrestled for
+life. The ruffian waited not for the others--he turned and fled along
+the fields.
+
+“Zounds, he is off!” cried the other two, and they rushed after him in
+pursuit. A pause--a shot--another--an oath--a groan--and all was still.
+
+“It’s all up with him now,” said one of the runners, in the distance;
+“he dies game.”
+
+At these words, the peasant, who had before skulked behind the haystack,
+seized the lanthorn from the ground, and ran to the spot. The banker
+involuntarily followed.
+
+There lay Luke Darvil on the grass--still living, but a horrible and
+ghastly spectacle. One ball had pierced his breast, another had shot
+away his jaw. His eyes rolled fearfully, and he tore up the grass with
+his hands.
+
+The officers looked coldly on. “He was a clever fellow!” said one.
+
+“And has given us much trouble,” said the other; “let us see to Will.”
+
+“But he’s not dead yet,” said the banker, shuddering.
+
+“Sir, he cannot live a minute.”
+
+Darvil raised himself bolt upright--shook his clenched fist at his
+conquerors, and a fearful gurgling howl, which the nature of his wounds
+did not allow him to syllable into a curse, came from his breast--with
+that he fell flat on his back--a corpse.
+
+“I am afraid, sir,” said the elder officer, turning away, “you had a
+narrow escape--but how came you here?”
+
+“Rather, how came _you_ here?”
+
+“Honest Hodge there, with the lanthorn, had marked the fellow skulk
+behind the haystack, when he himself was going out to snare rabbits. He
+had seen our advertisement of Watts’ person, and knew that we were then
+at a public house some miles off. He came to us--conducted us to the
+spot--we heard voices--showed up the glim--and saw our man. Hodge, you
+are a good subject, and love justice.”
+
+“Yees, but I shall have the rewourd,” said Hodge, showing his teeth.
+
+“Talk o’ that by and by,” said the officer. “Will, how are you, man?”
+
+“Bad,” groaned the poor runner, and a rush of blood from the lips
+followed the groan.
+
+It was many days before the ex-member for C------ sufficiently recovered
+the tone of his mind to think further of Alice; when he did, it was with
+great satisfaction that he reflected that Darvil was no more, and that
+the deceased ruffian was only known to the neighbourhood by the name of
+Peter Watts.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK V.
+
+PARODY.
+
+  My hero, turned author, lies mute in this section,
+  You may pass by the place if you’re bored by reflection:
+  But if honest enough to be fond of the Muse,
+  Stay, and read where you’re able, and sleep where you choose.
+   THEOC. _Epig. in Hippon_.
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+        “My genius spreads her wing,
+  And flies where Britain courts the western spring.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+  Pride in their port, defiance in their eye,
+  I see the lords of human kind pass by,
+  Intent on high designs.”--GOLDSMITH.
+
+I HAVE no respect for the Englishman who re-enters London after long
+residence abroad without a pulse that beats quick and a heart that
+heaves high. The public buildings are few, and, for the most part, mean;
+the monuments of antiquity not comparable to those which the pettiest
+town in Italy can boast of; the palaces are sad rubbish; the houses of
+our peers and princes are shabby and shapeless heaps of brick. But
+what of all this? the spirit of London is in her thoroughfares--her
+population! What wealth--what cleanliness--what order--what animation!
+How majestic, and yet how vivid, is the life that runs through her
+myriad veins! How, as the lamps blaze upon you at night, and street
+after street glides by your wheels, each so regular in its symmetry, so
+equal in its civilization--how all speak of the CITY OF FREEMEN.
+
+Yes, Maltravers felt his heart swell within him as the post-horses
+whirled on his dingy carriage--over Westminster Bridge--along
+Whitehall--through Regent Street--towards one of the quiet and
+private-house-like hotels that are scattered round the neighbourhood of
+Grosvenor Square.
+
+Ernest’s arrival had been expected. He had written from Paris to
+Cleveland to announce it; and Cleveland had, in reply, informed him
+that he had engaged apartments for him at Mivart’s. The smiling waiters
+ushered him into a spacious and well-aired room--the armchair was
+already wheeled by the fire--a score or so of letters strewed the table,
+together with two of the evening papers. And how eloquently of busy
+England do those evening papers speak! A stranger might have felt that
+he wanted no friend to welcome him--the whole room smiled on him a
+welcome.
+
+Maltravers ordered his dinner and opened his letters: they were of no
+importance; one from his steward, one from his banker, another about the
+county races, a fourth from a man he had never heard of, requesting the
+vote and powerful interest of Mr. Maltravers for the county of B------,
+should the rumour of a dissolution be verified; the unknown candidate
+referred Mr. Maltravers to his “well-known public character.” From
+these epistles Ernest turned impatiently, and perceived a little
+three-cornered note which had hitherto escaped his attention. It was
+from Cleveland, intimating that he was in town; that his health still
+precluded his going out, but that he trusted to see his dear Ernest as
+soon as he arrived.
+
+Maltravers was delighted at the prospect of passing his evening so
+agreeably; he soon despatched his dinner and his newspapers, and walked
+in the brilliant lamplight of a clear frosty evening of early December
+in London, to his friend’s house in Curzon Street: a small house,
+bachelor-like and unpretending; for Cleveland spent his moderate though
+easy fortune almost entirely at his country villa. The familiar face
+of the old valet greeted Ernest at the door, and he only paused to hear
+that his guardian was nearly recovered to his usual health, ere he
+was in the cheerful drawing-room, and--since Englishmen do not
+embrace--returning the cordial gripe of the kindly Cleveland.
+
+“Well, my dear Ernest,” said Cleveland, after they had gone through
+the preliminary round of questions and answers, “here you are at last:
+Heaven be praised; and how well you are looking--how much you are
+improved! It is an excellent period of the year for your _debut_ in
+London. I shall have time to make you intimate with people before the
+whirl of ‘the season’ commences.”
+
+“Why, I thought of going to Burleigh, my country-place. I have not seen
+it since I was a child.”
+
+“No, no! you have had solitude enough at Como, if I may trust to your
+letter; you must now mix with the great London world; and you will enjoy
+Burleigh the more in the summer.”
+
+“I fancy this great London world will give me very little pleasure; it
+may be pleasant enough to young men just let loose from college, but
+your crowded ball-rooms and monotonous clubs will be wearisome to one
+who has grown fastidious before his time. _J’ai vecu beaucoup dans peu
+d’annees_. I have drawn in youth too much upon the capital of existence
+to be highly delighted with the ostentatious parsimony with which our
+great men economise pleasure.”
+
+“Don’t judge before you have gone through the trial,” said Cleveland:
+“there is something in the opulent splendour, the thoroughly sustained
+magnificence, with which the leaders of English fashion conduct even the
+most insipid amusements, that is above contempt. Besides, you need not
+necessarily live with the butterflies. There are plenty of bees that
+will be very happy to make your acquaintance. Add to this, my dear
+Ernest, the pleasure of being made of--of being of importance in your
+own country. For you are young, well-born, and sufficiently handsome to
+be an object of interest to mothers and to daughters; while your name,
+and property, and interest, will make you courted by men who want
+to borrow your money and obtain your influence in your county. No,
+Maltravers, stay in London--amuse yourself your first year, and decide
+on your occupation and career the next; but reconnoitre before you give
+battle.”
+
+Maltravers was not ill-pleased to follow his friend’s advice, since by
+so doing he obtained his friend’s guidance and society. Moreover, he
+deemed it wise and rational to see, face to face, the eminent men in
+England, with whom, if he fulfilled his promise to De Montaigne, he
+was to run the race of honourable rivalry. Accordingly, he consented to
+Cleveland’s propositions.
+
+“And have you,” said he, hesitating, as he loitered by the door after
+the stroke of twelve had warned him to take his leave--“have you never
+heard anything of my--my--the unfortunate Alice Darvil?”
+
+“Who?--Oh, that poor young woman; I remember!--not a syllable.”
+
+Maltravers sighed deeply and departed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+ “Je trouve que c’est une folie de vouloir etudier le monde en
+  simple spectateur. * * * Dans l’ecole du monde, comme dans
+  cette de l’amour, il faut commencer par pratiquer cc qu’on veut
+  apprendre.” *--ROUSSEAU.
+
+* I find that it is a folly to wish to study the world like a simple
+spectator. * * * In the school of the world, as in that of love, it is
+necessary to begin by practising what we wish to learn.
+
+ERNEST MALTRAVERS was now fairly launched upon the wide ocean of London.
+Amongst his other property was a house in Seamore Place--that quiet, yet
+central street, which enjoys the air without the dust of the park. It
+had been hitherto let, and, the tenant now quitting very opportunely,
+Maltravers was delighted to secure so pleasant a residence: for he
+was still romantic enough to desire to look out upon trees and verdure
+rather than brick houses. He indulged only in two other luxuries: his
+love of music tempted him to an opera-box, and he had that English
+feeling which prides itself in the possession of beautiful horses,--a
+feeling that enticed him into an extravagance on this head that baffled
+the competition and excited the envy of much richer men. But four
+thousand a year goes a great way with a single man who does not gamble,
+and is too philosophical to make superfluities wants.
+
+The world doubled his income, magnified his old country-seat into a
+superb chateau, and discovered that his elder brother, who was only
+three or four years older than himself, had no children. The world was
+very courteous to Ernest Maltravers.
+
+It was, as Cleveland said, just at that time of year when people are
+at leisure to make new acquaintances. A few only of the most difficult
+houses in town were open; and their doors were cheerfully expanded to
+the accomplished ward of the popular Cleveland. Authors and statesmen,
+and orators, and philosophers--to all he was presented;--all seemed
+pleased with him, and Ernest became the fashion before he was conscious
+of the distinction. But he had rightly foreboded. He had commenced life
+too soon; he was disappointed; he found some persons he could admire,
+some whom he could like, but none with whom he could grow intimate,
+or for whom he could feel an interest. Neither his heart nor his
+imagination was touched; all appeared to him like artificial machines;
+he was discontented with things like life, but in which something or
+other was wanting. He more than ever recalled the brilliant graces of
+Valerie de Ventadour, which had thrown a charm over the most frivolous
+circles; he even missed the perverse and fantastic vanity of Castruccio.
+The mediocre poet seemed to him at least less mediocre than the
+worldlings about him. Nay, even the selfish good spirits and dry
+shrewdness of Lumley Ferrers would have been an acceptable change to
+the dull polish and unrevealed egotism of jealous wits and party
+politicians. “If these are the flowers of the parterre, what must be the
+weeds?” said Maltravers to himself, returning from a party at which he
+had met half a score of the most orthodox lions.
+
+He began to feel the aching pain of satiety.
+
+But the winter glided away--the season commenced, and Maltravers was
+whirled on with the rest into the bubbling vortex.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+ “And crowds commencing mere vexation,
+  Retirement sent its invitation.”--SHENSTONE.
+
+THE tench, no doubt, considers the pond in which he lives as the Great
+World. There is no place, however stagnant, which is not the great world
+to the creatures that move about, in it. People who have lived all their
+lives in a village still talk of the world as if they had ever seen
+it! An old woman in a hovel does not put her nose out of her door on a
+Sunday without thinking she is going amongst the pomps and vanities
+of the great world. _Ergo_, the great world is to all of us the little
+circle in which we live. But as fine people set the fashion, so the
+circle of fine people is called the Great World _par excellence_. Now
+this great world is not a bad thing when we thoroughly understand it;
+and the London great world is at least as good as any other. But then
+we scarcely do understand that or anything else in our _beaux
+jours_,--which, if they are sometimes the most exquisite, are also often
+the most melancholy and the most wasted portion of our life. Maltravers
+had not yet found out either _the set_ that pleased him or the species
+of amusement that really amused. Therefore he drifted on and about
+the vast whirlpool, making plenty of friends--going to balls and
+dinners--and bored with both as men are who have no object in society.
+Now the way society is enjoyed is to have a pursuit, a _metier_ of
+some kind, and then to go into the world, either to make the individual
+object a social pleasure, or to obtain a reprieve from some toilsome
+avocation. Thus, if you are a politician--politics at once make an
+object in your closet, and a social tie between others and yourself when
+you are in the world. The same may be said of literature, though in a
+less degree; and though, as fewer persons care about literature than
+politics, your companions must be more select. If you are very young,
+you are fond of dancing; if you are very profligate, perhaps you are
+fond of flirtations with your friend’s wife. These last are objects in
+their way: but they don’t last long, and, even with the most frivolous,
+are not occupations that satisfy the whole mind and heart, in which
+there is generally an aspiration after something useful. It is not
+vanity alone that makes a man of the _mode_ invent a new bit or give
+his name to a new kind of carriage; it is the influence of that mystic
+yearning after utility, which is one of the master-ties between the
+individual and the species.
+
+Maltravers was not happy--that is a lot common enough; but he was not
+amused--and that is a sentence more insupportable. He lost a great part
+of his sympathy with Cleveland, for, when a man is not amused, he feels
+an involuntary contempt for those who are. He fancies they are pleased
+with trifles which his superior wisdom is compelled to disdain.
+Cleveland was of that age when we generally grow social--for by being
+rubbed long and often against the great loadstone of society, we obtain,
+in a thousand little minute points, an attraction in common with our
+fellows. Their petty sorrows and small joys--their objects of interest
+or employment, at some time or other have been ours. We gather up a vast
+collection of moral and mental farthings of exchange: and we scarcely
+find any intellect too poor, but what we can deal with it in some
+way. But in youth, we are egotists and sentimentalists, and Maltravers
+belonged to the fraternity who employ
+
+   “The heart in passion and the head in rhymes.”
+
+At length--just when London begins to grow most pleasant--when
+flirtations become tender, and water-parties numerous--when birds sing
+in the groves of Richmond, and whitebait refresh the statesman by the
+shores of Greenwich,--Maltravers abruptly fled from the gay metropolis,
+and arrived, one lovely evening in July, at his own ivy-grown porch of
+Burleigh.
+
+What a soft, fresh, delicious evening it was! He had quitted his
+carriage at the lodge, and followed it across the small but picturesque
+park alone and on foot. He had not seen the place since childhood--he
+had quite forgotten its aspect. He now wondered how he could have lived
+anywhere else. The trees did not stand in stately avenues, nor did the
+antlers of the deer wave above the sombre fern; it was not the domain
+of a grand seigneur, but of an old, long-descended English squire.
+Antiquity spoke in the moss-grown palings in the shadowy groves, in
+the sharp gable-ends and heavy mullions of the house, as it now came in
+view, at the base of a hill covered with wood--and partially veiled by
+the shrubs of the neglected pleasure-ground, separated from the park by
+the invisible ha-ha. There, gleamed in the twilight the watery face
+of the oblong fish-pool, with its old-fashioned willows at each
+corner--there, grey and quaint, was the monastic dial--and there was the
+long terrace walk, with discoloured and broken vases, now filled with
+the orange or the aloe, which, in honour of his master’s arrival,
+the gardener had extracted from the dilapidated green-house. The
+very evidence of neglect around, the very weeds and grass on the
+half-obliterated road, touched Maltravers with a sort of pitying and
+remorseful affection for his calm and sequestered residence. And it was
+not with his usual proud step and erect crest that he passed from the
+porch to the solitary library, through a line of his servants:--the two
+or three old retainers belonging to the place were utterly unfamiliar to
+him, and they had no smile for their stranger lord.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+ “_Lucian._ He that is born to be a man neither should nor can
+  be anything nobler, greater, and better than a man.
+
+ “_Peregrine._ But, good Lucian, for the very reason that he may
+  not become less than a man, he should be always striving to be
+  more.”--WIELAND’S _Peregrinus Proteus_.
+
+IT was two years from the date of the last chapter before Maltravers
+again appeared in general society. These two years had sufficed to
+produce a revolution in his fate. Ernest Maltravers had lost the happy
+rights of the private individual; he had given himself to the Public; he
+had surrendered his name to men’s tongues, and was a thing that all had
+a right to praise, to blame, to scrutinise, to spy. Ernest Maltravers
+had become an author.
+
+Let no man tempt Gods and Columns, without weighing well the
+consequences of his experiment. He who publishes a book, attended with a
+moderate success, passes a mighty barrier. He will often look back with
+a sigh of regret at the land he has left for ever. The beautiful and
+decent obscurity of hearth and home is gone. He can no longer feel
+the just indignation of manly pride when he finds himself ridiculed or
+reviled. He has parted with the shadow of his life. His motives may
+be misrepresented, his character belied; his manners, his person, his
+dress, the “very trick of his walk” are all fair food for the cavil
+and the caricature. He can never go back, he cannot even pause; he has
+chosen his path, and all the natural feelings that make the nerve and
+muscle of the active being urge him to proceed. To stop short is to
+fail. He has told the world that he will make a name; and he must be
+set down as a pretender, or toil on till the boast be fulfilled. Yet
+Maltravers thought nothing of all this when, intoxicated with his own
+dreams and aspirations, he desired to make a world his confidant; when
+from the living nature, and the lore of books, and the mingled result of
+inward study and external observation, he sought to draw forth something
+that might interweave his name with the pleasurable associations of his
+kind. His easy fortune and lonely state gave him up to his own thoughts
+and contemplations; they suffused his mind, till it ran over upon the
+page which makes the channel that connects the solitary Fountain with
+the vast Ocean of Human Knowledge. The temperament of Maltravers was,
+as we have seen, neither irritable nor fearful. He formed himself, as a
+sculptor forms, with a model before his eyes and an ideal in his heart.
+He endeavoured, with labour and patience, to approach nearer and nearer
+with every effort to the standard of such excellence as he thought might
+ultimately be attained by a reasonable ambition; and when, at last,
+his judgment was satisfied, he surrendered the product with a tranquil
+confidence to a more impartial tribunal.
+
+His first work was successful; perhaps for this reason--that it bore the
+stamp of the Honest and the Real. He did not sit down to report of what
+he had never seen, to dilate on what he had never felt. A quiet and
+thoughtful observer of life, his descriptions were the more vivid,
+because his own first impressions were not yet worn away. His experience
+had sunk deep; not on the arid surface of matured age, but in the
+fresh soil of youthful emotions. Another reason, perhaps, that obtained
+success for his essay was, that he had more varied and more elaborate
+knowledge than young authors think it necessary to possess. He did not,
+like Cesarini, attempt to make a show of words upon a slender capital of
+ideas. Whether his style was eloquent or homely; it was still in him
+a faithful transcript of considered and digested thought. A third
+reason--and I dwell on these points not more to elucidate the career of
+Maltravers than as hints which may be useful to others--a third reason
+why Maltravers obtained a prompt and favourable reception from the
+public was, that he had not hackneyed his peculiarities of diction
+and thought in that worst of all schools for the literary novice--the
+columns of a magazine. Periodicals form an excellent mode of
+communication between the public and an author _already_ established,
+who has lost the charm of novelty, but gained the weight of acknowledged
+reputation; and who, either upon politics or criticism, seeks for
+frequent and continuous occasions to enforce his peculiar theses and
+doctrines. But, upon the young writer, this mode of communication, if
+too long continued, operates most injuriously both as to his future
+prospects and his own present taste and style. With respect to the
+first, it familiarises the public to his mannerism (and all writers
+worth reading have mannerism) in a form to which the said public are not
+inclined to attach much weight. He forestalls in a few months what ought
+to be the effect of years; namely, the wearying a world soon nauseated
+with the _toujours perdrix_. With respect to the last, it induces a man
+to write for momentary effects; to study a false smartness of style and
+reasoning; to bound his ambition of durability to the last day of the
+month; to expect immediate returns for labour; to recoil at the “hope
+deferred” of serious works on which judgment is slowly formed. The
+man of talent who begins young at periodicals, and goes on long, has
+generally something crude and stunted about both his compositions and
+his celebrity. He grows the oracle of small coteries; and we can rarely
+get out of the impression that he is cockneyfied and conventional.
+Periodicals sadly mortgaged the claims that Hazlitt, and many others of
+his contemporaries, had upon a vast reversionary estate of Fame. But
+I here speak too politically; to some the _res angustoe domi_ leave no
+option. And, as Aristotle and the Greek proverb have it, we cannot carve
+out all things with the knife of the Delphic cutler.
+
+The second work that Maltravers put forth, at an interval of eighteen
+months from the first, was one of a graver and higher nature; it served
+to confirm his reputation: and that is success enough for a second
+work, which is usually an author’s “_pons asinorum_.” He who, after a
+triumphant first book, does not dissatisfy the public with a second,
+has a fair chance of gaining a fixed station in literature. But now
+commenced the pains and perils of the after-birth. By a maiden effort an
+author rarely makes enemies. His fellow-writers are not yet prepared
+to consider him as a rival; if he be tolerably rich, they unconsciously
+trust that he will not become a regular, or, as they term it, “a
+professional” author: he did something just to be talked of; he may
+write no more, or his second book may fail. But when that second book
+comes out, and does not fail, they begin to look about them; envy
+wakens, malice begins. And all the old school--gentlemen who have
+retired on their pensions of renown--regard him as an intruder: then
+the sneer, then the frown, the caustic irony, the biting review, the
+depreciating praise. The novice begins to think that he is further from
+the goal than before he set out upon the race.
+
+Maltravers had, upon the whole, a tolerably happy temperament; but
+he was a very proud man, and he had the nice soul of a courageous,
+honourable, punctilious gentleman. He thought it singular that society
+should call upon him, as a gentleman, to shoot his best friend, if that
+friend affronted him with a rude word; and yet that, as an author, every
+fool and liar might, with perfect impunity, cover reams of paper with
+the most virulent personal abuse of him.
+
+It was one evening in the early summer that, revolving anxious and
+doubtful thoughts, Ernest sauntered gloomily along his terrace,
+
+   “And watched with wistful eyes the setting sun.”
+
+when he perceived a dusty travelling carriage whirled along the road
+by the ha-ha, and a hand waved in recognition from the open window. His
+guests had been so rare, and his friends were so few, that Maltravers
+could not conjecture who was his intended visitant. His brother, he
+knew, was in London. Cleveland, from whom he had that day heard, was at
+his villa. Ferrers was enjoying himself in Vienna. Who could it be? We
+may say of solitude what we please; but, after two years of solitude,
+a visitor is a pleasurable excitement. Maltravers retraced his steps,
+entered his house, and was just in time to find himself almost in the
+arms of De Montaigne.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+     “Quid tam dextro pede concipis ut te,
+  Conatus non poeniteat, votique peracti?” *--JUV.
+
+* What, under such happy auspices do you conceive that you may not
+repent of your endeavour and accomplished wish?
+
+“YES,” said De Montaigne, “in my way I also am fulfilling my destiny. I
+am a member of the _Chambre des Deputes_, and on a visit to England upon
+some commercial affairs. I found myself in your neighbourhood, and, of
+course, could not resist the temptation: so you must receive me as your
+guest for some days.”
+
+“I congratulate you cordially on your senatorial honours. I have already
+heard of your rising name.”
+
+“I return the congratulations with equal warmth. You are bringing my
+prophecies to pass. I have read your works with increased pride at our
+friendship.”
+
+Maltravers sighed slightly, and half turned away.
+
+“The desire of distinction,” said he, after a pause, “grows upon us till
+excitement becomes disease. The child who is born with the mariner’s
+instinct laughs with glee when his paper bark skims the wave of a pool.
+By and by nothing will content him but the ship and the ocean.--Like the
+child is the author.”
+
+“I am pleased with your simile,” said De Montaigne, smiling. “Do not
+spoil it, but go on with your argument.”
+
+Maltravers continued: “Scarcely do we win the applause of a moment,
+ere we summon the past and conjecture the future. Our contemporaries no
+longer suffice for competitors, our age for the Court to pronounce on
+our claims: we call up the Dead as our only true rivals--we appeal to
+Posterity as our sole just tribunal. Is this vain in us? Possibly. Yet
+such vanity humbles. ‘Tis then only we learn all the difference between
+Reputation and Fame--between To-Day and Immortality!”
+
+“Do you think,” replied De Montaigne, “that the dead did not feel the
+same when they first trod the path that leads to the life beyond life?
+Continue to cultivate the mind, to sharpen by exercise the genius, to
+attempt to delight or to instruct your race; and even supposing you fall
+short of every model you set before you--supposing your name moulder
+with your dust, still you will have passed life more nobly than the
+unlaborious herd. Grant that you win not that glorious accident, ‘a name
+below,’ how can you tell but what you may have fitted yourself for high
+destiny and employ in the world not of men, but of spirits? The powers
+of the mind are things that cannot be less immortal than the mere
+sense of identity; their acquisitions accompany us through the Eternal
+Progress; and we may obtain a lower or a higher grade hereafter,
+in proportion as we are more or less fitted by the exercise of our
+intellect to comprehend and execute the solemn agencies of God. The wise
+man is nearer to the angels than the fool is. This may be an apocryphal
+dogma, but it is not an impossible theory.”
+
+“But we may waste the sound enjoyments of actual life in chasing the
+hope you justly allow to be ‘apocryphal;’ and our knowledge may go for
+nothing in the eyes of the Omniscient.”
+
+“Very well,” said De Montaigne, smiling; “but answer me honestly. By the
+pursuits of intellectual ambition do you waste the sound enjoyments of
+life? If so, you do not pursue the system rightly. Those pursuits
+ought only to quicken your sense for such pleasures as are the true
+relaxations of life. And this, with you peculiarly, since you are
+fortunate enough not to depend for subsistence upon literature;--did you
+do so, I might rather advise you to be a trunkmaker than an author. A
+man ought not to attempt any of the highest walks of Mind and Art, as
+the mere provision of daily bread; not literature alone, but everything
+else of the same degree. He ought not to be a statesman, or an orator,
+or a philosopher, as a thing of pence and shillings: and usually all
+men, save the poor poet, feel this truth insensibly.”
+
+“This may be fine preaching,” said Maltravers; “but you may be quite
+sure that the pursuit of literature is a pursuit apart from the ordinary
+objects of life, and you cannot command the enjoyments of both.”
+
+“I think otherwise,” said De Montaigne; “but it is not in a country
+house eighty miles from the capital, without wife, guests, or friends,
+that the experiment can be fairly made. Come, Maltravers, I see before
+you a brave career, and I cannot permit you to halt at the onset.”
+
+“You do not see all the calumnies that are already put forth against me,
+to say nothing of all the assurances (and many by clever men) that there
+is nothing in me!”
+
+“Dennis was a clever man, and said the same thing of your Pope. Madame
+de Sevigne was a clever woman, but she thought Racine would never be
+very famous. Milton saw nothing in the first efforts of Dryden that made
+him consider Dryden better than a rhymester. Aristophanes was a good
+judge of poetry, yet how ill he judged of Euripides! But all this is
+commonplace, and yet you bring arguments that a commonplace answers in
+evidence against yourself.”
+
+“But it is unpleasant not to answer attacks--not to retaliate on
+enemies.”
+
+“Then answer attacks, and retaliate on enemies.”
+
+“But would that be wise?”
+
+“If it give you pleasure--it would not please _me_.”
+
+“Come, De Montaigne, you are reasoning Socratically. I will ask you
+plainly and bluntly, would you advise an author to wage war on his
+literary assailants, or to despise them?”
+
+“Both; let him attack but few, and those rarely. But it is his policy to
+show that he is one whom it is better not to provoke too far. The author
+always has the world on his side against the critics, if he choose
+his opportunity. And he must always recollect that he is ‘A STATE’ in
+himself, which must sometimes go to war in order to procure peace. The
+time for war or for peace must be left to the State’s own diplomacy and
+wisdom.”
+
+“You would make us political machines.”
+
+“It would make every man’s conduct more or less mechanical; for system
+is the triumph of mind over matter; the just equilibrium of all the
+powers and passions may seem like machinery. Be it so. Nature meant the
+world--the creation--man himself, for machines.”
+
+“And one must even be in a passion mechanically, according to your
+theories.”
+
+“A man is a poor creature who is not in a passion sometimes; but a very
+unjust, or a very foolish one, if he be in a passion with the wrong
+person, and in the wrong place and time. But enough of this, it is
+growing late.”
+
+“And when will Madame visit England?”
+
+“Oh, not yet, I fear. But you will meet Cesarini in London this year
+or the next. He is persuaded that you did not see justice done to his
+poems, and is coming here as soon as his indolence will let him, to
+proclaim your treachery in a biting preface to some toothless satire.”
+
+“Satire!”
+
+“Yes; more than one of your poets made their way by a satire, and
+Cesarini is persuaded he shall do the same. Castruccio is not as
+far-sighted as his namesake, the Prince of Lucca. Good night, my dear
+Ernest.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+ “When with much pains this boasted learning’s got,
+  ‘Tis an affront to those who have it not.”
+    CHURCHILL: _The Author_.
+
+THERE was something in De Montaigne’s conversation, which, without
+actual flattery, reconciled Maltravers to himself and his career. It
+served less, perhaps, to excite than to sober and brace his mind. De
+Montaigne could have made no man rash, but he could have made many men
+energetic and persevering. The two friends had some points in common;
+but Maltravers had far more prodigality of nature and passion about
+him--had more of flesh and blood, with the faults and excellences of
+flesh and blood. De Montaigne held so much to his favourite doctrine
+of moral equilibrium, that he had really reduced himself in much to
+a species of clockwork. As impulses are formed from habits, so the
+regularity of De Montaigne’s habits made his impulses virtuous and just,
+and he yielded to them as often as a hasty character might have done;
+but then those impulses never urged to anything speculative or daring.
+De Montaigne could not go beyond a certain defined circle of action. He
+had no sympathy for any reasonings based purely on the hypotheses of the
+imagination: he could not endure Plato, and he was dumb to the eloquent
+whispers of whatever was refining in poetry or mystical in wisdom.
+
+Maltravers, on the contrary, not disdaining Reason, ever sought
+to assist her by the Imaginative Faculty, and held all philosophy
+incomplete and unsatisfactory that bounded its inquiries to the limits
+of the Known and Certain. He loved the inductive process; but he carried
+it out to Conjecture as well as Fact. He maintained that, by a similar
+hardihood, all the triumphs of science, as well as art, had been
+accomplished--that Newton, that Copernicus, would have done nothing
+if they had not imagined as well as reasoned, guessed as well as
+ascertained. Nay, it was an aphorism with him, that the very soul of
+philosophy is conjecture. He had the most implicit confidence in the
+operations of the mind and the heart properly formed, and deemed
+that the very excesses of emotion and thought, in men well trained by
+experience and study, are conducive to useful and great ends. But
+the more advanced years, and the singularly practical character of De
+Montaigne’s views, gave him a superiority in argument over Maltravers
+which the last submitted to unwillingly. While, on the other hand, De
+Montaigne secretly felt that his young friend reasoned from a broader
+base, and took in a much wider circumference; and that he was, at once,
+more liable to failure and error, and more capable of new discovery and
+of intellectual achievement. But their ways in life being different,
+they did not clash; and De Montaigne, who was sincerely interested in
+Ernest’s fate, was contented to harden his friend’s mind against
+the obstacles in his way, and leave the rest to experiment and to
+Providence. They went up to London together: and De Montaigne returned
+to Paris. Maltravers appeared once more in the haunts of the gay and
+great. He felt that his new character had greatly altered his
+position. He was no longer courted and caressed for the same vulgar
+and adventitious circumstances of fortune, birth, and connections, as
+before--yet for circumstances that to him seemed equally unflattering.
+He was not sought for his merit, his intellect, his talents; but for
+his momentary celebrity. He was an author in fashion, and run after as
+anything else in fashion might have been. He was invited, less to be
+talked to than to be stared at. He was far too proud in his temper,
+and too pure in his ambition, to feel his vanity elated by sharing the
+enthusiasm of the circles with a German prince or an industrious flea.
+Accordingly he soon repelled the advances made to him, was reserved and
+supercilious to fine ladies, refused to be the fashion, and became very
+unpopular with the literary exclusives. They even began to run down the
+works, because they were dissatisfied with the author. But Maltravers
+had based his experiments upon the vast masses of the general Public. He
+had called the PEOPLE of his own and other countries to be his audience
+and his judges; and all the coteries in the world could have not injured
+him. He was like the member for an immense constituency, who may offend
+individuals, so long as he keep his footing with the body at large. But
+while he withdrew himself from the insipid and the idle, he took care
+not to become separated from the world. He formed his own society
+according to his tastes: took pleasure in the manly and exciting topics
+of the day; and sharpened his observation and widened his sphere as an
+author, by mixing freely and boldly with all classes as a citizen. But
+literature became to him as art to the artist--as his mistress to the
+lover--an engrossing and passionate delight. He made it his glorious
+and divine profession--he loved it as a profession--he devoted to its
+pursuits and honours his youth, cares, dreams--his mind, and his heart,
+and his soul. He was a silent but intense enthusiast in the priesthood
+he had entered. From LITERATURE he imagined had come all that makes
+nations enlightened and men humane. And he loved Literature the more,
+because her distinctions were not those of the world--because she had
+neither ribbands, nor stars, nor high places at her command. A name in
+the deep gratitude and hereditary delight of men--this was the title
+she bestowed. Hers was the Great Primitive Church of the world, without
+Popes or Muftis--sinecures, pluralities and hierarchies. Her servants
+spoke to the earth as the prophets of old, anxious only to be heard and
+believed. Full of this fanaticism, Ernest Maltravers pursued his way
+in the great procession of the myrtle-bearers to the sacred shrine.
+He carried the thyrsus, and he believed in the god. By degrees his
+fanaticism worked in him the philosophy which De Montaigne would have
+derived from sober calculation; it made him indifferent to the thorns in
+the path, to the storms in the sky. He learned to despise the enmity he
+provoked, the calumnies that assailed him. Sometimes he was silent, but
+sometimes he retorted. Like a soldier who serves a cause, he believed
+that when the cause was injured in his person, the weapons confided to
+his hands might be wielded without fear and without reproach. Gradually
+he became feared as well as known. And while many abused him, none could
+contemn.
+
+It would not suit the design of this work to follow Maltravers step by
+step in his course. I am only describing the principal events, not the
+minute details, of his intellectual life. Of the character of his
+works it will be enough to say that, whatever their faults, they were
+original--they were his own. He did not write according to copy, nor
+compile from commonplace books. He was an artist, it is true,--for what
+is genius itself but art? but he took laws, and harmony, and order,
+from the great code of Truth and Nature: a code that demands intense and
+unrelaxing study--though its first principles are few and simple: that
+study Maltravers did not shrink from. It was a deep love of truth that
+made him a subtle and searching analyst, even in what the dull world
+considers trifles; for he knew that nothing in literature is in itself
+trifling--that it is often but a hairsbreadth that divides a truism from
+a discovery. He was the more original, because he sought rather after
+the True than the New. No two minds are ever the same; and therefore
+any man who will give us fairly and frankly the results of his own
+impressions, uninfluenced by the servilities of imitation, will be
+original. But it was not from originality, which really made his
+predominant merit, that Maltravers derived his reputation, for his
+originality was not of that species which generally dazzles the
+vulgar--it was not extravagant nor _bizarre_--he affected no system and
+no school. Many authors of his day seemed more novel and _unique_ to the
+superficial. Profound and durable invention proceeds by subtle and fine
+gradations--it has nothing to do with those jerks and starts, those
+convulsions and distortions, which belong not to the vigour and health,
+but to the epilepsy and disease, of Literature.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+ “Being got out of town, the first thing I did was to give my
+  mule her head.”--_Gil Blas_.
+
+ALTHOUGH the character of Maltravers was gradually becoming more hard
+and severe,--although as his reason grew more muscular, his imagination
+lost something of its early bloom, and he was already very different
+from the wild boy who had set the German youths in a blaze, and had
+changed into a Castle of Indolence the little cottage tenanted with
+Poetry and Alice,--he still preserved many of his old habits; he loved,
+at frequent intervals, to disappear from the great world--to get rid of
+books and friends, and luxury and wealth, and make solitary excursions,
+sometimes on foot, sometimes on horseback, through this fair garden of
+England.
+
+It was one soft May-day that he found himself on such an expedition,
+slowly riding through one of the green lanes of ------shire. His cloak
+and his saddle-bags comprised all his baggage, and the world was before
+him “where to choose his place of rest.” The lane wound at length into
+the main road, and just as he came upon it he fell in with a gay party
+of equestrians.
+
+Foremost of its cavalcade rode a lady in a dark green habit, mounted
+on a thoroughbred English horse, which she managed with so easy a grace
+that Maltravers halted in involuntary admiration. He himself was a
+consummate horseman, and he had the quick eye of sympathy for those who
+shared the accomplishment. He thought, as he gazed, that he had never
+seen but one woman whose air and mien on horseback were so full of
+that nameless elegance which skill and courage in any art naturally
+bestow--that woman was Valerie de Ventadour. Presently, to his great
+surprise, the lady advanced from her companions, neared Maltravers, and
+said, in a voice which he did not at first distinctly recognise--“Is it
+possible?--do I see Mr. Maltravers?”
+
+She paused a moment, and then threw aside her veil, and Ernest
+beheld--Madame de Ventadour! By this time a tall, thin gentleman had
+joined the Frenchwoman.
+
+“Has _madame_ met with an acquaintance?” said he; “and, if so, will she
+permit me to partake her pleasure?”
+
+The interruption seemed a relief to Valerie;--she smiled and coloured.
+
+“Let me introduce you to Mr. Maltravers. Mr. Maltravers, this is my
+host, Lord Doningdale.”
+
+The two gentlemen bowed, the rest of the cavalcade surrounded the
+trio, and Lord Doningdale, with a stately yet frank courtesy, invited
+Maltravers to return with the party to his house, which was about
+four miles distant. As may be supposed, Ernest readily accepted the
+invitation. The cavalcade proceeded, and Maltravers hastened to seek an
+explanation from Valerie. It was soon given. Madame de Ventadour had
+a younger sister, who had lately married a son of Lord Doningdale.
+The marriage had been solemnized in Paris, and Monsieur and Madame de
+Ventadour had been in England a week on a visit to the English peer.
+
+The _rencontre_ was so sudden and unexpected that neither recovered
+sufficient self-possession for fluent conversation. The explanation
+given, Valerie sank into a thoughtful silence, and Maltravers rode by
+her side equally taciturn, pondering on the strange chance which, after
+the lapse of years, had thrown them again together.
+
+Lord Doningdale, who at first lingered with his other visitors, now
+joined them, and Maltravers was struck with his high-bred manner, and a
+singular and somewhat elaborate polish in his emphasis and expression.
+They soon entered a noble park, which attested far more care and
+attention than are usually bestowed upon those demesnes, so peculiarly
+English. Young plantations everywhere contrasted the venerable
+groves--new cottages of picturesque design adorned the outskirts--and
+obelisks and columns, copied from the antique, and evidently of recent
+workmanship, gleamed upon them as they neared the house--a large pile,
+in which the fashion of Queen Anne’s day had been altered into the
+French roofs and windows of the architecture of the Tuileries. “You
+reside much in the country, I am sure, my lord,” said Maltravers.
+
+“Yes,” replied Lord Doningdale, with a pensive air, “this place is
+greatly endeared to me. Here his Majesty Louis XVIII., when in England,
+honoured me with an annual visit. In compliment to him, I sought to
+model my poor mansion into an humble likeness of his own palace, so
+that he might as little as possible miss the rights he had lost. His
+own rooms were furnished exactly like those he had occupied at the
+Tuileries. Yes, the place is endeared to me--I think of the old
+times with pride. It is something to have sheltered a Bourbon in his
+misfortunes.”
+
+“It cost _milord_ a vast sum to make these alterations,” said Madame de
+Ventadour, glancing archly at Maltravers.
+
+“Ah, yes,” said the old lord; and his face, lately elated, became
+overcast--“nearly three hundred thousand pounds: but what then?--_‘Les
+souvenirs, madame, sont sans prix_!’”
+
+“Have you visited Paris since the restoration, Lord Doningdale,” asked
+Maltravers.
+
+His lordship looked at him sharply, and then turned his eye to Madame de
+Ventadour.
+
+“Nay,” said Valerie; laughing, “I did not dictate the question.”
+
+“Yes,” said Lord Doningdale, “I have been at Paris.”
+
+“His Majesty must have been delighted to return your lordship’s
+hospitality.”
+
+Lord Doningdale looked a little embarrassed, and made no reply, but put
+his horse into a canter.
+
+“You have galled our host,” said Valerie, smiling. “Louis XVIII. and his
+friends lived here as long as they pleased, and as sumptuously as
+they could; their visits half ruined the owner, who is the model of a
+_gentilhomme_ and _preux chevalier_. He went to Paris to witness
+their triumph; he expected, I fancy, the order of the St. Esprit. Lord
+Doningdale has royal blood in his veins. His Majesty asked him once
+to dinner, and, when he took leave, said to him, ‘We are happy, Lord
+Doningdale, to have thus requited our obligations to your lordship.’
+Lord Doningdale went back in dudgeon, yet he still boasts of his
+_souvenirs_, poor man.”
+
+“Princes are not grateful, neither are republics,” said Maltravers.
+
+“Ah, who is grateful,” rejoined Valerie, “except a dog and a woman?”
+
+Maltravers found himself ushered into a vast dressing-room, and was
+informed, by a French valet, that in the country Lord Doningdale dined
+at six--the first bell would ring in a few minutes. While the valet was
+speaking, Lord Doningdale himself entered the room. His lordship had
+learned, in the meanwhile, that Maltravers was of the great and ancient
+commoner’s house whose honours were centred in his brother; and yet
+more, that he was the Mr. Maltravers whose writings every one talked of,
+whether for praise or abuse. Lord Doningdale had the two characteristics
+of a high-bred gentleman of the old school--respect for birth and
+respect for talent; he was, therefore, more than ordinarily courteous to
+Ernest, and pressed him to stay some days with so much cordiality, that
+Maltravers could not but assent. His travelling toilet was scanty, but
+Maltravers thought little of dress.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+ “It is the soul that sees. The outward eyes
+  Present the object, but the mind descries;
+  And thence delight, disgust, or cool indifference rise.
+   “CRABBE.
+
+WHEN Maltravers entered the enormous saloon, hung with damask, and
+decorated with the ponderous enrichments and furniture of the time
+of Louis XIV. (that most showy and barbarous of all tastes, which has
+nothing in it of the graceful, nothing of the picturesque, and which,
+nowadays, people who should know better imitate with a ludicrous
+servility), he found sixteen persons assembled. His host stepped up from
+a circle which surrounded him, and formally presented his new visitor
+to the rest. He was struck with the likeness which the sister of
+Valerie bore to Valerie herself; but it was a sobered and chastened
+likeness--less handsome, less impressive. Mrs. George Herbert--such was
+the name she now owned--was a pretty, shrinking, timid girl, fond of her
+husband, and mightily awed by her father-in-law. Maltravers sat by her,
+and drew her into conversation. He could not help pitying the poor lady,
+when he found she was to live altogether at Doningdale Park--remote
+from all the friends and habits of her childhood--alone, so far as the
+affections were concerned, with a young husband, who was passionately
+fond of field-sports, and who, from the few words Ernest exchanged with
+him, seemed to have only three ideas--his dogs, his horses, and his
+wife. Alas! the last would soon be the least in importance. It is a
+sad position--that of a lively young Frenchwoman entombed in an
+English country-house! Marriages with foreigners are seldom fortunate
+experiments. But Ernest’s attention was soon diverted from the sister by
+the entrance of Valerie herself, leaning on her husband’s arm. Hitherto
+he had not very minutely observed what change time had effected in
+her--perhaps he was half afraid. He now gazed at her with curious
+interest. Valerie was still extremely handsome, but her face had grown
+sharper, her form thinner and more angular; there was something in her
+eye and lip, discontented, restless, almost querulous:--such is the too
+common expression in the face of those born to love, and condemned to
+be indifferent. The little sister was more to be envied of the two--come
+what may, she loved her husband, such as he was, and her heart might
+ache, but it was not with a void.
+
+Monsieur de Ventadour soon shuffled up to Maltravers--his nose longer
+than ever.
+
+“Hein--hein--how d’ye do--how d’ye do?--charmed to see you--saw madame
+before me--hein--hein--I suspect--I suspect--”
+
+“Mr. Maltravers, will you give Madame de Ventadour your arm?” said Lord
+Doningdale, as he stalked on to the dining-room with a duchess on his
+own.
+
+“And you have left Naples,” said Maltravers: “left it for good?”
+
+“We do not think of returning.”
+
+“It was a charming place--how I loved it!--how well I remember it!”
+ Ernest spoke calmly--it was but a general remark.
+
+Valerie sighed gently.
+
+During dinner, the conversation between Maltravers and Madame de
+Ventadour was vague and embarrassed. Ernest was no longer in love with
+her--he had outgrown that youthful fancy. She had exercised influence
+over him--the new influences that he had created had chased away her
+image. Such is life. Long absences extinguish all the false lights,
+though not the true ones. The lamps are dead in the banquet-room of
+yesterday; but a thousand years hence, and the stars we look on to-night
+will burn as brightly. Maltravers was no longer in love with Valerie.
+But Valerie--ah, perhaps _hers_ had been true love!
+
+Maltravers was surprised when he came to examine the state of his own
+feelings--he was surprised to find that his pulse did not beat quicker
+at the touch of one whose very glance had once thrilled him to the
+soul--he was surprised, but rejoiced. He was no longer anxious to seek,
+but to shun excitement, and he was a better and a higher being than he
+had been on the shores of Naples.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+ “Whence that low voice, a whisper from the heart,
+  That told of days long past?”--WORDSWORTH.
+
+ERNEST stayed several days at Lord Doningdale’s, and every day he rode
+out with Valerie, but it was with a large party; and every evening he
+conversed with her, but the whole world might have overheard what they
+said. In fact, the sympathy that had once existed between the young
+dreamer and the proud, discontented woman had in much passed away.
+Awakened to vast and grand objects, Maltravers was a dreamer no more.
+Inured to the life of trifles she had once loathed, Valerie had settled
+down into the usages and thoughts of the common world--she had no longer
+the superiority of earthly wisdom over Maltravers, and his romance was
+sobered in its eloquence, and her ear dulled to its tone. Still Ernest
+felt a deep interest in her, and still she seemed to feel a sensitive
+pride in his career.
+
+One evening Maltravers had joined a circle in which Madame de Ventadour,
+with more than her usual animation, presided--and to which, in her
+pretty, womanly, and thoroughly French way, she was lightly laying down
+the law on a hundred subjects--Philosophy, Poetry, Sevres china, and the
+balance of power in Europe. Ernest listened to her, delighted, but not
+enchanted. Yet Valerie was not natural that night--she was speaking from
+forced spirits.
+
+“Well,” said Madame de Ventadour at last, tired, perhaps of the part she
+had been playing, and bringing to a sudden close an animated description
+of the then French court--“well, see now if we ought not to be ashamed
+of ourselves--our talk has positively interrupted the music. Did you see
+Lord Doningdale stop it with a bow to me, as much as to say, with his
+courtly reproof, ‘It shall not disturb you, madam’? I will no longer be
+accessory to your crime of bad taste!”
+
+With this the Frenchwoman rose, and, gliding through the circle, retired
+to the further end of the room. Ernest followed her with his eyes.
+Suddenly she beckoned to him, and he approached and seated himself by
+her side.
+
+“Mr. Maltravers,” said Valerie, then, with great sweetness in her
+voice,--“I have not yet expressed to you the delight I have felt from
+your genius. In absence you have suffered me to converse with you--your
+books have been to me dear friends; as we shall soon part again, let me
+now tell you of this, frankly and without compliment.”
+
+This paved the way to a conversation that approached more on the
+precincts of the past than any they had yet known. But Ernest was
+guarded; and Valerie watched his words and looks with an interest she
+could not conceal--an interest that partook of disappointment.
+
+“It is an excitement,” said Valerie, “to climb a mountain, though it
+fatigue; and though the clouds may even deny us a prospect from its
+summit--it is an excitement that gives a very universal pleasure, and
+that seems almost as if it were the result of a common human instinct
+which makes us desire to rise--to get above the ordinary thoroughfares
+and level of life. Some such pleasure you must have in intellectual
+ambition, in which the mind is the upward traveller.”
+
+“It is not the _ambition_ that pleases,” replied Maltravers, “it is the
+following a path congenial to our tastes, and made dear to us in a short
+time by habit. The moments in which we look beyond our work, and fancy
+ourselves seated beneath the Everlasting Laurel, are few. It is the work
+itself, whether of action or literature, that interests and excites
+us. And at length the dryness of toil takes the familiar sweetness of
+custom. But in intellectual labour there is another charm--we become
+more intimate with our own nature. The heart and the soul grow friends,
+as it were, and the affections and the aspirations unite. Thus, we
+are never without society--we are never alone; all that we have read,
+learned and discovered, is company to us. This is pleasant,” added
+Maltravers, “to those who have no clear connections in the world
+without.”
+
+“And is that your case?” asked Valerie, with a timid smile.
+
+“Alas, yes! and since I conquered one affection,--Madame de Ventadour, I
+almost think I have outlived the capacity of loving. I believe that when
+we cultivate very largely the reason or the imagination, we blunt, to
+a certain extent, our young susceptibilities to the fair impressions
+of real life. From ‘idleness,’ says the old Roman poet, ‘Love feeds his
+torch.’”
+
+“You are too young to talk thus.”
+
+“I speak as I feel.”
+
+Valerie said no more. Shortly afterwards Lord Doningdale approached
+them, and proposed that they should make an excursion the next day to
+see the ruins of an old abbey, some few miles distant.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+ “If I should meet thee
+  After long years,
+  How shall I greet thee?”--BYRON.
+
+IT was a smaller party than usual the next day, consisting only of
+Lord Doningdale, his son George Herbert, Valerie and Ernest. They were
+returning from the ruins, and the sun, now gradually approaching the
+west, threw its slant rays over the gardens and houses of a small,
+picturesque town, or, perhaps, rather village, on the high North Road.
+It is one of the prettiest places in England, that town or village,
+and boasts an excellent old-fashioned inn, with a large and quaint
+pleasure-garden. It was through the long and straggling street that our
+little party slowly rode, when the sky became suddenly overcast, and, a
+few large hailstones falling, gave notice of an approaching storm.
+
+“I told you we should not get safely through the day,” said George
+Herbert. “Now we are in for it.”
+
+“George, that is a vulgar expression,” said Lord Doningdale, buttoning
+up his coat. While he spoke, a vivid flash of lightning darted across
+their very path, and the sky grew darker and darker.
+
+“We may as well rest at the inn,” said Maltravers: “the storm is coming
+on apace, and Madame de Ventadour--”
+
+“You are right,” interrupted Lord Doningdale; and he put his horse into
+a canter.
+
+They were soon at the door of the old hotel. Bells rang dogs
+barked--hostlers ran. A plain, dark, travelling post-chariot was before
+the inn-door; and, roused perhaps by the noise below, a lady in the
+“first-floor front, No. 2,” came to the window. This lady owned the
+travelling-carriage, and was at this time alone in that apartment. As
+she looked carelessly at the party, her eyes rested on one form--she
+turned pale, uttered a faint cry, and fell senseless on the floor.
+
+Meanwhile, Lord Doningdale and his guests were shown into the room next
+to that tenanted by the lady. Properly speaking, both the rooms made
+one long apartment for balls and county meetings, and the division was
+formed by a thin partition, removable at pleasure. The hail now came on
+fast and heavy, the trees groaned, the thunder roared; and in the large,
+dreary room there was a palpable and oppressive sense of coldness and
+discomfort. Valerie shivered--a fire was lighted--and the Frenchwoman
+drew near to it.
+
+“You are wet, my dear lady,” said Lord Doningdale. “You should take off
+that close habit, and have it dried.”
+
+“Oh, no; what matters it?” said Valerie bitterly, and almost rudely.
+
+“It matters everything,” said Ernest; “pray be ruled.”
+
+“And do you care for me?” murmured Valerie.
+
+“Can you ask that question?” replied Ernest, in the same tone, and with
+affectionate and friendly warmth.
+
+Meanwhile, the good old lord had summoned the chambermaid, and, with the
+kindly imperiousness of a father, made Valerie quit the room. The three
+gentlemen, left together, talked of the storm, wondered how long it
+would last, and debated the propriety of sending to Doningdale for the
+carriage. While they spoke, the hail suddenly ceased, though clouds in
+the distant horizon were bearing heavily up to renew the charge. George
+Herbert, who was the most impatient of mortals, especially of rainy
+weather in a strange place, seized the occasion, and insisted on riding
+to Doningdale, and sending back the carriage.
+
+“Surely a groom would do as well, George,” said the father.
+
+“My dear father, no; I should envy the rogue too much. I am bored to
+death here. Marie will be frightened about us. Brown Bess will take me
+back in twenty minutes. I am a hardy fellow, you know. Good-bye.”
+
+Away darted the young sportsman, and in two minutes they saw him spur
+gaily from the inn-door.
+
+“It is very odd that _I_ should have such a son,” said Lord Doningdale,
+musingly,--“a son who cannot amuse himself indoors for two minutes
+together. I took great pains with his education, too. Strange that
+people should weary so much of themselves that they cannot brave the
+prospect of a few minutes passed in reflection--that a shower and the
+resources of their own thoughts are evils so galling--very strange
+indeed. But it is a confounded climate this, certainly. I wonder when it
+will clear up.”
+
+Thus muttering, Lord Doningdale walked, or rather marched, to and fro
+the room, with his hands in his coat pockets, and his whip sticking
+perpendicularly out of the right one. Just at this moment the waiter
+came to announce that his lordship’s groom was without, and desired much
+to see him. Lord Doningdale had then the pleasure of learning that his
+favourite grey hackney, which he had ridden, winter and summer, for
+fifteen years, was taken with shivers, and, as the groom expressed it,
+seemed to have “the colic in its bowels!”
+
+Lord Doningdale turned pale, and hurried to the stables without saying a
+word.
+
+Maltravers, who, plunged in thought, had not overheard the low and brief
+conference between master and groom, remained alone, seated by the fire,
+his head buried in his bosom, and his arms folded.
+
+Meanwhile, the lady, who occupied the adjoining chamber, had recovered
+slowly from her swoon. She put both hands to her temples, as if trying
+to recollect her thoughts. Hers was a fair, innocent, almost childish
+face; and now, as a smile shot across it, there was something so sweet
+and touching in the gladness it shed over that countenance, that you
+could not have seen it without strong and almost painful interest.
+For it was the gladness of a person who has known sorrow. Suddenly she
+started up, and said: “No, then! I do not dream. He is come back--he is
+here--all will be well again! Ha! it is his voice. Oh, bless him, it is
+_his_ voice!” She paused, her finger on her lip, her face bent down. A
+low and indistinct sound of voices reached her straining ear through the
+thin door that divided her from Maltravers. She listened intently, but
+she could not overhear the import. Her heart beat violently. “He is not
+alone!” she murmured, mournfully. “I will wait till the sound ceases,
+and then I will venture in!”
+
+And what was the conversation carried on in that chamber? We must return
+to Ernest. He was sitting in the same thoughtful posture when Madame de
+Ventadour returned.
+
+The Frenchwoman coloured when she found herself alone with Ernest, and
+Ernest himself was not at his ease.
+
+“Herbert has gone home to order the carriage, and Lord Doningdale has
+disappeared, I scarce know whither. You do not, I trust, feel the worse
+for the rain?”
+
+“No,” said Valerie.
+
+“Shall you have any commands in London?” asked Maltravers; “I return to
+town to-morrow.”
+
+“So soon!” and Valerie sighed. “Ah!” she added, after a pause, “we
+shall not meet again for years, perhaps. Monsieur de Ventadour is to
+be appointed ambassador to the Court and so--and so--. Well, it is no
+matter. What has become of the friendship we once swore to each other?”
+
+“It is here,” said Maltravers, laying his hand on his heart. “Here, at
+least, lies the half of that friendship which was my charge; and more
+than friendship, Valerie de Ventadour--respect--admiration--gratitude.
+At a time of life when passion and fancy, most strong, might have left
+me an idle and worthless voluptuary, you convinced me that the world has
+virtue, and that woman is too noble to be our toy--the idol of to-day,
+the victim of to-morrow. Your influence, Valerie, left me a more
+thoughtful man--I hope a better one.”
+
+“Oh!” said Madame de Ventadour, strongly affected; “I bless you for what
+you tell me: you cannot know--you cannot guess how sweet it is to me.
+Now I recognise you once more. What--what did my resolution cost me? Now
+I am repaid!”
+
+Ernest was moved by her emotion, and by his own remembrances; he took
+her hand, and pressing it with frank and respectful tenderness--“I did
+not think, Valerie,” said he, “when I reviewed the past, I did not think
+that you loved me--I was not vain enough for that; but, if so, how
+much is your character raised in my eyes--how provident, how wise your
+virtue! Happier and better for both, our present feelings, each to each,
+than if we had indulged a brief and guilty dream of passion, at war with
+all that leaves passion without remorse, and bliss without alloy. Now--”
+
+“Now,” interrupted Valerie, quickly, and fixing on him her dark
+eyes--“now you love me no longer! Yet it is better so. Well, I will go
+back to my cold and cheerless state of life, and forget once more that
+Heaven endowed me with a heart!”
+
+“Ah, Valerie! esteemed, revered, still beloved, not indeed with the
+fires of old, but with a deep, undying, and holy tenderness, speak not
+thus to me. Let me not believe you unhappy; let me think that, wise,
+sagacious, brilliant as you are, you have employed your gifts to
+reconcile yourself to a common lot. Still let me look up to you when I
+would despise the circles in which you live, and say: ‘On that pedestal
+an altar is yet placed, to which the heart may bring the offerings of
+the soul.’”
+
+“It is in vain--in vain that I struggle,” said Valerie, half-choked
+with emotion, and clasping her hands passionately. “Ernest, I love you
+still--I am wretched to think you love me no more: I would give you
+nothing--yet I exact all; my youth is going--my beauty dimmed--my very
+intellect is dulled by the life I lead; and yet I ask from you that
+which your young heart once felt for me. Despise me, Maltravers, I am
+not what I seemed--I am a hypocrite--despise me.”
+
+“No,” said Ernest, again possessing himself of her hand, and falling on
+his knee by her side. “No, never-to-be-forgotten, ever-to-be-honoured
+Valerie, hear me.” As he spoke, he kissed the hand he held; with the
+other, Valerie covered her face and wept bitterly, but in silence.
+Ernest paused till the burst of her feelings had subsided, her hand
+still in his--still warmed by his kisses--kisses as pure as cavalier
+ever impressed on the hand of his queen.
+
+At this time, the door communicating with the next room gently opened.
+A fair form--a form fairer and younger than that of Valerie de
+Ventadour--entered the apartment; the silence had deceived her--she
+believed that Maltravers was alone. She had entered with her heart
+upon her lips; love, sanguine, hopeful love, in every vein, in every
+thought--she had entered dreaming that across that threshold life would
+dawn upon her afresh--that all would be once more as it had been,
+when the common air was rapture. Thus she entered; and now she
+stood spell-bound, terror-stricken, pale as death--life turned to
+stone--youth--hope--bliss were for ever over to her! Ernest kneeling to
+another was all she saw! For this had she been faithful and true amidst
+storm and desolation; for this had she hoped--dreamed--lived. They did
+not note her; she was unseen--unheard. And Ernest, who would have gone
+barefoot to the end of the earth to find her, was in the very room with
+her, and knew it not!
+
+“Call me again _beloved_!” said Valerie, very softly.
+
+“Beloved Valerie, hear me.”
+
+These words were enough for the listener; she turned noiselessly away:
+humble as that heart was, it was proud. The door closed on her--she had
+obtained the wish of her whole being--Heaven had heard her prayer--she
+had once more seen the lover of her youth; and thenceforth all was night
+and darkness to her. What matter what became of her? One moment, what
+an effect it produces upon years!--ONE MOMENT!--virtue, crime, glory,
+shame, woe, rapture, rest upon moments! Death itself is but a moment,
+yet Eternity is its successor!
+
+“Hear me!” continued Ernest, unconscious of what had passed--“hear me;
+let us be what human nature and worldly forms seldom allow those of
+opposite sexes to be--friends to each other, and to virtue also--friends
+through time and absence--friends through all the vicissitudes of
+life--friends on whose affection shame and remorse never cast a
+shade--friends who are to meet hereafter! Oh! there is no attachment so
+true, no tie so holy, as that which is founded on the old chivalry of
+loyalty and honour; and which is what love would be, if the heart and
+the soul were unadulterated by clay.”
+
+There was in Ernest’s countenance an expression so noble, in his voice
+a tone so thrilling, that Valerie was brought back at once to the
+nature which a momentary weakness had subdued. She looked at him with
+an admiring and grateful gaze, and then said, in a calm but low voice,
+“Ernest, I understand you; yes, your friendship is dearer to me than
+love.”
+
+At this time they heard the voice of Lord Doningdale on the stairs.
+Valerie turned away. Maltravers, as he rose, extended his hand; she
+pressed it warmly, and the spell was broken, the temptation conquered,
+the ordeal passed. While Lord Doningdale entered the room, the carriage,
+with Herbert in it, drove to the door. In a few minutes the little
+party were within the vehicle. As they drove away, the hostlers were
+harnessing the horses to the dark green travelling-carriage. From the
+window, a sad and straining eye gazed upon the gayer equipage of the
+peer--that eye which Maltravers would have given his whole fortune to
+meet again. But he did not look up; and Alice Darvil turned away, and
+her fate was fixed!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+ “Strange fits of passion I have known.
+   And I will dare to tell.”--WORDSWORTH.
+
+ “* * * * * The food of hope
+  Is meditated action.”--WORDSWORTH.
+
+MALTRAVERS left Doningdale the next day. He had no further conversation
+with Valerie; but when he took leave of her, she placed in his hand a
+letter, which he read as he rode slowly through the beech avenues of the
+park. Translated, it ran thus:
+
+
+“Others would despise me for the weakness I showed--but you will not!
+It is the sole weakness of a life. None can know what I have passed
+through--what hours of dejection and gloom. I, whom so many envy! Better
+to have been a peasant girl, with love, than a queen whose life is but
+a dull mechanism. You, Maltravers, I never forgot in absence; and your
+image made yet more wearisome and trite the things around me. Years
+passed, and your name was suddenly on men’s lips. I heard of you
+wherever I went--I could not shut you from me. Your fame was as if you
+were conversing by my side. We met at last, suddenly and unexpectedly.
+I saw that you loved me no more, and that thought conquered all my
+resolves: anguish subdues the nerves of the mind as sickness those of
+the body. And thus I forgot, and humbled, and might have undone myself.
+Juster and better thoughts are once more awakened within me, and when
+we meet again I shall be worthy of your respect. I see how dangerous are
+that luxury of thought, that sin of discontent which I indulged. I
+go back to life, resolved to vanquish all that can interfere with its
+claims and duties. Heaven guide and preserve you, Ernest. Think of me
+as one whom you will not blush to have loved--whom you will not blush
+hereafter to present to your wife. With so much that is soft, as well as
+great within you, you were not formed like me--to be alone.
+
+   “FAREWELL!”
+
+
+Maltravers read, and re-read this letter; and when he reached his home,
+he placed it carefully amongst the things he most valued. A lock of
+Alice’s hair lay beside it--he did not think that either was dishonoured
+by the contact.
+
+With an effort, he turned himself once more to those stern yet high
+connections which literature makes with real life. Perhaps there was a
+certain restlessness in his heart which induced him ever to occupy his
+mind. That was one of the busiest years of his life--the one in which he
+did most to sharpen jealousy and confirm fame.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+ “In effect he entered my apartment.”--_Gil Blas_.
+
+ “‘I am surprised,’ said he, ‘at the caprice of Fortune,
+  who sometimes delights in loading an execrable author
+  with favours, whilst she leaves good writers to perish
+  for want.’”--_Gil Blas_.
+
+IT was just twelve months after his last interview with Valerie, and
+Madame de Ventadour had long since quitted England, when one morning, as
+Maltravers sat alone in his study, Castruccio Cesarini was announced.
+
+“Ah, my dear Castruccio, how are you?” cried Maltravers, eagerly, as the
+opening door presented the form of the Italian.
+
+“Sir,” said Castruccio, with great stiffness, and speaking in French,
+which was his wont when he meant to be distant--“sir, I do not come
+to renew our former acquaintance--you are a great man [here a bitter
+sneer], I an obscure one [here Castruccio drew himself up]--I only come
+to discharge a debt to you which I find I have incurred.”
+
+“What tone is this, Castruccio; and what debt do you speak of?”
+
+“On my arrival in town yesterday,” said the poet solemnly, “I went to
+the man whom you deputed some years since to publish my little volume,
+to demand an account of its success; and I found that it had cost one
+hundred and twenty pounds, deducting the sale of forty-nine copies which
+had been sold. _Your_ books sell some thousands, I am told. It is
+well contrived--mine fell still-born, no pains were taken with it--no
+matter--[a wave of the hand]. You discharged this debt, I repay you:
+there is a cheque for the money. Sir, I have done! I wish you a good
+day, and health to enjoy _your_ reputation.”
+
+“Why, Cesarini, this is folly.”
+
+“Sir--”
+
+“Yes, it is folly; for there is no folly equal to that of throwing away
+friendship in a world where friendship is so rare. You insinuate that I
+am to blame for any neglect which your work experienced. Your publisher
+can tell you that I was more anxious about your book than I have ever
+been about my own.”
+
+“And the proof is that forty-nine copies were sold!”
+
+“Sit down, Castruccio; sit down, and listen to reason;” and Maltravers
+proceeded to explain, and soothe, and console. He reminded the poor
+poet that his verses were written in a foreign tongue--that even English
+poets of great fame enjoyed but a limited sale for their works--that it
+was impossible to make the avaricious public purchase what the stupid
+public would not take an interest in--in short, he used all those
+arguments which naturally suggested themselves as best calculated to
+convince and soften Castruccio; and he did this with so much evident
+sympathy and kindness, that at length the Italian could no longer
+justify his own resentment. A reconciliation took place, sincere on the
+part of Maltravers, hollow on the part of Cesarini; for the disappointed
+author could not forgive the successful one.
+
+“And how long shall you stay in London?”
+
+“Some months.”
+
+“Send for your luggage, and be my guest.”
+
+“No; I have taken lodgings that suit me. I am formed for solitude.”
+
+“While you stay here, you will, however, go into the world.”
+
+“Yes, I have some letters of introduction, and I hear that the English
+can honour merit, even in an Italian.”
+
+“You hear the truth, and it will amuse you, at least, to see our eminent
+men. They will receive you most hospitably. Let me assist you as a
+cicerone.”
+
+“Oh, your _valuable_ time!”
+
+“Is at your disposal: but where are you going?”
+
+“It is Sunday, and I have had my curiosity excited to hear a celebrated
+preacher--Mr. ------, who they tell me, is now more talked of than _any
+author_ in London.”
+
+“They tell you truly--I will go with you--I myself have not yet heard
+him, but proposed to do so this very day.”
+
+“Are you not jealous of a man so much spoken of?”
+
+“Jealous!--why, I never set up for a popular preacher!--_ce n’est pas
+mon metier_.”
+
+“If I were a _successful_ author, I should be jealous if the
+dancing-dogs were talked of.”
+
+“No, my dear Cesarini, I am sure you would not. You are a little
+irritated at present by natural disappointment; but the man who has as
+much success as he deserves is never morbidly jealous, even of a rival
+in his own line. Want of success sours us; but a little sunshine smiles
+away the vapours. Come, we have no time to lose.”
+
+Maltravers took his hat, and the two young men bent their way to ------
+Chapel. Cesarini still retained the singular fashion of his dress,
+though it was now made of handsomer materials, and worn with more
+coxcombry and pretension. He had much improved in person--had been
+admired in Paris, and told that he looked like a man of genius--and,
+with his black ringlets flowing over his shoulders, his long moustache,
+his broad Spanish-shaped hat, and eccentric garb, he certainly did not
+look like other people. He smiled with contempt at the plain dress of
+his companion. “I see,” said he, “that you follow the fashion, and look
+as if you passed your life with _elegans_ instead of students. I wonder
+you condescend to such trifles as fashionably-shaped hats and coats.”
+
+“It would be worse trifling to set up for originality in hats and
+coats, at least in sober England. I was born a gentleman, and I dress my
+outward frame like others of my order. Because I am a writer, why should
+I affect to be different from other men?”
+
+“I see that you are not above the weakness of your countryman Congreve,”
+ said Cesarini, “who deemed it finer to be a gentleman than an author.”
+
+“I always thought that anecdote misconstrued. Congreve had a proper and
+manly pride, to my judgment, when he expressed a dislike to be visited
+merely as a raree-show.”
+
+“But is it policy to let the world see that an author is like other
+people? Would he not create a deeper personal interest if he showed
+that even in person alone he was unlike the herd? He ought to be seen
+seldom--not to stale his presence--and to resort to the arts that belong
+to the royalty of intellect as well as the royalty of birth.”
+
+“I dare say an author, by a little charlatanism of that nature, might be
+more talked of--might be more adored in the boarding-schools, and make a
+better picture in the exhibition. But I think, if his mind be manly,
+he would lose in self-respect at every quackery of the sort. And my
+philosophy is, that to respect oneself is worth all the fame in the
+world.”
+
+Cesarini sneered and shrugged his shoulders; it was quite evident that
+the two authors had no sympathy with each other.
+
+They arrived at last at the chapel, and with some difficulty procured
+seats.
+
+Presently the service began. The preacher was a man of unquestionable
+talent and fervid eloquence; but his theatrical arts, his affected
+dress, his artificial tones and gestures; and, above all, the fanatical
+mummeries which he introduced into the House of God, disgusted
+Maltravers, while they charmed, entranced, and awed Cesarini. The one
+saw a mountebank and impostor--the other recognised a profound artist
+and an inspired prophet.
+
+But while the discourse was drawing towards a close, while the preacher
+was in one of his most eloquent bursts--the ohs! and ahs! of which
+were the grand prelude to the pathetic peroration--the dim outline of a
+female form, in the distance, riveted the eyes and absorbed the thoughts
+of Maltravers. The chapel was darkened, though it was broad daylight;
+and the face of the person that attracted Ernest’s attention was
+concealed by her head-dress and veil. But that bend of the neck, so
+simply graceful, so humbly modest, recalled to his heart but one image.
+Every one has, perhaps, observed that there is a physiognomy (if the
+bull may be pardoned) of _form_ as well as face, which it rarely happens
+that two persons possess in common. And this, with most, is peculiarly
+marked in the turn of the head, the outline of the shoulders, and the
+ineffable something that characterises the postures of each individual
+in repose. The more intently he gazed, the more firmly Ernest
+was persuaded that he saw before him the long-lost, the
+never-to-be-forgotten mistress of his boyish days, and his first love.
+On one side of the lady in question sat an elderly gentleman, whose eyes
+were fixed upon the preacher; on the other, a beautiful little girl,
+with long fair ringlets, and that cast of features which, from its
+exquisite delicacy and expressive mildness, painters and poets call
+the “angelic.” These persons appeared to belong to the same party.
+Maltravers literally trembled, so great were his impatience and
+agitation. Yet still, the dress of the supposed likeness of Alice, the
+appearance of her companions, were so evidently above the ordinary rank,
+that Ernest scarcely ventured to yield to the suggestions of his own
+heart. Was it possible that the daughter of Luke Darvil, thrown upon
+the wide world, could have risen so far beyond her circumstances and
+station? At length the moment came when he might resolve his doubts--the
+discourse was concluded--the extemporaneous prayer was at an end--the
+congregation broke up, and Maltravers pushed his way, as well as he
+could, through the dense and serried crowd. But every moment some
+vexatious obstruction, in the shape of a fat gentleman or three
+close-wedged ladies, intercepted his progress. He lost sight of the
+party in question amidst the profusion of tall bonnets and waving
+plumes. He arrived at last, breathless and pale as death (so great was
+the struggle within him), at the door of the chapel. He arrived in time
+to see a plain carriage with servants in grey undress liveries, driving
+from the porch--and caught a glimpse, within the vehicle, of the golden
+ringlets of a child. He darted forward, he threw himself almost before
+the horses. The coachman drew in, and with an angry exclamation, very
+much like an oath, whipped his horses aside and went off. But that
+momentary pause sufficed.--“It is she--it is! O Heaven, it is Alice!”
+ murmured Maltravers. The whole place reeled before his eyes, and he
+clung, overpowered and unconscious, to a neighbouring lamp-post for
+support. But he recovered himself with an agonising effort, as the
+thought struck upon this heart that he was about to lose sight of her
+again for ever. And he rushed forward, like one frantic, in pursuit of
+the carriage. But there was a vast crowd of other carriages, besides
+stream upon stream of foot-passengers,--for the great and the gay
+resorted to that place of worship, as a fashionable excitement in a
+dull day. And after a weary and a dangerous chase, in which he had been
+nearly run over three times, Maltravers halted at last, exhausted and
+in despair. Every succeeding Sunday, for months, he went to the same
+chapel, but in vain; in vain, too, he resorted to every public haunt of
+dissipation and amusement. Alice Darvil he beheld no more!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+        “Tell me, sir,
+  Have you cast up your state, rated your land,
+  And find it able to endure the charge?”
+    _The Noble Gentleman_.
+
+By degrees, as Maltravers sobered down from the first shock of that
+unexpected meeting, and from the prolonged disappointment that followed
+it, he became sensible of a strange kind of happiness or contentment.
+Alice was not in poverty, she was not eating the unhallowed bread of
+vice, or earning the bitter wages of laborious penury. He saw her in
+reputable, nay, opulent circumstances. A dark nightmare, that had often,
+amidst the pleasures of youth, or the triumphs of literature, weighed
+upon his breast, was removed. He breathed more freely--he could sleep
+in peace. His conscience could no longer say to him, “She who slept upon
+thy bosom is a wanderer upon the face of the earth--exposed to every
+temptation, perishing perhaps for want.” That single sight of Alice
+had been like the apparition of the injured Dead conjured up at
+Heraclea--whose sight could pacify the aggressor and exorcise the
+spectres of remorse. He was reconciled with himself, and walked on to
+the Future with a bolder step and a statelier crest. Was she married to
+that staid and sober-looking personage whom he had beheld with her?
+was that child the offspring of their union? He almost hoped so--it was
+better to lose than to destroy her. Poor Alice! could she have dreamed,
+when she sat at his feet gazing up into his eyes, that a time would come
+when Maltravers would thank Heaven for the belief that she was happy
+with another?
+
+Ernest Maltravers now felt a new man: the relief of conscience operated
+on the efforts of his genius. A more buoyant and elastic spirit entered
+into them--they seemed to breathe as with a second youth.
+
+Meanwhile, Cesarini threw himself into the fashionable world, and to his
+own surprise was _feted_ and caressed. In fact, Castruccio was exactly
+the sort of person to be made a lion of. The letters of introduction
+that he had brought from Paris were addressed to those great personages
+in England between whom and personages equally great in France
+politics makes a bridge of connection. Cesarini appeared to them as an
+accomplished young man, brother-in-law to a distinguished member of the
+French Chamber. Maltravers, on the other hand, introduced him to the
+literary dilettanti, who admire all authors that are not rivals. The
+singular costume of Cesarini, which would have revolted persons in an
+Englishman, enchanted them in an Italian. He looked, they said, like
+a poet. Ladies like to have verses written to them, and Cesarini, who
+talked very little, made up for it by scribbling eternally. The young
+man’s head soon grew filled with comparisons between himself in London
+and Petrarch at Avignon. As he had always thought that fame was in the
+gift of lords and ladies, and had no idea of the multitude, he fancied
+himself already famous. And, since one of his strongest feelings was
+his jealousy of Maltravers, he was delighted at being told he was a
+much more interesting creature than that haughty personage, who wore
+his neckcloth like other people, and had not even those indispensable
+attributes of genius--black curls and a sneer. Fine society, which, as
+Madame de Stael well says, depraves the frivolous mind and braces the
+strong one, completed the ruin of all that was manly in Cesarini’s
+intellect. He soon learned to limit his desire of effect or distinction
+to gilded saloons; and his vanity contented itself upon the scraps and
+morsels from which the lion heart of true ambition turns in disdain.
+But this was not all. Cesarini was envious of the greater affluence
+of Maltravers. His own fortune was in a small capital of eight or nine
+thousand pounds: but, thrown in the midst of the wealthiest society in
+Europe, he could not bear to sacrifice a single claim upon its esteem.
+He began to talk of the satiety of wealth, and young ladies listened to
+him with remarkable interest when he did so--he obtained the reputation
+of riches--he was too vain not to be charmed with it. He endeavoured to
+maintain the claim by adopting the extravagant excesses of the day. He
+bought horses--he gave away jewels--he made love to a marchioness
+of forty-two, who was very kind to him and very fond of _ecarte_--he
+gambled--he was in the high road to destruction.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK VI.
+
+  Perchance you say that gold’s the arch-exceller,
+  And to be rich is sweet?--EURIP. _Ion._, line 641.
+
+  * * * ‘Tis not to be endured,
+  To yield our trodden path and turn aside,
+  Giving our place to knaves.--_Ibid._, line 648
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+ “L’adresse et l’artifice out passe dans mon coeur;
+  Qu’ou a sous cet habit et d’esprit et de ruse.” *--REGNARD.
+
+* Subtility and craft have taken possession of my heart; but under this
+habit one exhibits both shrewdness and wit.
+
+IT was a fine morning in July, when a gentleman who had arrived in town
+the night before--after an absence from England of several years--walked
+slowly and musingly up the superb thoroughfare which connects the
+Regent’s park with St. James’s.
+
+He was a man, who, with great powers of mind, had wasted his youth in
+a wandering vagabond kind of life, but who had worn away the love of
+pleasure, and began to awaken to a sense of ambition.
+
+“It is astonishing how this city is improved,” said he to himself.
+“Everything gets on in this world with a little energy and bustle--and
+everybody as well as everything. My old cronies, fellows not half so
+clever as I am, are all doing well. There’s Tom Stevens, my very fag at
+Eton--snivelling little dog he was too!--just made under-secretary
+of state. Pearson, whose longs and shorts I always wrote, is now
+head-master to the human longs and shorts of a public school--editing
+Greek plays, and booked for a bishopric. Collier, I see by the papers,
+is leading his circuit--and Ernest Maltravers (but _he_ had some talent)
+has made a name in the world. Here am I, worth them all put together,
+who have done nothing but spend half my little fortune in spite of all
+my economy. Egad, this must have an end. I must look to the main chance;
+and yet, just when I want his help the most, my worthy uncle thinks fit
+to marry again. Humph--I’m too good for this world.”
+
+While thus musing, the soliloquist came in direct personal contact with
+a tall gentleman, who carried his head very high in the air, and did not
+appear to see that he had nearly thrown our abstracted philosopher off
+his legs.
+
+“Zounds, sir, what do you mean?” cried the latter.
+
+“I beg your par--” began the other, meekly, when his arm was seized,
+and the injured man exclaimed, “Bless me, sir, is it indeed _you_ whom I
+see?”
+
+“Ha!--Lumley?”
+
+“The same; and how fares it, any dear uncle? I did not know you were in
+London. I only arrived last night. How well you are looking!”
+
+“Why, yes, Heaven be praised, I am pretty well.”
+
+“And happy in your new ties? You must present me to Mrs. Templeton.”
+
+“Ehem,” said Mr. Templeton, clearing his throat, and with a slight but
+embarrassed smile, “I never thought I should marry again.”
+
+“_L’homme propose et Dieu dispose_,” observed Lumley Ferrers; for it was
+he.
+
+“Gently, my dear nephew,” replied Mr. Templeton, gravely; “those phrases
+are somewhat sacrilegious; I am an old-fashioned person, you know.”
+
+“Ten thousand apologies.”
+
+“_One_ apology will suffice; these hyperboles of phrase are almost
+sinful.”
+
+“Confounded old prig!” thought Ferrers; but he bowed sanctimoniously.
+
+“My dear uncle, I have been a wild fellow in my day; but with years
+comes reflection; and under your guidance, if I may hope for it, I trust
+to grow a wiser and a better man.”
+
+“It is well, Lumley,” returned the uncle, “and I am very glad to see
+you returned to your own country. Will you dine with me to-morrow? I am
+living near Fulham. You had better bring your carpet-bag, and stay with
+me some days; you will be heartily welcome, especially if you can shift
+without a foreign servant. I have a great compassion for papists, but--”
+
+“Oh, my dear uncle, do not fear; I am not rich enough to have a foreign
+servant, and have not travelled over three-quarters of the globe without
+learning that it is possible to dispense with a valet.”
+
+“As to being rich enough,” observed Mr. Templeton, with a calculating
+air, “seven hundred and ninety-five pounds ten shillings a year will
+allow a man to keep two servants, if he pleases; but I am glad to find
+you economical at all events. We meet to-morrow, then, at six o’clock.”
+
+“_Au revoir_--I mean, God bless you.
+
+“Tiresome old gentleman that,” muttered Ferrers, “and not so cordial as
+formerly; perhaps his wife is _enceinte_, and he is going to do me
+the injustice of having another heir. I must look to this; for without
+riches, I had better go back and live _au cinquieme_ at Paris.”
+
+With this conclusion, Lumley quickened his pace, and soon arrived at
+Seamore Place. In a few moments more he was in the library well stored
+with books, and decorated with marble busts and images from the studios
+of Canova and Thorwaldsen.
+
+“My master, sir, will be down immediately,” said the servant who
+admitted him; and Ferrers threw himself on a sofa, and contemplated the
+apartment with an air half envious and half cynical.
+
+Presently the door opened, and “My dear Ferrers!” “Well, _mon cher_, how
+are you?” were the salutations hastily exchanged.
+
+After the first sentences of inquiry, gratulation, and welcome, had
+cleared the way for more general conversation,--“Well, Maltravers,” said
+Ferrers, “so here we are together again, and after a lapse of so many
+years! both older, certainly; and you, I suppose, wiser. At all events,
+people think you so; and that’s all that’s important in the question.
+Why, man, you are looking as young as ever, only a little paler and
+thinner; but look at me--I am not very _much_ past thirty, and I am
+almost an old man; bald at the temples, crows’ feet, too, eh! Idleness
+ages one damnably.”
+
+“Pooh, Lumley, I never saw you look better. And are you really come to
+settle in England?”
+
+“Yes, if I can afford it. But at my age, and after having seen so much,
+the life of an idle, obscure _garcon_ does not content me. I feel that
+the world’s opinion, which I used to despise, is growing necessary to
+me. I want to be something. What can I be? Don’t look alarmed, I won’t
+rival you. I dare say literary reputation is a fine thing, but I
+desire some distinction more substantial and worldly. You know your own
+country; give me a map of the roads to Power.”
+
+“To Power! Oh, nothing but law, politics, and riches.”
+
+“For law I am too old; politics, perhaps, might suit me; but riches, my
+dear Ernest--ah, how I long for a good account with my banker!”
+
+“Well, patience and hope. Are you are not a rich uncle’s heir?”
+
+“I don’t know,” said Ferrers, very dolorously; “the old gentleman has
+married again, and may have a family.”
+
+“Married!--to whom?”
+
+“A widow, I hear; I know nothing more, except that she has a child
+already. So you see she has got into a cursed way of having children.
+And perhaps, by the time I’m forty, I shall see a whole covey of cherubs
+flying away with the great Templeton property!”
+
+“Ha, ha; your despair sharpens your wit, Lumley; but why not take a leaf
+out of your uncle’s book, and marry yourself?”
+
+“So I will when I can find an heiress. If that is what you meant to
+say--it is a more sensible suggestion than any I could have supposed to
+come from a man who writes books, especially poetry: and your advice is
+not to be despised. For rich I will be; and as the fathers (I don’t
+mean of the Church, but in Horace) told the rising generation, the first
+thing is to resolve to be rich, it is only the second thing to consider
+how.”
+
+“Meanwhile, Ferrers, you will be my guest.”
+
+“I’ll dine with you to-day; but to-morrow I am off to Fulham, to be
+introduced to my aunt. Can’t you fancy her?--grey _gros-de-Naples_ gown:
+gold chain with an eyeglass; rather fat; two pugs, and a parrot! ‘Start
+not, this is fancy’s sketch!’ I have not yet seen the respectable
+relative with my physical optics. What shall we have for dinner? Let
+me choose, you were always a bad caterer.” As Ferrers thus rattled on,
+Maltravers felt himself growing younger: old times and old adventures
+crowded fast upon him; and the two friends spent a most agreeable day
+together. It was only the next morning that Maltravers, in thinking
+over the various conversations that had passed between them, was forced
+reluctantly to acknowledge that the inert selfishness of Lumley Ferrers
+seemed now to have hardened into a resolute and systematic want of
+principle, which might, perhaps, make him a dangerous and designing man,
+if urged by circumstances into action.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+ “_Dauph._ Sir, I must speak to you. I have been long your
+  despised kinsman.
+
+ “_Morose._ Oh, what thou wilt, nephew.”--EPICENE.
+
+ “Her silence is dowry eno’--exceedingly soft spoken; thrifty
+  of her speech, that spends but six words a day.”--_Ibid._
+
+THE coach dropped Mr. Ferrers at the gate of a villa about three miles
+from town. The lodge-keeper charged himself with the carpet-bag, and
+Ferrers strolled, with his hands behind him (it was his favourite
+mode of disposing of them), through the beautiful and elaborate
+pleasure-grounds.
+
+“A very nice, snug little box (jointure-house, I suppose)! I would not
+grudge that, I’m sure, if I had but the rest. But here, I suspect, comes
+madam’s first specimen of the art of having a family.” This last thought
+was extracted from Mr. Ferrers’s contemplative brain by a lovely little
+girl, who came running up to him, fearless and spoilt as she was; and,
+after indulging a tolerable stare, exclaimed, “Are you come to see papa,
+sir?”
+
+“Papa!--the deuce!”--thought Lumley; “and who is papa, my dear?”
+
+“Why, mamma’s husband. He is not my papa by rights.”
+
+“Certainly not, my love; not by rights--I comprehend.”
+
+“Eh!”
+
+“Yes, I am going to see your papa by wrongs--Mr. Templeton.”
+
+“Oh, this way, then.”
+
+“You are very fond of Mr. Templeton, my little angel.”
+
+“To be sure I am. You have not seen the rocking-horse he is going to
+give me.”
+
+“Not yet, sweet child! And how is mamma?”
+
+“Oh, poor, dear mamma,” said the child, with a sudden change of voice,
+and tears in her eyes. “Ah, she is not well!”
+
+“In the family way, to a dead certainty!” muttered Ferrers with a groan:
+“but here is my uncle. Horrid name! Uncles were always wicked fellows.
+Richard the Third and the man who did something or other to the babes in
+the wood were a joke to my hard-hearted old relation, who has robbed me
+with a widow! The lustful, liquorish old--My _dear_ sir, I’m so glad to
+see you!”
+
+Mr. Templeton, who was a man very cold in his manners, and always either
+looked over people’s heads or down upon the ground, just touched his
+nephew’s outstretched hand, and telling him he was welcome, observed
+that it was a very fine afternoon.
+
+“Very, indeed; sweet place this; you see, by the way, that I have
+already made acquaintance with my fair cousin-in-law. She is very
+pretty.”
+
+“I really think she is,” said Mr. Templeton, with some warmth, and
+gazing fondly at the child, who was now throwing buttercups up in the
+air, and trying to catch them. Mr. Ferrers wished in his heart that they
+had been brickbats!
+
+“Is she like her mother?” asked the nephew.
+
+“Like whom, sir?”
+
+“Her mother--Mrs. Templeton.”
+
+“No, not very; there is an air, perhaps, but the likeness is not
+remarkably strong. Would you not like to go to your room before dinner?”
+
+“Thank you. Can I not first be presented to Mrs. Tem--”
+
+“She is at her devotions, Mr. Lumley,” interrupted Mr. Templeton,
+grimly.
+
+“The she-hypocrite!” thought Ferrers. “Oh, I am delighted that your
+pious heart has found so congenial a helpmate!”
+
+“It is a great blessing, and I am grateful for it. This is the way to
+the house.”
+
+Lumley, now formally installed in a grave bedroom, with dimity curtains
+and dark-brown paper with light-brown stars on it, threw himself into
+a large chair, and yawned and stretched with as much fervour as if he
+could have yawned and stretched himself into his uncle’s property. He
+then slowly exchanged his morning dress for a quiet suit of black, and
+thanked his stars that, amidst all his sins, he had never been a dandy,
+and had never rejoiced in a fine waistcoat--a criminal possession that
+he well knew would have entirely hardened his uncle’s conscience
+against him. He tarried in his room till the second bell summoned him to
+descend; and then, entering the drawing-room, which had a cold look
+even in July, found his uncle standing by the mantelpiece, and a young,
+slight, handsome woman, half-buried in a huge but not comfortable
+_fauteuil_.
+
+“Your aunt, Mrs. Templeton; madam, my nephew, Mr. Lumley Ferrers,” said
+Templeton, with a wave of the hand.
+
+“John,--dinner!”
+
+“I hope I am not late!”
+
+“No,” said Templeton, gently, for he had always liked his nephew, and
+began now to thaw towards him a little on seeing that Lumley put a good
+face upon the new state of affairs.
+
+“No, my dear boy--no; but I think order and punctuality cardinal virtues
+in a well-regulated family.”
+
+“Dinner, sir,” said the butler, opening the folding-doors at the end of
+the room.
+
+“Permit me,” said Lumley, offering his arm to his aunt. “What a lovely
+place this is!”
+
+Mrs. Templeton said something in reply, but what it was Ferrers could
+not discover, so low and choked was the voice.
+
+“Shy,” thought he: “odd for a widow! but that’s the way those
+husband-buriers take us in!”
+
+Plain as was the general furniture of the apartment, the natural
+ostentation of Mr. Templeton broke out in the massive value of the
+plate, and the number of the attendants. He was a rich man, and he
+was proud of his riches: he knew it was respectable to be rich, and he
+thought it was moral to be respectable. As for the dinner, Lumley knew
+enough of his uncle’s tastes to be prepared for viands and wines that
+even he (fastidious gourmand as he was) did not despise.
+
+Between the intervals of eating, Mr. Ferrers endeavoured to draw his
+aunt into conversation, but he found all his ingenuity fail him. There
+was, in the features of Mrs. Templeton, an expression of deep but
+calm melancholy, that would have saddened most persons to look upon,
+especially in one so young and lovely. It was evidently something beyond
+shyness or reserve that made her so silent and subdued, and even in
+her silence there was so much natural sweetness, that Ferrers could not
+ascribe her manner to haughtiness or the desire to repel. He was rather
+puzzled; “for though,” thought he, sensibly enough, “my uncle is not a
+youth, he is a very rich fellow; and how any widow, who is married again
+to a rich old fellow, can be melancholy, passes my understanding!”
+
+Templeton, as if to draw attention from his wife’s taciturnity, talked
+more than usual. He entered largely into politics, and regretted that in
+times so critical he was not in parliament.
+
+“Did I possess your youth and your health, Lumley, I would not neglect
+my country--Popery is abroad.”
+
+“I myself should like very much to be in parliament,” said Lumley,
+boldly.
+
+“I dare say you would,” returned the uncle, drily. “Parliament is very
+expensive--only fit for those who have a large stake in the country.
+Champagne to Mr. Ferrers.”
+
+Lumley bit his lip, and spoke little during the rest of the dinner. Mr.
+Templeton, however, waxed gracious by the time the dessert was on the
+table; and began cutting up a pineapple, with many assurances to Lumley
+that gardens were nothing without pineries. “Whenever you settle in the
+country, nephew, be sure you have a pinery.”
+
+“Oh, yes,” said Lumley, almost bitterly, “and a pack of hounds, and a
+French cook; they will all suit my fortune very well.”
+
+“You are more thoughtful on pecuniary matters than you used to be,” said
+the uncle.
+
+“Sir,” replied Ferrers, solemnly, “in a very short time I shall be what
+is called a middle-aged man.”
+
+“Humph!” said the host.
+
+There was another silence. Lumley was a man, as we have said, or implied
+before, of great knowledge of human nature, at least the ordinary sort
+of it, and he now revolved in his mind the various courses it might
+be wise to pursue towards his rich relation. He saw that, in delicate
+fencing, his uncle had over him the same advantage that a tall man has
+over a short one with the physical sword-play;--by holding his weapon in
+a proper position, he kept the other at arm’s length. There was a grand
+reserve and dignity about the man who had something to give away, of
+which Ferrers, however actively he might shift his ground and flourish
+his rapier, could not break the defence. He determined, therefore, upon
+a new game, for which his frankness of manner admirably adapted him.
+Just as he formed this resolution, Mrs. Templeton rose, and with a
+gentle bow, and soft though languid smile, glided from the room. The
+two gentlemen resettled themselves, and Templeton pushed the bottle to
+Ferrers.
+
+“Help yourself, Lumley! your travels seem to have deprived you of your
+high spirits--you are pensive.”
+
+“Sir,” said Ferrers, abruptly, “I wish to consult you.”
+
+“Oh, young man! you have been guilty of some excess--you have
+gambled--you have--”
+
+“I have done nothing, sir, that should make me less worthy your esteem.
+I repeat, I wish to consult you; I have outlived the hot days of my
+youth--I am now alive to the claims of the world. I have talents, I
+believe; and I have application, I know. I wish to fill a position in
+the world that may redeem my past indolence, and do credit to my family.
+Sir, I set your example before me, and I now ask your counsel, with the
+determination to follow it.”
+
+Templeton was startled; he half shaded his face with his hand, and
+gazed searchingly upon the high forehead and bold eyes of his nephew. “I
+believe you are sincere,” said he, after a pause.
+
+“You may well believe so, sir.”
+
+“Well, I will think of this. I like an honourable ambition--not too
+extravagant a one,--_that_ is sinful; but a _respectable_ station in the
+world is a proper object of desire, and wealth is a blessing; because,”
+ added the rich man, taking another slice of the pineapple,--“it enables
+us to be of use to our fellow-creatures!”
+
+“Sir, then,” said Ferrers, with daring animation--“then I avow that my
+ambition is precisely of the kind you speak of. I am obscure, I desire
+to be reputably known; my fortune is mediocre, I desire it to be
+great. I ask you for nothing--I know your generous heart; but I wish
+independently to work out my own career.”
+
+“Lumley,” said Templeton, “I never esteemed you so much as I do now.
+Listen to me--I will confide in you; I think the government are under
+obligations to me.”
+
+“I know it,” exclaimed Ferrers, whose eyes sparkled at the thought of a
+sinecure--for sinecures then existed!
+
+“And,” pursued the uncle, “I intend to ask them a favour in return.”
+
+“Oh, sir!”
+
+“Yes; I think--mark me--with management and address, I may--”
+
+“Well, my dear sir!”
+
+“Obtain a barony for myself and heirs; I trust I shall soon have a
+family!”
+
+Had somebody given Lumley Ferrers a hearty cuff on the ear, he would
+have thought less of it than of this wind-up of his uncle’s ambitious
+projects. His jaws fell, his eyes grew an inch larger, and he remained
+perfectly speechless.
+
+“Ay,” pursued Mr. Templeton, “I have long dreamed this; my character
+is spotless, my fortune great. I have ever exerted my parliamentary
+influence in favour of ministers; and, in this commercial country,
+no man has higher claims than Richard Templeton to the honours of
+a virtuous, loyal, and religious state. Yes, my boy,--I like your
+ambition--you see I have some of it myself; and since you are sincere
+in your wish to tread in my footsteps, I think I can obtain you a junior
+partnership in a highly respectable establishment. Let me see; your
+capital now is--
+
+“Pardon me, sir,” interrupted Lumley, colouring with indignation despite
+himself; “I honour commerce much, but my paternal relations are not such
+as would allow me to enter into trade. And permit me to add,” continued
+he, seizing with instant adroitness the new weakness presented to
+him--“permit me to add, that those relations, who have been ever kind to
+me, would, properly managed, be highly efficient in promoting your own
+views of advancement; for your sake I would not break with them. Lord
+Saxingham is still a minister--nay, he is in the cabinet.”
+
+“Hem--Lumley--hem!” said Templeton, thoughtfully; “we will consider--we
+will consider. Any more wine?”
+
+“No, I thank you, sir.”
+
+“Then I’ll just take my evening stroll, and think over matters. You
+can rejoin Mrs. Templeton. And I say, Lumley,--I read prayers at nine
+o’clock. Never forget your Maker, and He will not forget you. The barony
+will be an excellent thing--eh?--an English peerage--yes--an English
+peerage! very different from your beggarly countships abroad!”
+
+So saying, Mr. Templeton rang for his hat and cane, and stepped into the
+lawn from the window of the dining-room.
+
+“‘The world’s mine oyster, which I with sword will open,’” muttered
+Ferrers; “I would mould this selfish old man to my purpose; for, since
+I have neither genius to write nor eloquence to declaim, I will at
+least see whether I have not cunning to plot and courage to act.
+Conduct--conduct--conduct--there lies my talent; and what is conduct but
+a steady walk from a design to its execution?”
+
+With these thoughts Ferrers sought Mrs. Templeton. He opened the
+folding-doors very gently, for all his habitual movements were quick and
+noiseless, and perceived that Mrs. Templeton sat by the window, and that
+she seemed engrossed with a book which lay open on a little work-table
+before her.
+
+“Fordyce’s _Advice to Young Married Women_, I suppose. Sly jade!
+However, I must not have her against me.”
+
+He approached; still Mrs. Templeton did not note him; nor was it till
+he stood facing her that he himself observed that her tears were falling
+fast over the page.
+
+He was a little embarrassed, and, turning towards the window, affected
+to cough, and then said, without looking at Mrs. Templeton, “I fear I
+have disturbed you.”
+
+“No,” answered the same low, stifled voice that had before replied to
+Lumley’s vain attempts to provoke conversation; “it was a melancholy
+employment, and perhaps it is not right to indulge in it.”
+
+“May I inquire what author so affected you.”
+
+“It is but a volume of poems, and I am no judge of poetry; but it
+contains thoughts which--which--” Mrs. Templeton paused abruptly, and
+Lumley quietly took up the book.
+
+“Ah!” said he, turning to the title-page--“my friend ought to be much
+flattered.”
+
+“Your friend?”
+
+“Yes: this, I see, is by Ernest Maltravers, a very intimate ally of
+mine.”
+
+“I should like to see him,” cried Mrs. Templeton, almost with animation.
+“I read but little; it was by chance that I met with one of his books,
+and they are as if I heard a dear friend speaking to me. Ah! I should
+like to see him!”
+
+“I’m sure, madam,” said the voice of a third person, in an austere and
+rebuking accent, “I do not see what good it would do your immortal soul
+to see a man who writes idle verses, which appear to me, indeed, highly
+immoral. I just looked into that volume this morning and found nothing
+but trash--love-sonnets, and such stuff.”
+
+Mrs. Templeton made no reply, and Lumley, in order to change the
+conversation, which seemed a little too matrimonial for his taste, said,
+rather awkwardly, “You are returned very soon, sir.”
+
+“Yes, I don’t like walking in the rain!”
+
+“Bless me, it rains, so, it does--I had not observed--”
+
+“Are you wet, sir? had you not better--” began the wife timidly.
+
+“No, ma’am, I’m not wet, I thank you. By the by, nephew, this new author
+is a friend of yours. I wonder a man of his family should condescend
+to turn author. He can come to no good. I hope you will drop his
+acquaintance--authors are very unprofitable associates, I’m sure. I
+trust I shall see no more of Mr. Maltravers’s books in my house.”
+
+“Nevertheless, he is well thought of, sir, and makes no mean figure in
+the world,” said Lumley, stoutly; for he was by no means disposed to
+give up a friend who might be as useful to him as Mr. Templeton himself.
+
+“Figure or no figure--I have not had many dealings with authors in my
+day; and when I had I always repented it. Not sound, sir, not sound--all
+cracked somewhere. Mrs. Templeton, have the kindness to get the
+Prayer-book--my hassock must be fresh stuffed, it gives me quite a
+pain in my knee. Lumley, will you ring the bell? Your aunt is very
+melancholy. True religion is not gloomy; we will read a sermon on
+Cheerfulness.”
+
+“So, so,” said Mr. Ferrers to himself, as he undressed that night--“I
+see that my uncle is a little displeased with my aunt’s pensive face--a
+little jealous of her thinking of anything but himself: _tant mieux_.
+I must work upon this discovery; it will not do for them to live too
+happily with each other. And what with that lever, and what with his
+ambitious projects, I think I see a way to push the good things of this
+world a few inches nearer to Lumley Ferrers.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+ “The pride too of her step, as light
+  Along the unconscious earth she went,
+  Seemed that of one born with a right
+  To walk some heavenlier element.”
+         _Loves of the Angels._
+
+     “Can it be
+  That these fine impulses, these lofty thoughts
+  Burning with their own beauty, are but given
+  To make me the low slave of vanity?”--_Erinna._
+
+     “Is she not too fair
+  Even to think of maiden’s sweetest care?
+  The mouth and brow are contrasts.”--_Ibid._
+
+IT was two or three evenings after the date of the last chapter, and
+there was what the newspapers call “a select party” in one of the
+noblest mansions in London. A young lady, on whom all eyes were bent,
+and whose beauty might have served the painter for a model of Semiramis
+or Zenobia, more majestic than became her years, and so classically
+faultless as to have something cold and statue-like in its haughty
+lineaments, was moving through the crowd that murmured applauses as she
+passed. This lady was Florence Lascelles, the daughter of Lumley’s great
+relation, the Earl of Saxingham, and supposed to be the richest heiress
+in England. Lord Saxingham himself drew aside his daughter as she swept
+along.
+
+“Florence,” said he in a whisper, “the Duke of ------ is greatly struck
+with you--be civil to him--I am about to present him.”
+
+So saying, the earl turned to a small, dark, stiff-looking man, of about
+twenty-eight years of age, at his left, and introduced the Duke of-----
+ introduction between the greatest match and the wealthiest heiress in
+the peerage.
+
+“Lady Florence,” said Lord Saxingham, “is as fond of horses as yourself,
+duke, though not quite so good a judge.”
+
+“I confess I _do_ like horses,” said the duke, with an ingenuous air.
+
+Lord Saxingham moved away.
+
+Lady Florence stood mute--one glance of bright contempt shot from her
+large eyes; her lip slightly curled, and she then half turned aside, and
+seemed to forget that her new acquaintance was in existence.
+
+His grace, like most great personages, was not apt to take offence; nor
+could he, indeed, ever suppose that any slight towards the Duke of ------
+could be intended; still he thought it would be proper in Lady
+Florence to begin the conversation; for he himself, though not shy, was
+habitually silent, and accustomed to be saved the fatigue of defraying
+the small charges of society. After a pause, seeing, however, that Lady
+Florence remained speechless, he began:
+
+“You ride sometimes in the Park, Lady Florence?”
+
+“Very seldom.”
+
+“It is, indeed, too warm for riding at present.”
+
+“I did not say so.”
+
+“Hem--I thought you did.”
+
+Another pause.
+
+“Did you speak, Lady Florence?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Oh, I beg pardon--Lord Saxingham is looking very well.”
+
+“I am glad you think so.”
+
+“Your picture in the exhibition scarcely does you justice, Lady
+Florence; yet Lawrence is usually happy.”
+
+“You are very flattering,” said Lady Florence, with a lively and
+perceptible impatience in her tone and manner. The young beauty was
+thoroughly spoilt--and now all the scorn of a scornful nature was drawn
+forth, by observing the envious eyes of the crowd were bent upon one
+whom the Duke of ------ was actually talking to. Brilliant as were her
+own powers of conversation, she would not deign to exert them--she was
+an aristocrat of intellect rather than birth, and she took it into her
+head that the duke was an idiot. She was very much mistaken. If she had
+but broken up the ice, she would have found that the water below was not
+shallow. The duke, in fact, like many other Englishmen, though he did
+not like the trouble of showing forth, and had an ungainly manner, was
+a man who had read a good deal, possessed a sound head and an honourable
+mind, though he did not know what it was to love anybody, to care
+much for anything, and was at once perfectly sated and yet perfectly
+contented; for apathy is the combination of satiety and content.
+
+Still Florence judged of him as lively persons are apt to judge of the
+sedate; besides, she wanted to proclaim to him and to everybody else,
+how little she cared for dukes and great matches; she, therefore, with a
+slight inclination of her head, turned away, and extended her hand to
+a dark young man, who was gazing on her with that respectful but
+unmistakable admiration which proud women are never proud enough to
+despise.
+
+“Ah, signor,” said she, in Italian, “I am so glad to see you; it is a
+relief, indeed, to find genius in a crowd of nothings.”
+
+So saying, the heiress seated herself on one of those convenient couches
+which hold but two, and beckoned the Italian to her side. Oh, how the
+vain heart of Castruccio Cesarini beat!--what visions of love, rank,
+wealth, already flitted before him!
+
+“I almost fancy,” said Castruccio, “that the old days of romance are
+returned, when a queen could turn from princes and warriors to listen to
+a troubadour.”
+
+“Troubadours are now more rare than warriors and princes,” replied
+Florence, with gay animation, which contrasted strongly with the
+coldness she had manifested to the Duke of ------, “and therefore it
+would not now be a very great merit in a queen to fly from dulness and
+insipidity to poetry and wit.”
+
+“Ah, say not wit,” said Cesarini; “wit is incompatible with the
+grave character of deep feelings;--incompatible with enthusiasm, with
+worship;--incompatible with the thoughts that wait upon Lady Florence
+Lascelles.”
+
+Florence coloured and slightly frowned; but the immense distinction
+between her position and that of the young foreigner, with her own
+inexperience, both of real life and the presumption of vain hearts,
+made her presently forget the flattery that would have offended her in
+another. She turned the conversation, however, into general channels,
+and she talked of Italian poetry with a warmth and eloquence worthy of
+the theme. While they thus conversed, a new guest had arrived, who, from
+the spot where he stood, engaged with Lord Saxingham, fixed a steady and
+scrutinising gaze upon the pair.
+
+“Lady Florence has indeed improved,” said this new guest. “I could not
+have conceived that England boasted any one half so beautiful.”
+
+“She certainly is handsome, my dear Lumley,--the Lascelles cast of
+countenance,” replied Lord Saxingham, “and so gifted! She is positively
+learned--quite a _bas bleu_. I tremble to think of the crowd of poets
+and painters who will make a fortune out of her enthusiasm. _Entre
+nous_, Lumley, I could wish her married to a man of sober sense, like
+the Duke of ------; for sober sense is exactly what she wants. Do
+observe, she has been sitting just half an hour flirting with that
+odd-looking adventurer, a Signor Cesarini, merely because he writes
+sonnets and wears a dress like a stage-player!”
+
+“It is the weakness of the sex, my dear lord,” said Lumley; “they like
+to patronise, and they dote upon all oddities, from China monsters to
+cracked poets. But I fancy, by a restless glance cast every now and then
+around the room, that my beautiful cousin has in her something of the
+coquette.”
+
+“There you are quite right, Lumley,” returned Lord Saxingham, laughing;
+“but I will not quarrel with her for breaking hearts and refusing
+hands, if she do but grow steady at last, and settle into the Duchess
+of------.”
+
+“Duchess of ------!” repeated Lumley, absently; “well, I will go and
+present myself. I see she is growing tired of the signor. I will sound
+her as to the ducal impressions, my dear lord.”
+
+“Do--I dare not,” replied the father; “she is an excellent girl, but
+heiresses are always contradictory. It was very foolish to deprive me
+of all control over her fortune. Come and see me again soon, Lumley. I
+suppose you are going abroad?”
+
+“No, I shall settle in England; but of my prospects and plans more
+hereafter.”
+
+With this, Lumley quietly glided away to Florence. There was something
+in Ferrers that was remarkable from its very simplicity. His clear,
+sharp features, with the short hair and high brow--the absolute
+plainness of his dress, and the noiseless, easy, self-collected calm of
+all his motions, made a strong contrast to the showy Italian, by whose
+side he now stood. Florence looked up at him with some little surprise
+at his intrusion.
+
+“Ah, you don’t recollect me!” said Lumley, with his pleasant laugh.
+“Faithless Imogen, after all your vows of constancy! Behold your Alonzo!
+
+   ‘The worms they crept in and the worms they crept out.’
+
+“Don’t you remember how you trembled when I told you that true story, as
+we
+
+   ‘Conversed as we sat on the green”?
+
+“Oh!” cried Florence, “it is indeed you, my dear cousin--my dear Lumley!
+What an age since we parted!”
+
+“Don’t talk of age--it is an ugly word to a man of my years. Pardon,
+signor, if I disturb you.”
+
+And here Lumley, with a low bow, slid coolly into the place which
+Cesarini, who had shyly risen, left vacant for him. Castruccio looked
+disconcerted; but Florence had forgotten him in her delight at seeing
+Lumley, and Cesarini moved discontentedly away, and seated himself at a
+distance.
+
+“And I come back,” continued Lumley, “to find you a confirmed beauty and
+a professional coquette--don’t blush!”
+
+“Do they, indeed, call me a coquette?”
+
+“Oh, yes,--for once the world is just.”
+
+“Perhaps I do deserve the reproach. Oh, Lumley, how I despise all that I
+see and hear!”
+
+“What, even the Duke of ------?”
+
+“Yes, I fear even the Duke of ------ is no exception!”
+
+“Your father will go mad if he hear you.”
+
+“My father!--my poor father!--yes, he thinks the utmost that I, Florence
+Lascelles, am made for, is to wear a ducal coronet, and give the best
+balls in London.”
+
+“And pray what was Florence Lascelles made for?”
+
+“Ah! I cannot answer the question. I fear for Discontent and Disdain.”
+
+“You are an enigma--but I will take pains and not rest till I solve
+you.”
+
+“I defy you.”
+
+“Thanks--better defy than despise.
+
+“Oh, you must be strangely altered, if I can despise you.”
+
+“Indeed! what do you remember of me?”
+
+“That you were frank, bold, and therefore, I suppose, true!--that
+you shocked my aunts and my father by your contempt for the vulgar
+hypocrisies of our conventional life. Oh, no! I cannot despise you.”
+
+Lumley raised his eyes to those of Florence--he gazed on her long and
+earnestly--ambitious hopes rose high within him.
+
+“My fair cousin,” said he, in an altered and serious tone, “I see
+something in your spirit kindred to mine; and I am glad that yours is
+one of the earliest voices which confirm my new resolves on my return to
+busy England!”
+
+“And those resolves?”
+
+“Are an Englishman’s--energetic and ambitious.”
+
+“Alas, ambition! How many false portraits are there of the great
+original!”
+
+Lumley thought he had found a clue to the heart of his cousin, and he
+began to expatiate, with unusual eloquence, on the nobleness of that
+daring sin which “lost angels heaven.” Florence listened to him with
+attention, but not with sympathy. Lumley was deceived. His was not an
+ambition that could attract the fastidious but high-souled Idealist.
+The selfishness of his nature broke out in all the sentiments that he
+fancied would seem to her most elevated. Place--power--titles--all these
+objects were low and vulgar to one who saw them daily at her feet.
+
+At a distance the Duke of ------ continued from time to time to direct
+his cold gaze at Florence. He did not like her the less for not seeming
+to court him. He had something generous within him, and could understand
+her. He went away at last, and thought seriously of Florence as a wife.
+Not a wife for companionship, for friendship, for love; but a wife who
+could take the trouble of rank off his hands--do him honour, and raise
+him an heir, whom he might flatter himself would be his own.
+
+From his corner also, with dreams yet more vain and daring, Castruccio
+Cesarini cast his eyes upon the queen-like brow of the great heiress.
+Oh, yes, she had a soul--she could disdain rank and revere genius!
+What a triumph over De Montaigne--Maltravers--all the world, if he, the
+neglected poet, could win the hand for which the magnates of the earth
+sighed in vain! Pure and lofty as he thought himself, it was her birth
+and her wealth which Cesarini adored in Florence. And Lumley, nearer
+perhaps to the prize than either--yet still far off--went on conversing,
+with eloquent lips and sparkling eyes, while his cold heart was planning
+every word, dictating every glance, and laying out (for the most worldly
+are often the most visionary) the chart for a royal road to fortune.
+And Florence Lascelles, when the crowd had dispersed and she sought her
+chamber, forgot all three; and with that morbid romance often peculiar
+to those for whom Fate smiles the most, mused over the ideal image of
+the one she _could_ love--“in maiden meditation _not_ fancy-free!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+ “In mea vesanas habui dispendia vires,
+  Et valui poenas fortis in ipse meas.” *--OVID.
+
+* I had the strength of a madman to my own cost, and employed that
+strength in my own punishment.
+
+ “Then might my breast be read within,
+  A thousand volumes would be written there.”
+         EARL OF STIRLING.
+
+ERNEST MALTRAVERS was at the height of his reputation; the work which
+he had deemed the crisis that was to make or mar him was the most
+brilliantly successful of all he had yet committed to the public.
+Certainly, chance did as much for it as merit, as is usually the case
+with works that become instantaneously popular. We may hammer away at
+the casket with strong arm and good purpose, and all in vain; when some
+morning a careless stroke hits the right nail on the head, and we secure
+the treasure.
+
+It was at this time, when in the prime of youth--rich, courted,
+respected, run after--that Ernest Maltravers fell seriously ill. It was
+no active or visible disease, but a general irritability of the nerves,
+and a languid sinking of the whole frame. His labours began, perhaps, to
+tell against him. In earlier life he had been as active as a hunter
+of the chamois, and the hardy exercise of his frame counteracted the
+effects of a restless and ardent mind. The change from an athletic to a
+sedentary habit of life--the wear and tear of the brain--the absorbing
+passion for knowledge which day and night kept all his faculties in a
+stretch; made strange havoc in a constitution naturally strong. The poor
+author! how few persons understand; and forbear with, and pity him!
+He sells his health and youth to a rugged taskmaster. And, O blind and
+selfish world, you expect him to be as free of manner, and as pleasant
+of cheer, and as equal of mood, as if he were passing the most agreeable
+and healthful existence that pleasure could afford to smooth the
+wrinkles of the mind, or medicine invent to regulate the nerves of
+the body. But there was, besides all this, another cause that operated
+against the successful man!--His heart was too solitary. He lived
+without the sweet household ties--the connections and amities he formed
+excited for a moment, but possessed no charm to comfort or to soothe.
+Cleveland resided so much in the country, and was of so much calmer
+a temperament, and so much more advanced in age, that, with all the
+friendship that subsisted between them, there was none of that daily and
+familiar interchange of confidence which affectionate natures demand
+as the very food of life. Of his brother (as the reader will conjecture
+from never having been formally presented to him) Ernest saw but little.
+Colonel Maltravers, one of the gayest and handsomest men of his time,
+married a fine lady, lived principally at Paris, except when, for a
+few weeks in the shooting season, he filled his country house with
+companions who had nothing in common with Ernest: the brothers
+corresponded regularly every quarter, and saw each other once a
+year--this was all their intercourse. Ernest Maltravers stood in the
+world alone, with that cold but anxious spectre--Reputation.
+
+It was late at night. Before a table covered with the monuments of
+erudition and thought sat a young man with a pale and worn countenance.
+The clock in the room told with a fretting distinctness every moment
+that lessened the journey to the grave. There was an anxious and
+expectant expression on the face of the student, and from time to time
+he glanced to the clock, and muttered to himself. Was it a letter from
+some adored mistress--the soothing flattery from some mighty arbiter of
+arts and letters--that the young man eagerly awaited? No; the aspirer
+was forgotten in the valetudinarian. Ernest Maltravers was waiting the
+visit of his physician, whom at that late hour a sudden thought had
+induced him to summon from his rest. At length the well-known knock
+was heard, and in a few moments the physician entered. He was one well
+versed in the peculiar pathology of book men, and kindly as well as
+skilful.
+
+“My dear Mr. Maltravers, what is this? How are we?--not seriously ill, I
+hope--no relapse--pulse low and irregular, I see, but no fever. You are
+nervous.”
+
+“Doctor,” said the student, “I did not send for you at this time of
+night from the idle fear or fretful caprice of an invalid. But when I
+saw you this morning, you dropped some hints which have haunted me ever
+since. Much that it befits the conscience and the soul to attend to
+without loss of time depends upon my full knowledge of my real state.
+If I understand you rightly, I may have but a short time to live--is it
+so?”
+
+“Indeed!” said the doctor, turning away his face; “you have exaggerated
+my meaning. I did not say that you were in what we technically call
+danger.”
+
+“Am I then likely to be a _long_-lived man?”
+
+The doctor coughed--“That is uncertain, my dear young friend,” said he,
+after a pause.
+
+“Be plain with me. The plans of life must be based upon such
+calculations as we can reasonably form of its probable duration. Do not
+fancy that I am weak enough or coward enough to shrink from any abyss
+which I have approached unconsciously; I desire--I adjure--nay, I
+command you to be explicit.”
+
+There was an earnest and solemn dignity in his patient’s voice and
+manner which deeply touched and impressed the good physician.
+
+“I will answer you frankly,” said he; “you overwork the nerves and
+the brain; if you do not relax, you will subject yourself to confirmed
+disease and premature death. For several months--perhaps for years
+to come--you should wholly cease from literary labour. Is this a hard
+sentence? You are rich and young--enjoy yourself while you can.”
+
+Maltravers appeared satisfied--changed the conversation--talked easily
+on other matters for a few minutes: nor was it till he had dismissed
+his physician that he broke forth with the thoughts that were burning in
+him.
+
+“Oh!” cried he aloud, as he rose and paced the room with rapid strides;
+“now, when I see before me the broad and luminous path, am I to be
+condemned to halt and turn aside? A vast empire rises on my view,
+greater than that of Caesars and conquerors--an empire durable and
+universal in the souls of men, that time itself cannot overthrow; and
+Death marches with me, side by side, and the skeleton hand waves me back
+to the nothingness of common men.”
+
+He paused at the casement--he threw it open, and leant forth and gasped
+for air. Heaven was serene and still, as morning came coldly forth
+amongst the waning stars; and the haunts of men, in their thoroughfare
+of idleness and of pleasure, were desolate and void. Nothing, save
+Nature, was awake.
+
+“And if, O stars!” murmured Maltravers, from the depth of his excited
+heart--“if I have been insensible to your solemn beauty--if the Heaven
+and the Earth had been to me but as air and clay--if I were one of a
+dull and dim-eyed herd--I might live on, and drop into the grave from
+the ripeness of unprofitable years. It is because I yearn for the great
+objects of an immortal being, that life shrinks and shrivels up like a
+scroll. Away! I will not listen to these human and material monitors,
+and consider life as a thing greater than the things that I would live
+for. My choice is made, glory is more persuasive than the grave.”
+
+He turned impatiently from the casement--his eyes flashed--his chest
+heaved--he trod the chamber with a monarch’s air. All the calculations
+of prudence, all the tame and methodical reasonings with which, from
+time to time, he had sought to sober down the impetuous man into the
+calm machine, faded away before the burst of awful and commanding
+passions that swept over his soul. Tell a man, in the full tide of his
+triumphs, that he bears death within him; and what crisis of thought can
+be more startling and more terrible!
+
+Maltravers had, as we have seen, cared little for fame, till fame had
+been brought within his reach: then, with every step he took, new
+Alps had arisen. Each new conjecture brought to light a new truth that
+demanded enforcement or defence. Rivalry and competition chafed his
+blood, and kept his faculties at their full speed. He had the generous
+race-horse spirit of emulation. Ever in action, ever in progress,
+cheered on by the sarcasms of foes, even more than by the applause of
+friends, the desire of glory had become the habit of existence. When we
+have commenced a career, what stop is there till the grave?--where is
+the definite barrier of that ambition which, like the eastern bird,
+seems ever on the wing, and never rests upon the earth? Our names are
+not settled till our death: the ghosts of what we have done are made our
+haunting monitors--our scourging avengers--if ever we cease to do,
+or fall short of the younger past. Repose is oblivion; to pause is to
+unravel all the web that we have woven--until the tomb closes over
+us, and men, just when it is too late, strike the fair balance between
+ourselves and our rivals; and we are measured, not by the least, but
+by the greatest triumphs we have achieved. Oh, what a crushing sense of
+impotence comes over us, when we feel that our frame cannot support our
+mind--when the hand can no longer execute what the soul, actively as
+ever, conceives and desires!--the quick life tied to the dead form--the
+ideas fresh as immortality, gushing forth rich and golden, and the
+broken nerves, and the aching frame, and the weary eyes!--the spirit
+athirst for liberty and heaven--and the damning, choking consciousness
+that we are walled up and prisoned in a dungeon that must be our
+burial-place! Talk not of freedom--there is no such thing as freedom to
+a man whose body is the gaol, whose infirmities are the racks, of his
+genius!
+
+Maltravers paused at last, and threw himself on his sofa, wearied and
+exhausted. Involuntarily, and as a half unconscious means of escaping
+from his conflicting and profitless emotions, he turned to several
+letters, which had for hours lain unopened on his table. Every one, the
+seal of which he broke, seemed to mock his state--every one seemed to
+attest the felicity of his fortunes. Some bespoke the admiring sympathy
+of the highest and wisest--one offered him a brilliant opening into
+public life--another (it was from Cleveland) was fraught with all the
+proud and rapturous approbation of a prophet whose auguries are at last
+fulfilled. At that letter Maltravers sighed deeply, and paused before he
+turned to the others. The last he opened was in an unknown hand, nor was
+any name affixed to it. Like all writers of some note, Maltravers was
+in the habit of receiving anonymous letters of praise, censure, warning,
+and exhortation--especially from young ladies at boarding schools, and
+old ladies in the country; but there was that in the first sentences of
+the letter, which he now opened with a careless hand, that riveted his
+attention. It was a small and beautiful handwriting, yet the letters
+were more clear and bold than they usually are in feminine caligraphy.
+
+“Ernest Maltravers,” began this singular effusion, “have you weighed
+yourself? Are you aware of your capacities? Do you feel that for you
+there may be a more dazzling reputation that that which appears to
+content you? You who seem to penetrate into the subtlest windings of the
+human heart, and to have examined nature as through a glass--you, whose
+thoughts stand forth like armies marshalled in defence of truth, bold
+and dauntless, and without a stain upon their glittering armour;--are
+you, at your age, and with your advantages, to bury yourself amidst
+books and scrolls? Do you forget that action is the grand career for men
+who think as you do? Will this word-weighing and picture-writing--the
+cold eulogies of pedants--the listless praises of literary idlers,
+content all the yearnings of your ambition? You were not made solely for
+the closet; ‘The Dreams of Pindus, and the Aonian Maids’ cannot endure
+through the noon of manhood. You are too practical for the mere poet,
+and too poetical to sink into the dull tenor of a learned life. I have
+never seen you, yet I know you--I read your spirit in your page; that
+aspiration for something better and greater than the great and the
+good, which colours all your passionate revelations of yourself and
+others--cannot be satisfied merely by ideal images. You cannot be
+contented, as poets and historians mostly are, by becoming great only
+from delineating great men, or imagining great events, or describing
+a great era. Is it not worthier of you to be what you fancy or relate?
+Awake, Maltravers, awake! Look into your heart, and feel your proper
+destinies. And who am I that thus address you?--a woman whose soul is
+filled with you--a woman in whom your eloquence has awakened, amidst
+frivolous and vain circles, the sense of a new existence--a woman who
+would make you, yourself, the embodied ideal of your own thoughts and
+dreams, and who would ask from earth no other lot than that of following
+you on the road of fame with the eyes of her heart. Mistake me not; I
+repeat that I have never seen you, nor do I wish it; you might be
+other than I imagine, and I should lose an idol, and be left without
+a worship. I am a kind of visionary Rosicrucian: it is a spirit that I
+adore, and not a being like myself. You imagine, perhaps, that I have
+some purpose to serve in this--I have no object in administering to your
+vanity; and if I judge you rightly, this letter is one that might make
+you vain without a blush. Oh, the admiration that does not spring from
+holy and profound sources of emotion--how it saddens us or disgusts!
+I have had my share of vulgar homage, and it only makes me feel doubly
+alone. I am richer than you are--I have youth--I have what they call
+beauty. And neither riches, youth, nor beauty ever gave me the silent
+and deep happiness I experience when I think of you. This is a worship
+that might, I repeat, well make even you vain. Think of these words, I
+implore you. Be worthy, not of my thoughts, but of the shape in which
+they represent you: and every ray of glory that surrounds you
+will brighten my own way, and inspire me with a kindred emulation.
+Farewell.--I may write to you again, but you will never discover me; and
+in life I pray that we may never meet!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+ “Our list of nobles next let Amri grace.”
+         _Absalom and Achitophel_.
+
+ “Sine me vacivum tempus ne quod dem mihi Laboris.” *--TER.
+
+* Suffer me to employ my spare time in some kind of labour.
+
+“I CAN’T think,” said one of a group of young men, loitering by the
+steps of a clubhouse in St. James’s Street--“I can’t think what has
+chanced to Maltravers. Do you observe (as he walks--there--the other
+side of the way) how much he is altered? He stoops like an old man, and
+hardly ever lifts his eyes from the ground. He certainly seems sick and
+sad.”
+
+“Writing books, I suppose.”
+
+“Or privately married.”
+
+“Or growing too rich--rich men are always unhappy beings.”
+
+“Ha, Ferrers, how are you?”
+
+“So-so. What’s the news?” replied Lumley.
+
+“Rattler pays forfeit.”
+
+“O! but in politics?”
+
+“Hang politics--are you turned politician?”
+
+“At my age, what else is there left to do?”
+
+“I thought so, by your hat; all politicians sport odd-looking hats: it
+is very remarkable, but that is the great symptom of the disease.”
+
+“My hat!--_is_ it odd?” said Ferrers, taking off the commodity in
+question, and seriously regarding it.
+
+“Why, who ever saw such a brim?”
+
+“Glad you think so.”
+
+“Why, Ferrers?”
+
+“Because it is a prudent policy in this country to surrender something
+trifling up to ridicule. If people can abuse your hat or your carriage,
+or the shape of your nose, or a wart on your chin, they let slip a
+thousand more important matters. ‘Tis the wisdom of the camel-driver,
+who gives up his gown for the camel to trample on, that he may escape
+himself.”
+
+“How droll you are, Ferrers! Well, I shall turn in, and read the papers;
+and you--”
+
+“Shall pay my visits and rejoice in my hat.”
+
+“Good day to you; by the by, your friend, Maltravers, has just passed,
+looking thoughtful, and talking to himself. What’s the matter with him?”
+
+“Lamenting, perhaps, that he, too, does not wear an odd hat for
+gentlemen like you to laugh at, and leave the rest of him in peace. Good
+day.”
+
+On went Ferrers, and soon found himself in the Mall of the Park. Here he
+was joined by Mr. Templeton.
+
+“Well, Lumley,” said the latter (and it may be here remarked that Mr.
+Templeton now exhibited towards his nephew a greater respect of manner
+and tone than he had thought it necessary to observe before)--“well,
+Lumley, and have you seen Lord Saxingham?”
+
+“I have, sir; and I regret to say--”
+
+“I thought so--I thought it,” interrupted Templeton: “no gratitude in
+public men--no wish, in high place, to honour virtue!”
+
+“Pardon me; Lord Saxingham declares that he should be delighted to
+forward your views--that no man more deserves a peerage; but that--”
+
+“Oh, yes; always _buts_!”
+
+“But that there are so many claimants at present whom it is impossible
+to satisfy; and--and--but I feel I ought not to go on.”
+
+“Proceed, sir, I beg.”
+
+“Why, then, Lord Saxingham is (I must be frank) a man who has a great
+regard for his own family. Your marriage (a source, my dear uncle, of
+the greatest gratification to _me_) cuts off the probable chance of your
+fortune and title, if you acquire the latter, descending to--”
+
+“Yourself!” put in Templeton, drily. “Your relation seems, for the first
+time, to have discovered how dear your interests are to him.”
+
+“For me, individually, sir, my relation does not care a rush--but he
+cares a great deal for any member of his house being rich and in high
+station. It increases the range and credit of his connections; and Lord
+Saxingham is a man whom connections help to keep great. To be plain with
+you, he will not stir in this business, because he does not see how his
+kinsman is to be benefited, or his house strengthened.”
+
+“Public virtue!” exclaimed Templeton.
+
+“Virtue, my dear uncle, is a female: as long as she is private property,
+she is excellent; but public virtue, like any other public lady, is a
+common prostitute.”
+
+“Pshaw!” grunted Templeton, who was too much out of humour to read his
+nephew the lecture he might otherwise have done upon the impropriety of
+his simile; for Mr. Templeton was one of those men who hold it vicious
+to talk of vice as existing in the world; he was very much shocked to
+hear anything called by its proper name.
+
+“Has not Mrs. Templeton some connections that may be useful to you?”
+
+“No, sir!” cried the uncle, in a voice of thunder.
+
+“Sorry to hear it--but we cannot expect all things: you have married
+for love--you have a happy home, a charming wife--this is better than a
+title and a fine lady.”
+
+“Mr. Lumley Ferrers, you may spare me your consolations. My wife--”
+
+“Loves you dearly, I dare say,” said the imperturbable nephew. “She has
+so much sentiment, is so fond of poetry. Oh, yes, she must love one who
+has done so much for her.”
+
+“Done so much; what do you mean?”
+
+“Why, with your fortune--your station--your just ambition--you,
+who might have married any one; nay, by remaining unmarried, have
+conciliated all my interested, selfish relations--hang them--you have
+married a lady without connections--and what more could you do for her?”
+
+“Pooh, pooh; you don’t know all.”
+
+Here Templeton stopped short, as if about to say too much, and frowned;
+then, after a pause, he resumed, “Lumley, I have married, it is true.
+You may not be my heir, but I will make it up to you--that is, if you
+deserve my affection.”
+
+“My dear unc--”
+
+“Don’t interrupt me, I have projects for you. Let our interests be
+the same. The title may yet descend to you. I may have no male
+offspring--meanwhile, draw on me to any reasonable amount--young men
+have expenses--but be prudent, and if you want to get on in the world,
+never let the world detect you in a scrape. There, leave me now.”
+
+“My best, my heartfelt thanks!”
+
+“Hush--sound Lord Saxingham again; I must and will have this bauble--I
+have set my heart on it.” So saying, Templeton waved away his nephew,
+and musingly pursued his path towards Hyde Park Corner, where his
+carriage awaited him. As soon as he entered his demesnes, he saw
+his wife’s daughter running across the lawn to greet him. His heart
+softened; he checked the carriage and descended: he caressed her, he
+played with her, he laughed as she laughed. No parent could be more
+fond.
+
+“Lumley Ferrers has talent to do me honour,” said he, anxiously, “but
+his principles seem unstable. However, surely that open manner is the
+sign of a good heart.”
+
+Meanwhile, Ferrers, in high spirits, took his way to Ernest’s house. His
+friend was not at home, but Ferrers never wanted a host’s presence in
+order to be at home himself. Books were round him in abundance, but
+Ferrers was not one of those who read for amusement. He threw himself
+into an easy-chair, and began weaving new meshes of ambition and
+intrigue. At length the door opened, and Maltravers entered.
+
+“Why, Ernest, how ill you are looking!”
+
+“I have not been well, but I am now recovering. As physicians recommend
+change of air to ordinary patients--so I am about to try change of
+habit. Active I must be--action is the condition of my being; but I must
+have done with books from the present. You see me in a new character.”
+
+“How?”
+
+“That of a public man--I have entered parliament.”
+
+“You astonish me!--I have read the papers this morning. I see not even a
+vacancy, much less an election.”
+
+“It is all managed by the lawyer and the banker. In other words, my seat
+is a close borough.”
+
+“No bore of constituents. I congratulate you, and envy. I wish I were in
+parliament myself.”
+
+“You! I never fancied you bitten by the political mania.”
+
+“Political!--no. But it is the most respectable way, with luck, of
+living on the public. Better than swindling.”
+
+“A candid way of viewing the question. But I thought at one time you
+were half a Benthamite, and that your motto was, ‘The greatest happiness
+of the greatest number.’”
+
+“The greatest number to me is number _one_. I agree with the
+Pythagoreans--unity is the perfect principle of creation! Seriously, how
+can you mistake the principles of opinion for the principles of conduct?
+I am a Benthamite, a benevolist, as a logician--but the moment I leave
+the closet for the world, I lay aside speculation for others, and act
+for myself.”
+
+“You are, at least, more frank than prudent in these confessions.”
+
+“There you are wrong. It is by affecting to be worse than we are that
+we become popular--and we get credit for being both honest and practical
+fellows. My uncle’s mistake is to be a hypocrite in words: it rarely
+answers. Be frank in words, and nobody will suspect hypocrisy in your
+designs.”
+
+Maltravers gazed hard at Ferrers--something revolted and displeased
+his high-wrought Platonism in the easy wisdom of his old friend. But he
+felt, almost for the first time, that Ferrers was a man to get on in the
+world--and he sighed; I hope it was for the world’s sake.
+
+After a short conversation on indifferent matters, Cleveland was
+announced; and Ferrers, who could make nothing out of Cleveland, soon
+withdrew. Ferrers was now becoming an economist in his time.
+
+“My dear Maltravers,” said Cleveland, when they were alone, “I am so
+glad to see you; for, in the first place, I rejoice to find you are
+extending your career of usefulness.”
+
+“Usefulness--ah, let me think so! Life is so uncertain and so short,
+that we cannot too soon bring the little it can yield into the great
+commonwealth of the Beautiful or the Honest; and both belong to and make
+up the Useful. But in politics, and in a highly artificial state, what
+doubts beset us! what darkness surrounds! If we connive at abuses, we
+juggle with our own reason and integrity--if we attack them, how much,
+how fatally we may derange that solemn and conventional ORDER which is
+the mainspring of the vast machine! How little, too, can one man, whose
+talents may not be in that coarse road--in that mephitic atmosphere, be
+enabled to effect!”
+
+“He may effect a vast deal even without eloquence or labour:--he may
+effect a vast deal, if he can set one example, amidst a crowd of selfish
+aspirants and heated fanatics, of an honest and dispassionate man.
+He may effect more, if he may serve among the representatives of that
+hitherto unrepresented thing--Literature; if he redeem, by an ambition
+above place and emolument, the character for subservience that
+court-poets have obtained for letters--if he may prove that speculative
+knowledge is not disjoined from the practical world, and maintain the
+dignity of disinterestedness that should belong to learning. But the
+end of a scientific morality is not to serve others only, but also to
+perfect and accomplish our individual selves; our own souls are a solemn
+trust to our own lives. You are about to add to your experience of human
+motives and active men; and whatever additional wisdom you acquire
+will become equally evident and equally useful, no matter whether it be
+communicated through action or in books. Enough of this, my dear Ernest.
+I have come to dine with you, and make you accompany me to-night to
+a house where you will be welcome, and I think interested. Nay,
+no excuses. I have promised Lord Latimer that he shall make your
+acquaintance, and he is one of the most eminent men with whom political
+life will connect you.”
+
+And to this change of habits, from the closet to the senate, had
+Maltravers been induced by a state of health, which, with most men,
+would have been an excuse for indolence. Indolent he could not be; he
+had truly said to Ferrers, that “action was the condition of his being.”
+ If THOUGHT, with its fever and aching tension, had been too severe a
+taskmaster on the nerves and brain, the coarse and homely pursuit of
+practical politics would leave the imagination and intellect in repose,
+while it would excite the hardier qualities and gifts, which animate
+without exhausting. So, at least, hoped Maltravers. He remembered the
+profound saying in one of his favourite German authors, “that to keep
+the mind and body in perfect health, it is necessary to mix habitually
+and betimes in the common affairs of men.” And the anonymous
+correspondent;--had her exhortations any influence on his decision? I
+know not. But when Cleveland left him, Maltravers unlocked his desk, and
+re-perused the last letter he had received from the Unknown. The _last_
+letter!--yes, those epistles had now become frequent.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+ * * * * “Le brillant de votre esprit donne un si grand
+  eclat a votre teint et a vos yeux, que quoiqu’il semble
+  que l’esprit ne doit toucher que les oreilles, il est
+  pourtaut certain que la votre eblouit les yeux.” *
+        _Lettres de Madame de Sevigne_.
+
+* The brilliancy of your wit gives so great a lustre to your complexion
+and your eyes, that, though it seems that wit should only reach the
+ears, it is altogether certain that yours dazzles the eyes.
+
+AT Lord Latimer’s house were assembled some hundreds of those persons
+who are rarely found together in London society; for business, politics,
+and literature draught off the most eminent men, and usually leave
+to houses that receive the world little better than indolent rank or
+ostentatious wealth. Even the young men of pleasure turn up their noses
+at parties now-a-days, and find society a bore. But there are some dozen
+or two of houses, the owners of which are both apart from and above the
+fashion, in which a foreigner may see, collected under the same roof,
+many of the most remarkable men of busy, thoughtful, majestic England.
+Lord Latimer himself had been a cabinet minister. He retired from public
+life on pretence of ill-health; but, in reality, because its anxious
+bustle was not congenial to a gentle and accomplished, but somewhat
+feeble, mind. With a high reputation and an excellent cook he enjoyed a
+great popularity, both with his own party and the world in general; and
+he was the centre of a small, but distinguished circle of acquaintances,
+who drank Latimer’s wine, and quoted Latimer’s sayings, and liked
+Latimer much better, because, not being author or minister, he was not
+in their way.
+
+Lord Latimer received Maltravers with marked courtesy, and even
+deference, and invited him to join his own whist-table, which was one
+of the highest compliments his lordship could pay to his intellect. But
+when his guest refused the proffered honour, the earl turned him over
+to the countess, as having become the property of the womankind; and was
+soon immersed in his aspirations for the odd trick.
+
+Whilst Maltravers was conversing with Lady Latimer, he happened to
+raise his eyes, and saw opposite to him a young lady of such
+remarkable beauty, that he could scarcely refrain from an admiring
+exclamation.--“And who,” he asked, recovering himself, “is that lady?
+It is strange that even I, who go so little into the world, should be
+compelled to inquire the name of one whose beauty must already have made
+her celebrated.”
+
+“Oh, Lady Florence Lascelles--she came out last year. She is, indeed,
+most brilliant, yet more so in mind and accomplishments than face. I
+must be allowed to introduce you.”
+
+At this offer, a strange shyness, and as it were reluctant distrust,
+seized Maltravers--a kind of presentiment of danger and evil. He drew
+back, and would have made some excuse, but Lady Latimer did not heed his
+embarrassment, and was already by the side of Lady Florence Lascelles. A
+moment more, and beckoning to Maltravers, the countess presented him to
+the lady. As he bowed and seated himself beside his new acquaintance, he
+could not but observe that her cheeks were suffused with the most lively
+blushes, and that she received him with a confusion not common even in
+ladies just brought out, and just introduced to “a lion.” He was rather
+puzzled than flattered by these tokens of an embarrassment, somewhat
+akin to his own; and the first few sentences of their conversation
+passed off with a certain awkwardness and reserve. At this moment, to
+the surprise, perhaps to the relief, of Ernest, they were joined by
+Lumley Ferrers.
+
+“Ah, Lady Florence, I kiss your hands--I am charmed to find you
+acquainted with my friend Maltravers.”
+
+“And Mr. Ferrers, what makes him so late to-night?” asked the fair
+Florence, with a sudden ease, which rather startled Maltravers.
+
+“A dull dinner, _voila tout_--I have no other excuse.” And Ferrers,
+sliding into a vacant chair on the other side of Lady Florence,
+conversed volubly and unceasingly, as if seeking to monopolise her
+attention.
+
+Ernest had not been so much captivated with the manner of Florence as he
+had been struck with her beauty, and now, seeing her apparently engaged
+with another, he rose and quietly moved away. He was soon one of a knot
+of men who were conversing on the absorbing topics of the day; and as
+by degrees the exciting subject brought out his natural eloquence and
+masculine sense, the talkers became listeners, the knot widened into a
+circle, and he himself was unconsciously the object of general attention
+and respect.
+
+“And what think you of Mr. Maltravers?” asked Ferrers, carelessly; “does
+he keep up your expectations?”
+
+Lady Florence had sunk into a reverie, and Ferrers repeated his
+question.
+
+“He is younger than I imagined him,--and--and--”
+
+“Handsomer, I suppose, you mean.”
+
+“No! calmer and less animated.”
+
+“He seems animated enough now,” said Ferrers; “but your ladylike
+conversation failed in striking the Promethean spark. ‘Lay that
+flattering unction to your soul.’”
+
+“Ah, you are right--he must have thought me very--”
+
+“Beautiful, no doubt.”
+
+“Beautiful!--I hate the word, Lumley. I wish I were not handsome--I
+might then get some credit for my intellect.”
+
+“Humph!” said Ferrers, significantly.
+
+“Oh, you don’t think so, sceptic,” said Florence, shaking her head with
+a slight laugh, and an altered manner.
+
+“Does it matter what I think,” said Ferrers, with an attempted touch at
+the sentimental, “when Lord This, and Lord That, and Mr. So-and-so, and
+Count What-d’ye-call-him, are all making their way to you, to dispossess
+me of my envied monopoly?”
+
+While Ferrers spoke, several of the scattered loungers grouped around
+Florence, and the conversation, of which she was the cynosure,
+became animated and gay. Oh, how brilliant she was, that peerless
+Florence!--with what petulant and sparkling grace came wit and wisdom,
+and even genius, from those ruby lips! Even the assured Ferrers felt his
+subtle intellect as dull and coarse to hers, and shrank with a reluctant
+apprehension from the arrows of her careless and prodigal repartees. For
+there was a scorn in the nature of Florence Lascelles which made her
+wit pain more frequently than it pleased. Educated even to
+learning--courageous even to a want of feminacy--she delighted to sport
+with ignorance and pretension, even in the highest places; and the laugh
+that she excited was like lightning;--no one could divine where next it
+might fall.
+
+But Florence, though dreaded and unloved, was yet courted, flattered,
+and the rage. For this there were two reasons: first, she was a
+coquette, and secondly, she was an heiress.
+
+Thus the talkers in the room were divided into two principal groups,
+over one of which Maltravers may be said to have presided; over the
+other, Florence. As the former broke up, Ernest was joined by Cleveland.
+
+“My dear cousin,” said Florence, suddenly, and in a whisper, as she
+turned to Lumley, “your friend is speaking of me--I see it. Go, I
+implore you, and let me know what he says!”
+
+“The commission is not flattering,” said Ferrers, almost sullenly.
+
+“Nay, a commission to gratify a woman’s curiosity is ever one of the
+most flattering embassies with which we can invest an able negotiator.”
+
+“Well, I must do your bidding, though I disown the favour.” Ferrers
+moved away, and joined Cleveland and Maltravers.
+
+“She is, indeed, beautiful: so perfect a contour I never beheld: she
+is the only woman I ever saw in whom the aquiline features seem more
+classical than even the Greek.”
+
+“So, that is your opinion of my fair cousin!” cried Ferrers, “you are
+caught.”
+
+“I wish he were,” said Cleveland. “Ernest is now old enough to settle,
+and there is not a more dazzling prize in England--rich, high-born,
+lovely, and accomplished.”
+
+“And what say you?” asked Lumley, almost impatiently, to Maltravers.
+
+“That I never saw one whom I admire more or could love less,” replied
+Ernest, as he quitted the rooms.
+
+Ferrers looked after him, and muttered to himself; he then rejoined
+Florence, who presently rose to depart, and taking Lumley’s arm, said,
+“Well, I see my father is looking round for me--and so for once I will
+forestall him. Come, Lumley, let us join him; I know he wants to see
+you.
+
+“Well?” said Florence, blushing deeply, and almost breathless, as they
+crossed the now half-empty apartments.
+
+“Well, my cousin?”
+
+“You provoke me--well, then, what said your friend?”
+
+“That you deserved your reputation of beauty, but that you were not his
+style. Maltravers is in love, you know.”
+
+“In love?”
+
+“Yes, a pretty Frenchwoman! quite romantic--an attachment of some years’
+standing.”
+
+Florence turned away her face, and said no more.
+
+“That’s a good fellow, Lumley,” said Lord Saxingham; “Florence is never
+more welcome to my eyes than at half-past one o’clock A.M., when I
+associate her with thoughts of my natural rest, and my unfortunate
+carriage-horses. By the by, I wish you would dine with me next
+Saturday.”
+
+“Saturday: unfortunately I am engaged to my uncle.”
+
+“Oh! he has behaved handsomely to you?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Mrs. Templeton pretty well?”
+
+“I fancy so.”
+
+“As ladies wish to be, etc.?” whispered his lordship.
+
+“No, thank Heaven!”
+
+“Well, if the old man could but make you his heir, we might think twice
+about the title.”
+
+“My dear lord, stop! one favour--write me a line to hint that
+delicately.”
+
+“No--no letters; letters always get into the papers.”
+
+“But cautiously worded--no danger of publication, on my honour.”
+
+“I’ll think of it. Good night.”
+
+
+
+
+BOOK VII.
+
+ Every man should strive to be as good as possible, but not
+ suppose himself to be the only thing that is good.
+        --PLOTIN. EN. 11. lib. ix. c. 9.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+ “Deceit is the strong but subtle chain which runs through
+  all the members of a society, and links them together;
+  trick or be tricked is the alternative; ‘tis the way of
+  the world, and without it intercourse would drop.”
+         _Anonymous writer_ of 1722.
+
+ “A lovely child she was, of looks serene,
+  And motions which o’er things indifferent shed
+  The grace and gentleness from whence they came.”
+         PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.
+
+ “His years but young, but his experience old.”--SHAKESPEARE.
+
+ “He after honour hunts, I after love.”--_Ibid._
+
+LUMLEY FERRERS was one of the few men in the world who act upon a
+profound, deliberate, and organized system--he had done so even from
+a boy. When he was twenty-one, he had said to himself, “Youth is the
+season for enjoyment: the triumphs of manhood, the wealth of age, do not
+compensate for a youth spent in unpleasurable toils.” Agreeably to this
+maxim, he had resolved not to adopt any profession; and being fond of
+travel, and of a restless temper, he had indulged abroad in all the
+gratifications that his moderate income could afford him: that income
+went farther on the Continent than at home, which was another reason
+for the prolongation of his travels. Now, when the whims and passions of
+youth were sated; and, ripened by a consummate and various knowledge of
+mankind, his harder capacities of mind became developed and centred into
+such ambition as it was his nature to conceive, he acted no less upon a
+regular and methodical plan of conduct, which he carried into details.
+He had little or nothing within himself to cross his cold theories by
+contradictory practice; for he was curbed by no principles and regulated
+but by few tastes: and our tastes are often checks as powerful as our
+principles. Looking round the English world, Ferrers saw, that at his
+age and with an equivocal position, and no chances to throw away, it was
+necessary that he should cast off all attributes of the character of the
+wanderer and the _garcon_.
+
+“There is nothing respectable in lodgings and a cab,” said Ferrers to
+himself--that “_self_” was his grand confidant!--“nothing stationary.
+Such are the appliances of a here-to-day-gone-to-morrow kind of life.
+One never looks substantial till one pays rates and taxes, and has a
+bill with one’s butcher!”
+
+Accordingly, without saying a word to anybody, Ferrers took a long lease
+of a large house, in one of those quiet streets that proclaim the owners
+do not wish to be made by fashionable situations--streets in which, if
+you have a large house, it is supposed to be because you can afford one.
+He was very particular in its being a respectable street--Great George
+Street, Westminster, was the one he selected.
+
+No frippery or baubles, common to the mansions of young bachelors--no
+buhl, and marquetrie, and Sevres china, and cabinet pictures,
+distinguished the large dingy drawing-rooms of Lumley Ferrers. He bought
+all the old furniture a bargain of the late tenant--tea-coloured chintz
+curtains, and chairs and sofas that were venerable and solemn with the
+accumulated dust of twenty-five years. The only things about which
+he was particular were a very long dining-table that would hold
+four-and-twenty, and a new mahogany sideboard. Somebody asked him why
+he cared about such articles. “I don’t know,” said he “but I observe
+all respectable family-men do--there must be something in it--I shall
+discover the secret by and by.”
+
+In this house did Mr. Ferrers ensconce himself with two middle-aged
+maidservants, and a man out of livery, whom he chose from a multitude
+of candidates, because the man looked especially well fed. Having thus
+settled himself, and told every one that the lease of his house was
+for sixty-three years, Lumley Ferrers made a little calculation of his
+probable expenditure, which he found, with good management, might amount
+to about one-fourth more than his income.
+
+“I shall take the surplus out of my capital,” said he, “and try the
+experiment for five years; if it don’t do, and pay me profitably, why,
+then either men are not to be lived upon, or Lumley Ferrers is a much
+duller clog than he thinks himself!”
+
+Mr. Ferrers had deeply studied the character of his uncle, as a prudent
+speculator studies the qualities of a mine in which he means to invest
+his capital, and much of his present proceedings was intended to act
+upon the uncle as well as upon the world. He saw that the more he could
+obtain for himself, not a noisy, social, fashionable reputation, but
+a good, sober, substantial one, the more highly Mr. Templeton would
+consider him, and the more likely he was to be made his uncle’s
+heir,--that is, provided Mrs. Templeton did not supersede the nepotal
+parasite by indigenous olive-branches. This last apprehension died away
+as time passed, and no signs of fertility appeared. And, accordingly,
+Ferrers thought he might prudently hazard more upon the game on which
+he now ventured to rely. There was one thing, however, that greatly
+disturbed his peace; Mr. Templeton, though harsh and austere in his
+manner to his wife, was evidently attached to her; and, above all, he
+cherished the fondest affection for his stepdaughter. He was as anxious
+for her health, her education, her little childish enjoyments, as if he
+had been not only her parent, but a very doting one. He could not bear
+her to be crossed or thwarted. Mr. Templeton, who had never spoiled
+anything before, not even an old pen (so careful, and calculating, and
+methodical was he), did his best to spoil this beautiful child whom he
+could not even have the vain luxury of thinking he had produced to the
+admiring world. Softly, exquisitely lovely was that little girl; and
+every day she increased in the charm of her person, and in the caressing
+fascination of her childish ways. Her temper was so sweet and docile,
+that fondness and petting, however injudiciously exhibited, only seemed
+yet more to bring out the colours of a grateful and tender nature.
+Perhaps the measured kindness of more reserved affection might have been
+the true way of spoiling one whose instincts were all for exacting and
+returning love. She was a plant that suns less warm might have nipped
+and chilled. But beneath an uncapricious and unclouded sunshine she
+sprang up in a luxurious bloom of heart and sweetness of disposition.
+
+Every one, even those who did not generally like children, delighted
+in this charming creature, excepting only Mr. Lumley Ferrers. But that
+gentleman, less mild than Pope’s Narcissa,--
+
+   “To make a wash, had gladly stewed the child!”
+
+He had seen how very common it is for a rich man, married late in life,
+to leave everything to a young widow and her children by her former
+marriage, when once attached to the latter; and he sensibly felt that
+he himself had but a slight hold over Templeton by the chain of the
+affections. He resolved, therefore, as much as possible, to alienate his
+uncle from his young wife; trusting that, as the influence of the wife
+was weakened, that of the child would be lessened also; and to raise in
+Templeton’s vanity and ambition an ally that might supply to himself
+the want of love. He pursued his twofold scheme with masterly art and
+address. He first sought to secure the confidence and regard of the
+melancholy and gentle mother; and in this--for she was peculiarly
+unsuspicious and inexperienced, he obtained signal and complete success.
+His frankness of manner, his deferential attention, the art with which
+he warded off from her the spleen or ill-humour of Mr. Templeton, the
+cheerfulness that his easy gaiety threw over a very gloomy house, made
+the poor lady hail his visits and trust in his friendship. Perhaps
+she was glad of any interruption to _tetes-a-tetes_ with a severe and
+ungenial husband, who had no sympathy for the sorrows, of whatever
+nature they might be, which preyed upon her, and who made it a point of
+morality to find fault wherever he could.
+
+The next step in Lumley’s policy was to arm Templeton’s vanity against
+his wife, by constantly refreshing his consciousness of the sacrifices
+he had made by marriage, and the certainty that he would have attained
+all his wishes had he chosen more prudently. By perpetually, but
+most judiciously, rubbing this sore point, he, as it were, fixed the
+irritability into Templeton’s constitution, and it reacted on all
+his thoughts, aspiring or domestic. Still, however, to Lumley’s great
+surprise and resentment, while Templeton cooled to his wife, he only
+warmed to her child. Lumley had not calculated enough upon the thirst
+and craving for affection in most human hearts; and Templeton, though
+not exactly an amiable man, had some excellent qualities; if he had less
+sensitively regarded the opinion of the world, he would neither have
+contracted the vocabulary of cant, nor sickened for a peerage--both his
+affectation of saintship, and his gnawing desire of rank, arose from an
+extraordinary and morbid deference to opinion, and a wish for worldly
+honours and respect, which he felt that his mere talents could not
+secure to him. But he was, at bottom, a kindly man--charitable to the
+poor, considerate to his servants, and had within him the want to love
+and be loved, which is one of the desires wherewith the atoms of the
+universe are cemented and harmonised. Had Mrs. Templeton evinced love
+to him, he might have defied all Lumley’s diplomacy, been consoled for
+worldly disadvantages, and been a good and even uxorious husband. But
+she evidently did not love him, though an admirable, patient, provident
+wife; and her daughter _did_ love him--love him as well even as she
+loved her mother; and the hard worldling would not have accepted a
+kingdom as the price of that little fountain of pure and ever-refreshing
+tenderness. Wise and penetrating as Lumley was, he never could
+thoroughly understand this weakness, as he called it; for we never know
+men entirely, unless we have complete sympathies with men in all their
+natural emotions; and Nature had left the workmanship of Lumley Ferrers
+unfinished and incomplete, by denying him the possibility of caring for
+anything but himself.
+
+His plan for winning Templeton’s esteem and deference was, however,
+completely triumphant. He took care that nothing in his _menage_ should
+appear “_extravagant_;” all was sober, quiet, and well-regulated.
+He declared that he had so managed as to live within his income: and
+Templeton receiving no hint for money, nor aware that Ferrers had on the
+Continent consumed a considerable portion of his means, believed him.
+Ferrers gave a great many dinners, but he did not go on that foolish
+plan which has been laid down by persons who pretend to know life, as
+a means of popularity--he did not profess to give dinners better than
+other people. He knew that, unless you are a very rich or a very great
+man, no folly is equal to that of thinking that you soften the hearts
+of your friends by soups _a la bisque_, and Johannisberg at a guinea a
+bottle. They all go away saying, “What right has that d----d fellow
+to give a better dinner than we do? What horrid taste! What ridiculous
+presumption.”
+
+No; though Ferrers himself was a most scientific epicure, and held
+the luxury of the palate at the highest possible price, he dieted his
+friends on what he termed “respectable fare.” His cook put plenty
+of flour into the oyster sauce; cod’s head and shoulders made his
+invariable fish; and four _entrees_, without flavour or pretence, were
+duly supplied by the pastry-cook, and carefully eschewed by the host.
+Neither did Mr. Ferrers affect to bring about him gay wits and brilliant
+talkers. He confined himself to men of substantial consideration, and
+generally took care to be himself the cleverest person present; while
+he turned the conversation on serious matters crammed for the
+occasion--politics, stocks, commerce, and the criminal code. Pruning
+his gaiety, though he retained his frankness, he sought to be known as
+a highly-informed, painstaking man, who would be sure to rise. His
+connections, and a certain nameless charm about him, consisting chiefly
+in a pleasant countenance, a bold yet winning candour, and the absence
+of all _hauteur_ or pretence, enabled him to assemble round this
+plain table, which, if it gratified no taste, wounded no self-love, a
+sufficient number of public men of rank, and eminent men of business, to
+answer his purpose. The situation he had chosen, so near the Houses of
+Parliament, was convenient to politicians, and, by degrees, the large
+dingy drawing-rooms became a frequent resort for public men to talk over
+those thousand underplots by which a party is served or attached. Thus,
+though not in parliament himself, Ferrers became insensibly associated
+with parliamentary men and things, and the ministerial party, whose
+politics he espoused, praised him highly, made use of him, and meant,
+some day or other, to do something for him.
+
+While the career of this able and unprincipled man thus opened--and
+of course the opening was not made in a day--Ernest Maltravers was
+ascending by a rough, thorny, and encumbered path, to that eminence on
+which the monuments of men are built. His success in public life was
+not brilliant nor sudden. For, though he had eloquence and knowledge, he
+disdained all oratorical devices; and though he had passion and energy,
+he could scarcely be called a warm partisan. He met with much envy, and
+many obstacles; and the gracious and buoyant sociality of temper
+and manners that had, in early youth, made him the idol of his
+contemporaries at school or college, had long since faded away into a
+cold, settled, and lofty, though gentle reserve, which did not attract
+towards him the animal spirits of the herd. But though he spoke seldom,
+and heard many, with half his powers, more enthusiastically cheered, he
+did not fail of commanding attention and respect; and though no darling
+of cliques and parties, yet in that great body of the people who were
+ever the audience and tribunal to which, in letters or in politics,
+Maltravers appealed, there was silently growing up, and spreading wide,
+a belief in his upright intentions, his unpurchasable honour, and his
+correct and well-considered views. He felt that his name was safely
+invested, though the return for the capital was slow and moderate. He
+was contented to abide his time.
+
+Every day he grew more attached to that true philosophy which makes a
+man, as far as the world will permit, a world to himself; and from the
+height of a tranquil and serene self-esteem, he felt the sun shine above
+him, when malignant clouds spread sullen and ungenial below. He did not
+despise or wilfully shock opinion, neither did he fawn upon and flatter
+it. Where he thought the world should be humoured, he humoured--where
+contemned, he contemned it. There are many cases in which an honest,
+well-educated, high-hearted individual is a much better judge than the
+multitude of what is right and what is wrong; and in these matters he is
+not worth three straws if he suffer the multitude to bully or coax him
+out of his judgment. The Public, if you indulge it, is a most damnable
+gossip, thrusting its nose into people’s concerns, where it has no right
+to make or meddle; and in those things, where the Public is impertinent,
+Maltravers scorned and resisted its interference as haughtily as he
+would the interference of any insolent member of the insolent whole.
+It was this mixture of deep love and profound respect for the eternal
+PEOPLE, and of calm, passionless disdain for that capricious charlatan,
+the momentary PUBLIC, which made Ernest Maltravers an original and
+solitary thinker; and an actor, in reality modest and benevolent, in
+appearance arrogant and unsocial. “Pauperism, in contradistinction to
+poverty,” he was wont to say, “is the dependence upon other people for
+existence, not on our own exertions; there is a moral pauperism in
+the man who is dependent on others for that support of moral
+life--self-respect.”
+
+Wrapped in this philosophy, he pursued his haughty and lonesome way,
+and felt that in the deep heart of mankind, when prejudices and envies
+should die off, there would be a sympathy with his motives and his
+career. So far as his own health was concerned, the experiment
+had answered. No mere drudgery of business--late hours and dull
+speeches--can produce the dread exhaustion which follows the efforts
+of the soul to mount into the higher air of severe thought or intense
+imagination. Those faculties which had been overstrained now lay
+fallow--and the frame rapidly regained its tone. Of private comfort and
+inspiration Ernest knew but little. He gradually grew estranged from his
+old friend Ferrers, as their habits became opposed. Cleveland lived more
+and more in the country, and was too well satisfied with his quondam
+pupil’s course of life and progressive reputation to trouble him with
+exhortation or advice. Cesarini had grown a literary lion, whose genius
+was vehemently lauded by all the reviews--on the same principle as that
+which induces us to praise foreign singers or dead men;--we must praise
+something, and we don’t like to praise those who jostle ourselves.
+Cesarini had therefore grown prodigiously conceited--swore that England
+was the only country for true merit; and no longer concealed his jealous
+anger at the wider celebrity of Maltravers. Ernest saw him squandering
+away his substance, and prostituting his talents to drawing-room
+trifles, with a compassionate sigh. He sought to warn him, but Cesarini
+listened to him with such impatience that he resigned the office of
+monitor. He wrote to De Montaigne, who succeeded no better. Cesarini was
+bent on playing his own game. And to one game, without a metaphor, he
+had at last come. His craving for excitement vented itself at Hazard,
+and his remaining guineas melted daily away.
+
+But De Montaigne’s letters to Maltravers consoled him for the loss of
+less congenial friends. The Frenchman was now an eminent and celebrated
+man; and his appreciation of Maltravers was sweeter to the latter than
+would have been the huzzas of crowds. But, all this while, his vanity
+was pleased and his curiosity roused by the continued correspondence of
+his unseen Egeria. That correspondence (if so it may be called, being
+all on one side) had now gone on for a considerable time, and he
+was still wholly unable to discover the author: its tone had of late
+altered--it had become more sad and subdued--it spoke of the hollowness
+as well as the rewards of fame; and, with a touch of true womanly
+sentiment, often hinted more at the rapture of soothing dejection,
+than of sharing triumph. In all these letters, there was the undeniable
+evidence of high intellect and deep feeling; they excited a strong and
+keen interest in Maltravers, yet the interest was not that which made
+him wish to discover, in order that he might love, the writer. They
+were for the most part too full of the irony and bitterness of a man’s
+spirit, to fascinate one who considered that gentleness was the essence
+of a woman’s strength. Temper spoke in them, no less than mind and
+heart, and it was not the sort of temper which a man who loves women to
+be womanly could admire.
+
+“I hear you often spoken of” (ran one of these strange epistles), “and I
+am almost equally angry whether fools presume to praise or to blame you.
+This miserable world we live in, how I loathe and disdain it!--yet I
+desire you to serve and to master it! Weak contradiction, effeminate
+paradox! Oh! rather a thousand times that you would fly from its mean
+temptations and poor rewards!--if the desert were your dwelling-place
+and you wished one minister, I could renounce all--wealth, flattery,
+repute, womanhood--to serve you.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+“I once admired you for your genius. My disease has fastened on me,
+and I now almost worship you for yourself. I have seen you, Ernest
+Maltravers,--seen you often,--and when you never suspected that these
+eyes were on you. Now that I have seen, I understand you better. We can
+not judge men by their books and deeds. Posterity can know nothing of
+the beings of the past. A thousand books never written--a thousand deeds
+never done--are in the eyes and lips of the few greater than the herd.
+In that cold, abstracted gaze, that pale and haughty brow, I read the
+disdain of obstacles, which is worthy of one who is confident of the
+goal. But my eyes fill with tears when I survey you!--you are sad, you
+are alone! If failures do not mortify you, success does not elevate. Oh,
+Maltravers, I, woman as I am, and living in a narrow circle, I, even
+I, know at last that to have desires nobler, and ends more august, than
+others, is but to surrender waking life to morbid and melancholy dreams.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+“Go more into the world, Maltravers--go more into the world, or quit
+it altogether. Your enemies must be met; they accumulate, they grow
+strong--you are too tranquil, too slow in your steps towards the
+prize which should be yours, to satisfy my impatience, to satisfy
+your friends. Be less refined in your ambition that you may be more
+immediately useful. The feet of clay after all are the swiftest in the
+race. Even Lumley Ferrers will outstrip you if you do not take heed.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+“Why do I run on thus!--you--you love another, yet you are not less
+the ideal that I could love--if ever I loved any one. You love--and
+yet--well--no matter.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+ “Well, but this is being only an official nobleman. No matter,
+  ‘tis still being a nobleman, and that’s his aim.”
+    _Anonymous writer of 1772_.
+
+ “La musique est le seul des talens qui jouissent de lui-meme;
+  tons les autres veulent des temoins.” *--MARMONTEL.
+
+* Music is the sole talent which gives pleasure of itself; all the
+others require witnesses.
+
+ “Thus the slow ox would gaudy trappings claim.”--HORACE.
+
+MR. TEMPLETON had not obtained his peerage, and, though he had met with
+no direct refusal, nor made even a direct application to headquarters,
+he was growing sullen. He had great parliamentary influence, not close
+borough, illegitimate influence, but very proper orthodox influence of
+character, wealth, and so forth. He could return one member at least
+for a city--he could almost return one member for a county, and in
+three boroughs any activity on his part could turn the scale in a close
+contest. The ministers were strong, but still they could not afford
+to lose supporters hitherto zealous--the example of desertion is
+contagious. In the town which Templeton had formerly represented, and
+which he now almost commanded, a vacancy suddenly occurred--a candidate
+started on the opposition side and commenced a canvass; to the
+astonishment and panic of the Secretary of the Treasury, Templeton
+put forward no one, and his interest remained dormant. Lord Saxingham
+hurried to Lumley.
+
+“My dear fellow, what is this?--what can your uncle be about? We shall
+lose this place--one of our strongholds. Bets run even.”
+
+“Why, you see, you have all behaved very ill to my uncle--I am really
+sorry for it, but I can do nothing.”
+
+“What, this confounded peerage! Will that content him, and nothing short
+of it?”
+
+“Nothing.”
+
+“He must have it, by Jove!”
+
+“And even that may come too late.”
+
+“Ha! do you think so?”
+
+“Will you leave the matter to me?”
+
+“Certainly--you are a monstrous clever fellow, and we all esteem you.”
+
+“Sit down and write as I dictate, my dear lord.”
+
+“Well,” said Lord Saxingham, seating himself at Lumley’s enormous
+writing-table--“well, go on.”
+
+“_My dear Mr. Templeton_--”
+
+“Too familiar,” said Lord Saxingham.
+
+“Not a bit; go on.”
+
+“_My dear Mr. Templeton:_--
+
+“_We are anxious to secure your parliamentary influence in C------ to
+the proper quarter, namely, to your own family, as the best defenders of
+the administration, which you honour by your support. We wish signally,
+at the same time, to express our confidence in your principles, and our
+gratitude for your countenance._”
+
+“D-----d sour countenance!” muttered Lord Saxingham.
+
+“_Accordingly,_” continued Ferrers, “_as one whose connection with you
+permits the liberty, allow me to request that you will suffer our joint
+relation, Mr. Ferrers, to be put into immediate nomination._”
+
+Lord Saxingham threw down the pen and laughed for two minutes without
+ceasing. “Capital, Lumley, capital--Very odd I did not think of it
+before.”
+
+“Each man for himself, and God for us all,” returned Lumley, gravely:
+“pray go on, my dear lord.”
+
+“_We are sure you could not have a representative that would, more
+faithfully reflect your own opinions and our interests. One word more. A
+creation of peers will probably take place in the spring, among which
+I am sure your name would be to his Majesty a gratifying addition; the
+title will of course be secured to your sons--and failing the latter, to
+your nephew._
+
+     “_With great regard and respect,_
+
+        “_Truly yours,_
+
+          “_SAXINGHAM._”
+
+“There, inscribe that ‘Private and confidential,’ and send it express to
+my uncle’s villa.”
+
+“It shall be done, my dear Lumley--and this contents me as much as it
+does you. You are really a man to do us credit. You think it will be
+arranged?”
+
+“No doubt of it.”
+
+“Well, good day. Lumley, come to me when it is all settled: Florence is
+always glad to see you; she says no one amuses her more. And I am
+sure that is rare praise, for she is a strange girl,--quite a Timon in
+petticoats.”
+
+Away went Lord Saxingham.
+
+“Florence glad to see me!” said Lumley, throwing his arms behind him,
+and striding to and fro the room--“Scheme the Second begins to smile
+upon me behind the advancing shadow of Scheme One. If I can but succeed
+in keeping away other suitors from my fair cousin until I am in a
+condition to propose myself, why, I may carry off the greatest match in
+the three kingdoms. _Courage, mon brave Ferrers, courage!_”
+
+It was late that evening when Ferrers arrived at his uncle’s villa. He
+found Mrs. Templeton in the drawing-room seated at the piano. He entered
+gently; she did not hear him, and continued at the instrument. Her voice
+was so sweet and rich, her taste so pure, that Ferrers, who was a good
+judge of music, stood in delighted surprise. Often as he had now been
+a visitor, even an inmate, at the house, he had never before heard Mrs.
+Templeton play any but sacred airs, and this was one of the popular
+songs of sentiment. He perceived that her feeling at last overpowered
+her voice, and she paused abruptly, and turning round, her face was so
+eloquent of emotion, that Ferrers was forcibly struck by its expression.
+He was not a man apt to feel curiosity for anything not immediately
+concerning himself; but he did feel curious about this melancholy and
+beautiful woman. There was in her usual aspect that inexpressible look
+of profound resignation which betokens a lasting remembrance of a bitter
+past: a prematurely blighted heart spoke in her eyes, in her smile, her
+languid and joyless step. But she performed the routine of her quiet
+duties with a calm and conscientious regularity which showed that grief
+rather depressed than disturbed her thoughts. If her burden were heavy,
+custom seemed to have reconciled her to bear it without repining; and
+the emotion which Ferrers now traced in her soft and harmonious features
+was of a nature he had only once witnessed before--viz., on the first
+night he had seen her, when poetry, which is the key of memory, had
+evidently opened a chamber haunted by mournful and troubled ghosts.
+
+“Ah! dear madam,” said Ferrers, advancing, as he found himself
+discovered, “I trust I do not disturb you. My visit is unseasonable; but
+my uncle--where is he?”
+
+“He has been in town all the morning; he said he should dine out, and I
+now expect him every minute.”
+
+“You have been endeavouring to charm away the sense of his absence. Dare
+I ask you to continue to play? It is seldom that I hear a voice so
+sweet and skill so consummate. You must have been instructed by the best
+Italian masters.”
+
+“No,” said Mrs. Templeton, with a very slight colour in her delicate
+cheek, “I learned young, and of one who loved music and felt it; but who
+was not a foreigner.”
+
+“Will you sing me that song again?--you give the words a beauty I never
+discovered in them; yet they (as well as the music itself), are by my
+poor friend whom Mr. Templeton does not like--Maltravers.”
+
+“Are they his also?” said Mrs. Templeton, with emotion; “it is strange I
+did not know it. I heard the air in the streets, and it struck me much.
+I inquired the name of the song and bought it--it is very strange!”
+
+“What is strange?”
+
+“That there is a kind of language in your friend’s music and poetry
+which comes home to me, like words I have heard years ago! Is he young,
+this Mr. Maltravers?”
+
+“Yes, he is still young.”
+
+“And, and--”
+
+Here Mrs. Templeton was interrupted by the entrance of her husband.
+He held the letter from Lord Saxingham--it was yet unopened. He seemed
+moody; but that was common with him. He coldly shook hands with Lumley;
+nodded to his wife, found fault with the fire, and throwing himself into
+his easy-chair, said, “So, Lumley, I think I was a fool for taking your
+advice--and hanging back about this new election. I see by the evening
+papers that there is shortly to be a creation of peers. If I had shown
+activity on behalf of the government I might have shamed them into
+gratitude.”
+
+“I think I was right, sir,” replied Lumley; “public men are often
+alarmed into gratitude, seldom shamed into it. Firm votes, like old
+friends, are most valued when we think we are about to lose them; but
+what is that letter in your hand?”
+
+“Oh, some begging petition, I suppose.”
+
+“Pardon me--it has an official look.” Templeton put on his spectacles,
+raised the letter, examined the address and seal, hastily opened it,
+and broke into an exclamation very like an oath: when he had
+concluded--“Give me your hand, nephew--the thing is settled--I am to
+have the peerage. You were right--ha, ha!--my dear wife, you will be my
+lady, think of that--aren’t you glad?--why don’t your ladyship smile?
+Where’s the child--where is she, I say?”
+
+“Gone to bed, sir,” said Mrs. Templeton, half frightened.
+
+“Gone to bed! I must go and kiss her. Gone to bed, has she? Light that
+candle, Lumley.” [Here Mr. Templeton rang the bell.] “John,” said he,
+as the servant entered,--“John, tell James to go the first thing in the
+morning to Baxter’s, and tell him not to paint my chariot till he hears
+from me. I must go kiss the child--I must, really.”
+
+“D--- the child,” muttered Lumley, as, after giving the candle to his
+uncle, he turned to the fire; “what the deuce has she got to do with
+the matter? Charming little girl--yours, madam! how I love her! My uncle
+dotes on her--no wonder!”
+
+“He is, indeed, very, very, fond of her,” said Mrs. Templeton, with a
+sigh that seemed to come from the depth of her heart.
+
+“Did he take a fancy to her before you were married?”
+
+“Yes, I believe--oh yes, certainly.”
+
+“Her own father could not be more fond of her.”
+
+Mrs. Templeton made no answer, but lighted her candle, and wishing
+Lumley good night, glided from the room.
+
+“I wonder if my grave aunt and my grave uncle took a bite at the apple
+before they bought the right of the tree. It looks suspicious; yet no,
+it can’t be; there is nothing of the seducer or the seductive about the
+old fellow. It is not likely--here he comes.”
+
+In came Templeton, and his eyes were moist, and his brow relaxed.
+
+“And how is the little angel, sir?” asked Ferrers.
+
+“She kissed me, though I woke her up; children are usually cross when
+wakened.”
+
+“Are they?--little dears! Well, sir, so I was right, then; may I see the
+letter?”
+
+“There it is.”
+
+Ferrers drew his chair to the fire, and read his own production with all
+the satisfaction of an anonymous author.
+
+“How kind!--how considerate!--how delicately put!--a double favour! But
+perhaps, after all, it does not express your wishes.”
+
+“In what way?”
+
+“Why--why--about myself.”
+
+“_You!_--is there anything about _you_ in it?--I did not observe
+_that_--let me see.”
+
+“Uncles never selfish!--mem. for commonplace book!” thought Ferrers.
+
+The uncle knit his brows as he re-perused the letter. “This won’t do,
+Lumley,” said he very shortly, when he had done.
+
+“A seat in parliament is too much honour for a poor nephew, then, sir?”
+ said Lumley, very bitterly, though he did not feel at all bitter; but
+it was the proper tone. “I have done all in my power to advance your
+ambition, and you will not even lend a hand to forward me one step in my
+career. But, forgive me, sir, I have no right to expect it.”
+
+“Lumley,” replied Templeton, kindly, “you mistake me. I think much more
+highly of you than I did--much: there is a steadiness, a sobriety about
+you most praiseworthy, and you shall go into parliament if you wish it;
+but not for C------. I will give my interest there to some other friend
+of the government, and in return they can give you a treasury borough!
+That is the same thing to you.”
+
+Lumley was agreeably surprised--he pressed his uncle’s hand warmly, and
+thanked him cordially. Mr. Templeton proceeded to explain to him that it
+was inconvenient and expensive sitting for places where one’s family was
+known, and Lumley fully subscribed to all.
+
+“As for the settlement of the peerage, that is all right,” said
+Templeton; and then he sank into a reverie, from which he broke
+joyously--“yes, that is all right. I have projects, objects--this
+may unite them all--nothing can be better--you will be the next
+lord--what--I say, what title shall we have?”
+
+“Oh, take a sounding one--you have very little landed property, I
+think?”
+
+“Two thousand a year in ------shire, bought a bargain.”
+
+“What’s the name of the place?”
+
+“Grubley.”
+
+“Lord Grubley!--Baron Grubley of Grubley--oh, atrocious! Who had the
+place before you?”
+
+“Bought it of Mr. Sheepshanks--very old family.”
+
+“But surely some old Norman once had the place?”
+
+“Norman, yes! Henry the Second gave it to his barber--Bertram Courval.”
+
+“That’s it!--that’s it! Lord de Courval--singular coincidence!--descent
+from the old line. Herald’s College soon settle all that. Lord de
+Courval!--nothing can sound better. There must be a village or hamlet
+still called Courval about the property.”
+
+“I am afraid not. There is Coddle End!”
+
+“Coddle End!--Coddle End!--the very thing, sir--the very thing--clear
+corruption from Courval!--Lord de Courval of Courval! Superb! Ha! ha!”
+
+“Ha! ha!” laughed Templeton, and he had hardly laughed before since he
+was thirty.
+
+The relations sat long and conversed familiarly. Ferrers slept at the
+villa, and his sleep was sound; for he thought little of plans once
+formed and half executed; it was the hunt that kept him awake, and he
+slept like a hound when the prey was down. Not so Templeton, who did
+not close his eyes all night.--“Yes, yes,” thought he, “I must get
+the fortune and the title in one line by a prudent management. Ferrers
+deserves what I mean to do for him. Steady, good-natured, frank, and
+will get on--yes, yes, I see it all. Meanwhile I did well to prevent
+his standing for C------; might pick up gossip about Mrs. T., and other
+things that might be unpleasant. Ah, I’m a shrewd fellow!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+ “_Lauzun._--There, Marquis, there, I’ve done it.
+  _Montespan._--Done it! yes! Nice doings!”
+         _The Duchess de la Valliere_.
+
+LUMLEY hastened to strike while the iron was hot. The next morning he
+went straight to the Treasury--saw the managing secretary, a clever,
+sharp man, who, like Ferrers, carried off intrigue and manoeuvre by a
+blunt, careless, bluff manner.
+
+Ferrers announced that he was to stand for the free, respectable, open
+city of C------, with an electoral population of 2,500. A very showy
+place it was for a member in the old ante-reform times, and was
+considered a thoroughly independent borough. The secretary congratulated
+and complimented him.
+
+“We have had losses lately in _our_ elections among the larger
+constituencies,” said Lumley.
+
+“We have indeed--three towns lost in the last six months. Members do die
+so very unseasonably.”
+
+“Is Lord Staunch yet provided for?” asked Lumley. Now Lord Staunch was
+one of the popular show-fight great guns of the administration--not in
+office, but that most useful person to all governments, an out-and-out
+supporter upon the most independent principles--who was known to have
+refused place and to value himself on independence--a man who helped the
+government over the stile when it was seized with a temporary lameness,
+and who carried “great weight with him in the country.” Lord Staunch had
+foolishly thrown up a close borough in order to contest a large city,
+and had failed in the attempt. His failure was everywhere cited as a
+proof of the growing unpopularity of ministers.
+
+“Is Lord Staunch yet provided for?” asked Lumley.
+
+“Why, he must have his old seat--Three-Oaks. Three-Oaks is a nice, quiet
+little place; most respectable constituency--all Staunch’s own family.”
+
+“Just the thing for him; yet, ‘tis a pity that he did not wait to stand
+for C------; my uncle’s interest would have secured him.”
+
+“Ay, I thought so the moment C------ was vacant. However, it is too late
+now.”
+
+“It would be a great triumph if Lord Staunch could show that a large
+constituency volunteered to elect him without expense.”
+
+“Without expense!--Ah, yes, indeed! It would prove that purity of
+election still exists--that British institutions are still upheld.”
+
+“It might be done, Mr. ------.”
+
+“Why, I thought that you--”
+
+“Were to stand--that is true--and it will be difficult to manage my
+uncle; but he loves me much--you know I am his heir--I believe I could
+do it; that is, if you think it would be _a very great advantage_ to the
+party, and _a very great service_ to the government.”
+
+“Why, Mr. Ferrers, it would indeed be both.”
+
+“And in that case I could have Three-Oaks.”
+
+“I see--exactly so; but to give up so respectable a seat--really it is a
+sacrifice.”
+
+“Say no more, it shall be done. A deputation shall wait on Lord Staunch
+directly. I will see my uncle, and a despatch shall be sent down to
+C------ to-night; at least, I hope so. I must not be too confident.
+My uncle is an old man, nobody but myself can manage him; I’ll go this
+instant.”
+
+“You may be sure your kindness will be duly appreciated.”
+
+Lumley shook hands cordially with the secretary and retired. The
+secretary was not “humbugged,” nor did Lumley expect he should be. But
+the secretary noted this of Lumley Ferrers (and that gentleman’s object
+was gained), that Lumley Ferrers was a man who looked out for office,
+and if he did tolerably well in parliament, that Lumley Ferrers was a
+man who ought to be _pushed_.
+
+Very shortly afterwards the _Gazette_ announced the election of Lord
+Staunch for C------, after a sharp but decisive contest. The ministerial
+journals rang with exulting paeans; the opposition ones called the
+electors of C------ all manner of hard names, and declared that Mr.
+Stout, Lord Staunch’s opponent, would petition--which he never did. In
+the midst of the hubbub, Mr. Lumley Ferrers quietly and unobservedly
+crept into the representation of Three-Oaks.
+
+On the night of his election he went to Lord Saxingham’s; but what there
+happened deserves another chapter.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+ “Je connois des princes du sang, des princes etrangers, des
+  grands seigneurs, des ministres d’etat, des magistrats, et
+  des philosophes qui fileroient pour l’amour de vous. En
+  pouvez-vous demander davantage?” *
+        _Lettres de Madame de Sevigne_
+
+* I know princes of the blood, foreign princes, great lords, ministers
+of state, magistrates, and philosophers who would even spin for love of
+you. What can you ask more?
+
+ “_Lindore._ I--I believe it will choke me. I’m in love * * * Now
+hold your tongue. Hold your tongue, I say.
+
+ “_Dalner._ You in love! Ha! ha!
+
+ “_Lind._ There, he laughs.
+
+ “_Dal._ No; I am really sorry for you.”
+
+        _German Play (False Delicacy)_.
+
+   *  *  *  “What is here?
+
+            Gold.”--SHAKSPEARE.
+
+IT happened that that evening Maltravers had, for the first time,
+accepted one of many invitations with which Lord Saxingham had honoured
+him. His lordship and Maltravers were of different political parties,
+nor were they in other respects adapted to each other. Lord Saxingham
+was a clever man in his way, but worldly even to a proverb among worldly
+people. That “man was born to walk erect and look upon the stars,” is
+an eloquent fallacy that Lord Saxingham might suffice to disprove. He
+seemed born to walk with a stoop; and if he ever looked upon any
+stars, they were those which go with a garter. Though of celebrated and
+historical ancestry, great rank, and some personal reputation, he had
+all the ambition of a _parvenu_. He had a strong regard for office, not
+so much from the sublime affection for that sublime thing,--power over
+the destinies of a glorious nation,--as because it added to that vulgar
+thing--importance in his own set. He looked on his cabinet uniform as
+a beadle looks on his gold lace. He also liked patronage, secured good
+things to distant connections, got on his family to the remotest degree
+of relationship; in short, he was of the earth, earthy. He did not
+comprehend Maltravers; and Maltravers, who every day grew prouder and
+prouder, despised him. Still, Lord Saxingham was told that Maltravers
+was a rising man, and he thought it well to be civil to rising men, of
+whatever party; besides, his vanity was flattered by having men who are
+talked of in his train. He was too busy and too great a personage to
+think Maltravers could be other than sincere, when he declared himself,
+in his notes, “very sorry,” or “much concerned,” to forego the honour of
+dining with Lord Saxingham on the, &c., &c.; and therefore continued
+his invitations, till Maltravers, from that fatality which undoubtedly
+regulates and controls us, at last accepted the proffered distinction.
+
+He arrived late--most of the guests were assembled; and, after
+exchanging a few words with his host, Ernest fell back into the general
+group, and found himself in the immediate neighbourhood of Lady Florence
+Lascelles. This lady had never much pleased Maltravers, for he was not
+fond of masculine or coquettish heroines, and Lady Florence seemed to
+him to merit both epithets; therefore, though he had met her often since
+the first day he had been introduced to her, he had usually contented
+himself with a distant bow or a passing salutation. But now, as he
+turned round and saw her, she was, for a miracle, sitting alone; and
+in her most dazzling and noble countenance there was so evident an
+appearance of ill health, that he was struck and touched by it. In fact,
+beautiful as she was, both in face and form, there was something in the
+eye and the bloom of Lady Florence, which a skilful physician would have
+seen with prophetic pain. And, whenever occasional illness paled the
+roses of the cheek, and sobered the play of the lips, even an ordinary
+observer would have thought of the old commonplace proverb--“that the
+brightest beauty has the briefest life.” It was some sentiment of
+this kind, perhaps, that now awakened the sympathy of Maltravers. He
+addressed her with more marked courtesy than usual, and took a seat by
+her side.
+
+“You have been to the House, I suppose, Mr. Maltravers?” said Lady
+Florence.
+
+“Yes, for a short time; it is not one of our field nights--no division
+was expected; and by this time, I dare say, the House has been counted
+out.”
+
+“Do you like the life?”
+
+“It has excitement,” said Maltravers, evasively.
+
+“And the excitement is of a noble character?”
+
+“Scarcely so, I fear--it is so made up of mean and malignant
+motives,--there is in it so much jealousy of our friends, so much
+unfairness to our enemies;--such readiness to attribute to others the
+basest objects,--such willingness to avail ourselves of the poorest
+stratagems! The ends may be great, but the means are very ambiguous.”
+
+“I knew _you_ would feel this,” exclaimed Lady Florence, with a
+heightened colour.
+
+“Did you?” said Maltravers, rather interested as well as surprised. “I
+scarcely imagined it possible that you would deign to divine secrets so
+insignificant.”
+
+“You did not do me justice, then,” returned Lady Florence, with an arch
+yet half-painful smile; “for--but I was about to be impertinent.”
+
+“Nay, say on.”
+
+“For--then--I do not imagine you to be one apt to do injustice to
+yourself.”
+
+“Oh, you consider me presumptuous and arrogant; but that is common
+report, and you do right, perhaps, to believe it.”
+
+“Was there ever any one unconscious of his own merit?” asked Lady
+Florence, proudly. “They who distrust themselves have good reason for
+it.”
+
+“You seek to cure the wound you inflicted,” returned Maltravers,
+smiling.
+
+“No; what I said was an apology for myself, as well as for you. You need
+no words to vindicate you; you are a man, and can bear out all arrogance
+with the royal motto _Dieu et mon droit_. With you deeds can support
+pretension; but I am a woman--it was a mistake of Nature.”
+
+“But what triumphs that man can achieve bring so immediate, so palpable
+a reward as those won by a woman, beautiful and admired--who finds every
+room an empire, and every class her subjects?”
+
+“It is a despicable realm.”
+
+“What!--to command--to win--to bow to your worship--the greatest, and
+the highest, and the sternest; to own slaves in those whom men recognise
+as their lords! Is such a power despicable? If so, what power is to be
+envied?”
+
+Lady Florence turned quickly round to Maltravers, and fixed on him her
+large dark eyes, as if she would read into his very heart. She turned
+away with a blush and a slight frown--“There is mockery on your lip,”
+ said she.
+
+Before Maltravers could answer, dinner was announced, and a foreign
+ambassador claimed the hand of Lady Florence. Maltravers saw a young
+lady with gold oats in her very light hair, fall to his lot, and
+descended to the dining-room, thinking more of Lady Florence Lascelles
+than he had ever done before.
+
+He happened to sit nearly opposite to the young mistress of the house
+(Lord Saxingham, as the reader knows, was a widower and Lady Florence
+an only child); and Maltravers was that day in one of those felicitous
+moods in which our animal spirits search and carry up, as it were,
+to the surface, our intellectual gifts and acquisitions. He conversed
+generally and happily; but once, when he turned his eyes to appeal to
+Lady Florence for her opinion on some point in discussion, he caught her
+gaze fixed upon him with an expression that checked the current of his
+gaiety, and cast him into a curious and bewildered reverie. In that gaze
+there was earnest and cordial admiration; but it was mixed with so much
+mournfulness, that the admiration lost its eloquence, and he who noticed
+it was rather saddened than flattered.
+
+After dinner, when Maltravers sought the drawing-rooms, he found
+them filled with the customary snob of good society. In one corner he
+discovered Castruccio Cesarini, playing on a guitar, slung across his
+breast with a blue riband. The Italian sang well; many young ladies were
+grouped round him, amongst others Florence Lascelles. Maltravers,
+fond as he was of music, looked upon Castruccio’s performance as a
+disagreeable exhibition. He had a Quixotic idea of the dignity of
+talent; and though himself of a musical science, and a melody of voice
+that would have thrown the room into ecstasies, he would as soon have
+turned juggler or tumbler for polite amusement, as contend for the
+bravos of a drawing-room. It was because he was one of the proudest men
+in the world, that Maltravers was one of the least _vain_. He did
+not care a rush for applause in small things. But Cesarini would have
+summoned the whole world to see him play at push-pin, if he thought the
+played it well.
+
+“Beautiful! divine! charming!” cried the young ladies, as Cesarini
+ceased; and Maltravers observed that Florence praised more earnestly
+than the rest, and that Cesarini’s dark eye sparkled, and his pale cheek
+flushed with unwonted brilliancy. Florence turned to Maltravers, and the
+Italian, following her eyes, frowned darkly.
+
+“You know the Signor Cesarini,” said Florence, joining Maltravers. “He
+is an interesting and gifted person.”
+
+“Unquestionably. I grieve to see him wasting his talents upon a soil
+that may yield a few short-lived flowers, without one useful plant or
+productive fruit.”
+
+“He enjoys the passing hour, Mr. Maltravers; and sometimes, when I see
+the mortifications that await sterner labour, I think he is right.”
+
+“Hush!” said Maltravers; “his eyes are on us--he is listening
+breathlessly for every word you utter. I fear that you have made an
+unconscious conquest of a poet’s heart; and if so, he purchases the
+enjoyment of the passing hour at a fearful price.”
+
+“Nay,” said Lady Florence, indifferently, “he is one of those to
+whom the fancy supplies the place of the heart. And if I give him an
+inspiration, it will be an equal luxury to him whether his lyre be
+strung to hope or disappointment. The sweetness of his verses will
+compensate to him for any bitterness in actual life.”
+
+“There are two kinds of love,” answered Maltravers,--“love and
+self-love; the wounds of the last are often most incurable in those
+who appear least vulnerable to the first. Ah, Lady Florence, were I
+privileged to play the monitor, I would venture on one warning, however
+much it might offend you.”
+
+“And that is--”
+
+“To forbear coquetry.”
+
+Maltravers smiled as he spoke, but it was gravely--and at the same time
+he moved gently away. But Lady Florence laid her hand on his arm.
+
+“Mr. Maltravers,” said she, very softly, and with a kind of faltering in
+her tone, “am I wrong to say that I am anxious for your good opinion?
+Do not judge me harshly. I am soured, discontented, unhappy. I have no
+sympathy with the world. These men whom I see around me--what are
+they? the mass of them unfeeling and silken egotists--ill-judging,
+ill-educated, well-dressed: the few who are called distinguished--how
+selfish in their ambition, how passionless in their pursuits! Am I to
+be blamed if I sometimes exert a power over such as these, which rather
+proves my scorn of them than my own vanity?”
+
+“I have no right to argue with you.”
+
+“Yes, argue with me, convince me, guide me--Heaven knows that, impetuous
+and haughty as I am, I need a guide,”--and Lady Florence’s eyes swam
+with tears. Ernest’s prejudices against her were greatly shaken: he
+was even somewhat dazzled by her beauty, and touched by her unexpected
+gentleness; but still, his heart was not assailed, and he replied almost
+coldly, after a short pause:
+
+“Dear Lady Florence, look round the world--who so much to be envied
+as yourself? What sources of happiness and pride are open to you! Why,
+then, make to yourself causes of discontent?--why be scornful of those
+who cross not your path? Why not look with charity upon God’s less
+endowed children, beneath you as they may seem? What consolation have
+you in hurting the hearts or the vanities of others? Do you raise
+yourself even in your own estimation? You affect to be above your
+sex--yet what character do you despise more in women than that which you
+assume? Semiramis should not be a coquette. There now, I have offended
+you--I confess I am very rude.”
+
+“I am not offended,” said Florence, almost struggling with her tears;
+and she added inly, “Ah, I am too happy!”--There are some lips from
+which even the proudest women love to hear the censure which appears to
+disprove indifference.
+
+It was at this time that Lumley Ferrers, flushed with the success of his
+schemes and projects, entered the room; and his quick eye fell upon
+that corner, in which he detected what appeared to him a very alarming
+flirtation between his rich cousin and Ernest Maltravers. He advanced to
+the spot, and, with his customary frankness, extended a hand to each.
+
+“Ah, my dear and fair cousin, give me your congratulations, and ask
+me for my first frank, to be bound up in a collection of autographs by
+distinguished senators--it will sell high one of these days. Your most
+obedient, Mr. Maltravers;--how we shall laugh in our sleeves at the
+humbug of politics, when you and I, the best friends in the world, sit
+_vis-a-vis_ on opposite benches. But why, Lady Florence, have you never
+introduced me to your pet Italian? _Allons_! I am his match in Alfieri,
+whom, of course, he swears by, and whose verses, by the way, seem cut
+out of box-wood--the hardest material for turning off that sort of
+machinery that invention ever hit on.”
+
+Thus saying, Ferrers contrived, as he thought, very cleverly, to divide
+a pair that he much feared were justly formed to meet by nature--and, to
+his great joy, Maltravers shortly afterwards withdrew.
+
+Ferrers, with the happy ease that belonged to his complacent, though
+plotting character, soon made Cesarini at home with him; and two or
+three slighting expressions which the former dropped with respect to
+Maltravers, coupled with some outrageous compliments to the Italian,
+completely won the heart of the poet. The brilliant Florence was more
+silent and subdued than usual; and her voice was softer, though graver,
+when she replied to Castruccio’s eloquent appeals. Castruccio was one of
+those men who _talk fine_. By degrees, Lumley lapsed into silence, and
+listened to what took place between Lady Florence and the Italian,
+while appearing to be deep in “The Views of the Rhine,” which lay on the
+table.
+
+“Ah,” said the latter, in his soft native tongue, “could you know how
+I watch every shade of that countenance which makes my heaven! Is it
+clouded? night is with me!--is it radiant? I am as the Persian gazing on
+the sun!”
+
+“Why do you speak thus to me? were you not a poet, I might be angry.”
+
+“You were not angry when the English poet, that cold Maltravers, spoke
+to you perhaps as boldly.”
+
+Lady Florence drew up her haughty head. “Signor,” said she, checking,
+however, her first impulse, and with mildness, “Mr. Maltravers neither
+flatters nor--”
+
+“Presumes, you were about to say,” said Cesarini, grinding his teeth.
+“But it is well--once you were less chilling to the utterance of my deep
+devotion.”
+
+“Never, Signor Cesarini, never--but when I thought it was but the common
+gallantry of your nation: let me think so still.”
+
+“No, proud woman,” said Cesarini, fiercely, “no--hear the truth.”
+
+Lady Florence rose indignantly.
+
+“Hear me,” he continued. “I--I, the poor foreigner, the despised
+minstrel, dare to lift up my eyes to you! I love you!”
+
+Never had Florence Lascelles been so humiliated and confounded. However
+she might have amused herself with the vanity of Cesarini, she had not
+given him, as she thought, the warrant to address her--the great Lady
+Florence, the prize of dukes and princes--in this hardy manner; she
+almost fancied him insane. But the next moment she recalled the warning
+of Maltravers, and felt as if her punishment had commenced.
+
+“You will think and speak more calmly, sir, when we meet again,” and so
+saying, she swept away.
+
+Cesarini remained rooted to the spot, with his dark countenance
+expressing such passions as are rarely seen in the aspects of civilised
+men.
+
+“Where do you lodge, Signor Cesarini?” asked the bland, familiar voice
+of Ferrers. “Let us walk part of the way together--that is, when you are
+tired of these hot rooms.”
+
+Cesarini groaned. “You are ill,” continued Ferrers; “the air will
+revive you--come.” He glided from the room, and the Italian mechanically
+followed him. They walked together for some moments in silence, side
+by side, in a clear, lovely, moonlight night. At length Ferrers said,
+“Pardon me, my dear signor, but you may already have observed that I am
+a very frank, odd sort of fellow. I see you are caught by the charms of
+my cruel cousin. Can I serve you in any way?”
+
+A man at all acquainted with the world in which we live would have been
+suspicious of such cordiality in the cousin of an heiress, towards a
+very unsuitable aspirant. But Cesarini, like many indifferent poets (but
+like few good ones), had no common sense. He thought it quite natural
+that a man who admired his poetry so much as Lumley had declared he did,
+should take a lively interest in his welfare; and he therefore replied
+warmly, “Oh, sir, this is indeed a crushing blow: I dreamed she loved
+me. She was ever flattering and gentle when she spoke to me, and in
+verse already I had told her of my love, and met with no rebuke.”
+
+“Did your verses really and plainly declare love, and in your own
+person?”
+
+“Why, the sentiment was veiled, perhaps--put into the mouth of a
+fictitious character, or conveyed in an allegory.”
+
+“Oh,” ejaculated Ferrers, thinking it very likely that the gorgeous
+Florence, hymned by a thousand bards, had done little more than cast a
+glance over the lines that had cost poor Cesarini such anxious toil,
+and inspired him with such daring hope. “Oh!--and to-night she was more
+severe--she is a terrible coquette, _la belle Florence_! But perhaps you
+have a rival.”
+
+“I feel it--I saw it--I know it.”
+
+“Whom do you suspect?”
+
+“That accursed Maltravers! He crosses me in every path--my spirit quails
+beneath his whenever we encounter. I read my doom.”
+
+“If it be Maltravers,” said Ferrers, gravely, “the danger cannot be
+great. Florence has seen but little of him, and he does not admire
+her much; but she is a great match, and he is ambitious. We must guard
+against this betimes, Cesarini--for know that I dislike Maltravers as
+much as you do, and will cheerfully aid you in any plan to blight his
+hopes in that quarter.”
+
+“Generous, noble friend!--yet he is richer, better-born than I.”
+
+“That may be: but to one in Lady Florence’s position, all minor grades
+of rank in her aspirants seem pretty well levelled. Come, I don’t tell
+you that I would not sooner she married a countryman and an equal--but
+I have taken a liking to you, and I detest Maltravers. She is very
+romantic--fond of poetry to a passion--writes it herself, I fancy. Oh,
+you’ll just suit her; but, alas! how will you see her?”
+
+“See her! What mean you?”
+
+“Why, have you not declared love to-night? I thought I overheard you.
+Can you for a moment fancy that, after such an avowal, Lady Florence
+will again receive you--that is, if she mean to reject your suit?”
+
+“Fool that I was! But no--she must, she shall.”
+
+“Be persuaded; in this country violence will not do. Take my advice,
+write an humble apology, confess your fault, invoke her pity; and,
+declaring that you renounce for ever the character of a lover, implore
+still to be acknowledged as a friend. Be quiet now, hear me out; I am
+older than you; I know my cousin; this will pique her; your modesty will
+soothe, while your coldness will arouse, her vanity. Meanwhile you will
+watch the progress of Maltravers; I will be by your elbow; and between
+us, to use a homely phrase, we will do for him. Then you may have your
+opportunity, clear stage, and fair play.”
+
+Cesarini was at first rebellious; but, at length, even he saw the
+policy of the advice. But Lumley would not leave him till the advice was
+adopted. He made Castruccio accompany him to a club, dictated the letter
+to Florence, and undertook its charge. This was not all.
+
+“It is also necessary,” said Lumley, after a short but thoughtful
+silence, “that you should write to Maltravers.”
+
+“And for what?”
+
+“I have my reasons. Ask him, in a frank and friendly spirit, his opinion
+of Lady Florence; state your belief that she loves you, and inquire
+ingenuously what he thinks your chances of happiness in such a union.”
+
+“But why this?”
+
+“His answer may be useful,” returned Lumley, musingly. “Stay, I will
+dictate the letter.”
+
+Cesarini wondered and hesitated, but there was that about Lumley Ferrers
+which had already obtained command over the weak and passionate poet.
+He wrote, therefore, as Lumley dictated, beginning with some commonplace
+doubts as to the happiness of marriage in general, excusing himself for
+his recent coldness towards Maltravers, and asking him his confidential
+opinion both as to Lady Florence’s character and his own chances of
+success.
+
+This letter, like the former one, Lumley sealed and despatched.
+
+“You perceive,” he then said, briefly, to Cesarini, “that it is the
+object of this letter to entrap Maltravers into some plain and honest
+avowal of his dislike to Lady Florence; we may make good use of such
+expressions hereafter, if he should ever prove a rival. And now go home
+to rest: you look exhausted. Adieu, my new friend.”
+
+“I have long had a presentiment,” said Lumley to his councillor SELF, as
+he walked to Great George Street, “that that wild girl has conceived a
+romantic fancy for Maltravers. But I can easily prevent such an accident
+ripening into misfortune. Meanwhile, I have secured a tool, if I want
+one. By Jove, what an ass that poet is! But so was Cassio; yet Iago made
+use of him. If Iago had been born now, and dropped that foolish fancy
+for revenge, what a glorious fellow he would have been! Prime minister
+at least!”
+
+Pale, haggard, exhausted, Castruccio Cesarini, traversing a length of
+way, arrived at last at a miserable lodging in the suburb of Chelsea.
+His fortune was now gone; gone in supplying the poorest food to a
+craving and imbecile vanity: gone, that its owner might seem what nature
+never meant him for: the elegant Lothario, the graceful man of pleasure,
+the troubadour of modern life! gone in horses, and jewels, and fine
+clothes, and gaming, and printing unsaleable poems on gilt-edged vellum;
+gone, that he might not be a greater but a more fashionable man than
+Ernest Maltravers! Such is the common destiny of those poor adventurers
+who confine fame to boudoirs and saloons. No matter whether they be
+poets or dandies, wealthy _parvenus_ or aristocratic cadets, all equally
+prove the adage that the wrong paths to reputation are strewed with the
+wrecks of peace, fortune, happiness, and too often honour! And yet this
+poor young man had dared to hope for the hand of Florence Lascelles! He
+had the common notion of foreigners, that English girls marry for
+love, are very romantic; that, within the three seas, heiresses are
+as plentiful as blackberries; and for the rest, his vanity had been
+so pampered, that it now insinuated itself into every fibre of his
+intellectual and moral system.
+
+Cesarini looked cautiously round, as he arrived at his door; for he
+fancied that, even in that obscure place, persons might be anxious to
+catch a glimpse of the celebrated poet; and he concealed his residence
+from all; dined on a roll when he did not dine out, and left his address
+at “The Travellers.” He looked round, I say, and he did observe a tall
+figure wrapped in a cloak that had indeed followed him from a distant
+and more populous part of the town. But the figure turned round, and
+vanished instantly. Cesarini mounted to his second floor. And about the
+middle of the next day a messenger left a letter at his door, containing
+one hundred pounds in a blank envelope. Cesarini knew not the writing of
+the address; his pride was deeply wounded. Amidst all his penury, he
+had not even applied to his own sister. Could it come from her, from De
+Montaigne? He was lost in conjecture. He put the remittance aside for
+a few days; for he had something fine in him, the poor poet! but bills
+grew pressing, and necessity hath no law.
+
+Two days afterwards, Cesarini brought to Ferrers the answer he had
+received from Maltravers. Lumley had rightly foreseen that the high
+spirit of Ernest would conceive some indignation at the coquetry of
+Florence in beguiling the Italian into hopes never to be realised, and
+that he would express himself openly and warmly. He did so, however,
+with more gentleness than Lumley had anticipated.
+
+“This is not exactly the thing,” said Ferrers, after twice reading the
+letter; “still it may hereafter be a strong card in our hands--we will
+keep it.”
+
+So saying, he locked the letter up in his desk, and Cesarini soon forgot
+its existence.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+ “She was a phantom of delight,
+  When first she gleamed upon my sight:
+  A lovely apparition sent
+  To be a moment’s ornament.”--WORDSWORTH.
+
+MALTRAVERS did not see Lady Florence again for some weeks; meanwhile,
+Lumley Ferrers made his _debut_ in parliament. Rigidly adhering to
+his plan of acting on a deliberate system, and not prone to overrate
+himself, Mr. Ferrers did not, like most promising new members, try
+the hazardous ordeal of a great first speech. Though bold, fluent, and
+ready, he was not eloquent; and he knew that on great occasions,
+when great speeches are wanted, great guns like to have the fire to
+themselves. Neither did he split upon the opposite rock of “promising
+young men,” who stick to “the business of the house” like leeches, and
+quibble on details; in return for which labour they are generally voted
+bores, who can never do anything remarkable. But he spoke frequently,
+shortly, courageously, and with a strong dash of good-humoured
+personality. He was the man whom a minister could get to say something
+which other people did not like to say: and he did so with a frank
+fearlessness that carried off any seeming violation of good taste.
+He soon became a very popular speaker in the parliamentary clique;
+especially with the gentlemen who crowd the bar, and never want to
+hear the argument of the debate. Between him and Maltravers a visible
+coldness now existed; for the latter looked upon his old friend (whose
+principles of logic led him even to republicanism, and who had been
+accustomed to accuse Ernest of temporising with plain truths, if he
+demurred to their application to artificial states of society) as a
+cold-blooded and hypocritical adventurer; while Ferrers, seeing that
+Ernest could now be of no further use to him, was willing enough to
+drop a profitless intimacy. Nay, he thought it would be wise to pick a
+quarrel with him, if possible, as the best means of banishing a supposed
+rival from the house of his noble relation, Lord Saxingham. But no
+opportunity for that step presented itself; so Lumley kept a fit of
+convenient rudeness, or an impromptu sarcasm, in reserve, if ever it
+should be wanted.
+
+The season and the session were alike drawing to a close, when
+Maltravers received a pressing invitation from Cleveland to spend a week
+at his villa, which he assured Ernest would be full of agreeable
+people; and as all business productive of debate or division was
+over, Maltravers was glad to obtain fresh air, and a change of scene.
+Accordingly, he sent down his luggage and favourite books, and one
+afternoon in early August rode alone towards Temple Grove. He was much
+dissatisfied, perhaps disappointed, with his experience of public life;
+and with his high-wrought and over-refining views of the deficiencies
+of others more prominent, he was in a humour to mingle also censure of
+himself, for having yielded too much to the doubts and scruples that
+often, in the early part of their career, beset the honest and sincere,
+in the turbulent whirl of politics, and ever tend to make the robust
+hues that should belong to action
+
+   “Sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought.”
+
+His mind was working its way slowly towards those conclusions,
+which sometimes ripen the best practical men out of the most exalted
+theorists, and perhaps he saw before him the pleasing prospect
+flatteringly exhibited to another, when he complained of being too
+honest for party, viz., “of becoming a very pretty rascal in time!”
+
+For several weeks he had not heard from his unknown correspondent, and
+the time was come when he missed those letters, now continued for more
+than two years; and which, in their eloquent mixture of complaint,
+exhortation, despondent gloom and declamatory enthusiasm, had often
+soothed him in dejection, and made him more sensible of triumph. While
+revolving in his mind thoughts connected with these subjects--and,
+somehow or other, with his more ambitious reveries were always mingled
+musings of curiosity respecting his correspondent--he was struck by the
+beauty of a little girl, of about eleven years old, who was walking with
+a female attendant on the footpath that skirted the road. I said that he
+was struck by her beauty, but that is a wrong expression; it was rather
+the charm of her countenance than the perfection of her features which
+arrested the gaze of Maltravers--a charm that might not have existed for
+others, but was inexpressibly attractive to him, and was so much apart
+from the vulgar fascination of mere beauty, that it would have equally
+touched a chord at his heart, if coupled with homely features or a
+bloomless cheek. This charm was in a wonderful innocent and dove-like
+softness of expression. We all form to ourselves some _beau-ideal_ of
+the “fair spirit” we desire as our earthly “minister,” and somewhat
+capriciously gauge and proportion our admiration of living shapes
+according as the _beau-ideal_ is more or less embodied or approached.
+Beauty, of a stamp that is not familiar to the dreams of our fancy,
+may win the cold homage of our judgment, while a look, a feature, a
+something that realises and calls up a boyish vision, and assimilates
+even distantly to the picture we wear within us, has a loveliness
+peculiar to our eyes, and kindles an emotion that almost seems to
+belong to memory. It is this which the Platonists felt when they wildly
+supposed that souls attracted to each other on earth had been united in
+an earlier being and a diviner sphere; and there was in the young
+face on which Ernest gazed precisely this ineffable harmony with his
+preconceived notions of the beautiful. Many a nightly and noonday
+reverie was realised in those mild yet smiling eyes of the darkest blue;
+in that ingenuous breadth of brow, with its slightly-pencilled arches,
+and the nose, not cut in that sharp and clear symmetry which looks so
+lovely in marble, but usually gives to flesh and blood a decided
+and hard character, that better becomes the sterner than the gentler
+sex--no; not moulded in the pure Grecian, nor in the pure Roman, cast;
+but small, delicate, with the least possible inclination to turn upward,
+that was only to be detected in one position of the head, and served
+to give a prettier archness to the sweet flexile lips, which, from the
+gentleness of their repose, seemed to smile unconsciously, but rather
+from a happy constitutional serenity than from the giddiness of mirth.
+Such was the character of this fair child’s countenance, on which
+Maltravers turned and gazed involuntarily and reverently, with something
+of the admiring delight with which we look upon the Virgin of a Rafaele,
+or the sunset landscape of a Claude. The girl did not appear to feel
+any premature coquetry at the evident, though respectful admiration she
+excited. She met the eyes bent upon her, brilliant and eloquent as they
+were, with a fearless and unsuspecting gaze, and pointed out to her
+companion, with all a child’s quick and unrestrained impulse, the
+shining and raven gloss, the arched and haughty neck, of Ernest’s
+beautiful Arabian.
+
+Now there happened between Maltravers and the young object of his
+admiration a little adventure, which served, perhaps, to fix in her
+recollection this short encounter with a stranger; for certain it
+is that, years after, she did remember both the circumstances of the
+adventure and the features of Maltravers. She wore one of those large
+straw-hats which look so pretty upon children, and the warmth of the day
+made her untie the strings which confined it. A gentle breeze arose, as
+by a turn in the road the country became more open, and suddenly wafted
+the hat from its proper post, almost to the hoofs of Ernest’s horse. The
+child naturally made a spring forward to arrest the deserter, and her
+foot slipped down the bank, which was rather steeply raised above
+the road. She uttered a low cry of pain. To dismount--to regain the
+prize--and to restore it to its owner, was, with Ernest, the work of
+a moment; the poor girl had twisted her ankle and was leaning upon her
+servant for support. But when she saw the anxiety, and almost the alarm,
+upon the stranger’s face (and her exclamation of pain had literally
+thrilled his heart--so much and so unaccountably had she excited his
+interest), she made an effort at self-control, not common at her years,
+and, with a forced smile, assured him she was not much hurt--that it was
+nothing--that she was just at home.
+
+“Oh, miss!” said the servant, “I am sure you are very bad. Dear heart,
+how angry master will be! It was not my fault; was it, sir?”
+
+“Oh, no, it was not your fault, Margaret; don’t be frightened--papa
+sha’n’t blame you. But I’m much better now.” So saying, she tried to
+walk; but the effort was in vain--she turned yet more pale, and though
+she struggled to prevent a shriek, the tears rolled down her cheeks.
+
+It was very odd, but Maltravers had never felt more touched--the tears
+stood in his own eyes; he longed to carry her in his arms, but, child
+as she was, a strange kind of nervous timidity forbade him. Margaret,
+perhaps, expected it of him, for she looked hard in his face, before she
+attempted a burthen to which, being a small, slight person, she was by
+no means equal. However, after a pause, she took up her charge, who,
+ashamed of her tears, and almost overcome with pain, nestled her head in
+the woman’s bosom, and Maltravers walked by her side, while his docile
+and well-trained horse followed at a distance, every now and then
+putting its fore-legs on the bank and cropping away a mouthful of leaves
+from the hedge-row.
+
+“Oh, Margaret!” said the little sufferer, “I cannot bear it--indeed I
+cannot.”
+
+And Maltravers observed that Margaret had permitted the lame foot to
+hang down unsupported, so that the pain must indeed have been scarcely
+bearable. He could restrain himself no longer.
+
+“You are not strong enough to carry her,” said he, sharply, to the
+servant; and the next moment the child was in his arms. Oh, with what
+anxious tenderness he bore her! and he was so happy when she turned her
+face to him and smiled, and told him she now scarcely felt the pain.
+If it were possible to be in love with a child of eleven years old,
+Maltravers was almost in love. His pulses trembled as he felt her pure
+breath on his cheek, and her rich beautiful hair was waved by the breeze
+across his lips. He hushed his voice to a whisper as he poured forth all
+the soothing and comforting expressions which give a natural eloquence
+to persons fond of children--and Ernest Maltravers was the idol of
+children;--he understood and sympathised with them; he had a great
+deal of the child himself, beneath the rough and cold husk of his proud
+reserve. At length they came to a lodge, and Margaret eagerly inquiring
+“whether master and missus were at home,” seemed delighted to hear they
+were not. Ernest, however, insisted on bearing his charge across the
+lawn to the house, which, like most suburban villas, was but a stone’s
+throw from the lodge; and, receiving the most positive promise that
+surgical advice should be immediately sent for, he was forced to content
+himself with laying the sufferer on a sofa in the drawing-room; and she
+thanked him so prettily, and assured him she was so much easier, that
+he would have given the world to kiss her. The child had completed her
+conquest over him by being above the child’s ordinary littleness of
+making the worst of things, in order to obtain the consequence and
+dignity of being pitied;--she was evidently unselfish and considerate
+for others. He did kiss her, but it was the hand that he kissed, and no
+cavalier ever kissed his lady’s hand with more respect; and then, for
+the first time, the child blushed--then, for the first time, she felt
+as if the day would come when she should be a child no longer! Why
+was this?--perhaps because it is an era in life--the first sign of a
+tenderness that inspires respect, not familiarity!
+
+“If ever again I could be in love,” said Maltravers, as he spurred on
+his road, “I really think it would be with that exquisite child. My
+feeling is more like that of love at first sight than any emotion which
+beauty ever caused in me. Alice--Valerie--no; the _first_ sight of them
+did not:--but what folly is this--a child of eleven--and I verging upon
+thirty!”
+
+Still, however, folly as it might be, the image of that young girl
+haunted Maltravers for many days; till change of scene, the distractions
+of society, the grave thoughts of manhood, and, above all, a series of
+exciting circumstances about to be narrated, gradually obliterated a
+strange and most delightful impression. He had learned, however, that
+Mr. Templeton was the proprietor of the villa, which was the child’s
+home. He wrote to Ferrers to narrate the incident, and to inquire after
+the sufferer. In due time he heard from that gentleman that the child
+was recovered, and gone with Mr. and Mrs. Templeton to Brighton, for
+change of air and sea-bathing.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK VIII.
+
+ Whither come Wisdom’s queen
+ And the snare-weaving Love?
+     EURIP. _Iphig. in Aul._ I. 1310.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+ “Notitiam primosque gradus vicinia fecit.” *--OVID.
+
+* Neighbourhood caused the acquaintance and first introduction.
+
+CLEVELAND’S villa _was_ full, and of persons usually called agreeable.
+Amongst the rest was Lady Florence Lascelles. The wise old man had ever
+counselled Maltravers not to marry too young; but neither did he wish
+him to put off that momentous epoch of life till all the bloom of heart
+and emotion was passed away. He thought, with the old lawgivers, that
+thirty was the happy age for forming a connection, in the choice of
+which, with the reason of manhood, ought, perhaps, to be blended
+the passion of youth. And he saw that few men were more capable than
+Maltravers of the true enjoyments of domestic life. He had long thought,
+also, that none were more calculated to sympathise with Ernest’s views,
+and appreciate his peculiar character, than the gifted and brilliant
+Florence Lascelles. Cleveland looked with toleration on her many
+eccentricities of thought and conduct,--eccentricities which he imagined
+would rapidly melt away beneath the influence of that attachment which
+usually operates so great a change in women; and, where it is strongly
+and intensely felt, moulds even those of the most obstinate character
+into compliance or similitude with the sentiments or habits of its
+object.
+
+The stately self-control of Maltravers was, he conceived, precisely that
+quality that gives to men an unconscious command over the very thoughts
+of the woman whose affection they win: while, on the other hand, he
+hoped that the fancy and enthusiasm of Florence would tend to render
+sharper and more practical an ambition, which seemed to the sober man
+of the world too apt to refine upon the means, and to _cui bono_
+the objects of worldly distinction. Besides, Cleveland was one who
+thoroughly appreciated the advantages of wealth and station; and the
+rank and the dower of Florence were such as would force Maltravers into
+a position in social life, which could not fail to make new exactions
+upon talents which Cleveland fancied were precisely those adapted rather
+to command than to serve. In Ferrers he recognised a man to _get_ into
+power--in Maltravers one by whom power, if ever attained, would be
+wielded with dignity, and exerted for great uses. Something, therefore,
+higher than mere covetousness for the vulgar interests of Maltravers
+made Cleveland desire to secure to him the heart and hand of the great
+heiress; and he fancied that, whatever might be the obstacle, it would
+not be in the will of Lady Florence herself. He prudently resolved,
+however, to leave matters to their natural course. He hinted nothing
+to one party or the other. No place for falling in love like a large
+country house, and no time for it, amongst the indolent well-born, like
+the close of a London season, when, jaded by small cares, and sickened
+of hollow intimacies, even the coldest may well yearn for the tones of
+affection--the excitement of an honest emotion.
+
+Somehow or other it happened that Florence and Ernest, after the first
+day or two, were constantly thrown together. She rode on horseback, and
+Maltravers was by her side--they made excursions on the river, and they
+sat on the same bench in the gliding pleasure-boat. In the evenings, the
+younger guests, with the assistance of the neighbouring families, often
+got up a dance in a temporary pavilion built out of the dining-room.
+Ernest never danced. Florence did at first. But once, as she was
+conversing with Maltravers, when a gay guardsman came to claim her
+promised hand in the waltz, she seemed struck by a grave change in
+Ernest’s face.
+
+“Do you never waltz?” she asked, while the guardsman was searching for a
+corner wherein safely to deposit his hat.
+
+“No,” said he; “yet there is no impropriety in _my_ waltzing.”
+
+“And you mean that there is in mine?”
+
+“Pardon me--I did not say so.”
+
+“But you think it.”
+
+“Nay, on consideration, I am glad, perhaps, that you do waltz.”
+
+“You are mysterious.”
+
+“Well then, I mean, that you are precisely the woman I would never fall
+in love with. And I feel the danger is lessened, when I see you destroy
+any one of my illusions, or, I ought to say, attack any one of my
+prejudices.”
+
+Lady Florence coloured; but the guardsman and the music left her no
+time for reply. However, after that night she waltzed no more. She was
+unwell--she declared she was ordered not to dance, and so quadrilles
+were relinquished as well as the waltz.
+
+Maltravers could not but be touched and flattered by this regard for
+his opinion; but Florence contrived to testify it so as to forbid
+acknowledgment, since another motive had been found for it. The second
+evening after that commemorated by Ernest’s candid rudeness, they
+chanced to meet in the conservatory, which was connected with the
+ball-room; and Ernest, pausing to inquire after her health, was struck
+by the listless and dejected sadness which spoke in her tone and
+countenance as she replied to him.
+
+“Dear Lady Florence,” said he, “I fear you are worse than you will
+confess. You should shun these draughts. You owe it to your friends to
+be more careful of yourself.”
+
+“Friends!” said Lady Florence, bitterly--“I have no friends!--even my
+poor father would not absent himself from a cabinet dinner a week
+after I was dead. But that is the condition of public life--its hot
+and searing blaze puts out the lights of all lesser but not unholier
+affections.--Friends! Fate, that made Florence Lascelles the envied
+heiress, denied her brothers, sisters; and the hour of her birth lost
+her even the love of a mother! Friends! where shall I find them?”
+
+As she ceased, she turned to the open casement, and stepped out into
+the verandah, and by the trembling of her voice Ernest felt that she had
+done so to hide or to suppress her tears.
+
+“Yet,” said he, following her, “there is one class of more distant
+friends, whose interest Lady Florence Lascelles cannot fail to secure,
+however she may disdain it. Among the humblest of that class, suffer me
+to rank myself. Come, I assume the privilege of advice--the night air is
+a luxury you must not indulge.”
+
+“No, no, it refreshes me--it soothes. You misunderstand me, I have no
+illness that still skies and sleeping flowers can increase.”
+
+Maltravers, as is evident, was not in love with Florence, but he could
+not fail, brought, as he had lately been, under the direct influence
+of her rare and prodigal gifts, mental and personal, to feel for her a
+strong and even affectionate interest--the very frankness with which he
+was accustomed to speak to her, and the many links of communion there
+necessarily were between himself and a mind so naturally powerful and
+so richly cultivated, had already established their acquaintance upon an
+intimate footing.
+
+“I cannot restrain you, Lady Florence,” said he, half smiling, “but
+my conscience will not let me be an accomplice. I will turn king’s
+evidence, and hunt out Lord Saxingham to send him to you.”
+
+Lady Florence, whose face was averted from his, did not appear to hear
+him.
+
+“And you, Mr. Maltravers,” turning quickly round--“you--have you
+friends? Do you feel that there are, I do not say public, but private
+affections and duties, for which life is made less a possession than a
+trust?”
+
+“Lady Florence--no!--I have friends, it is true, and Cleveland is of the
+nearest; but the life within life--the second self, in whom we vest
+the right and mastery over our own being--I know it not. But is it,” he
+added, after a pause, “a rare privation? Perhaps it is a happy one.
+I have learned to lean on my own soul, and not look elsewhere for the
+reeds that a wind can break.”
+
+“Ah, it is a cold philosophy--you may reconcile yourself to its wisdom
+in the world, in the hum and shock of men; but in solitude, with
+Nature--ah, no! While the mind alone is occupied, you may be contented
+with the pride of stoicism; but there are moments when the _heart_
+wakens as from a sleep--wakens like a frightened child--to feel itself
+alone and in the dark.”
+
+Ernest was silent, and Florence continued, in an altered voice: “This
+is a strange conversation--and you must think me indeed a wild,
+romance-reading person, as the world is apt to call me. But if I
+live--I--pshaw!--life denies ambition to women.”
+
+“If a woman like you, Lady Florence, should ever love, it will be one
+in whose career you may perhaps find that noblest of all ambitions--the
+ambition women only feel--the ambition for another!”
+
+“Ah! but I shall never love,” said Lady Florence, and her cheek grew
+pale as the starlight shone on it; “still, perhaps,” she added quickly,
+“I may at least know the blessing of friendship. Why now,” and here,
+approaching Maltravers, she laid her hand with a winning frankness on
+his arm--“why now, should not we be to each other as if love, as
+you call it, were not a thing for earth--and friendship supplied its
+place?--there is no danger of our falling in love with each other! You
+are not vain enough to expect it in me, and I, you know, am a coquette;
+let us be friends, confidants--at least till you marry, or I give
+another the right to control my friendships and monopolise my secrets.”
+
+Maltravers was startled--the sentiment Florence addressed to him, he, in
+words not dissimilar, had once addressed to Valerie.
+
+“The world,” said he, kissing the hand that yet lay on his arm, “the
+world will--”
+
+“Oh, you men!--the world, the world!--Everything gentle, everything
+pure, everything noble, high-wrought and holy--is to be squared, and
+cribbed, and maimed to the rule and measure of the world! The world--are
+you, too, its slave? Do you not despise its hollow cant--its methodical
+hypocrisy?”
+
+“Heartily!” said Ernest Maltravers, almost with fierceness. “No man ever
+so scorned its false gods and its miserable creeds--its war upon the
+weak--its fawning upon the great--its ingratitude to benefactors--its
+sordid league with mediocrity against excellence. Yes, in proportion as
+I love mankind, I despise and detest that worse than Venetian oligarchy
+which mankind set over them and call ‘THE WORLD.’”
+
+And then it was, warmed by the excitement of released feelings, long
+and carefully shrouded, that this man, ordinarily so calm and
+self-possessed, poured burningly and passionately forth all those
+tumultuous and almost tremendous thoughts, which, however much we may
+regulate, control, or disguise them, lurk deep within the souls of all
+of us, the seeds of the eternal war between the natural man and
+the artificial; between our wilder genius and our social
+conventionalities;--thoughts that from time to time break forth into the
+harbingers of vain and fruitless revolutions, impotent struggles against
+destiny;--thoughts that good and wise men would be slow to promulge and
+propagate, for they are of a fire which burns as well as brightens,
+and which spreads from heart to heart--as a spark spreads amidst
+flax;--thoughts which are rifest where natures are most high, but belong
+to truths that virtue dare not tell aloud. And as Maltravers spoke, with
+his eyes flashing almost intolerable light--his breast heaving, his form
+dilated, never to the eyes of Florence Lascelles did he seem so great:
+the chains that bound the strong limbs of his spirit seemed snapped
+asunder, and all his soul was visible and towering, as a thing that has
+escaped slavery, and lifts its crest to heaven, and feels that it is
+free.
+
+That evening saw a new bond of alliance between these two
+persons,--young, handsome, and of opposite sexes, they agreed to be
+friends, and nothing more. Fools!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+ “Idem velle, et idem nolle, ea demum firma amicitia est.” *
+        SALLUST.
+
+*To will the same thing and not to will the same thing, that at length
+is firm friendship.
+
+ “_Carlos._ That letter.
+  _Princess Eboli._ Oh, I shall die. Return it instantly.”
+         SCHILLER: _Don Carlos_.
+
+IT seemed as if the compact Maltravers and Lady Florence had entered
+into removed whatever embarrassment and reserve had previously existed.
+They now conversed with an ease and freedom not common in persons of
+different sexes before they have passed their grand climacteric. Ernest,
+in ordinary life, like most men of warm emotions and strong imagination,
+if not taciturn, was at least guarded. It was as if a weight were taken
+from his breast, when he found one person who could understand him best
+when he was most candid. His eloquence--his poetry--his intense and
+concentrated enthusiasm found a voice. He could talk to an individual
+as he would have written to the public--a rare happiness to the men of
+books.
+
+Florence seemed to recover her health and spirits as by a miracle; yet
+she was more gentle, more subdued, than of old--there was less effort
+to shine, less indifference whether she shocked. Persons who had not
+met her before, wondered why she was dreaded in society. But at times a
+great natural irritability of temper--a quick suspicion of the motives
+of those around her--an imperious and obstinate vehemence of will, were
+visible to Maltravers, and served, perhaps, to keep him heart-whole.
+He regarded her through the eyes of the intellect, not those of the
+passions--he thought not of her as a woman--her very talents, her very
+grandeur of idea and power of purpose, while they delighted him in
+conversation, diverted his imagination from dwelling on her beauty.
+He looked on her as something apart from her sex;--a glorious creature
+spoilt by being a woman. He once told her so, laughing, and Florence
+considered it a compliment. Poor Florence, her scorn of her sex avenged
+her sex, and robbed her of her proper destiny!
+
+Cleveland silently observed their intimacy, and listened with a quiet
+smile to the gossips who pointed out _tetes-a-tetes_ by the terrace, and
+loiterings by the lawn, and predicted what would come of it all. Lord
+Saxingham was blind. But his daughter was of age, in possession of her
+princely fortune, and had long made him sensible of her independence of
+temper. His lordship, however, thoroughly misunderstood the character of
+her pride, and felt fully convinced she would marry no one less than
+a duke; as for flirtations, he thought them natural and innocent
+amusements. Besides, he was very little at Temple Grove. He went to
+London every morning, after breakfasting in his own room--came back to
+dine, play at whist, and talk good-humoured nonsense to Florence in his
+dressing-room, for the three minutes that took place between his sipping
+his wine-and-water and the appearance of his valet. As for the other
+guests, it was not their business to do more than gossip with each
+other; and so Florence and Maltravers went on their way unmolested,
+though not unobserved. Maltravers, not being himself in love, never
+fancied that Lady Florence loved him, or that she would be in any danger
+of doing so. This is a mistake a man often commits--a woman never. A
+woman always knows when she is loved, though she often imagines she is
+loved when she is not. Florence was not happy, for happiness is a calm
+feeling. But she was excited with a vague, wild, intoxicating emotion.
+
+She had learned from Maltravers that she had been misinformed by
+Ferrers, and that no other claimed empire over his heart; and whether or
+not he loved her, still for the present they seemed all in all to each
+other; she lived but for the present day, she would not think of the
+morrow.
+
+Since that severe illness which had tended so much to alter Ernest’s
+mode of life, he had not come before the public as an author. Latterly,
+however, the old habit had broken out again. With the comparative
+idleness of recent years, the ideas and feelings which crowd so fast on
+the poetical temperament, once indulged, had accumulated within him to
+an excess that demanded vent. For with some, to write is not a vague
+desire, but an imperious destiny. The fire is kindled and must break
+forth; the wings are fledged, and the birds must leave their nest. The
+communication of thought to man is implanted as an instinct in those
+breasts to which Heaven has intrusted the solemn agencies of genius.
+In the work which Maltravers now composed he consulted Florence: his
+confidence delighted her--it was a compliment she could appreciate.
+Wild, fervid, impassioned, was that work--a brief and holiday
+creation--the youngest and most beloved of the children of his brain.
+And as day by day the bright design grew into shape, and thought and
+imagination found themselves “local habitations,” Florence felt as if
+she were admitted into the palace of the genii, and made acquainted with
+the mechanism of those spells and charms with which the preternatural
+powers of mind design the witchery of the world. Ah, how different in
+depth and majesty were those intercommunications of idea between Ernest
+Maltravers and a woman scarcely inferior to himself in capacity and
+acquirement, from that bridge of shadowy and dim sympathies which the
+enthusiastic boy had once built up between his own poetry of knowledge
+and Alice’s poetry of love!
+
+It was one late afternoon in September, when the sun was slowly going
+down its western way, that Lady Florence, who had been all that
+morning in her own room, paying off, as she said, the dull arrears of
+correspondence, rather on Lord Saxingham’s account than her own; for he
+punctiliously exacted from her the most scrupulous attention to cousins
+fifty times removed, provided they were rich, clever, well off, or in
+any way of consequence:--it was one afternoon that, relieved from these
+avocations, Lady Florence strolled through the grounds with Cleveland.
+The gentlemen were still in the stubble-fields, the ladies were out in
+barouches and pony phaetons, and Cleveland and Lady Florence were alone.
+
+Apropos of Florence’s epistolary employment, their conversation fell
+upon that most charming species of literature, which joins with the
+interest of a novel the truth of a history--the French memoir and
+letter-writers. It was a part of literature in which Cleveland was
+thoroughly at home.
+
+“Those agreeable and polished gossips,” said he, “how well they
+contrived to introduce nature into art! Everything artificial seemed so
+natural to them. They even feel by a kind of clockwork, which seems to
+go better than the heart itself. Those pretty sentiments, those delicate
+gallantries, of Madame de Sevigne to her daughter, how amiable they are;
+but, somehow or other, I can never fancy them the least motherly. What
+an ending for a maternal epistle is that elegant compliment--‘Songez
+que de tons les coeurs ou vous regnez, il n’y en a aucun ou votre
+empire soit si bien etabli que dans le mien.’* I can scarcely fancy Lord
+Saxingham writing so to you, Lady Florence.”
+
+* Think that of all the hearts over which you reign, there is not one in
+which your empire can be so well established as in mine.
+
+“No, indeed,” replied Lady Florence, smiling. “Neither papas nor
+mammas in England are much addicted to compliment; but I confess I
+like preserving a sort of gallantry even in our most familiar
+connections--why should we not carry the imagination into all the
+affections?”
+
+“I can scarce answer the why,” returned Cleveland; “but I think it would
+destroy the reality. I am rather of the old school. If I had a daughter,
+and asked her to get my slippers, I am afraid I should think it a little
+wearisome if I had, in receiving them, to make _des belles phrases_ in
+return.”
+
+While they were thus talking, and Lady Florence continued to press her
+side of the question, they passed through a little grove that conducted
+to an arm of the stream which ornamented the grounds, and by its quiet
+and shadowy gloom was meant to give a contrast to the livelier features
+of the domain. Here they came suddenly upon Maltravers. He was walking
+by the side of the brook, and evidently absorbed in thought.
+
+It was the trembling of Lady Florence’s hand as it lay on Cleveland’s
+arm, that induced him to stop short in an animated commentary on
+Rochefoucauld’s character of Cardinal de Retz, and look round.
+
+“Ha, most meditative Jacques!” said he; “and what new moral hast thou
+been conning in our Forest of Ardennes?”
+
+“Oh, I am glad to see you; I wished to consult you, Cleveland. But
+first, Lady Florence, to convince you and our host that my rambles
+have not been wholly fruitless, and that I could not walk from Dan to
+Beersheba and find all barren, accept my offering--a wild rose that I
+discovered in the thickest part of the wood. It is not a civilised rose.
+Now, Cleveland, a word with you.”
+
+“And now, Mr. Maltravers, I am _de trop_,” said Lady Florence.
+
+“Pardon me, I have no secrets from you in this matter--or rather these
+matters; for there are two to be discussed. In the first place, Lady
+Florence, that poor Cesarini,--you know and like him--nay, no blushes.”
+
+“Did I blush?--then it was in recollection of an old reproach of yours.”
+
+“At its justice?--well, no matter. He is one for whom I always felt a
+lively interest. His very morbidity of temperament only increases my
+anxiety for his future fate. I have received a letter from De Montaigne,
+his brother-in-law, who seems seriously uneasy about Castruccio. He
+wishes him to leave England at once, as the sole means of restoring his
+broken fortunes. De Montaigne has the opportunity of procuring him a
+diplomatic situation, which may not again occur--and--but you know the
+man--what shall we do? I am sure he will not listen to me; he looks on
+me as an interested rival for fame.”
+
+“Do you think I have any subtler eloquence?” said Cleveland. “No, I
+am an author, too. Come, I think your ladyship must be the
+arch-negotiator.”
+
+“He has genius, he has merit,” said Maltravers, pleadingly; “he wants
+nothing but time and experience to wean him from his foibles. _Will_ you
+try to save him, Lady Florence?”
+
+“Why? nay, I must not be obdurate; I will see him when I go to town. It
+is like you, Mr. Maltravers, to feel this interest in one--”
+
+“Who does not like me, you would say; but he will some day or other.
+Besides, I owe him deep gratitude. In his weaker qualities I have seen
+many which all literary men might incur, without strict watch over
+themselves; and let me add, also, that his family have great claims on
+me.”
+
+“You believe in the soundness of his heart, and in the integrity of his
+honour?” said Cleveland, inquiringly.
+
+“Indeed I do; these are, these must be, the redeeming qualities of
+poets.”
+
+Maltravers spoke warmly; and such at that time was his influence over
+Florence, that his words formed--alas, too fatally!--her estimate of
+Castruccio’s character, which had at first been high, but which his own
+presumption had latterly shaken. She had seen him three or four times in
+the interval between the receipt of his apologetic letter and her visit
+to Cleveland, and he had seemed to her rather sullen than humbled. But
+she felt for the vanity she herself had wounded.
+
+“And now,” continued Maltravers, “for my second subject of consultation.
+But that is political; will it weary Lady Florence?”
+
+“Oh, no; to politics I am never indifferent: they always inspire me with
+contempt or admiration, according to the motives of those who bring the
+science into action. Pray say on.”
+
+“Well,” said Cleveland, “one confidant at a time; you will forgive me,
+for I see my guests coming across the lawn, and I may as well make a
+diversion in your favour. Ernest can consult _me_ at any time.”
+
+Cleveland walked away; but the intimacy between Maltravers and Florence
+was of so frank a nature that there was nothing embarrassing in the
+thought of a _tete-a-tete_.
+
+“Lady Florence,” said Ernest, “there is no one in the world with whom
+I can confer so cheerfully as with you. I am almost glad of Cleveland’s
+absence, for, with all his amiable and fine qualities, ‘the world is
+too much with him,’ and we do not argue from the same data. Pardon my
+prelude--now to my position. I have received a letter from Mr. ------.
+That statesman, whom none but those acquainted with the chivalrous
+beauty of his nature can understand or appreciate, sees before him the
+most brilliant career that ever opened in this country to a public
+man not born an aristocrat. He has asked me to form one of the new
+administration that he is about to create: the place offered to me is
+above my merits, nor suited to what I have yet done, though, perhaps,
+it be suited to what I may yet do. I make that qualification, for
+you know,” added Ernest, with a proud smile, “that I am sanguine and
+self-confident.”
+
+“You accept the proposal?”
+
+“Nay,--should I not reject it? Our politics are the same only for
+the moment, our ultimate objects are widely different. To serve with
+Mr.------, I must make an unequal compromise--abandon nine opinions to
+promote one. Is not this a capitulation of that great citadel, one’s own
+conscience? No man will call me inconsistent, for, in public life, to
+agree with another on a party question is all that is required; the
+thousand questions not yet ripened, and lying dark and concealed in the
+future, are not inquired into and divined; but I own I shall deem myself
+worse than inconsistent. For this is my dilemma,--if I use this noble
+spirit merely to advance one object, and then desert him where he halts,
+I am treacherous to him; if I halt with him, but one of my objects
+effected, I am treacherous to myself. Such are my views. It is with pain
+I arrive at them, for, at first, my heart beat with a selfish ambition.”
+
+“You are right, you are right,” exclaimed Florence, with glowing cheeks;
+“how could I doubt you? I comprehend the sacrifice you make; for a proud
+thing is it to soar above the predictions of foes in that palpable road
+to honour which the world’s hard eyes can see, and the world’s cold
+heart can measure; but prouder is it to feel that you have never
+advanced one step to the goal, which remembrance would retract. No, my
+friend, wait your time, confident that it must come, when conscience and
+ambition can go hand-in-hand--when the broad objects of a luminous and
+enlarged policy lie before you like a chart, and you can calculate every
+step of the way without peril of being lost. Ah, let them still
+call loftiness of purpose and whiteness of soul the dreams of a
+theorist,--even if they be so, the Ideal in this case is better than the
+Practical. Meanwhile your position is not one to forfeit lightly. Before
+you is that throne in literature which it requires no doubtful step
+to win, if you have, as I believe, the mental power to attain it. An
+ambition that may indeed be relinquished, if a more troubled career can
+better achieve those public purposes at which both letters and policy
+should aim, but which is not to be surrendered for the rewards of a
+place-man, or the advancement of a courtier.”
+
+It was while uttering these noble and inspiring sentiments, that
+Florence Lascelles suddenly acquired in Ernest’s eyes a loveliness with
+which they had not before invested her.
+
+“Oh,” he said, as, with a sudden impulse, he lifted her hand to his
+lips, “blessed be the hour in which you gave me your friendship! These
+are the thoughts I have longed to hear from living lips, when I have
+been tempted to believe patriotism a delusion, and virtue but a name.”
+
+Lady Florence heard, and her whole form seemed changed,--she was no
+longer the majestic sibyl, but the attached, timorous, delighted woman.
+
+It so happened that in her confusion she dropped from her hand the
+flower Maltravers had given her, and involuntarily glad of a pretext to
+conceal her countenance, she stooped to take it from the ground. In so
+doing, a letter fell from her bosom--and Maltravers, as he bent forwards
+to forestall her own movement, saw that the direction was to himself,
+and in the handwriting of his unknown correspondent. He seized the
+letter, and gazed in flattered and entranced astonishment, first on the
+writing, next on the detected writer. Florence grew deadly pale, and
+covering her face with her hands, burst into tears.
+
+“O fool that I was,” cried Ernest, in the passion of the moment, “not to
+know--not to have felt that there were not two Florences in the world!
+But if the thought had crossed me, I would not have dared to harbour
+it.”
+
+“Go, go,” sobbed Florence; “leave me, in mercy leave me!”
+
+“Not till you bid me rise,” said Ernest, in emotion scarcely less deep
+than hers, as he sank on his knee at her feet.
+
+Need I go on?--When they left that spot, a soft confession had been
+made--deep vows interchanged, and Ernest Maltravers was the accepted
+suitor of Florence Lascelles.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+ “A hundred fathers would in my situation tell you that, as
+  you are of noble extraction, you should marry a nobleman.
+  But I do not say so. I will not sacrifice my child to any
+  prejudice.”
+         KOTZEBUE. _Lover’s Vows_.
+
+ “Take heed, my lord; the welfare of us all
+  Hangs on the cutting short that fraudful man.”
+         SHAKSPEARE. _Henry VI._
+
+ “Oh, how this spring of love resembleth
+  Th’ uncertain glory of an April day;
+  Which now shows all the beauty of the sun,
+  And by and by a cloud takes all away!”
+         SHAKSPEARE. _The Two Gentlemen of Verona_.
+
+WHEN Maltravers was once more in his solitary apartment, he felt as in
+a dream. He had obeyed an impulse, irresistible, perhaps, but one with
+which the _conscience of his heart_ was not satisfied. A voice whispered
+to him, “Thou hast deceived her and thyself--thou dost not love her!”
+ In vain he recalled her beauty, her grace, her genius--her singular and
+enthusiastic passion for himself--the voice still replied, “Thou dost
+not love. Bid farewell for ever to thy fond dreams of a life more
+blessed than that of mortals. From the stormy sea of the future are
+blotted out eternally for thee--Calypso and her Golden Isle. Thou canst
+no more paint on the dim canvas of thy desires the form of her with
+whom thou couldst dwell for ever. Thou hast been unfaithful to thine own
+ideal--thou hast given thyself for ever and for ever to another--thou
+hast renounced hope--thou must live as in a prison, with a being with
+whom thou hast not the harmony of love.”
+
+“No matter,” said Maltravers, almost alarmed, and starting from these
+thoughts, “I am betrothed to one who loves me--it is folly and dishonour
+to repent and to repine. I have gone through the best years of youth
+without finding the Egeria with whom the cavern would be sweeter than
+a throne. Why live to the grave a vain and visionary Nympholept? Out of
+the real world could I have made a nobler choice?”
+
+While Maltravers thus communed with himself, Lady Florence passed into
+her father’s dressing-room, and there awaited his return from London.
+She knew his worldly views--she knew also the pride of her affianced,
+and, she felt that she alone could mediate between the two.
+
+Lord Saxingham at last returned--busy, bustling, important, and
+good-humoured as usual. “Well, Flory, well?--glad to see you--quite
+blooming, I declare,--never saw you with such a colour--monstrous like
+me, certainly. We always had fine complexions and fine eyes in our
+family. But I’m rather late--first bell rung--we _ci-devant jeunes
+hommes_ are rather long dressing, and you are not dressed yet, I see.”
+
+“My dearest father, I wished to speak with you on a matter of much
+importance.”
+
+“Do you?--what, immediately?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Well--what is it?--your Slingsby property, I suppose.”
+
+“No, my dear father--pray sit down and hear me patiently.”
+
+Lord Saxingham began to be both alarmed and curious--he seated himself
+in silence, and looked anxiously in the face of his daughter.
+
+“You have always been very indulgent to me,” commenced Florence, with
+a half smile, “and I have had my own way more than most young ladies.
+Believe me, my dear father. I am most grateful not only for your
+affection but your esteem. I have been a strange wild girl, but I am
+now about to reform; and as the first step, I ask your consent to give
+myself a preceptor and a guide--”
+
+“A what!” cried Lord Saxingham.
+
+“In other words, I am about to--to--well, the truth must out--to marry.”
+
+“Has the Duke of ------ been here to-day?”
+
+“Not that I know of. But it is no duke to whom I have promised my
+hand--it is a nobler and rarer dignity that has caught my ambition. Mr.
+Maltravers has--”
+
+“Mr. Maltravers!--Mr. Devil!--the girl’s mad!--don’t talk to me,
+child, I won’t consent to any such nonsense. A country gentleman--very
+respectable, very clever, and all that, but it’s no use talking--my
+mind’s made up. With your fortune, too!”
+
+“My dear father, I will not marry without your consent, though my
+fortune is settled on me, and I am of age.”
+
+“There’s a good child--and now let me dress--we shall be late.”
+
+“No, not yet,” said Lady Florence, throwing her arm carelessly round her
+father’s neck--“I shall marry Mr. Maltravers, but it will be with your
+full approval. Just consider, if I married the Duke of ------, he would
+expect all my fortune, such as it is. Ten thousand a year is at my
+disposal; if I marry Mr. Maltravers, it will be settled on you--I always
+meant it--it is a poor return for your kindness, your indulgence--but it
+will show that your own Flory is not ungrateful.”
+
+“I won’t hear.”
+
+“Stop--listen to reason. You are not rich--you are entitled but to a
+small pension if you ever resign office, and your official salary, I
+have often heard you say, does not prevent you from being embarrassed.
+To whom should a daughter give from her superfluities but to a
+parent?--from whom should a parent receive, but from a child, who can
+never repay his love?--Ah, this is nothing; but you--you who have never
+crossed her lightest whim--do not you destroy all the hopes of happiness
+your Florence can ever form.”
+
+Florence wept, and Lord Saxingham, who was greatly moved, let fall a few
+tears also. Perhaps it is too much to say that the pecuniary part of the
+proffered arrangement entirely won him over; but still the way it was
+introduced softened his heart. He possibly thought that it was better to
+have a good and grateful daughter in a country gentleman’s wife, than a
+sullen and thankless one in a duchess. However that may be, certain it
+is, that before Lord Saxingham began his toilet, he promised to make no
+obstacle to the marriage, and all he asked in return was, that at least
+three months (but that, indeed, the lawyers would require) should elapse
+before it took place; and on this understanding Florence left him,
+radiant and joyous as Flora herself, when the sun of spring makes the
+world a garden. Never had she thought so little of her beauty, and never
+had it seemed so glorious, as that happy evening. But Maltravers was
+pale and thoughtful, and Florence in vain sought his eyes during the
+dinner, which seemed to her insufferably long. Afterwards, however,
+they met and conversed apart the rest of the evening; and the beauty of
+Florence began to produce upon Ernest’s heart its natural effect; and
+that evening--ah, how Florence treasured the remembrance of every hour,
+every minute of its annals!
+
+It would have been amusing to witness the short conversation between
+Lord Saxingham and Maltravers, when the latter sought the earl at night
+in his lordship’s room. To Lord Saxingham’s surprise, not a word did
+Maltravers utter of his own subordinate pretensions to Lady Florence’s
+hand. Coldly, drily, and almost haughtily, did he make the formal
+proposals, “as if [as Lord Saxingham afterwards said to Ferrers] the
+man were doing me the highest possible honour in taking my daughter, the
+beauty of London, with fifty thousand a year, off my hands.” But this
+was quite Maltravers!--if he had been proposing to the daughter of a
+country curate, without a sixpence, he would have been the humblest of
+the humble. The earl was embarrassed and discomposed--he was almost awed
+by the Siddons-like countenance and Coriolanus-like air of his future
+son-in-law-he even hinted nothing of the compromise as to time which
+he had made with his daughter. He thought it better to leave it to Lady
+Florence to arrange that matter. They shook hands frigidly and parted.
+Maltravers went next into Cleveland’s room, and communicated all to the
+delighted old man, whose congratulations were so fervid that Maltravers
+felt it would be a sin not to fancy himself the happiest, man in the
+world. That night he wrote his refusal of the appointment offered him.
+
+The next day, Lord Saxingham went to his office in Downing Street as
+usual, and Lady Florence and Ernest found an opportunity to ramble
+through the grounds alone.
+
+There it was that occurred those confessions, sweet alike to utter and
+to hear. Then did Florence speak of her early years--of her self-formed
+and solitary mind--of her youthful dreams and reveries. Nothing around
+her to excite interest or admiration, or the more romantic, the higher,
+or the softer qualities of her nature, she turned to contemplation and
+to books. It is the combination of the faculties with the affections,
+exiled from action, and finding no worldly vent, which produces Poetry,
+the child of passion and of thought. Hence, before the real cares of
+existence claim them, the young, who are abler yet lonelier than their
+fellows, are nearly always poets; and Florence was a poetess. In minds
+like this, the first book that seems to embody and represent their own
+most cherished and beloved trains of sentiment and ideas, ever creates
+a reverential and deep enthusiasm. The lonely, and proud, and melancholy
+soul of Maltravers, which made itself visible in all his creations,
+became to Florence like a revealer of the secrets of her own nature.
+She conceived an intense and mysterious interest in the man whose mind
+exercised so pervading a power over her own. She made herself acquainted
+with his pursuits, his career--she fancied she found a symmetry and
+harmony between the actual being and the breathing genius--she imagined
+she understood what seemed dark and obscure to others. He whom she
+had never seen grew to her a never-absent friend. His ambition, his
+reputation, were to her like a possession of her own. So at length, in
+the folly of her young romance, she wrote to him, and dreaming of no
+discovery, anticipating no result, the habit once indulged became to
+her that luxury which writing for the eye of the world is to an author
+oppressed with the burthen of his own thoughts. At length she saw him,
+and he did not destroy her illusion. She might have recovered from the
+spell if she had found him ready at once to worship at her shrine. The
+mixture of reserve and frankness--frankness of language, reserve of
+manner--which belonged to Maltravers, piqued her. Her vanity became the
+auxiliary to her imagination. At length they met at Cleveland’s house;
+their intercourse became more unrestrained--their friendship was
+established, and she discovered that she had wilfully implicated her
+happiness in indulging her dreams; yet even then she believed that
+Maltravers loved her, despite his silence upon the subject of love. His
+manner, his words bespoke his interest in her, and his voice was ever
+soft when he spoke to women; for he had much of the old chivalric
+respect and tenderness for the sex. What was general it was natural
+that she should apply individually--she who had walked the world but
+to fascinate and to conquer. It was probable that her great wealth and
+social position imposed a check on the delicate pride of Maltravers--she
+hoped so--she believed it--yet she felt her danger, and her own pride at
+last took alarm. In such a moment she had resumed the character of the
+unknown correspondent--she had written to Maltravers--addressed her
+letter to his own house, and meant the next day to have gone to London,
+and posted it there. In this letter she had spoken of his visit to
+Cleveland, of his position with herself. She exhorted him, if he loved
+her, to confess, and if not, to fly. She had written artfully and
+eloquently--she was desirous of expediting her own fate; and then, with
+that letter in her bosom, she had met Maltravers, and the reader has
+learned the rest. Something of all this the blushing and happy Florence
+now revealed: and when she ended with uttering the woman’s soft fear
+that she had been too bold, is it wonderful that Maltravers, clasping
+her to his bosom, felt the gratitude, and the delighted vanity, which
+seemed even to himself like love? And into love those feelings rapidly
+and deliciously will merge, if fate and accident permit!
+
+And now they were by the side of the water; and the sun was gently
+setting as on the eve before. It was about the same hour, the fairest of
+an autumn day; none were near--the slope of the hill hid the house from
+their view. Had they been in the desert they could not have been more
+alone. It was not silence that breathed around them, as they sat on that
+bench with the broad beech spreading over them its trembling canopy
+of leaves;--but those murmurs of living nature which are sweeter than
+silence itself--the songs of birds--the tinkling bell of the sheep on
+the opposite bank--the wind sighing through the trees, and the gentle
+heaving of the glittering waves that washed the odorous reed and
+water-lily at their feet. They had both been for some moments silent;
+and Florence now broke the pause, but in tones more low than usual.
+
+“Ah!” said she, turning towards him, “these hours are happier than we
+can find in that crowded world whither your destiny must call us. For
+me, ambition seems for ever at an end. I have found all; I am no longer
+haunted with the desire of gaining a vague something,--a shadowy empire,
+that we call fame or power. The sole thought that disturbs the
+calm current of my soul, is the fear to lose a particle of the rich
+possession I have gained.”
+
+“May your fears ever be as idle!”
+
+“And you really love me! I repeat to myself ever and ever that one
+phrase. I could once have borne to lose you, now it would be my death. I
+despaired of ever being loved for myself; my wealth was a fatal dower;
+I suspected avarice in every vow, and saw the base world lurk at
+the bottom of every heart that offered itself at my shrine. But you,
+Ernest,--you, I feel, never could weigh gold in the balance--and you--if
+you love--love me for myself.”
+
+“And I shall love thee more with every hour.”
+
+“I know not that: I dread that you will love me less when you know me
+more. I fear I shall seem to you exacting--I am jealous already. I was
+jealous even of Lady T------, when I saw you by her side this morning. I
+would have your every look--monopolise your every word.”
+
+This confession did not please Maltravers, as it might have done if he
+had been more deeply in love. Jealousy, in a woman of so vehement and
+imperious a nature, was indeed a passion to be dreaded.
+
+“Do not say so, dear Florence,” said he, with a very grave smile;
+“for love should have implicit confidence as its bond and nature--and
+jealousy is doubt, and doubt is the death of love.”
+
+A shade passed over Florence’s too expressive face, and she sighed
+heavily.
+
+It was at this time that Maltravers, raising his eyes, saw the form of
+Lumley Ferrers approaching towards them from the opposite end of the
+terrace: at the same instant, a dark cloud crept over the sky, the
+waters seemed overcast and the breeze fell: a chill and strange
+presentiment of evil shot across Ernest’s heart, and, like many
+imaginative persons, he was unconsciously superstitious as to
+presentiments.
+
+“We are no longer alone,” said he, rising; “your cousin has doubtless
+learned our engagement, and comes to congratulate your suitor.”
+
+“Tell me,” he continued musingly, as they walked on to meet Ferrers,
+“are you very partial to Lumley? what think you of his character?--it is
+one that perplexes me; sometimes I think it has changed since we parted
+in Italy--sometimes I think it has not changed, but ripened.”
+
+“Lumley, I have known from a child,” replied Florence, “and see much to
+admire and like in him; I admire his boldness and candour; his scorn
+of the world’s littleness and falsehood; I like his good-nature--his
+gaiety--and fancy his heart better than it may seem to the superficial
+observer.”
+
+“Yet he appears to me selfish and unprincipled.”
+
+“It is from a fine contempt for the vices and follies of men that he has
+contracted the habit of consulting his own resolute will--and,
+believing everything done in this noisy stage of action a cheat, he has
+accommodated his ambition to the fashion. Though without what is termed
+genius, he will obtain a distinction and power that few men of genius
+arrive at.”
+
+“Because _genius_ is essentially honest,” said Maltravers. “However, you
+teach me to look on him more indulgently. I suspect the real frankness
+of men whom I know to be hypocrites in public life--but, perhaps, I
+judge by too harsh a standard.”
+
+“Third persons,” said Ferrers, as he now joined them, “are seldom
+unwelcome in the country; and I flatter myself that I am the exact thing
+wanting to complete the charm of this beautiful landscape.”
+
+“You are ever modest, my cousin.”
+
+“It is my weak side, I know; but I shall improve with years and wisdom.
+What say you, Maltravers?” and Ferrers passed his arm affectionately
+through Ernest’s.
+
+“By the by, I am too familiar--I am sunk in the world. I am a thing to
+be sneered at by you old-family people. I am next heir to a bran-new
+Brummagem peerage. ‘Gad, I feel brassy already!”
+
+“What, is Mr. Templeton--”
+
+“Mr. Templeton is no more; he is defunct, extinguished--out of the
+ashes rises the phoenix Lord Vargrave. We had thought of a more sounding
+title; De Courval has a nobler sound,--but my good uncle has nothing of
+the Norman about him: so we dropped the De as ridiculous--Vargrave is
+euphonious and appropriate. My uncle has a manor of that name--Baron
+Vargrave of Vargrave.”
+
+“Ah--I congratulate you.”
+
+“Thank you. Lady Vargrave may destroy all my hopes yet. But nothing
+venture, nothing have. My uncle will be gazetted to-day. Poor man, he
+will be delighted; and as he certainly owes it much to me, he will, I
+suppose, be very grateful--or hate me ever afterwards--that is a toss
+up. A benefit conferred is a complete hazard between the thumb of pride
+and the forefinger of affection. Heads gratitude, tails hatred! There,
+that’s a simile in the fashion of the old writers: ‘Well of English
+undefiled!’ humph!”
+
+“So that beautiful child is Mrs. Templeton’s, or rather Lady Vargrave’s,
+daughter by a former marriage?” said Maltravers, abstractedly.
+
+“Yes, it is astonishing how fond he is of her. Pretty little
+creature--confoundedly artful though. By the way, Maltravers, we had
+an unexpectedly stormy night the last of the session--strong
+division--ministers hard pressed. I made quite a good speech for them. I
+suppose, however, there will be some change--the moderates will be taken
+in. Perhaps by next session I may congratulate you.”
+
+Ferrers looked hard at Maltravers while he spoke. But Ernest replied
+coldly, and evasively, and they were now joined by a party of idlers,
+lounging along the lawn in expectation of the first dinner-bell.
+Cleveland was in high consultation about the proper spot for a new
+fountain; and he summoned Maltravers to give his opinion whether it
+should spring from the centre of a flower-bed or beneath the drooping
+shade of a large willow. While this interesting discussion was going
+on, Ferrers drew aside his cousin, and pressing her hand affectionately,
+said, in a soft and tender voice:
+
+“My dear Florence--for in such a time permit me to be familiar--I
+understand from Lord Saxingham, whom I met in London, that you are
+engaged to Maltravers. Busy as I was, I could not rest without coming
+hither to offer my best and most earnest wish for your happiness. I may
+seem a careless, I am considered a selfish, person; but my heart is warm
+to those who really interest it. And never did brother offer up for the
+welfare of a beloved sister prayers more anxious and fond, than those
+that poor Lumley Ferrers, breathes for Florence Lascelles.”
+
+Florence was startled and melted--the whole tone and manner of Lumley
+were so different from those he usually assumed. She warmly returned the
+pressure of his hand, and thanked him briefly, but with emotion.
+
+“No one is great and good enough for you, Florence,” continued
+Ferrers--“no one. But I admire your disinterested and generous choice.
+Maltravers and I have not been friends lately; but I respect him, as all
+must. He has noble qualities, and he has great ambition. In addition to
+the deep and ardent love that you cannot fail to inspire, he will owe
+you eternal gratitude. In this aristocratic country, your hand secures
+to him the most brilliant fortunes, the most proud career. His talents
+will now be measured by a very different standard. His merits will not
+pass through any subordinate grades, but leap at once into the highest
+posts; and, as he is even more proud than ambitious, how he must bless
+one who raises him, without effort, into positions of eminent command!”
+
+“Oh, he does not think of such worldly advantages--he, the too pure,
+the too refined!” said Florence, with trembling eagerness. “He has no
+avarice, nothing mercenary in his nature!”
+
+“No; there you indeed do him justice,--there is not a particle of
+baseness in his mind--I did not say there was. The very greatness of
+his aspirations, his indignant and scornful pride, lift him above the
+thought of your wealth, your rank,--except as means to an end.”
+
+“You mistake still,” said Florence, faintly smiling, but turning pale.
+
+“No,” resumed Ferrers, not appearing to hear her, and as if pursuing
+his own thoughts. “I always predicted that Maltravers would make a
+distinguished connection in marriage. He would not permit himself to
+love the lowborn or the poor. His affections are in his pride as much
+as in his heart. He is a great creature--you have judged wisely--and may
+Heaven bless you!”
+
+With these words, Ferrers left her, and Florence, when she descended to
+dinner, wore a moody and clouded brow. Ferrers stayed three days at
+the house. He was peculiarly cordial to Maltravers, and spoke little to
+Florence. But that little never failed to leave upon her mind a jealous
+and anxious irritability, to which she yielded with morbid facility. In
+order perfectly to understand Florence Lascelles, it must be remembered
+that, with all her dazzling qualities, she was not what is called a
+lovable person. A certain hardness in her disposition, even as a child,
+had prevented her winding into the hearts of those around her. Deprived
+of her mother’s care--having little or no intercourse with children of
+her own age--brought up with a starched governess, or female relations,
+poor and proud--she never had contracted the softness of manner which
+the reciprocation of household affections usually produces. With a
+haughty consciousness of her powers, her birth, her position, advantages
+always dinned into her ear, she grew up solitary, unsocial, and
+imperious. Her father was rather proud than fond of her--her servants
+did not love her--she had too little consideration for others, too
+little blandness and suavity to be loved by inferiors--she was too
+learned and too stern to find pleasure in the conversation and society
+of young ladies of her own age:--she had no friends. Now, having really
+strong affection, she felt all this, but rather with resentment than
+grief--she longed to be loved, but did not seek to be so--she felt as if
+it was her fate not to be loved--she blamed Fate, not herself.
+
+When, with all the proud, pure, and generous candour of her nature,
+she avowed to Ernest her love for him, she naturally expected the most
+ardent and passionate return; nothing less could content her. But the
+habit and experience of all the past made her eternally suspicious
+that she was not loved; it was wormwood and poison to her to fancy that
+Maltravers had ever considered her advantages of fortune, except as a
+bar to his pretensions and a check on his passion. It was the same thing
+to her, whether it was the pettiest avarice or the loftiest aspirations
+that actuated her lover, if he had been actuated in his heart by any
+sentiment but love; and Ferrers, to whose eye her foibles were familiar,
+knew well how to make his praises of Ernest arouse against Ernest all
+her exacting jealousies and irritable doubts.
+
+“It is strange,” said he, one evening, as he was conversing with
+Florence, “how complete and triumphant a conquest you have effected over
+Ernest! Will you believe it?--he conceived a prejudice against you when
+he first saw you--he even said that you were made to be admired, not to
+be loved.”
+
+“Ha!--did he so?--true, true--he has almost said the same thing to me.”
+
+“But now how he must love you! Surely he has all the signs.”
+
+“And what are the signs, most learned Lumley?” said Florence, forcing a
+smile.
+
+“Why, in the first place, you will doubtless observe that he never
+takes his eyes from you--with whomsoever he converses, whatever his
+occupation, those eyes, restless and pining, wander around for one
+glance from you.”
+
+Florence sighed, and looked up--at the other end of the room, her lover
+was conversing with Cleveland, and his eyes never wandered in search of
+her.
+
+Ferrers did not seem to notice this practical contradiction of his
+theory, but went on.
+
+“Then surely his whole character is changed--that brow has lost its
+calm majesty, that deep voice its assured and tranquil tone. Has he not
+become humble, and embarrassed, and fretful, living only on your smile,
+reproachful if you look upon another--sorrowful if your lip be less
+smiling--a thing of doubt, and dread, and trembling agitation--slave to
+a shadow--no longer lord of the creation? Such is love, such is the love
+you should inspire, such is the love Maltravers is capable of--for I
+have seen him testify it to another. But,” added Lumley, quickly, and as
+if afraid he had said too much, “Lord Saxingham is looking out for me to
+make up his whist-table. I go to-morrow--when shall you be in town?”
+
+“In the course of the week,” said poor Florence mechanically; and Lumley
+walked away.
+
+In another moment, Maltravers, who had been more observant than he
+seemed, joined her where she sat.
+
+“Dear Florence,” said he, tenderly, “you look pale--I fear you are not
+so well this evening.”
+
+“No affectation of an interest you do not feel, pray,” said Florence,
+with a scornful lip but swimming eyes.
+
+“Do not feel, Florence!”
+
+“It is the first time, at least, that you have observed whether I am
+well or ill. But it is no matter.”
+
+“My dear Florence,--why this tone?--how have I offended you? Has Lumley
+said--”
+
+“Nothing but in your praise. Oh, be not afraid, you are one of those of
+whom all speak highly. But do not let me detain you here; let us join
+our host--you have left him alone.”
+
+Lady Florence waited for no reply, nor did Maltravers attempt to detain
+her. He looked pained, and when she turned round to catch a glance,
+that she hoped would be reproachful, he was gone. Lady Florence became
+nervous and uneasy, talked she knew not what, and laughed hysterically.
+She, however, deceived Cleveland into the notion that she was in the
+best possible spirits. By and by she rose, and passed through the suite
+of rooms: her heart was with Maltravers--still he was not visible. At
+length she entered the conservatory, and there she observed him, through
+the open casements, walking slowly, with folded arms, upon the moonlit
+lawn. There was a short struggle in her breast between woman’s pride and
+woman’s love; the last conquered, and she joined him.
+
+“Forgive me, Ernest,” she said, extending her hand, “I was to blame.”
+
+Ernest kissed the fair hand, and answered touchingly:
+
+“Florence, you have the power to wound me, be forbearing in its
+exercise. Heaven knows that I would not, from the vain desire of showing
+command over you, inflict upon you a single pang. Ah! do not fancy that
+in lovers’ quarrels there is any sweetness that compensates the sting.”
+
+“I told you I was too exacting, Ernest. I told you you would not love me
+so well when you knew me better.”
+
+“And were a false prophetess. Florence, every day, every hour I love you
+more--better than I once thought I could.”
+
+“Then,” cried this wayward girl, anxious to pain herself, “then once you
+did not love me?”
+
+“Florence, I will be candid--I did not. You are now rapidly obtaining an
+empire over me, greater than my reason should allow. But, beware: if my
+love be really a possession you desire,--beware how you arm my reason
+against you. Florence, I am a proud man. My very consciousness of the
+more splendid alliances you could form renders me less humble a lover
+than you might find in others. I were not worthy of you if I were not
+tenacious of my self-respect.”
+
+“Ah!” said Florence, to whose heart these words went home, “forgive me
+but this once. I shall not forgive myself so soon.”
+
+And Ernest drew her to his heart, and felt that, with all her faults, a
+woman whom he feared he could not render as happy as her sacrifices to
+him deserved was becoming very dear to him. In his heart he knew that
+she was not formed to render him happy; but that was not his thought,
+his fear. Her love had rooted out all thought of self from that generous
+breast. His only anxiety was to requite her.
+
+They walked along the sward, silent, thoughtful; and Florence
+melancholy, yet blessed.
+
+“That serene heaven, those lovely stars,” said Maltravers at last, “do
+they not preach to us the Philosophy of Peace? Do they not tell us how
+much of calm belongs to the dignity of man, and the sublime essence of
+the soul. Petty distractions and self-wrought cares are not congenial to
+our real nature; their very disturbance is a proof that they are at war
+with our natures. Ah, sweet Florence, let us learn from yon skies, over
+which, in the faith of the poets of old, brooded the wings of primaeval
+and serenest Love, what earthly love should be,--a thing pure as light,
+and peaceful as immortality, watching over the stormy world, that it
+shall survive, and high above the clouds and vapours that roll below.
+Let little minds introduce into the holiest of affections all the
+bitterness and tumult of common life! Let us love as beings who will one
+day be inhabitants of the stars!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+ “A slippery and subtle knave; a finder out of occasions, that
+  has an eye can stamp and counterfeit advantages.”--_Othello_.
+
+ “Knavery’s plain face is never seen till used.”--_Ibid._
+
+“You see, my dear Lumley,” said Lord Saxingham, as the next day the two
+kinsmen were on their way to London in the earl’s chariot, “you see that
+at the best this marriage of Flory’s is a cursed bore.”
+
+“Why, indeed, it has its disadvantages. Maltravers is a gentleman and
+a man of genius; but gentlemen are plentiful, and his genius only tells
+against us, since he is not even of our politics.”
+
+“Exactly--my own son-in-law voting against me!”
+
+“A practicable, reasonable man would change; not so Maltravers--and all
+the estates, and all the parliamentary influence, and all the wealth
+that ought to go with the family and with the party, go out of the
+family and against the party. You are quite right, my dear lord--it is a
+cursed bore.”
+
+“And she might have had the Duke of ------, a man with a rental
+of L100,000 a year. It is too ridiculous. This Maltravers, d----d
+disagreeable fellow, too, eh?”
+
+“Stiff and stately--much changed for the worse of late years--grown
+conceited and set up.”
+
+“Do you know, Lumley, I would rather, of the two, have had you for my
+son-in-law?”
+
+Lumley half started. “Are you serious, my lord? I have not Ernest’s
+fortune--I cannot make such settlements: my lineage, too, at least on my
+mother’s side, is less ancient.”
+
+“Oh, as to settlements, Flory’s fortune ought to be settled on
+herself,--and as compared with that fortune, what could Mr. Maltravers
+pretend to settle? Neither she nor any children she may have could want
+his L4,000 a year, if he settled it all. As for family, connections tell
+more nowadays than Norman descent,--and for the rest, you are likely to
+be old Templeton’s heir, to have a peerage (a large sum of ready money
+is always useful)--are rising in the House--one of our own set--will
+soon be in office--and, flattery apart, a devilish good fellow into
+the bargain. Oh, I would sooner a thousand times that Flory had taken a
+fancy to you.”
+
+Lumley Ferrers bowed his head but said nothing. He fell into a reverie,
+and Lord Saxingham took up his official red box, became deep in its
+contents, and forgot all about the marriage of his daughter.
+
+Lumley pulled the check-string as the carriage entered Pall Mall, and
+desired to be set down at “The Travellers.” While Lord Saxingham was
+borne on to settle the affairs of the nation, not being able to settle
+those of his own household, Ferrers was inquiring the address of
+Castruccio Cesarini. The porter was unable to give it him. The Signor
+generally called every day for his notes, but no one at the club
+knew where he lodged. Ferrers wrote, and left with the porter a line
+requesting Cesarini to call on him as soon as possible, and he bent
+his way to his house in Great George Street. He went straight into his
+library, unlocked his escritoire, and took out that letter which, the
+reader will remember, Maltravers had written to Cesarini, and which
+Lumley had secured; carefully did he twice read over this effusion, and
+the second time his face brightened and his eyes sparkled. It is now
+time to lay this letter before the reader: it ran thus:--
+
+
+        _“Private and confidential.”_
+
+“MY DEAR CESARINI:
+
+“The assurance of your friendly feelings is most welcome to me. In much
+of what you say of marriage, I am inclined, though with reluctance, to
+agree. As to Lady Florence herself, few persons are more calculated
+to dazzle, perhaps to fascinate. But is she a person to make a home
+happy--to sympathise where she has been accustomed to command--to
+comprehend, and to yield to the waywardness and irritability common to
+our fanciful and morbid race--to content herself with the homage of a
+single heart? I do not know her enough to decide the question; but I
+know her enough to feel deep solicitude and anxiety for your happiness,
+if centred in a nature so imperious and so vain. But you will remind me
+of her fortune, her station. You will say that such are the sources from
+which, to an ambitious mind, happiness may well be drawn! Alas! I fear
+that the man who marries Lady Florence must indeed confine his dreams
+of felicity to those harsh and disappointing realities. But, Cesarini,
+these are not words which, were we more intimate, I would address to
+you. I doubt the reality of those affections which you ascribe to her
+and suppose devoted to yourself. She is evidently fond of conquest. She
+sports with the victims she makes. Her vanity dupes others, perhaps to
+be duped itself at last. I will not say more to you.
+
+   “Yours,
+     E. MALTRAVERS.”
+
+
+“Hurrah!” cried Ferrers, as he threw down the letter, and rubbed his
+hands with delight. “I little thought, when I schemed for this letter,
+that chance would make it so inestimably serviceable. There is less
+to alter than I thought for--the clumsiest botcher in the world could
+manage it. Let me look again. Hem, hem--the first phrase to alter is
+this: ‘I know her enough to feel deep solicitude and anxiety for _your_
+happiness if centred in a nature so imperious and vain’--scratch
+out ‘your,’ and put ‘my.’ All the rest good, good--till we come
+to ‘affections which you ascribe to her, and suppose devoted to
+_yourself_’--for ‘_yourself_’ write ‘_myself_’--the rest will do. Now,
+then, the date--we must change it to the present month, and the work is
+done. I wish that Italian blockhead would come. If I can but once make
+an irreparable breach between her and Maltravers, I think I cannot fail
+of securing his place; her pique, her resentment, will hurry her into
+taking the first who offers, by way of revenge. And by Jupiter, even if
+I fail (which I am sure I shall not), it will be something to keep Flory
+as lady paramount for a duke of our own party. I shall gain immensely
+by such a connection; but I lose everything and gain nothing by her
+marrying Maltravers--of opposite politics too--whom I begin to hate
+like poison. But no duke shall have her--Florence Ferrers, the only
+alliteration I ever liked--yet it would sound rough in poetry.”
+
+Lumley then deliberately drew towards him his inkstand--“No
+penknife!--Ah, true, I never mend pens--sad waste--must send out for
+one.” He rang the bell, ordered a penknife to be purchased, and the
+servant was still out when a knock at the door was heard, and in a
+minute more Cesarini entered.
+
+“Ah,” said Lumley, assuming a melancholy air, “I am glad that you are
+arrived; you will excuse my having written to you so unceremoniously.
+You received my note--sit down, pray--and how are you? you look
+delicate--can I offer you anything?”
+
+“Wine,” said Cesarini, laconically, “wine; your climate requires wine.”
+
+Here the servant entered with the penknife, and was ordered to bring
+wine and sandwiches. Lumley then conversed lightly on different matters
+till the wine appeared; he was rather surprised to observe Cesarini
+pour out and drink off glass upon glass, with an evident craving for the
+excitement. When he had satisfied himself, he turned his dark eyes to
+Ferrers, and said, “You have news to communicate--I see it in your brow.
+I am now ready to hear all.”
+
+“Well, then listen to me; you were right in your suspicions; jealousy
+is ever a true diviner. I make no doubt Othello was quite right, and
+Desdemona was no better than she should be. Maltravers has proposed to
+my cousin; and been accepted.”
+
+Cesarini’s complexion grew perfectly ghastly; his whole frame shook like
+a leaf--for a moment he seemed paralysed.
+
+“Curse him!” said he, at last, drawing a deep breath, and betwixt his
+grinded teeth--“curse him, from the depths of the heart he has broken!”
+
+“And after such a letter to you!--do you remember it?--here it is. He
+warns you against Lady Florence, and then secures her to himself--is
+this treachery?”
+
+“Treachery black as hell! I am an Italian,” cried Cesarini, springing to
+his feet, and with all the passions of his climate in his face, “and
+I will be avenged! Bankrupt in fortune, ruined in hopes, blasted in
+heart--I have still the godlike consolation of the desperate--I have
+revenge.”
+
+“Will you call him out?” asked Lumley, musingly and calmly. “Are you
+a dead shot? If so, it is worth thinking about; if not, it is a
+mockery--your shot misses, his goes in the air, seconds interpose, and
+you both walk away devilish glad to get off so well. Duels are humbug.”
+
+“Mr. Ferrers,” said Cesarini, fiercely, “this is not a matter of jest.”
+
+“I do not make it a jest; and what is more, Cesarini,” said Ferrers,
+with a concentrated energy far more commanding than the Italian’s
+fury, “what is more, I so detest Maltravers, I am so stung by his cold
+superiority, so wroth with his success, so loathe the thought of his
+alliance, that I would cut off this hand to frustrate that marriage! I
+do not jest, man; but I have method and sense in my hatred--it is our
+English way.”
+
+Cesarini stared at the speaker gloomily, clenched his hand, and strode
+rapidly to and fro the room.
+
+“You would be avenged, so would I. Now what shall be the means?” said
+Ferrers.
+
+“I will stab him to the heart--I will--”
+
+“Cease these tragic flights. Nay, frown and stamp not; but sit down, and
+be reasonable, or leave me and act for yourself.”
+
+“Sir,” said Cesarini, with an eye that might have alarmed a man less
+resolute than Ferrers, “have a care how you presume on my distress.”
+
+“You are in distress, and you refuse relief; you are bankrupt in
+fortune, and you rave like a poet, when you should be devising and
+plotting for the attainment of boundless wealth. Revenge and ambition
+may both be yours; but they are prizes never won but by a cautious foot
+as well as a bold hand.”
+
+“What would you have me do? and what but his life would content me?”
+
+“Take his life if you can--I have no objection--go and take it; only
+just observe this, that if you miss your aim, or he, being the stronger
+man, strike you down, you will be locked up in a madhouse for the next
+year or two at least; and that is not the place in which I should like
+to pass the winter--but as you will.”
+
+“You!--you!--But what are you to me? I will go. Good day, sir.”
+
+“Stay a moment,” said Ferrers, when he saw Cesarini about to leave the
+room; “stay, take this chair, and listen to me--you had better--”
+
+Cesarini hesitated, and then, as it were, mechanically obeyed.
+
+“Read that letter which Maltravers wrote to you. You have
+finished--well--now observe--if Florence sees that letter she will not
+and cannot marry the man who wrote it--you must show it to her.”
+
+“Ah, my guardian angel, I see it all! Yes, there are words in this
+letter no woman so proud could ever pardon. Give me it again, I will go
+at once.”
+
+“Pshaw! You are too quick; you have not remarked that this letter was
+written five months ago, before Maltravers knew much of Lady Florence.
+He himself has confessed to her that he did not then love her--so much
+the more would she value the conquest she has now achieved. Florence
+would smile at this letter, and say, ‘Ah, he judges me differently
+now.’”
+
+“Are you seeking to madden me? What do you mean? Did you not just now
+say that, did she see that letter, she would never marry the writer?”
+
+“Yes, yes, but the letter must be altered. We must erase the date;--we
+must date it from to-day;--to-day--Maltravers returns to-day. We must
+suppose it written, not in answer to a letter from you, demanding his
+advice and opinion as to your marriage with Lady Florence, but in answer
+to a letter of yours in which you congratulate him on his approaching
+marriage to her. By the substitution of one pronoun for another, in two
+places, the letter will read as well one way as another. Read it again,
+and see; or stop, I will be the lecturer.”
+
+Here Ferrers read over the letter, which, by the trifling substitutions
+he proposed, might indeed bear the character he wished to give it.
+
+“Does the light break in upon you now?” said Ferrers. “Are you prepared
+to go through a part that requires subtlety, delicacy, address, and,
+above all, self-control?--qualities that are the common attributes of
+your countrymen.”
+
+“I will do all, fear me not. It may be villainous, it may be base; but I
+care not, Maltravers shall not rival, master, eclipse me in all things.”
+
+“Where are you lodging?”
+
+“Where?--out of town a little way.”
+
+“Take up your home with me for a few days. I cannot trust you out of my
+sight. Send for your luggage; I have a room at your service.”
+
+Cesarini at first refused; but a man who resolves on a crime feels the
+awe of solitude, and the necessity of a companion. He went himself to
+bring his effects, and promised to return to dinner.
+
+“I must own,” said Lumley, resettling himself at his desk, “this is the
+dirtiest trick that ever I played; but the glorious end sanctifies
+the paltry means. After all, it is the mere prejudice of gentlemanlike
+education.”
+
+A very few seconds, and with the aid of the knife to erase, and the
+pen to re-write, Ferrers completed his task, with the exception of the
+change of date, which, on second thoughts, he reserved as a matter to be
+regulated by circumstances.
+
+“I think I have hit off his _m_’s and _y_’s tolerably,” said he,
+“considering I was not brought up to this sort of thing. But the
+alteration would be visible on close inspection. Cesarini must read
+the letter to her, then if she glances over it herself it will be with
+bewildered eyes and a dizzy brain. Above all, he must not leave it with
+her, and must bind her to the closest secresy. She is honourable and
+will keep her word; and so now that matter is settled. I have just time
+before dinner to canter down to my uncle’s and wish the old fellow joy.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+ “And then my lord has much that he would state
+  All good to you.”--CRABBE: _Tales of the Heart_.
+
+LORD VARGRAVE was sitting alone in his library, with his account-books
+before him. Carefully did he cast up the various sums which, invested
+in various speculations, swelled his income. The result seemed
+satisfactory--and the rich man threw down his pen with an air of
+triumph.
+
+“I will invest L120,000 in land--only L120,000. I will not be tempted to
+sink more. I will have a fine house--a house fitting for a nobleman--a
+fine old Elizabethan house--a house of historical interest. I must have
+woods and lakes--and a deer-park, above all. Deer are very gentlemanlike
+things, very. De Clifford’s place is to be sold, I know; they ask too
+much for it, but ready money is tempting. I can bargain--bargain, I am
+a good hand at a bargain. Should I be now Lord Baron Vargrave, if I had
+always given people what they asked? I will double my subscriptions
+to the Bible Society and the Philanthropic, and the building of new
+churches. The world shall not say Richard Templeton does not deserve his
+greatness. I will--Come in. Who’s there?--come in.”
+
+The door gently opened--the meek face of the new peeress appeared. “I
+disturb you--I beg your pardon--I--”
+
+“Come in, my dear, come in--I want to talk to you--I want to talk to
+your ladyship--sit down, pray.”
+
+Lady Vargrave obeyed.
+
+“You see,” said the peer, crossing his legs, and caressing his left foot
+with both hands, while he see-sawed his stately person to and fro in
+his chair--“you see that the honour conferred upon me will make a great
+change in our mode of life, Mrs. Temple--I mean Lady Vargrave. This
+villa is all very well--my country house is not amiss for a country
+gentleman--but now we must support our rank. The landed estate I already
+possess will go with the title--go to Lumley--I shall buy another at
+my own disposal, one that I can feel _thoroughly mine_--it shall be a
+splendid place, Lady Vargrave.”
+
+“This place is splendid to me,” said Lady Vargrave, timidly.
+
+“This place--nonsense--you must learn loftier ideas, Lady Vargrave; you
+are young, you can easily contract new habits, more, easily, perhaps,
+than myself. You are naturally ladylike, though I say it--you have good
+taste, you don’t talk much, you don’t show your ignorance--quite right.
+You must be presented at court, Lady Vargrave--we must give great
+dinners, Lady Vargrave. Balls are sinful, so is the opera, at least I
+fear so--yet an opera-box would be a proper appendage to your rank, Lady
+Vargrave.”
+
+“My dear Mr. Templeton--”
+
+“Lord Vargrave, if your ladyship pleases.”
+
+“I beg pardon. May you live long to enjoy your honours; but I, my dear
+lord--I am not fit to share them: it is only in our quiet life that
+I can forget what--what I was. You terrify me when you talk of
+court--of--”
+
+“Stuff, Lady Vargrave! stuff; we accustom ourselves to these things. Do
+I look like a man who has stood behind a counter? rank is a glove that
+stretches to the hand that wears it. And the child, dear child,--dear
+Evelyn, she shall be the admiration of London, the beauty, the heiress,
+the--oh, she will do me honour!”
+
+“She will, she will!” said Lady Vargrave, and the tears gushed from her
+eyes.
+
+Lord Vargrave was softened.
+
+“No mother ever deserved more from a child than you from Evelyn.”
+
+“I would hope I have done my duty,” said Lady Vargrave, drying her
+tears.
+
+“Papa, papa!” cried an impatient voice, tapping at the window, “come and
+play, papa--come and play at ball, papa!”
+
+And there, by the window, stood that beautiful child, glowing with
+health and mirth--her light hair tossed from her forehead, her sweet
+mouth dimpled with smiles.
+
+“My darling, go on the lawn,--don’t over-exert yourself--you have not
+quite recovered that horrid sprain--I will join you immediately--bless
+you!”
+
+“Don’t be long, papa--nobody plays so nicely as you do;” and, nodding
+and laughing from very glee, away scampered the young fairy. Lord
+Vargrave turned to his wife.
+
+“What think you of my nephew--of Lumley?” said he, abruptly.
+
+“He seems all that is amiable, frank, and kind.”
+
+Lord Vargrave’s brow became thoughtful. “I think so too,” he said, after
+a short pause; “and I hope you will approve of what I mean to do. You
+see Lumley was brought up to regard himself as my heir--I owe something
+to him, beyond the poor estate which goes with, but never can adequately
+support, _my_ title. Family honours, hereditary rank, must be properly
+regarded. But that dear girl--I shall leave her the bulk of my fortune.
+Could we not unite the fortune and the title? It would secure the rank
+to her, it would incorporate all my desires--all my duties.”
+
+“But,” said Lady Vargrave, with evident surprise, “if I understand you
+rightly, the disparity of years--”
+
+“And what then, what then, Lady Vargrave? Is there no disparity of years
+between _us_?--a greater disparity than between Lumley and that tall
+girl. Lumley is a mere youth, a youth still, five-and-thirty; he will
+be little more than forty when they marry; I was between fifty and sixty
+when I married you, Lady Vargrave. I don’t like boy and girl marriages:
+a man should be older than his wife. But you are so romantic, Lady
+Vargrave. Besides, Lumley is so gay and good-looking, and wears so well.
+He has been very nearly forming another attachment; but that, I trust,
+is out of his head now. They must like each other. You will not gainsay
+me, Lady Vargrave, and if anything happens to me--life is uncertain--”
+
+“Oh, do not speak so--my friend, my benefactor!”
+
+“Why, indeed,” resumed his lordship, mildly, “thank Heaven, I am very
+well--feel younger than ever I did--but still life is uncertain; and
+if you survive me, you will not throw obstacles in the way of my grand
+scheme?”
+
+“I--no,--no--of course you have the right in all things over her
+destiny; but so young--so soft-hearted, if she should love one of her
+own years--”
+
+“Love!--pooh! love does not come into girls’ heads unless it is put
+there. We will bring her up to love Lumley. I have another reason--a
+cogent one--our secret!--to him it can be confided--it should not go out
+of our family. Even in my grave I could not rest if a slur were cast on
+my respectability--my name.”
+
+Lord Vargrave spoke solemnly and warmly; then muttering to himself,
+“Yes, it is for the best,” he took up his hat and quitted the room. He
+joined his stepchild on the lawn. He romped with her--he played with
+her--that stiff, stately man!--he laughed louder than she did, and ran
+almost as fast. And when she was fatigued and breathless, he made her
+sit down beside him, in a little summer-house, and, fondly stroking down
+her disordered tresses, said, “You tire me out, child; I am growing too
+old to play with you. Lumley must supply my place. You love Lumley?”
+
+“Oh, dearly, he is so good-humoured, so kind: he has given me such a
+beautiful doll, with such eyes!”
+
+“You shall be his little wife--you would like to be his little wife?”
+
+“Wife! why, poor mamma is a wife, and she is not so happy as I am.”
+
+“Your mamma has bad health, my dear,” said Lord Vargrave, a little
+discomposed. “But it is a fine thing to be a wife and have a carriage of
+your own, and a fine house, and jewels, and plenty of money, and be your
+own mistress; and Lumley will love you dearly.”
+
+“Oh, yes, I should like all that.”
+
+“And you will have a protector, child, when I am no more.”
+
+The tone, rather than the words, of her stepfather struck a damp into
+that childish heart. Evelyn lifted her eyes, gazed at him earnestly, and
+then, throwing her arms round him, burst into tears.
+
+Lord Vargrave wiped his own eyes, and covered her with kisses.
+
+“Yes, you shall be Lumley’s wife, his honoured wife, heiress to my rank
+as to my fortunes.”
+
+“I will do all that papa wishes.”
+
+“You will be Lady Vargrave, then, and Lumley will be your husband,” said
+the stepfather, impressively. “Think over what I have said. Now let us
+join mamma. But, as I live, here is Lumley himself. However, it is not
+yet the time to sound him:--I hope that he has no chance with that Lady
+Florence.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+          “Fair encounter
+  Of two most rare affections.”--_Tempest_.
+
+MEANWHILE the betrothed were on their road to London. The balmy and
+serene beauty of the day had induced them to perform the short journey
+on horseback. It is somewhere said, that lovers are never so handsome as
+in each other’s company, and neither Florence nor Ernest ever looked so
+well as on horseback. There was something in the stateliness and grace
+of both, something even in the aquiline outline of their features and
+the haughty bend of the neck, that made a sort of likeness between these
+young persons, although there was no comparison as to their relative
+degrees of personal advantage: the beauty of Florence defied all
+comparison. And as they rode from Cleveland’s porch, where the other
+guests yet lingering were assembled to give the farewell greeting, there
+was a general conviction of the happiness destined to the affianced
+ones,--a general impression that both in mind and person they were
+eminently suited to each other. Their position was that which is ever
+interesting, even in more ordinary people, and at that moment they were
+absolutely popular with all who gazed on them; and when the good old
+Cleveland turned away with tears in his eyes and murmured “Bless them!”
+ there was not one of the party who would have hesitated to join the
+prayer.
+
+Florence felt a nameless dejection as she quitted a spot so consecrated
+by grateful recollections.
+
+“When shall we be again so happy?” said she, softly, as she turned back
+to gaze upon the landscape, which, gay with flowers and shrubs, and the
+bright English verdure, smiled behind them like a garden.
+
+“We will try and make my old hall, and its gloomy shades, remind us of
+these fairer scenes, my Florence.”
+
+“Ah! describe to me the character of your place. We shall live there
+principally, shall we not? I am sure I shall like it much better than
+Marsden Court, which is the name of that huge pile of arches and columns
+in Vanbrugh’s heaviest taste, which will soon be yours.”
+
+“I fear we shall never dispose of all your mighty retinue, grooms of the
+chamber, and Patagonian footmen, and Heaven knows who besides, in the
+holes and corners of Burleigh,” said Ernest smiling. And then he went
+on to describe the old place with something of a well-born country
+gentleman’s not displeasing pride; and Florence listened, and they
+planned, and altered, and added, and improved, and laid out a map for
+the future. From that topic they turned to another, equally interesting
+to Florence. The work in which Maltravers had been engaged was
+completed, was in the hands of the printer, and Florence amused herself
+with conjectures as to the criticisms it would provoke. She was certain
+that all that had most pleased her would be _caviare_ to the multitude.
+She never would believe that any one could understand Maltravers but
+herself. Thus time flew on till they passed that part of the road in
+which had occurred Ernest’s adventure with Mrs. Templeton’s daughter.
+Maltravers paused abruptly in the midst of his glowing periods, as
+the spot awakened its associations and reminiscences, and looked
+round anxiously and inquiringly. But the fair apparition was not again
+visible; and whatever impression the place produced, it gradually died
+away as they entered the suburbs of the great metropolis. Two other
+gentlemen and a young lady of thirty-three (I had almost forgotten
+them) were of the party, but they had the tact to linger a little behind
+during the greater part of the road, and the young lady, who was a wit
+and a flirt, found gossip and sentiment for both the cavaliers.
+
+“Will you come to us this evening?” asked Florence, timidly.
+
+“I fear I shall not be able. I have several matters to arrange before
+I leave town for Burleigh, which I must do next week. Three months,
+dearest Florence, will scarcely suffice to make Burleigh put on its best
+looks to greet its new mistress; and I have already appointed the great
+modern magicians of draperies and ormolu to consult how we may make
+Aladdin’s palace fit for the reception of the new princess. Lawyers,
+too!--in short, I expect to be fully occupied. But to-morrow, at three,
+I shall be with you, and we can ride out, if the day be fine.”
+
+“Surely,” said Florence, “yonder is Signor Cesarini--how haggard and
+altered he appears!”
+
+Maltravers, turning his eyes towards the spot to which Florence pointed,
+saw Cesarini emerging from a lane, with a porter behind him carrying
+some books and a trunk. The Italian, who was talking and gesticulating
+as to himself, did not perceive them.
+
+“Poor Castruccio! he seems leaving his lodging,” thought Maltravers. “By
+this time I fear he will have spent the last sum I conveyed to him--I
+must remember to find him out and replenish his stores.--Do not forget,”
+ said he aloud, “to see Cesarini, and urge him to accept the appointment
+we spoke of.”
+
+“I will not forget it--I will see him to-morrow before we meet. Yet it
+is a painful task, Ernest.”
+
+“I allow it. Alas! Florence, you owe him some reparation. He undoubtedly
+once conceived himself entitled to form hopes the vanity of which his
+ignorance of our English world and his foreign birth prevented him from
+suspecting.”
+
+“Believe me, I did not give him the right to form such expectations.”
+
+“But you did not sufficiently discourage them. Ah, Florence, never
+underrate the pangs of hope crushed, of love contemned.”
+
+“Dreadful!” said Florence, almost shuddering. “It is strange, but my
+conscience never so smote me before. It is since I loved that I feel,
+for the first time, how guilty a creature is--”
+
+“A coquette!” interrupted Maltravers. “Well, let us think of the past no
+more; but if we can restore a gifted man, whose youth promised much,
+to an honourable independence and a healthful mind, let us do so. Me,
+Cesarini never can forgive; he will think I have robbed him of you. But
+we men--the woman we have once loved, even after she rejects us, ever
+has some power over us, and your eloquence, which has so often roused
+me, cannot fail to impress a nature yet more excitable.”
+
+Maltravers, on quitting Florence at her own door, went home, summoned
+his favourite servant, gave him Cesarini’s address at Chelsea, bade him
+find out where he was, if he had left his lodgings; and leave at his
+present home, or (failing its discovery) at the “Travellers,” a cover,
+which he made his servant address, inclosing a bank-note of some amount.
+If the reader wonder why Maltravers thus constituted himself the unknown
+benefactor of the Italian, I must tell him that he does not understand
+Maltravers. Cesarini was not the only man of letters whose faults he
+pitied, whose wants he relieved. Though his name seldom shone in the
+pompous list of public subscriptions--though he disdained to affect the
+Maecenas and the patron, he felt the brotherhood of mankind, and a kind
+of gratitude for those who aspired to rise or to delight their species.
+An author himself, he could appreciate the vast debt which the world
+owes to authors, and pays but by calumny in life and barren laurels
+after death. He whose profession is the Beautiful succeeds only
+through the Sympathies. Charity and compassion are virtues taught with
+difficulty to ordinary men; to true genius they are but the instincts
+which direct it to the destiny it is born to fulfil-viz., the discovery
+and redemption of new tracts in our common nature. Genius--the Sublime
+Missionary--goes forth from the serene Intellect of the Author to live
+in the wants, the griefs, the infirmities of others, in order that it
+may learn their language; and as its highest achievement is Pathos, so
+its most absolute requisite is Pity!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+ “_Don John._ How canst thou cross this marriage?
+
+ “_Borachio._ Not honestly, my lord; but so covertly, that no
+  dishonesty shall appear in me, my lord.”--_Much Ado about Nothing_.
+
+FERRERS and Cesarini were both sitting over their wine, and both had
+sunk into silence, for they had only one subject in common, when a note
+was brought to Lumley from Lady Florence.--“This is lucky enough!” said
+he, as he read it. “Lady Florence wishes to see you, and incloses me a
+note for you, which she asks me to address and forward to you. There it
+is.”
+
+Cesarini took the note with trembling hands: it was very short, and
+merely expressed a desire to see him the next day at two o’clock.
+
+“What can it be?” he exclaimed; “can she want to apologise, to explain?”
+
+“No, no, no! Florence will not do that; but, from certain words she
+dropped in talking with me, I guess that she has some offer to your
+worldly advantage to propose to you. Ha! by the way, a thought strikes
+me.”
+
+Lumley eagerly rang the bell. “Is Lady Florence’s servant waiting for an
+answer?”
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“Very well--detain him.”
+
+“Now, Cesarini, assurance is made doubly sure. Come into the next
+room. There, sit down at my desk, and write, as I shall dictate, to
+Maltravers.”
+
+“I!”
+
+“Yes, now do put yourself in my hands--write, write. When you have
+finished, I will explain.”
+
+Cesarini obeyed, and the letter was as follows:
+
+
+“DEAR MALTRAVERS,
+
+“I have learned your approaching marriage with Lady Florence Lascelles.
+Permit me to congratulate you. For myself, I have overcome a vain and
+foolish passion; and can contemplate your happiness without a sigh.
+
+“I have reviewed all my old prejudices against marriage, and believe it
+to be a state which nothing but the most perfect congeniality of temper,
+pursuits, and minds, can render bearable. How rare is such congeniality!
+In your case it may exist. The affections of that beautiful being are
+doubtless ardent--and they are yours!
+
+“Write me a line by the bearer to assure me of your belief in my
+sincerity.
+
+   “Yours,
+
+     “C. CESARINI.”
+
+
+“Copy out this letter, I want its ditto--quick. Now seal and direct the
+duplicate,” continued Ferrers; “that’s right; go into the hall, give it
+yourself to Lady Florence’s servant, and beg him to take it to Seamore
+Place, wait for an answer, and bring it here; by which time you will
+have a note ready for Lady Florence. Say I will mention this to her
+ladyship, and give the man half-a-crown. There, begone.”
+
+“I do not understand a word of this,” said Cesarini, when he returned:
+“will you explain?”
+
+“Certainly; the copy of the note you have despatched to Maltravers I
+shall show to Lady Florence this evening, as a proof of your sobered
+and generous feelings; observe, it is so written, that the old letter of
+your rival may seem an exact reply to it. To-morrow a reference to this
+note of yours will bring out our scheme more easily; and if you follow
+my instructions, you will not seem to _volunteer_ showing our handiwork,
+as we at first intended; but rather to yield it to her eyes, from
+a generous impulse, from an irresistible desire to save her from an
+unworthy husband and a wretched fate. Fortune has been dealing our cards
+for us, and has turned up the ace. Three to one now on the odd trick.
+Maltravers, too, is at home. I called at his house, on returning from my
+uncle’s, and learned that he would not stir out all the evening.”
+
+In due time came the answer from Ernest: it was short and hurried; but
+full of all the manly kindness of his nature; it expressed admiration
+and delight at the tone of Cesarini’s letter; it revoked all former
+expressions derogatory to Lady Florence; it owned the harshness and
+error of his first impressions; it used every delicate argument that
+could soothe and reconcile Cesarini; and concluded by sentiments of
+friendship and desire of service, so cordial, so honest, so free from
+the affectation of patronage, that even Cesarini himself, half insane as
+he was with passion, was almost softened. Lumley saw the change in his
+countenance--snatched the letter from his hand--read it--threw it into
+the fire--and saying, “We must guard against accidents,” clapped the
+Italian affectionately on the shoulder, and added, “Now you can have no
+remorse; for a more Jesuitical piece of insulting hypocritical cant I
+never read. Where’s your note to Lady Florence? Your compliments, you
+will be with her at two. There, now the rehearsal’s over, the scenes
+arranged, and I’ll dress, and open the play for you with a prologue.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+       “Aestuat ingens
+  Imo in corde pudor, mixtoque insania luctu,
+  Et furiis agitatus amor, et conscia virtus.” *--VIRGIL.
+
+* Deep in her inmost heart is stirred the immense shame, and madness
+with commingled grief, and love agitated by rage, and conscious virtue.
+
+THE next day, punctual to his appointment, Cesarini repaired to his
+critical interview with Lady Florence. Her countenance, which, like
+that of most persons whose temper is not under their command, ever too
+faithfully expressed what was within, was unusually flushed. Lumley
+had dropped words and hints which had driven sleep from her pillow and
+repose from her mind.
+
+She rose from her seat with nervous agitation as Cesarini entered and
+made his grave salutation. After a short and embarrassed pause, she
+recovered, however, her self-possession, and with all a woman’s delicate
+and dexterous tact, urged upon the Italian the expediency of accepting
+the offer of honourable independence now extended to him.
+
+“You have abilities,” she said, in conclusion, “you have friends, you
+have youth; take advantage of those gifts of nature and fortune, and
+fulfil such a career as,” added Lady Florence, with a smile, “Dante did
+not consider incompatible with poetry.”
+
+“I cannot object to any career,” said Cesarini, with an effort, “that
+may serve to remove me from a country that has no longer any charms for
+me. I thank you for your kindness; I will obey you. May you be happy;
+and yet--no, ah! no--happy you must be! Even he, sooner or later, must
+see you with my eyes.”
+
+“I know,” replied Florence, falteringly, “that you have wisely and
+generously mastered a past illusion. Mr. Ferrers allowed me to see the
+letter you wrote to Er---to Mr. Maltravers; it was worthy of you:
+it touched me deeply; but I trust you will outlive your prejudices
+against--”
+
+“Stay,” interrupted Cesarini; “did Ferrers communicate to you the answer
+to that letter?”
+
+“No, indeed.”
+
+“I am glad of it.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“Oh, no matter. Heaven bless you; farewell.”
+
+“No; I implore you, do not go yet; what was there in that letter that it
+could pain me to see? Lumley hinted darkly; but would not speak out: be
+more frank.”
+
+“I cannot: it would be treachery to Maltravers, cruelty to you; yet
+would it be cruel?”
+
+“No, it would not; it would be kindness and mercy; show me the
+letter--you have it with you.”
+
+“You could not bear it; you would hate me for the pain it would give
+you. Let me depart.”
+
+“Man, you wrong Maltravers. I see it now. You would darkly slander him
+whom you cannot openly defame. Go; I was wrong to listen to you--go!”
+
+“Lady Florence, beware how you taunt me into undeceiving you. Here is
+the letter, it is his handwriting; will you read it? I warn you not.”
+
+“I will believe nothing but the evidence of my own eyes; give it me.”
+
+“Stay then; on two conditions. First, that you promise me sacredly that
+you will not disclose to Maltravers, without my consent, that you have
+seen this letter. Think not I fear his anger. No! but in the mortal
+encounter that must ensue, if you thus betray me, your character would
+be lowered in the world’s eyes, and even I (my excuse unknown) might
+not appear to have acted with honour in obeying your desire, and warning
+you, while there is yet time, of bartering love for avarice. Promise
+me.”
+
+“I do, I do most solemnly.”
+
+“Secondly, assure me that you will not ask to keep the letter, but will
+immediately restore it to me.”
+
+“I promise it. Now then.”
+
+“Take the letter.”
+
+Florence seized and rapidly read the fatal and garbled document: her
+brain was dizzy, her eyes clouded, her ears rang as with the sound of
+water, she was sick and giddy with emotion; but she read enough. This
+letter was written, then, in answer to Castruccio’s of last night; it
+avowed dislike of her character; it denied the sincerity of her love;
+it more than hinted the mercenary nature of his own feelings. Yes, even
+there, where she had garnered up her heart, she was not Florence,
+the lovely and beloved woman; but Florence, the wealthy and high-born
+heiress. The world which she had built upon the faith and heart of
+Maltravers crumbled away at her feet. The letter dropped from her hands;
+her whole form seemed to shrink and shrivel up; her teeth were set, and
+her cheek was as white as marble.
+
+“O God!” cried Cesarini, stung with remorse. “Speak to me, speak to
+me, Florence! I did wrong; forget that hateful letter! I have been
+false--false!”
+
+“Ah, false--say so again--no, no, I remember he told me--he, so wise,
+so deep a judge of human character, that he would be sponsor for your
+faith--, that your honour and heart were incorruptible. It is true; I
+thank you--you have saved me from a terrible fate.”
+
+“O, Lady Florence, dear--too dear--yet, would that--alas! she does not
+listen to me,” muttered Castruccio, as Florence, pressing her hands to
+her temples, walked wildly to and fro the room. At length she paused
+opposite to Cesarini, looked him full in the face, returned him the
+letter without a word, and pointed to the door.
+
+“No, no, do not bid me leave you yet,” said Cesarini, trembling with
+repentant emotion, yet half beside himself with jealous rage at her love
+for his rival.
+
+“My friend, go,” said Florence, in a tone of voice singularly subdued
+and soft. “Do not fear me; I have more pride in me than even affection;
+but there are certain struggles in a woman’s breast which she could
+never betray to any one--any one but a mother. God help me, I have none!
+Go; when next we meet, I shall be calm.”
+
+She held out her hand as she spoke, the Italian dropped on his knee,
+kissed it convulsively, and, fearful of trusting himself further,
+vanished from the room.
+
+He had not been long gone before Maltravers was seen riding through the
+street. As he threw himself from his horse, he looked up at the window,
+and kissed his hand at Lady Florence, who stood there watching his
+arrival, with feelings indeed far different from those he anticipated.
+He entered the room lightly and gaily.
+
+Florence stirred not to welcome him. He approached and took her hand;
+she withdrew it with a shudder.
+
+“Are you not well, Florence?”
+
+“I am well, for I have recovered.”
+
+“What do you mean? why do you turn from me?”
+
+Lady Florence fixed her eyes on him, eyes that literally blazed; her lip
+quivered with scorn.
+
+“Mr. Maltravers, at length I know you. I understand the feelings with
+which you have sought a union between us. O God! why, why was I thus
+cursed with riches--why made a thing of barter and merchandise, and
+avarice, and low ambition? Take my wealth, take it, Mr. Maltravers,
+since that is what you prize. Heaven knows I can cast it willingly away;
+but leave the wretch whom you long deceived, and who now, wretch though
+she be, renounces and despises you!”
+
+“Lady Florence, do I hear aright? Who has accused me to you?”
+
+“None, sir, none; I would have believed none. Let it suffice that I
+am convinced that our union can be happy to neither: question me no
+further; all intercourse between us is for ever over!”
+
+“Pause,” said Maltravers, with cold and grave solemnity; “another word,
+and the gulf will become impassable. Pause.”
+
+“Do not,” exclaimed the unhappy lady, stung by what she considered
+the assurance of a hardened hypocrisy--“do not affect this haughty
+superiority; it dupes me no longer. I was your slave while I loved you:
+the tie is broken. I am free, and I hate and scorn you! Mercenary and
+sordid as you are, your baseness of spirit revives the differences of
+our rank. Henceforth, Mr. Maltravers, I am Lady Florence Lascelles, and
+by that title alone will you know me. Begone, Sir!”
+
+As she spoke, with passion distorting every feature of her face, all
+her beauty vanished away from the eyes of the proud Maltravers, as if
+by witchcraft: the angel seemed transformed into the fury; and cold,
+bitter, and withering was the eye which he fixed upon that altered
+countenance.
+
+“Mark me, Lady Florence Lascelles,” said he, very calmly, “you have now
+said what you can never recall. Neither in man nor in woman did Ernest
+Maltravers ever forget or forgive a sentence which accused him of
+dishonour. I bid you farewell for ever; and with my last words I condemn
+you to the darkest of all dooms--the remorse that comes too late!”
+ Slowly he moved away; and as the door closed upon that towering and
+haughty form, Florence already felt that his curse was working to its
+fulfilment. She rushed to the window--she caught one last glimpse of him
+as his horse bore him rapidly away. Ah! when shall they meet again?
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+ “And now I live--O wherefore do I live?
+  And with that pang I prayed to be no more.”
+           WORDSWORTH.
+
+IT was about nine o’clock that evening, and Maltravers was alone in
+his room. His carriage was at the door--his servants were arranging
+the luggage--he was going that night to Burleigh. London--society-the
+world--were grown hateful to him. His galled and indignant spirit
+demanded solitude. At this time, Lumley Ferrers entered.
+
+“You will pardon my intrusion,” said the latter, with his usual
+frankness--“but--”
+
+“But what, sir? I am engaged.”
+
+“I shall be very brief. Maltravers, you are my old friend. I retain
+regard and affection for you, though our different habits have of late
+estranged us. I come to you from my cousin--from Florence--there has
+been some misunderstanding between you. I called on her to-day after you
+left the house. Her grief affected me. I have only just quitted her.
+She has been told by some gossip or other some story or other--women are
+credulous, foolish creatures;--undeceive her, and, I dare say, all may
+be settled.”
+
+“Ferrers, if a man had spoken to me as Lady Florence did, his blood
+or mine must have flowed. And do you think that words that might have
+plunged me into the guilt of homicide if uttered by a man, I could ever
+pardon in one whom I had dreamed of for a wife? Never!”
+
+“Pooh, pooh--women’s words are wind. Don’t throw away so splendid a
+match for such a trifle.”
+
+“Do you too, sir, mean to impute mercenary motives to me?”
+
+“Heaven forbid! You know I am no coward, but I really don’t want to
+fight you. Come, be reasonable.”
+
+“I dare say you mean well, but the breach is final--all recurrence to it
+is painful and superfluous. I must wish you good evening.”
+
+“You have positively decided?”
+
+“I have.”
+
+“Even if Lady Florence made the _amende honorable_?”
+
+“Nothing on the part of Lady Florence could alter my resolution. The
+woman whom an honourable man--an English gentleman--makes the partner of
+his life, ought never to listen to a syllable against his fair name: his
+honour is hers, and if her lips, that should breathe comfort in calumny,
+only serve to retail the lie--she may be beautiful, gifted, wealthy, and
+high-born, but he takes a curse to his arms. That curse I have escaped.”
+
+“And this I am to say to my cousin?”
+
+“As you will. And now stay, Lumley Ferrers, and hear me. I neither
+accuse nor suspect you, I desire not to pierce your heart, and in this
+case I cannot fathom your motives; but if it should so have happened
+that you have, in any way, ministered to Lady Florence Lascelles’
+injurious opinions of my faith and honour, you will have much to answer
+for, and sooner or later there will come a day of reckoning between you
+and me.”
+
+“Mr. Maltravers, there can be no quarrel between us, with my cousin’s
+fair name at stake, or else we should not now part without preparations
+for a more hostile meeting. I can bear your language. _I_, too, though
+no philosopher, can forgive. Come, man, you are heated--it is very
+natural;--let us part friends--your hand.”
+
+“If you can take my hand, Lumley, you are innocent, and I have wronged
+you.”
+
+Lumley smiled, and cordially pressed the hand of his old friend.
+
+As he descended the stairs, Maltravers followed, and just as Lumley
+turned into Curzon Street, the carriage whirled rapidly past him, and by
+the lamps he saw the pale and stern face of Maltravers.
+
+It was a slow, drizzling rain,--one of those unwholesome nights frequent
+in London towards the end of autumn. Ferrers, however, insensible to the
+weather, walked slowly and thoughtfully towards his cousin’s house. He
+was playing for a mighty stake, and hitherto the cast was in his favour,
+yet he was uneasy and perturbed. His conscience was tolerably proof to
+all compunction, as much from the levity as from the strength of his
+nature; and (Maltravers removed) he trusted in his knowledge of the
+human heart, and the smooth speciousness of his manner, to win, at last,
+in the hand of Lady Florence, the object of his ambition. It was not
+on her affection, it was on her pique, her resentment, that he relied.
+“When a woman fancies herself slighted by the man she loves, the first
+person who proposes must be a clumsy wooer indeed, if he does not carry
+her away.” So reasoned Ferrers, but yet he was ruffled and disquieted;
+the truth must be spoken,--able, bold, sanguine, and scornful as he was,
+his spirit quailed before that of Maltravers; he feared the lion of that
+nature when fairly aroused: his own character had in it something of a
+woman’s--an unprincipled, gifted, aspiring, and subtle woman’s,--and
+in Maltravers--stern, simple, and masculine--he recognised the
+superior dignity of the “lords of the creation;” he was overawed by the
+anticipation of a wrath and revenge which he felt he merited, and which
+he feared might be deadly.
+
+While gradually, however, his spirit recovered its usual elasticity,
+he came in the vicinity of Lord Saxingham’s house, and suddenly, by
+a corner of the street, his arm was seized: to his inexpressible
+astonishment he recognised in the muffled figure that accosted him the
+form of Florence Lascelles.
+
+“Good heavens!” he cried, “is it possible?--You, alone in the streets,
+at this hour, in such a night, too! How very wrong--how very imprudent!”
+
+“Do not talk to me--I am almost mad as it is: I could not rest--I could
+not brave quiet, solitude,--still less, the face of my father--I
+could not!--but quick, what says he?--What excuse has he? Tell me
+everything--I will cling to a straw.”
+
+“And is this the proud Florence Lascelles?”
+
+“No,--it is the humbled Florence Lascelles. I have done with
+pride--speak to me!”
+
+“Ah, what a treasure is such a heart! How can he throw it away?”
+
+“Does he deny?”
+
+“He denies nothing--he expresses himself rejoiced to have escaped--such
+was his expression--a marriage in which his heart never was engaged. He
+is unworthy of you--forget him.”
+
+Florence shivered, and as Ferrers drew her arm in his own, her ungloved
+hand touched his, and the touch was like that of ice.
+
+“What will the servants think?--what excuse can we make?” said Ferrers,
+when they stood beneath the porch. Florence did not reply; but as the
+door opened, she said softly,--
+
+“I am ill--ill,” and clung to Ferrers with that unnerved and heavy
+weight which betokens faintness.
+
+The light glared on her--the faces of the lacqueys betokened their
+undisguised astonishment. With a violent effort, Florence recovered
+herself, for she had not yet done with pride, swept through the hall
+with her usual stately step, slowly ascended the broad staircase, and
+gained the solitude of her own room, to fall senseless on the floor.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK IX.
+
+  I go, the bride of Acheron.--SOPH. _Antig._
+
+  These things are in the Future.--_Ib._ 1333.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+  * * * “There the action lies
+  In its true nature * * * *
+  * * *  What then? What rests?
+  Try what repentance can!”--_Hamlet_.
+
+ “I doubt he will be dead or ere I come.”--_King John_.
+
+IT was a fine afternoon in December, when Lumley Ferrers turned from
+Lord Saxingham’s door. The knockers were muffled--the windows on the
+third story were partially closed. There was sickness in that house.
+
+Lumley’s face was unusually grave; it was even sad. “So young--so
+beautiful,” he muttered. “If ever I loved woman, I do believe I loved
+her:--that love must be my excuse.... I repent of what I have done--but
+I could not foresee that a mere lover’s stratagem was to end in such
+effects--the metaphysician was very right when he said, ‘We only
+sympathise with feelings we know ourselves.’ A little disappointment in
+love could not have hurt me much--it is d----d odd it should hurt her
+so. I am altogether out of luck: old Templeton--I beg his pardon, Lord
+Vargrave--(by-the-by, he gets heartier every day--what a constitution he
+has!) seems cross with me. He did not like the idea that I should marry
+Lady Florence--and when I thought that vision might have been realised,
+hinted that I was disappointing some expectations he had formed; I can’t
+make out what he means. Then, too, the government have offered that
+place to Maltravers instead of to me. In fact, my star is not in the
+ascendant. Poor Florence, though,--I would really give a great deal
+to know her restored to health!--I have done a villainous thing, but I
+thought it only a clever one. However, regret is a fool’s passion. By
+Jupiter!--talking of fools, here comes Cesarini.”
+
+Wan, haggard, almost spectral, his hat over his brows, his dress
+neglected, his air reckless and fierce, Cesarini crossed the way, and
+thus accosted Lumley:
+
+“We have murdered her, Ferrers; and her ghost will haunt us to our dying
+day!”
+
+“Talk prose; you know I am no poet. What do you mean?”
+
+“She is worse to-day,” groaned Cesarini, in a hollow voice. “I wander
+like a lost spirit round the house; I question all who come from it.
+Tell me--oh, tell me, is there hope?”
+
+“I do, indeed, trust so,” replied Ferrers, fervently. “The illness has
+only of late assumed an alarming appearance. At first it was merely a
+severe cold, caught by imprudent exposure one rainy night. Now they fear
+it has settled on the lungs; but if we could get her abroad, all might
+be well.”
+
+“You think so, honestly?”
+
+“I do. Courage, my friend; do not reproach yourself; it has nothing to
+do with us. She was taken ill of a cold, not of a letter, man!”
+
+“No, no; I judge her heart by my own. Oh, that I could recall the past!
+Look at me; I am the wreck of what I was; day and night the recollection
+of my falsehood haunts me with remorse.”
+
+“Pshaw!--we will go to Italy together, and in your beautiful land love
+will replace love.”
+
+“I am half resolved, Ferrers.”
+
+“Ha!--to do what?”
+
+“To write--to reveal all to her.”
+
+The hardy complexion of Ferrers grew livid; his brow became dark with a
+terrible expression.
+
+“Do so, and fall the next day by my hand; my aim in slighter quarrel
+never erred.”
+
+“Do you dare to threaten me?”
+
+“Do you dare to betray me? Betray one who, if he sinned, sinned on your
+account--in your cause; who would have secured to you the loveliest
+bride, and the most princely dower in England; and whose only offence
+against you is that he cannot command life and health?”
+
+“Forgive me,” said the Italian, with great emotion,--“forgive me, and
+do not misunderstand; I would not have betrayed _you_--there is honour
+among villains. I would have confessed only my own crime; I would never
+have revealed yours--why should I?--it is unnecessary.”
+
+“Are you in earnest--are you sincere?”
+
+“By my soul!”
+
+“Then, indeed, you are worthy of my friendship. You will assume the
+whole forgery--an ugly word, but it avoids circumlocution--to be your
+own?”
+
+“I will.”
+
+Ferrers paused a moment, and then stopped suddenly short.
+
+“You will swear this!”
+
+“By all that is holy.”
+
+“Then mark me, Cesarini; if to-morrow Lady Florence be worse, I will
+throw no obstacle in the way of your confession, should you resolve to
+make it; I will even use that influence which you leave me, to palliate
+your offence, to win your pardon. And yet to resign your hopes--to
+surrender one so loved to the arms of one so hated--it is
+magnanimous--it is noble--it is above my standard! Do as you will.”
+
+Cesarini was about to reply, when a servant on horseback abruptly
+turned the corner, almost at full speed. He pulled in--his eye fell upon
+Lumley--he dismounted.
+
+“Oh, Mr. Ferrers,” said the man breathlessly, “I have been to your
+house; they told me I might find you at Lord Saxingham’s--I was just
+going there--”
+
+“Well, well, what is the matter?”
+
+“My poor master, sir--my lord, I mean--”
+
+“What of him?”
+
+“Had a fit, sir--the doctors are with him--my mistress--for my lord
+can’t speak--sent me express for you.”
+
+“Lend me your horse--there, just lengthen the stirrups.”
+
+While the groom was engaged at the saddle, Ferrers turned to Cesarini.
+“Do nothing rashly,” said he; “I would say, if I might, nothing at
+all, without consulting me; but mind, I rely, at all events, on your
+promise--your oath.”
+
+“You may,” said Cesarini, gloomily.
+
+“Farewell, then,” said Lumley, as he mounted; and in a few moments he
+was out of sight.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+ “O world, thou wast the forest to this hart,
+
+   * * * * *
+
+  Dost thou here lie?”--_Julius Caesar_.
+
+AS Lumley leapt from his horse at his uncle’s door, the disorder and
+bustle of those demesnes, in which the severe eye of the master usually
+preserved a repose and silence as complete as if the affairs of life
+were carried on by clockwork, struck upon him sensibly. Upon the trim
+lawn the old women employed in cleaning and weeding the walks were all
+assembled in a cluster, shaking their heads ominously in concert, and
+carrying on their comments in a confused whisper. In the hall, the
+housemaid (and it was the first housemaid whom Lumley had ever seen in
+that house, so invisibly were the wheels of the domestic machine carried
+on) was leaning on her broom, “swallowing with open mouth a footman’s
+news.” It was as if, with the first slackening of the rigid rein, human
+nature broke loose from the conventual stillness in which it had ever
+paced its peaceful path in that formal mansion.
+
+“How is he?”
+
+“My lord is better, sir; he has spoken, I believe.”
+
+At this moment a young face, swollen and red with weeping, looked down
+from the stairs; and presently Evelyn rushed breathlessly into the hall.
+
+“Oh, come up--come up--cousin Lumley; he cannot, cannot die in your
+presence; you always seem so full of life! He cannot die; you do not
+think he will die? Oh, take me with you, they won’t let me go to him!”
+
+“Hush, my dear little girl, hush; follow me lightly--that is right.”
+
+Lumley reached the door, tapped gently--entered; and the child also
+stole in unobserved or at least unprevented. Lumley drew aside the
+curtains; the new lord was lying on his bed, with his head propped by
+pillows, his eyes wide open, with a glassy, but not insensible stare,
+and his countenance fearfully changed.
+
+Lady Vargrave was kneeling on the other side of the bed, one hand
+clasped in her husband’s, the other bathing his temples, and her tears
+falling, without sob or sound, fast and copiously down her pale fair
+cheeks.
+
+Two doctors were conferring in the recess of the window; an apothecary
+was mixing drugs at a table; and two of the oldest female servants of
+the house were standing near the physicians, trying to overhear what was
+said.
+
+“My dear, dear uncle, how are you?” asked Lumley.
+
+“Ah, you are come, then,” said the dying man, in a feeble yet distinct
+voice; “that is well--I have much to say to you.”
+
+“But not now--not now--you are not strong enough,” said the wife,
+imploringly.
+
+The doctors moved to the bedside. Lord Vargrave waved his hand, and
+raised his head.
+
+“Gentlemen,” said he, “I feel as if death were hastening upon me; I
+have much need, while my senses remain, to confer with my nephew. Is
+the present a fitting time?--if I delay, are you sure that I shall have
+another?”
+
+The doctors looked at each other.
+
+“My lord,” said one, “it may perhaps settle and relieve your mind
+to converse with your nephew; afterwards you may more easily compose
+yourself to sleep.”
+
+“Take this cordial, then,” said the other doctor.
+
+The sick man obeyed. One of the physicians approached Lumley, and
+beckoned him aside.
+
+“Shall we send for his lordship’s lawyer?” whispered the leech.
+
+“I am his heir-at-law,” thought Lumley. “Why, _no_, my dear sir--no, I
+think not, unless he expresses a desire to see him; doubtless my poor
+uncle has already settled his worldly affairs. What is his state?”
+
+The doctor shook his head. “I will speak to you, sir, after you have
+left his lordship.”
+
+“What is the matter there?” cried the patient, sharply and querulously.
+“Clear the room--I would be alone with my nephew.”
+
+The doctors disappeared; the old women reluctantly followed; when,
+suddenly, the little Evelyn sprang forward and threw herself on the
+breast of the dying man, sobbing as if her heart would break.
+
+“My poor child!--my sweet child--my own, own darling!” gasped out Lord
+Vargrave, folding his weak arms round her; “bless you--bless you! and
+God will bless you. My wife,” he added, with a voice far more tender
+than Lumley had ever before heard him address to Lady Vargrave, “if
+these be the last words I utter to you, let them express all the
+gratitude I feel for you, for duties never more piously discharged:
+you did not love me, it is true; and in health and pride that knowledge
+often made me unjust to you. I have been severe--you have had much to
+bear--forgive me.”
+
+“Oh! do not talk thus; you have been nobler, kinder than my deserts. How
+much I owe you--how little I have done in return!”
+
+“I cannot bear this; leave me, my dear, leave me. I may live yet--I hope
+I may--I do not want to die. The cup may pass from me. Go--go--and you,
+my child.”
+
+“Ah, let _me_ stay.”
+
+Lord Vargrave kissed the little creature, as she clung to his neck, with
+passionate affection, and then, placing her in her mother’s arms, fell
+back exhausted on his pillow. Lumley, with handkerchief to his eyes,
+opened the door to Lady Vargrave, who sobbed bitterly, and carefully
+closing it, resumed his station by his uncle.
+
+When Lumley Ferrers left the room, his countenance was gloomy and
+excited rather than sad. He hurried to the room which he usually
+occupied, and remained there for some hours while his uncle slept--a
+long and sound sleep. But the mother and the stepchild (now restored to
+the sick-room) did not desert their watch.
+
+It wanted about an hour to midnight, when the senior physician sought
+the nephew.
+
+“Your uncle asks for you, Mr. Ferrers; and I think it right to say that
+his last moments approach. We have done all that can be done.”
+
+“Is he fully aware of his danger?”
+
+“He is; and has spent the last two hours in prayer--it is a Christian’s
+death-bed, sir.”
+
+“Humph!” said Ferrers, as he followed the physician. The room was
+darkened--a single lamp, carefully shaded, burned on a table, on which
+lay the Book of Life in Death: and with awe and grief on their faces,
+the mother and the child were kneeling beside the bed.
+
+“Come here, Lumley,” faltered forth the fast-dying man.
+
+“There are none here but you three--nearest and dearest to me?--That is
+well. Lumley, then, you know all--my wife, he knows all. My child, give
+your hand to your cousin--so you are now plighted. When you grow up,
+Evelyn, you will know that it is my last wish and prayer that you should
+be the wife of Lumley Ferrers. In giving you this angel, Lumley, I atone
+to you for all seeming injustice. And to you, my child, I secure the
+rank and honours to which I have painfully climbed, and which I am
+forbidden to enjoy. Be kind to her, Lumley--you have a good and frank
+heart--let it be her shelter--she has never known a harsh word. God
+bless you all, and God forgive me--pray for me. Lumley, to-morrow you
+will be Lord Vargrave, and by and by” (here a ghastly, but exultant
+smile flitted over the speaker’s countenance), “you will be my
+Lady--Lady Vargrave. Lady--so--so--Lady Var--”
+
+The words died on his trembling lips; he turned round, and, though he
+continued to breathe for more than an hour, Lord Vargrave never uttered
+another syllable.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+        “Hopes and fears
+  Start up alarmed, and o’er life’s narrow verge
+  Look down--on what?--a fathomless abyss.”--YOUNG.
+
+ “Contempt, farewell, and maiden pride, adieu!”
+         _Much Ado about Nothing_.
+
+THE wound which Maltravers had received was peculiarly severe and
+rankling. It is true that he had never been what is called violently in
+love with Florence Lascelles; but from the moment in which he had been
+charmed and surprised into the character of a declared suitor, it was
+consonant with his scrupulous and loyal nature to view only the bright
+side of Florence’s gifts and qualities, and to seek to enamour his
+grateful fancy with her beauty, her genius, and her tenderness for
+himself. He had thus forced and formed his thoughts and hopes to centre
+all in one object; and Florence and the Future had grown words which
+conveyed the same meaning to his mind. Perhaps he felt more bitterly
+her sudden and stunning accusations, couched as they were in language so
+unqualified, because they fell upon his pride rather than his affection,
+and were not softened away by the thousand excuses and remembrances
+which a passionate love would have invented and recalled. It was a deep,
+concentrated sense of injury and insult, that hardened and soured his
+whole nature--wounded vanity, wounded pride, and wounded honour.
+
+And the blow, too, came upon him at a time when he was most dissatisfied
+with all other prospects. He was disgusted with the littleness of the
+agents and springs of political life--he had formed a weary contempt
+for the barrenness of literary reputation. At thirty years of age he had
+necessarily outlived the sanguine elasticity of early youth, and he
+had already broken up many of those later toys in business and ambition
+which afford the rattle and the hobby-borse to our maturer manhood.
+Always asking for something too refined and too exalted for human life,
+every new proof of unworthiness in men and things saddened or revolted
+a mind still too fastidious for that quiet contentment with the world
+as it is, which we must all learn before we can make our philosophy
+practical and our genius as fertile of the harvest as it may be prodigal
+of the blossom. Haughty, solitary, and unsocial, the ordinary resources
+of mortified and disappointed men were not for Ernest Maltravers.
+Rigidly secluded in his country retirement, he consumed the days in
+moody wanderings; and in the evenings he turned to books with a spirit
+disdainful and fatigued. So much had he already learned, that books
+taught him little that he did not already know. And the biographies of
+authors, those ghost-like beings who seem to have had no life but in
+the shadow of their own haunting and imperishable thoughts, dimmed the
+inspiration he might have caught from their pages. Those slaves of the
+Lamp, those Silkworms of the Closet, how little had they enjoyed, how
+little had they lived! Condemned to a mysterious fate by the wholesale
+destinies of the world, they seemed born but to toil and to spin
+thoughts for the common crowd--and, their task performed in drudgery and
+in darkness, to die when no further service could be wrung from their
+exhaustion. Names had they been in life, and as names they lived for
+ever, in life as in death, airy and unsubstantial phantoms. It pleased
+Maltravers at this time to turn a curious eye towards the obscure and
+half-extinct philosophies of the ancient world. He compared the Stoics
+with the Epicureans--those Epicureans who had given their own version to
+the simple and abstemious utilitarianism of their master. He asked which
+was the wiser, to sharpen pain or to deaden pleasure--to bear all or to
+enjoy all; and, by a natural reaction which often happens to us in life,
+this man, hitherto so earnest, active-spirited, and resolved on great
+things, began to yearn for the drowsy pleasures of indolence. The
+garden grew more tempting than the porch. He seriously revolved the old
+alternative of the Grecian demi-god--might it not be wiser to abandon
+the grave pursuits to which he had been addicted, to dethrone the
+august but severe ideal in his heart, to cultivate the light loves and
+voluptuous trifles of the herd, and to plant the brief space of youth
+yet left to him with the myrtle and the rose? As water flows over
+water, so new schemes rolled upon new--sweeping away every momentary
+impression, and leaving the surface facile equally to receive and to
+forget. Such is the common state with men of imagination in those crises
+of life, when some great revolution of designs and hopes unsettles
+elements too susceptible of every changing wind. And thus the weak
+are destroyed, while the strong relapse, after terrible but unknown
+convulsions, into that solemn harmony and order from which destiny and
+God draw their uses to mankind.
+
+It was from this irresolute contest between antagonist principles that
+Maltravers was aroused by the following letter from Florence Lascelles:
+
+
+“For three days and three sleepless nights I have debated with myself
+whether or not I ought to address you. Oh, Ernest, were I what I was,
+in health, in pride, I might fear that, generous as you are, you would
+misconstrue my appeal; but that is now impossible. Our union never can
+take place, and my hopes bound themselves to one sweet and melancholy
+hope, that you will remove from my last hours the cold and dark shadow
+of your resentment. We have both been cruelly deceived and betrayed.
+Three days ago I discovered the perfidy that has been practised against
+us. And then, ah! then, with all the weak human anguish of discovering
+it too late (_your curse is fulfilled_, Ernest!), I had at least one
+moment of proud, of exquisite rapture. Ernest Maltravers, the hero of my
+dreams, stood pure and lofty as of old--a thing it was not unworthy to
+love, to mourn, to die for. A letter in your handwriting had been
+shown to me, garbled and altered, as it seems--but I detected not
+the imposture--it was yourself, yourself alone, brought in false and
+horrible witness against yourself! And could you think that any other
+evidence, the words, the oaths of others, would have convicted you in
+my eyes? There you wronged me. But I deserved it--I had bound myself to
+secrecy--the seal is taken from my lips in order to be set upon my tomb.
+Ernest, beloved Ernest--beloved till the last breath is extinct--till
+the last throb of this heart is stilled--write me one word of comfort
+and of pardon. You will believe what I have imperfectly written, for
+you ever trusted my faith, if you have blamed my faults. I am now
+comparatively happy--a word from you will, make me blest. And Fate
+has, perhaps, been more merciful to both, than in our shortsighted and
+querulous human vision, we might, perhaps, believe; for now that the
+frame is brought low--and in the solitude of my chamber I can duly and
+humbly commune with mine own heart, I see the aspect of those faults
+which I once mistook for virtues--and feel that, had we been united, I,
+loving you ever, might not have constituted your happiness, and so have
+known the misery of losing your affection. May He who formed you for
+glorious and yet all unaccomplished purposes strengthen you, when these
+eyes can no longer sparkle at your triumphs, or weep at your lightest
+sorrow. You will go on in your broad and luminous career:--a few years,
+and my remembrance will have left but the vestige of a dream behind.
+But, but--I can write no more. God bless you!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+ “Oh, stop this headlong current of your goodness;
+  It comes too fast upon a feeble soul.”
+         DRYDEN: _Sebastian and Doras_.
+
+THE smooth physician had paid his evening visit; Lord Saxingham had gone
+to a cabinet dinner, for Life must ever walk side by side with Death:
+and Lady Florence Lascelles was alone. It was a room adjoining her
+sleeping-apartment--a room in which, in the palmy days of the brilliant
+and wayward heiress, she had loved to display her fanciful and peculiar
+taste. There had she been accustomed to muse, to write, to study--there
+had she first been dazzled by the novel glow of Ernest’s undiurnal and
+stately thoughts--there had she first conceived the romance of girlhood,
+which had led her to confer with him, unknown--there had she first
+confessed to herself that fancy had begotten love--there had she gone
+through love’s short and exhausting process of lone emotion;--the
+doubt, the hope, the ecstasy; the reverse, the terror; the inanimate
+despondency, the agonised despair! And there now, sadly and patiently,
+she awaited the gradual march of inevitable decay. And books and
+pictures, and musical instruments, and marble busts, half shadowed
+by classic draperies--and all the delicate elegancies of womanly
+refinement--still invested the chamber with a grace as cheerful as if
+youth and beauty were to be the occupants for ever--and the dark and
+noisome vault were not the only lasting residence for the things of
+clay.
+
+Florence Lascelles was dying; but not indeed wholly of that common,
+if mystic malady, a broken heart. Her health, always delicate, because
+always preyed upon by a nervous, irritable, and feverish spirit, had
+been gradually and invisibly undermined, even before Ernest confessed
+his love. In the singular lustre of those large-pupilled eyes--in the
+luxuriant transparency of that glorious bloom,--the experienced might
+long since have traced the seeds which cradled death. In the night
+when her restless and maddened heart so imprudently drove her forth to
+forestall the communication of Lumley (whom she had sent to Maltravers,
+she scarce knew for what object, or with what hope), in that night she
+was already in a high state of fever. The rain and the chill struck the
+growing disease within--her excitement gave it food and fire--delirium
+succeeded; and in that most fearful and fatal of all medical errors,
+which robs the frame, when it most needs strength, of the very principle
+of life, they had bled her into a temporary calm, and into permanent and
+incurable weakness. Consumption seized its victim. The physicians who
+attended her were the most renowned in London, and Lord Saxingham was
+firmly persuaded that there was no danger. It was not in his nature
+to think that death would take so great a liberty with Lady Florence
+Lascelles, when there were so many poor people in the world whom there
+would be no impropriety in removing from it. But Florence knew her
+danger, and her high spirit did not quail before it. Yet, when Cesarini,
+stung beyond endurance by the horrors of his remorse, wrote and
+confessed all his own share of the fatal treason, though, faithful to
+his promise, he concealed that of his accomplice,--then, ah then, she
+did indeed repine at her doom, and long to look once more with the eyes
+of love and joy upon the face of the beautiful world. But the illness of
+the body usually brings out a latent power and philosophy of the soul,
+which health never knows; and God has mercifully ordained it as the
+customary lot of nature, that in proportion as we decline into the
+grave, the sloping path is made smooth and easy to our feet; and every
+day, as the films of clay are removed from our eyes, Death loses the
+false aspect of the spectre, and we fall at last into its arms as a
+wearied child upon the bosom of its mother.
+
+It was with a heavy heart that Lady Florence listened to the monotonous
+clicking of the clock that announced the departure of moments few, yet
+not precious, still spared to her. Her face buried in her hands, she
+bent over the small table beside her sofa, and indulged her melancholy
+thoughts. Bowed was the haughty crest, unnerved the elastic shape that
+had once seemed born for majesty and command--no friends were near,
+for Florence had never made friends. Solitary had been her youth, and
+solitary were her dying hours.
+
+As she thus sat and mused, a sound of carriage wheels in the street
+below slightly shook the room--it ceased--the carriage stopped at the
+door. Florence looked up. “No, no, it cannot be,” she muttered; yet,
+while she spoke, a faint flush passed over her sunken and faded cheek,
+and the bosom heaved beneath the robe, “a world too wide for its shrunk”
+ proportions. There was a silence, which to her seemed interminable, and
+she turned away with a deep sigh, and a chill sinking of the heart.
+
+At this time her woman entered with a meaning and flurried look.
+
+“I beg your pardon, my lady--but--”
+
+“But what?”
+
+“Mr. Maltravers has called, and asked for your ladyship--so, my lady,
+Mr. Burton sent for me, and I said, my lady is too unwell to see any
+one; but Mr. Maltravers would not be denied; and he is waiting in my
+lord’s library, and insisted on my coming up and ‘nouncing him, my
+lady.”
+
+Now Mrs. Shinfield’s words were not euphonistic, nor her voice
+mellifluous; but never had eloquence seemed to Florence so effective.
+Youth, love, beauty, all rushed back upon her at once, brightening her
+eyes, her cheek, and filling up ruin with sudden and deceitful light.
+
+“Well,” she said, after a pause, “let Mr. Maltravers come up.”
+
+“Come up, my lady? Bless me!--let me just ‘range your hair--your
+ladyship is really in such dish-a-bill.”
+
+“Best as it is, Shinfield--he will excuse all.--Go.”
+
+Mrs. Shinfield shrugged her shoulders, and departed. A few moments
+more--a step on the stairs, the creaking of the door,--and Maltravers
+and Florence were again alone. He stood motionless on the threshold. She
+had involuntarily risen, and so they stood opposite to each other, and
+the lamp fell full upon her face. Oh, Heaven! when did that sight cease
+to haunt the heart of Maltravers! When shall that altered aspect not
+pass as a ghost before his eyes!--there it is, faithful and reproachful
+alike in solitude and in crowds--it is seen in the glare of noon--it
+passes dim and wan at night beneath the stars and the earth--it looked
+into his heart and left its likeness there for ever and for ever!
+Those cheeks, once so beautifully rounded, now sunken into lines and
+hollows--the livid darkness beneath the eyes--the whitened lip--the
+sharp, anxious, worn expression, which had replaced that glorious and
+beaming regard from which all the life of genius, all the sweet pride of
+womanhood had glowed forth, and in which not only the intelligence, but
+the eternity of the soul, seemed visibly wrought.
+
+There he stood, aghast and appalled. At length a low groan broke from
+his lips--he rushed forward, sank on his knees beside her, and clasping
+both her hands, sobbed aloud as he covered them with kisses. All the
+iron of his strong nature was broken down, and his emotions, long
+silenced, and now uncontrollable and resistless, were something terrible
+to behold!
+
+“Do not--do not weep so,” murmured Lady Florence, frightened by his
+vehemence; “I am sadly changed, but the fault is mine--Ernest, it is
+mine; best, kindest, gentlest, how could I have been so mad! And you
+forgive me? I am yours again--a little while yours. Ah, do not grieve
+while I am so blessed!”
+
+As she spoke, her tears--tears from a source how different from that
+whence broke the scorching and intolerable agony of his own! fell soft
+upon his bended head, and the hands that still convulsively strained
+hers. Maltravers looked wildly up into her countenance, and shuddered
+as he saw her attempt to smile. He rose abruptly, threw himself into
+a chair, and covered his face. He was seeking by a violent effort to
+master himself, and it was only by the heaving of his chest, and now and
+then a gasp as for breath, that he betrayed the stormy struggle within.
+
+Florence gazed at him a moment in bitter, in almost selfish penitence.
+“And this was the man who seemed to me so callous to the softer
+sympathies--this was the heart I trampled upon--this the nature I
+distrusted!”
+
+She came near him, trembling and with feeble steps--she laid her hand
+upon his shoulder, and the fondness of love came over her, and she wound
+her arms around him.
+
+“It is our fate--it is my fate,” said Maltravers at last, awaking as
+from a hideous dream, and in a hollow but calm voice--“we are the things
+of destiny, and the wheel has crushed us. It is an awful state of
+being this human life!--What is wisdom--virtue--faith to men--piety to
+Heaven--all the nurture we bestow on ourselves--all our desire to win
+a loftier sphere, when we are thus the tools of the merest chance--the
+victims of the pettiest villainy; and our very existence--our very
+senses almost, at the mercy of every traitor and every fool!”
+
+There was something in Ernest’s voice, as well as in his reflections,
+which appeared so unnaturally calm and deep that it startled Florence,
+with a fear more acute than his previous violence had done. He rose,
+and muttering to himself, walked to and fro, as if insensible of her
+presence--in fact he was so. At length he stopped short, and fixing his
+eyes upon Lady Florence, said in a whispered and thrilling tone:
+
+“Now, then, the name of our undoer?”
+
+“No, Ernest, no--never, unless you promise me to forego the purpose
+which I read in your eyes. He has confessed--he is penitent--I have
+forgiven him--you will do so too!”
+
+“His name!” repeated Maltravers, and his face, before very flushed, was
+unnaturally pale.
+
+“Forgive him--promise me.”
+
+“His name, I say,--his name?”
+
+“Is this kind?--you terrify me--you will kill me!” faltered out
+Florence, and she sank on the sofa exhausted: her nerves, now so
+weakened, were perfectly unstrung by his vehemence, and she wrung her
+hands and wept piteously.
+
+“You will not tell me his name?” said Maltravers, softly. “Be it so. I
+will ask no more. I can discover it myself. Fate the Avenger will reveal
+it.”
+
+At the thought he grew more composed; and as Florence wept on, the
+unnatural concentration and fierceness of his mind again gave way,
+and, seating himself beside her, he uttered all that could soothe, and
+comfort, and console. And Florence was soon soothed! And there, while
+over their heads the grim skeleton was holding the funeral pall, they
+again exchanged their vows, and again, with feelings fonder than of old,
+spoke of love.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+        “Erichtho, then,
+  Breathes her dire murmurs, which enforce him bear
+  Her baneful secrets to the spirits of horror.”--MARLOWE.
+
+WITH a heavy step Maltravers ascended the stairs of his lonely house
+that night, and heavily, with a suppressed groan, did he sink upon the
+first chair that proffered rest.
+
+It was intensely cold. During his long interview with Lady Florence, his
+servant had taken the precaution to go to Seamore Place, and make
+some hasty preparations for the owner’s return. But the bedroom looked
+comfortless and bare, the curtains were taken down, the carpets were
+taken up (a single man’s housekeeper is wonderfully provident in these
+matters; the moment his back is turned, she bustles, she displaces, she
+exults; “things can be put a little to rights!”). Even the fire would
+not burn clear, but gleamed sullen and fitful from the smothering fuel.
+It was a large chamber, and the lights imperfectly filled it. On
+the table lay parliamentary papers, and pamphlets, and bills and
+presentation-books from younger authors--evidences of the teeming
+business of that restless machine the world. But of all this Maltravers
+was not sensible: the winter frost numbed not his feverish veins. His
+servant, who loved him, as all who saw much of Maltravers did, fidgeted
+anxiously about the room, and plied the sullen fire, and laid out the
+comfortable dressing-robe, and placed wine on the table, and asked
+questions which were not answered, and pressed service which was not
+heeded. The little wheels of life go on, even when the great wheel is
+paralysed or broken. Maltravers was, if I may so express it, in a kind
+of mental trance. His emotions had left him thoroughly exhausted. He
+felt that torpor which succeeds and is again the precursor of great woe.
+At length he was alone, and the solitude half unconsciously restored
+him to the sense of his heavy misery. For it may be observed, that
+when misfortune has stricken us home, the presence of any one seems to
+interfere between the memory and the heart. Withdraw the intruder, and
+the lifted hammer falls at once upon the anvil! He rose as the door
+closed on his attendant--rose with a start, and pushed the hat from his
+gathered brows. He walked for some moments to and fro, and the air of
+the room, freezing as it was, oppressed him.
+
+There are times when the arrow quivers within us--in which all space
+seems too confined. Like the wounded hart, we could fly on for ever;
+there is a vague desire of escape--a yearning, almost insane, to get out
+from our own selves: the soul struggles to flee away, and take the wings
+of the morning.
+
+Impatiently, at last, did Maltravers throw open his window; it
+communicated with a balcony, built out to command the wide view which,
+from a certain height, that part of the park affords. He stepped into
+the balcony and bared his breast to the keen air. The uncomfortable and
+icy heavens looked down upon the hoar-rime that gathered over the grass,
+and the ghostly boughs of the deathlike trees. All things in the world
+without brought the thought of the grave, and the pause of being,
+and the withering up of beauty, closer and closer to his soul. In the
+palpable and griping winter, death itself seemed to wind around him
+its skeleton and joyless arms. And as thus he stood, and, wearied with
+contending against, passively yielded to, the bitter passions that
+wrung and gnawed his heart,--he heard not a sound at the door--nor
+the footsteps on the stairs--nor knew he that a visitor was in his
+room--till he felt a hand upon his shoulder, and turning round, he
+beheld the white and livid countenance of Castruccio Cesarini.
+
+“It is a dreary night and a solemn hour, Maltravers,” said the Italian,
+with a distorted smile--“a fitting night and time for my interview with
+you.”
+
+“Away!” said Maltravers, in an impatient tone. “I am not at leisure for
+these mock heroics.”
+
+“Ay, but you shall hear me to the end. I have watched your arrival--I
+have counted the hours in which you remained with her--I have followed
+you home. If you have human passions, humanity itself must be dried
+up within you, and the wild beast in his cavern is not more fearful
+to encounter. Thus, then, I seek and brave you. Be still. Has Florence
+revealed to you the name of him who belied you, and who betrayed herself
+to the death?”
+
+“Ha!” said Maltravers, growing very pale, and fixing his eyes on
+Cesarini, “you are not the man--my suspicions lighted elsewhere.”
+
+“I am the man. Do thy worst.”
+
+Scarce were the words uttered, when, with a fierce cry, Maltravers threw
+himself on the Italian;--he tore him from his footing--he grasped him in
+his arms as a child--he literally whirled him around and on high; and in
+that maddening paroxysm, it was, perhaps, but the balance of a feather,
+in the conflicting elements of revenge and reason, which withheld
+Maltravers from hurling the criminal from the fearful height on which
+they stood. The temptation passed--Cesarini leaned safe, unharmed, but
+half senseless with mingled rage and fear, against the wall.
+
+He was alone--Maltravers had left him--had fled from himself--fled into
+the chamber--fled for refuge from human passions to the wing of the
+All-Seeing and All-Present. “Father,” he groaned, sinking on his knees,
+“support me, save me: without Thee I am lost.”
+
+Slowly Cesarini recovered himself, and re-entered the apartment. A
+string in his brain was already loosened, and, sullen and ferocious,
+he returned again to goad the lion that had spared him. Maltravers had
+already risen from his brief prayer. With locked and rigid countenance,
+with arms folded on his breast, he stood confronting the Italian,
+who advanced towards him with a menacing brow and arm, but halted
+involuntarily at the sight of that commanding aspect.
+
+“Well, then,” said Maltravers at last, with a tone preternaturally calm
+and low, “you then are the man. Speak on--what arts did you employ?”
+
+“Your own letter. When, many months ago, I wrote to tell you of the
+hopes it was mine to conceive, and to ask your opinion of her I loved,
+how did you answer me? With doubts, with depreciation, with covert and
+polished scorn, of the very woman whom, with a deliberate treachery, you
+afterwards wrested from my worshipping and adoring love. That letter I
+garbled. I made the doubts you expressed of my happiness seem doubts of
+your own. I changed the dates--I made the letter itself appear written,
+not on your first acquaintance with her, but subsequent to your plighted
+and accepted vows. Your own handwriting convicted you of mean suspicions
+and of sordid motives. These were my arts.”
+
+“They were most noble. Do you abide by them--or repent?”
+
+“For what I have done to _thee_ I have no repentance. Nay, I regard thee
+still as the aggressor. Thou hast robbed me of her who was all the world
+to me--and, be thine excuses what they may, I hate thee with a hate that
+cannot slumber--that abjures the abject name of remorse! I exult in the
+very agonies thou endurest. But for her--the stricken--the dying! O God,
+O God! The blow falls upon mine own head!”
+
+“Dying!” said Maltravers, slowly and with a shudder. “No, no--not
+dying--or what art thou? Her murderer! And what must I be? Her avenger!”
+
+Overpowered with his own passions, Cesarini sank down and covered his
+face with his clasped hands. Maltravers stalked gloomily to and fro the
+apartment. There was silence for some moments.
+
+At length Maltravers paused opposite Cesarini and thus addressed him:
+
+“You have come hither not so much to confess the basest crime of which
+man can be guilty, as to gloat over my anguish and to brave me to
+revenge my wrongs. Go, man, go--for the present you are safe. While she
+lives, my life is not mine to hazard--if she recover, I can pity you
+and forgive. To me your offence, foul though it be, sinks below contempt
+itself. It is the consequences of that crime as they relate to--to--that
+noble and suffering woman, which can alone raise the despicable into
+the tragic and make your life a worthy and a necessary offering--not to
+revenge, but justice:--life for life--victim for victim! ‘Tis the old
+law--‘tis a righteous one.”
+
+“You shall not, with your accursed coldness, thus dispose of me as you
+will, and arrogate the option to smite or save! No,” continued Cesarini,
+stamping his foot--“no; far from seeking forbearance at your hands--I
+dare and defy you! You think I have injured you--I, on the other hand,
+consider that the wrong has come from yourself. But for you, she might
+have loved me--have been mine. Let that pass. But for you, at least, it
+is certain that I should neither have sullied my soul with a vile sin,
+nor brought the brightest of human beings to the grave. If she dies, the
+murder may be mine, but you were the cause--the devil that tempted to
+the offence. I defy and spit upon you--I have no softness left in me--my
+veins are fire--my heart thirsts for blood. You--you--have still the
+privilege to see--to bless--to tend her:--and I--I, who loved her
+so--who could have kissed the earth she trod on--I--well, well, no
+matter--I hate you--I insult you--I call you villain and dastard--I
+throw myself on the laws of honour, and I demand that conflict you defer
+or deny!”
+
+“Home, doter--home--fall on thy knees, and pray to Heaven for
+pardon--make up thy dread account--repine not at the days yet thine to
+wash the black spot from thy soul. For, while I speak, I foresee too
+well that her days are numbered, and with her thread of life is entwined
+thine own. Within twelve hours from her last moment, we shall meet
+again: but now I am as ice and stone,--thou canst not move me. Her
+closing life shall not be darkened by the aspect of blood--by the
+thought of the sacrifice it demands. Begone, or menials shall cast thee
+from my door: those lips are too base to breathe the same air as honest
+men. Begone, I say, begone!”
+
+Though scarce a muscle moved in the lofty countenance of
+Maltravers--though no frown darkened the majestic brow--though no fire
+broke from the steadfast and scornful eye--there was a kingly authority
+in the aspect, in the extended arm, the stately crest, and a power in
+the swell of the stern voice, which awed and quelled the unhappy being
+whose own passions exhausted and unmanned him. He strove to fling back
+scorn to scorn, but his lips trembled, and his voice died in hollow
+murmurs within his breast. Maltravers regarded him with a crushing
+and intense disdain. The Italian with shame and wrath wrestled against
+himself, but in vain: the cold eye that was fixed upon him was as a
+spell, which the fiend within him could not rebel against or resist.
+Mechanically he moved to the door,--then turning round, he shook his
+clenched hand at Maltravers, and, with a wild, maniacal laugh, rushed
+from the apartment.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+ “On some fond breast the parting soul relies.”--GRAY.
+
+NOT a day passed in which Maltravers was absent from the side of
+Florence. He came early, he went late. He subsided into his former
+character of an accepted suitor, without a word of explanation with Lord
+Saxingham. That task was left to Florence. She doubtless performed it
+well, for his lordship seemed satisfied though grave, and, almost for
+the first time in his life, sad. Maltravers never reverted to the cause
+of their unhappy dissension. Nor from that night did he once give way
+to whatever might be his more agonised and fierce emotions--he never
+affected to reproach himself--he never bewailed with a vain despair
+their approaching separation. Whatever it cost him, he stood collected
+and stoical in the intense power of his self control. He had but
+one object, one desire, one hope--to save the last hours of Florence
+Lascelles from every pang--to brighten and smooth the passage across
+the Solemn Bridge. His forethought, his presence of mind, his care,
+his tenderness, never forsook him for an instant: they went beyond
+the attributes of men, they went into all the fine, the indescribable
+minutiae by which woman makes herself, “in pain and anguish,” the
+“ministering angel.” It was as if he had nerved and braced his whole
+nature to one duty--as if that duty were more felt than affection
+itself--as if he were resolved that Florence should not remember that
+_she had no mother_!
+
+And, oh, then, how Florence loved him! how far more luxurious, in its
+grateful and clinging fondness, was that love, than the wild and jealous
+fire of their earlier connection! Her own character, as is often the
+case in lingering illness, became incalculably more gentle and softened
+down, as the shadows closed around it. She loved to make him read and
+talk to her--and her ancient poetry of thought now grew mellowed, as
+it were, into religion, which is indeed poetry with a stronger wing....
+There was a world beyond the grave--there was life out of the chrysalis
+sleep of death--they would yet be united. And Maltravers, who was a
+solemn and intense believer in the GREAT HOPE, did not neglect the
+purest and highest of all the fountains of solace.
+
+Often in that quiet room, in that gorgeous mansion, which had been the
+scene of all vain or worldly schemes--of flirtations and feastings,
+and political meetings and cabinet dinners, and all the bubbles of the
+passing wave--often there did these persons, whose position to each
+other had been so suddenly and so strangely changed--converse on those
+matters--daring and divine--which “make the bridal of the earth and
+sky.”
+
+“How fortunate am I,” said Florence, one day, “that my choice fell on
+one who thinks as you do! How your words elevate and exalt me!--yet once
+I never dreamt of asking your creed on these questions. It is in
+sorrow or sickness that we learn why Faith was given as a soother to
+man--Faith, which is Hope with a holier name--hope that knows neither
+deceit nor death. Ah, how wisely do you speak of the _philosophy_ of
+belief! It is, indeed, the telescope through which the stars grow large
+upon our gaze. And to you, Ernest, my beloved--comprehended and known
+at last--to you I leave, when I am gone, that monitor--that friend; you
+will know yourself what you teach to me. And when you look not on the
+heaven alone but in all space--on all the illimitable creation, you will
+know that I am there! For the home of a spirit is wherever spreads the
+Universal Presence of God. And to what numerous stages of being, what
+paths, what duties, what active and glorious tasks in other worlds may
+we not be reserved--perhaps to know and share them together, and mount
+age after age higher in the scale of being. For surely in heaven there
+is no pause or torpor--we do not lie down in calm and unimprovable
+repose. Movement and progress will remain the law and condition of
+existence. And there will be efforts and duties for us above as there
+have been below.”
+
+It was in this theory, which Maltravers shared, that the character of
+Florence, her overflowing life and activity of thought--her aspirations,
+her ambition, were still displayed. It was not so much to the calm and
+rest of the grave that she extended her unreluctant gaze, as to the
+light and glory of a renewed and progressive existence.
+
+It was while thus they sat, the low voice of Ernest, tranquil yet half
+trembling with the emotions he sought to restrain--sometimes sobering,
+sometimes yet more elevating, the thoughts of Florence, that Lord
+Vargrave was announced, and Lumley Ferrers, who had now succeeded to
+that title, entered the room. It was the first time that Florence had
+seen him since the death of his uncle--the first time Maltravers
+had seen him since the evening so fatal to Florence. Both
+started--Maltravers rose and walked to the window. Lord Vargrave took
+the hand of his cousin and pressed it to his lips in silence, while his
+looks betokened feelings that for once were genuine.
+
+“You see, Lumley, I am resigned,” said Florence, with a sweet smile. “I
+am resigned and happy.”
+
+Lumley glanced at Maltravers, and met a cold, scrutinising, piercing
+eye, from which he shrank with some confusion. He recovered himself in
+an instant.
+
+“I am rejoiced, my cousin, I _am_ rejoiced,” said he, very earnestly,
+“to see Maltravers here again. Let us now hope the best.”
+
+Maltravers walked deliberately up to Lumley. “Will you take my hand
+_now_, too?” said he, with deep meaning in his tone.
+
+“More willingly than ever,” said Lumley; and he did not shrink as he
+said it.
+
+“I am satisfied,” replied Maltravers, after a pause, and in a voice that
+expressed more than his words.
+
+There is in some natures so great a hoard of generosity, that it often
+dulls their acuteness. Maltravers could not believe that frankness could
+be wholly a mask--it was an hypocrisy he knew not of. He himself was
+not incapable, had circumstances so urged him, of great crimes; nay, the
+design of one crime lay at that moment deadly and dark within his heart,
+for he had some passions which in so resolute a character could produce,
+should the wind waken them into storm, dire and terrible effects. Even
+at the age of thirty, it was yet uncertain whether Ernest Maltravers
+might become an exemplary or an evil man. But he could sooner have
+strangled a foe than taken the hand of a man whom he had once betrayed.
+
+“I love to think you friends,” said Florence, gazing at them
+affectionately, “and to you, at least, Lumley, such friendship should be
+a blessing. I always loved you much and dearly, Lumley--loved you as a
+brother, though our characters often jarred.”
+
+Lumley winced. “For Heaven’s sake,” he cried, “do not speak thus
+tenderly to me--I cannot bear it, and look on you and think--”
+
+“That I am dying. Kind words become us best when our words are
+approaching to the last. But enough of this--I grieved for your loss.”
+
+“My poor uncle!” said Lumley, eagerly changing the conversation--“the
+shock was sudden; and melancholy duties have absorbed me so till this
+day, that I could not come even to you. It soothed me, however, to
+learn, in answer to my daily inquiries, that Ernest was here. For
+my part,” he added with a faint smile, “I have had duties as well as
+honours devolved on me. I am left guardian to an heiress, and betrothed
+to a child.”
+
+“How do you mean?”
+
+“Why, my poor uncle was so fondly attached to his wife’s daughter, that
+he has left her the bulk of his property: a very small estate--not L2000
+a year--goes with the title (a new title, too, which requires twice as
+much to carry it off and make its pinchbeck pass for gold). In order,
+however, to serve a double purpose, secure to his _protegee_ his own
+beloved peerage, and atone to his nephew for the loss of wealth--he has
+left it a last request, that I should marry the young lady over whom I
+am appointed guardian, when she is eighteen--alas! I shall then be at
+the other side of forty! If she does not take to so mature a bridegroom,
+she loses thirty--only thirty of the L200,000 settled upon her, which
+goes to me as a sugar-plum after the nauseous draught of the young
+lady’s ‘No.’ Now, you know all. His widow, really an exemplary young
+woman, has a jointure of L1500 a year, and the villa. It is not much,
+but she is contented.”
+
+The lightness of the new peer’s tone revolted Maltravers, and he
+turned impatiently away. But Lord Vargrave, resolving not to suffer the
+conversation to glide back to sorrowful subjects, which he always hated,
+turned round to Ernest, and said, “Well, my dear Ernest, I see by the
+papers that you are to have N------‘s late appointment--it is a very
+rising office. I congratulate you.”
+
+“I have refused,” said Maltravers, drily.
+
+“Bless me!--indeed!--why?”
+
+Ernest bit his lip, and frowned; but his glance wandering unconsciously
+at Florence, Lumley thought he detected the true reply to his question,
+and became mute.
+
+The conversation was afterwards embarrassed and broken up; Lumley went
+away as soon as he could, and Lady Florence that night had a severe
+fit, and could not leave her bed the next day. That confinement she
+had struggled against to the last; and now, day by day, it grew more
+frequent and inevitable. The steps of Death became accelerated. And Lord
+Saxingham, wakened at last to the mournful truth, took his place by his
+daughter’s side, and forgot that he was a cabinet minister.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+ “Away, my friends, why take such pains to know
+  What some brave marble soon in church shall show?”
+           CRABBE.
+
+IT may seem strange, but Maltravers had never loved Lady Florence as he
+did now. Was it the perversity of human nature that makes the things of
+mortality dearer to us in proportion as they fade from our hopes, like
+birds whose hues are only unfolded when they take wing and vanish amidst
+the skies; or was it that he had ever doted more on loveliness of mind
+than that of form, and the first bloomed out the more, the more the last
+decayed? A thing to protect, to soothe, to shelter--oh, how dear it is
+to the pride of man! The haughty woman who can stand alone and requires
+no leaning-place in our heart, loses the spell of her sex.
+
+I pass over those stages of decline gratuitously painful to record; and
+which in this case mine cannot be the cold and technical hand to trace.
+At length came that time when physicians could define within a few days
+the final hour of release. And latterly the mocking pruderies of rank
+had been laid aside, and Maltravers had, for some hours at least in the
+day, taken his watch beside the couch to which the admired and brilliant
+Florence Lascelles was now almost constantly reduced. But her high and
+heroic spirit was with her to the last. To the last she could endure
+love and hope. One day when Maltravers left his post, she besought him,
+with more solemnity than usual, to return that evening. She fixed the
+precise hour, and she sighed heavily when he departed. Maltravers
+paused in the hall to speak to the physician, who was just quitting Lord
+Saxingham’s library. Ernest spoke to him for some moments calmly, and
+when he heard the fiat, he betrayed no other emotion than a slight
+quiver of the lip! “I must not weep for her yet,” he muttered, as he
+turned from the door. He went thence to the house of a gentleman of his
+own age, with whom he had formed that kind of acquaintance which never
+amounts to familiar friendship, but rests upon mutual respect, and
+is often more ready than professed friendship itself to confer mutual
+service. Colonel Danvers was a man who usually sat next to Maltravers in
+parliament; they voted together, and thought alike on principles both
+of politics and honour: they would have lent thousands to each other
+without bond or memorandum; and neither ever wanted a warm and indignant
+advocate when he was abused behind his back in the presence of the
+other. Yet their tastes and ordinary habits were not congenial; and when
+they met in the streets, they never said, as they would to companions
+they esteemed less, “Let us spend the day together!” Such forms of
+acquaintance are not uncommon among honourable men who have already
+formed habits and pursuits of their own, which they cannot surrender
+even to friendship. Colonel Danvers was not at home--they believed he
+was at his club, of which Ernest also was a member. Thither Maltravers
+bent his way. On arriving, he found that Danvers had been at the club
+an hour ago, and left word that he should shortly return. Maltravers
+entered and quietly sat down. The room was full of its daily loungers;
+but he did not shrink from, he did not even heed, the crowd. He felt not
+the desire of solitude--there was solitude enough within him. Several
+distinguished public men were there, grouped around the fire, and many
+of the hangers-on and satellites of political life; they were talking
+with eagerness and animation, for it was a season of great party
+conflict. Strange as it may seem, though Maltravers was then scarcely
+sensible of their conversation, it all came back vividly and faithfully
+on him afterwards, in the first hours of reflection on his own future
+plans, and served to deepen and consolidate his disgust of the world.
+They were discussing the character of a great statesman whom, warmed
+but by the loftiest and purest motives, they were unable to understand.
+Their gross suspicions, their coarse jealousies, their calculations of
+patriotism by place, all that strips the varnish from the face of that
+fair harlot--Political Ambition--sank like caustic into his spirit.
+A gentleman seeing him sit silent, with his hat over his moody brows,
+civilly extended to him the paper he was reading.
+
+“It is the second edition; you will find the last French express.”
+
+“Thank you,” said Maltravers; and the civil man started as he heard
+the brief answer; there was something so inexpressibly prostrate and
+broken-spirited in the voice that uttered it.
+
+Maltravers’s eyes fell mechanically on the columns, and caught his own
+name. That work which, in the fair retirement of Temple Grove it had
+so pleased him to compose--in every page and every thought of which
+Florence had been consulted--which was so inseparably associated with
+her image, and glorified by the light of her kindred genius--was just
+published. It had been completed long since; but the publisher had, for
+some excellent reason of the craft, hitherto delayed its appearance.
+Maltravers knew nothing of its publication; he had meant, after his
+return to town, to have sent to forbid its appearance; but his thoughts
+of late had crushed everything else out of his memory--he had forgotten
+its existence. And now, in all the pomp and parade of authorship, it was
+sent into the world! _Now_, _now_, when it was like an indecent mockery
+of the Bed of Death--a sacrilege, an impiety! There is a terrible
+disconnection between the author and the man---the author’s life and
+the man’s life--the eras of visible triumph may be those of the most
+intolerable, though unrevealed and unconjectured anguish. The book that
+delighted us to compose may first appear in the hour when all things
+under the sun are joyless. This had been Ernest Maltravers’s most
+favoured work. It had been conceived in a happy hour of great
+ambition--it had been executed with that desire of truth, which, in the
+mind of genius, becomes ART. How little in the solitary hours stolen
+from sleep had he thought of self, and that labourer’s hire called
+“fame!” how had he dreamt that he was promulgating secrets to make his
+kind better, and wiser, and truer to the great aims of life! How had
+Florence, and Florence alone, understood the beatings of his heart in
+every page! _And now_!--it so chanced that the work was reviewed in the
+paper he read--it was not only a hostile criticism, it was a personally
+abusive diatribe, a virulent invective. All the motives that can darken
+or defile were ascribed to him. All the mean spite of some mean mind
+was sputtered forth. Had the writer known the awful blow that awaited
+Maltravers at that time, it is not in man’s nature but that he would
+have shrunk from this petty gall upon the wrung withers; but, as I have
+said, there is a terrible disconnection between the author and the man.
+The first is always at our mercy--of the last we know nothing. At such
+an hour Maltravers could feel none of the contempt that proud--none of
+the wrath that vain, minds feel at these stings. He could feel nothing
+but an undefined abhorrence of the world, and of the aims and objects
+he had pursued so long. Yet that even he did not then feel. He was in
+a dream; but as men remember dreams, so when he awoke did he loathe his
+own former aspirations, and sicken at their base rewards. It was the
+first time since his first year of inexperienced authorship that abuse
+had had the power even to vex him for a moment. But here, when the cup
+was already full, was the drop that overflowed. The great column of his
+past world was gone, and all else seemed crumbling away.
+
+At length Colonel Danvers entered. Maltravers drew him aside, and they
+left the club.
+
+“Danvers,” said the latter, “the time in which I told you I should need
+your services is near at hand; let me see you, if possible, to-night.”
+
+“Certainly--I shall be, at the House till eleven. After that hour you
+will find me at home.”
+
+“I thank you.”
+
+“Cannot this matter be arranged amicably?”
+
+“No, it is a quarrel of life and death.”
+
+“Yet the world is really growing too enlightened for these old mimicries
+of single combat.”
+
+“There are some cases in which human nature and its deep wrongs will be
+ever stronger than the world and its philosophy. Duels and wars belong
+to the same principle; both are sinful on light grounds and poor
+pretexts. But it is not sinful for a soldier to defend his country from
+invasion, nor for man, with a man’s heart, to vindicate truth and honour
+with his life. The robber that asks me for money I am allowed to shoot.
+Is the robber that tears from me treasures never to be replaced, to go
+free? These are the inconsistencies of a pseudo-ethics, which, as long
+as we are made of flesh and blood, we can never subscribe to.”
+
+“Yet the ancients,” said Danvers, with a smile, “were as passionate as
+ourselves, and they dispensed with duels.”
+
+“Yes, because they resorted to assassination!” answered Maltravers, with
+a gloomy frown. “As in revolutions all law is suspended, so are there
+stormy events and mighty injuries in life which are as revolutions to
+individuals. Enough of this--it is no time to argue like the schoolmen.
+When we meet you shall know all, and you will judge like me. Good day!”
+
+“What, are you going already? Maltravers, you look ill, your hand is
+feverish--you should take advice.”
+
+Maltravers smiled--but the smile was not like his own--shook his head,
+and strode rapidly away.
+
+Three of the London clocks, one after the other, had told the hour
+of nine, as a tall and commanding figure passed up the street towards
+Saxingham House. Five doors before you reach that mansion there is a
+crossing, and at this spot stood a young man, in whose face youth itself
+looked sapless and blasted. It was then March;--the third of March;
+the weather was unusually severe and biting, even for that angry month.
+There had been snow in the morning, and it lay white and dreary in
+various ridges along the street. But the wind was not still in the keen
+but quiet sharpness of frost; on the contrary, it howled almost like a
+hurricane through the desolate thoroughfares, and the lamps flickered
+unsteadily in the turbulent gusts. Perhaps it was the blasts which
+increased the haggardness of aspect in the young man I have mentioned.
+His hair, which was much longer than is commonly worn, was tossed wildly
+from cheeks preternaturally shrunken, hollow, and livid: and the frail,
+thin form seemed scarcely able to support itself against the rush of the
+winds.
+
+As the tall figure, which, in its masculine stature and proportions, and
+a peculiar and nameless grandeur of bearing, strongly contrasted that of
+the younger man, now came to the spot where the streets met, it paused
+abruptly.
+
+“You are here once more, Castruccio Cesarini; it is well!” said the low
+but ringing voice of Ernest Maltravers. “This, I believe, will not be
+our last interview to-night.”
+
+“I ask you, sir,” said Cesarini, in a tone in which pride struggled with
+emotion--“I ask you to tell me how she is; whether you know--I cannot
+speak--”
+
+“Your work is nearly done,” answered Maltravers. “A few hours more, and
+your victim, for she is yours, will bear her tale to the Great Judgment
+Seat. Murderer as you are, tremble, for your own hour approaches!”
+
+“She dies and I cannot see her! and you are permitted that last glimpse
+of human perfectness; you who never loved her as I did; you--hated and
+detested! you--”
+
+Cesarini paused, and his voice died away, choked in his own convulsive
+gaspings for breath.
+
+Maltravers looked at him from the height of his erect and lofty form,
+with a merciless eye; for in this one quarter, Maltravers had shut out
+pity from his soul.
+
+“Weak criminal!” said he, “hear me. You received at my hands
+forbearance, friendship, fostering and anxious care. When your own
+follies plunged you into penury, mine was the unseen hand that plucked
+you from famine, or the prison. I strove to redeem, and save, and raise
+you, and endow your miserable spirit with the thirst and the power of
+honour and independence. The agent of that wish was Florence Lascelles;
+you repaid us well! a base and fraudulent forgery, attaching meanness to
+me, fraught with agony and death to her. Your conscience at last smote
+you; you revealed to her your crime--one spark of manhood made you
+reveal it also to myself. Fresh as I was in that moment from the
+contemplations of the ruin you had made, I curbed the impulse that would
+have crushed the life from your bosom. I told you to live on while life
+was left to her. If she recovered, I could forgive; if she died, I must
+avenge. We entered into that solemn compact, and in a few hours the bond
+will need the seal: it is the blood of one of us. Castruccio Cesarini,
+there is justice in Heaven. Deceive yourself not; you will fall by my
+hand. When the hour comes, you will hear from me. Let me pass--I have no
+more now to say.”
+
+Every syllable of this speech was uttered with that thrilling
+distinctness which seems as if the depth of the heart spoke in the
+voice. But Cesarini did not appear to understand its import. He seized
+Maltravers by the arm, and looked in his face with a wild and menacing
+glare.
+
+“Did you tell me she was dying?” he said. “I ask you that question:
+why do you not answer me? Oh, by the way, you threaten me with your
+vengeance. Know you not that I long to meet you front to front, and
+to the death? Did I not tell you so--did I not try to move your slow
+blood--to insult you into a conflict in which I should have gloried? Yet
+then you were marble.”
+
+“Because _my_ wrong I could forgive, and _hers_--there was then a hope
+that hers might not need the atonement. Away!”
+
+Maltravers shook the hold of the Italian from his arm, and passed on. A
+wild, sharp yell of despair rang after him, and echoed in his ear as
+he strode the long, dim, solitary stairs that led to the death-bed of
+Florence Lascelles.
+
+Maltravers entered the room adjoining that which contained the
+sufferer--the same room, still gay and cheerful, in which had been his
+first interview with Florence since their reconciliation.
+
+Here he found the physician dozing in a _fauteuil_. Lady Florence had
+fallen asleep during the last two or three hours. Lord Saxingham was in
+his own apartment, deeply and noisily affected; for it was not thought
+that Florence could survive the night.
+
+Maltravers sat himself quietly down. Before him, on a table, lay several
+manuscript books, gaily and gorgeously bound; he mechanically opened
+them. Florence’s fair, noble Italian characters met his eye in every
+page. Her rich and active mind, her love for poetry, her thirst for
+knowledge, her indulgence of deep thought, spoke from those pages
+like the ghosts of herself. Often, underscored with the marks of her
+approbation, he chanced upon extracts from his own works, sometimes upon
+reflections by the writer herself, not inferior in truth and depth to
+his own; snatches of wild verse never completed, but of a power
+and energy beyond the delicate grace of lady-poets; brief, vigorous
+criticisms on books, above the common holiday studies of the sex;
+indignant and sarcastic aphorisms on the real world, with high and sad
+bursts of feeling upon the ideal one; all chequering and enriching the
+various volumes, told of the rare gifts with which this singular girl
+was endowed--a herbal, as it were, of withered blossoms that might have
+borne Hesperian fruits. And sometimes in these outpourings of the
+full mind and laden heart were allusions to himself, so tender and so
+touching--the pencilled outline of his features, traced by memory in
+a thousand aspects--the reference to former interviews and
+conversations--the dates and hours marked with a woman’s minute and
+treasuring care!--all these tokens of genius and of love spoke to him
+with a voice that said, “And this creature is lost to you, forever: you
+never appreciated her till the time for her departure was irrevocably
+fixed!”
+
+Maltravers uttered a deep groan; all the past rushed over him. Her
+romantic passion for one yet unknown--her interest in his glory--her
+zeal for his life of life, his spotless and haughty name. It was as if
+with her, Fame and Ambition were dying also, and henceforth nothing but
+common clay and sordid motives were to be left on earth.
+
+How sudden--how awfully sudden had been the blow! True, there had been
+an absence of some months in which the change had operated. But absence
+is a blank, a nonentity. He had left her in apparent health, in the time
+of prosperity and pride. He saw her again--stricken down in body and
+temper--chastened--humbled--dying. And this being, so bright and lofty,
+how had she loved him! Never had he been so loved, except in that
+morning dream, haunted by the vision of the lost and dim-remembered
+Alice. Never on earth could he be so loved again. The air and aspect
+of the whole chamber grew to him painful and oppressive. It was full of
+her--the owner! There the harp, which so well became her muse-like
+form that it was associated with her like a part of herself! There the
+pictures, fresh and glowing from her hand,-the grace--the harmony--the
+classic and simple taste everywhere displayed.
+
+Rousseau has left to us an immortal portrait of the lover waiting
+for the first embraces of his mistress. But to wait with a pulse as
+feverish, a brain as dizzy, for her last look--to await the moment of
+despair, not rapture--to feel the slow and dull time as palpable a load
+upon the heart, yet to shrink from your own impatience, and wish that
+the agony of suspense might endure for ever--this, oh, this is a picture
+of intense passion--of flesh and blood reality--of the rare and solemn
+epochs of our mysterious life--which had been worthier the genius of
+that “Apostle of Affliction”!
+
+At length the door opened; the favourite attendant of Florence looked
+in.
+
+“Is Mr. Maltravers there? Oh, sir, my lady is awake and would see you.”
+
+Maltravers rose, but his feet were glued to the ground, his sinking
+heart stood still--it was a mortal terror that possessed him. With a
+deep sigh he shook off the numbing spell, and passed to the bedside of
+Florence.
+
+She sat up, propped by pillows, and as he sank beside her, and clasped
+her wan, transparent hand, she looked at him with a smile of pitying
+love.
+
+“You have been very, very kind to me,” she said, after a pause, and with
+a voice which had altered even since the last time he heard it. “You
+have made that part of life from which human nature shrinks with dread,
+the happiest and the brightest of all my short and vain existence. My
+own clear Ernest--Heaven reward you!”
+
+A few grateful tears dropped from her eyes, and they fell on the hand
+which she bent her lips to kiss.
+
+“It was not here--nor amidst the streets and the noisy abodes of
+anxious, worldly men--nor was it in this harsh and dreary season of the
+year, that I could have wished to look my last on earth. Could I have
+seen the face of Nature--could I have watched once more with the summer
+sun amidst those gentle scenes we loved so well, Death would have had
+no difference from sleep. But what matters it? With you there are summer
+and Nature everywhere!”
+
+Maltravers raised his face, and their eyes met in silence--it was
+a long, fixed gaze, which spoke more than all words could. Her head
+dropped on his shoulder, and there it lay, passive and motionless,
+for some moments. A soft step glided into the room--it was the unhappy
+father’s. He came to the other side of his daughter, and sobbed
+convulsively.
+
+She then raised herself, and even in the shades of death, a faint blush
+passed over her cheek.
+
+“My good dear father, what comfort will it give you hereafter to think
+how fondly you spoiled your Florence!”
+
+Lord Saxingham could not answer: he clasped her in his arms and wept
+over her. Then he broke away--looked on her with a shudder--
+
+“O God!” he cried, “she is dead--she is dead!”
+
+Maltravers started. The physician kindly approached, and, taking Lord
+Saxingham’s hand, led him from the room--he went mute and obedient like
+a child.
+
+But the struggle was not yet past. Florence once more opened her eyes,
+and Maltravers uttered a cry of joy. But along those eyes the film was
+darkening rapidly, as still through the mist and shadow they sought
+the beloved countenance which hung over her, as if to breathe life into
+waning life. Twice her lips moved, but her voice failed her; she shook
+her head sadly.
+
+Maltravers hastily held to her mouth a cordial which lay ready on the
+table near her, but scarce had it moistened her lips, when her whole
+frame grew heavier and heavier, in his clasp. Her head once more sank
+upon his bosom--she thrice gasped wildly for breath--and at length,
+raising her hand on high, life struggled into its expiring ray.
+
+“_There_--above!--Ernest--that name--Ernest!”
+
+Yes, that name was the last she uttered; she was evidently conscious of
+that thought, for a smile, as her voice again faltered--a smile sweet
+and serene--that smile never seen but on the faces of the dying and the
+dead--borrowed from a light that is not of this world--settled slowly on
+her brow, her lips, her whole countenance; still she breathed, but the
+breath grew fainter! at length, without murmur, sound, or struggle, it
+passed away--the head dropped from his bosom--the form fell from his
+arms-all was over!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+  * * * * “Is this the promised end?”--_Lear_.
+
+IT was two hours after that scene before Maltravers left the house. It
+was then just on the stroke of the first hour of morning. To him, while
+he walked through the streets, and the sharp winds howled on his path,
+it was as if a strange and wizard life had passed into and supported
+him--a sort of drowsy, dull existence. He was like a sleepwalker,
+unconscious of all around him; yet his steps went safe and free; and the
+one thought that possessed his being--into which all intellect seemed
+shrunk--the thought, not fiery nor vehement, but calm, stern, and
+solemn--the thought of revenge--seemed, as it were, grown his soul
+itself. He arrived at the door of Colonel Danvers, mounted the stairs,
+and as his friend advanced to meet him, said calmly, “Now, then, the
+hour has arrived.”
+
+“But what would you do now?”
+
+“Come with me, and you shall learn.”
+
+“Very well, my carriage is below. Will you direct the servants?”
+
+Maltravers nodded, gave his orders to the careless footman, and the two
+friends were soon driving through the less known and courtly regions of
+the giant city. It was then that Maltravers concisely stated to Danvers
+the fraud that had been practised by Cesarini.
+
+“You will go with me now,” concluded Maltravers, “to his house. To
+do him justice, he is no coward; he has not shrunk from giving me his
+address, nor will he shrink from the atonement I demand. I shall wait
+below while you arrange our meeting--at daybreak for to-morrow.” Danvers
+was astonished and even appalled by the discovery made to him. There was
+something so unusual and strange in the whole affair. But neither his
+experience, nor his principles of honour, could suggest any alternative
+to the plan proposed. For though not regarding the cause of quarrel in
+the same light as Maltravers, and putting aside all question as to the
+right of the latter to constitute himself the champion of the betrothed,
+or the avenger of the dead, it seemed clear to the soldier that a man
+whose confidential letter had been garbled by another for the purpose
+of slandering his truth and calumniating his name, had no option but
+contempt, or the sole retribution (wretched though it be) which the
+customs of the higher class permit to those who live within its pale.
+But contempt for a wrong that a sorrow so tragic had followed--was
+_that_ option in human philosophy?
+
+The carriage stopped at a door in a narrow lane in an obscure suburb.
+Yet, dark as all the houses around were, lights were seen in the upper
+windows of Cesarini’s residence, passing to and fro; and scarce had the
+servant’s loud knock echoed through the dim thoroughfare, ere the door
+was opened. Danvers descended, and entered the passage--“Oh, sir, I am
+so glad you are come!” said an old woman, pale and trembling; “he do
+take on so!”
+
+“There is no mistake,” asked Danvers, halting; “an Italian gentleman
+named Cesarini lodges here?”
+
+“Yes, sir, poor cretur--I sent for you to come to him--for says I to my
+boy, says I--”
+
+“Whom do you take me for?”
+
+“Why, la, sir, you be’s the doctor, ben’t you?”
+
+Danvers made no reply; he had a mean opinion of the courage of one who
+could act dishonourably; he thought there was some design to cheat his
+friend out of his revenge; accordingly he ascended the stairs, motioning
+the woman to precede him.
+
+He came back to the door of the carriage in a few minutes. “Let us go
+home, Maltravers,” said he, “this man is not in a state to meet you.”
+
+“Ha!” cried Maltravers, frowning darkly, and all his long-smothered
+indignation rushing like fire through every vein of his body; “would he
+shrink from the atonement?” He pushed Danvers impatiently aside, leapt
+from the carriage, and rushed up-stairs.
+
+Danvers followed.
+
+Heated, wrought-up, furious, Ernest Maltravers burst into a small and
+squalid chamber; from the closed doors of which, through many chinks,
+had gleamed the light that told him Cesarini was within. And Cesarini’s
+eyes, blazing with horrible fire, were the first object that met his
+gaze. Maltravers stood still, as if frozen into stone.
+
+“Ha! ha!” laughed a shrill and shrieking voice, which contrasted dreadly
+with the accents of the soft Tuscan, in which the wild words were
+strung--“who comes here with garments dyed in blood? You cannot accuse
+me--for my blow drew no blood, it went straight to the heart--it tore no
+flesh by the way; we Italians poison our victims! Where art thou--where
+art thou, Maltravers? I am ready. Coward, you do not come! Oh, yes, yes,
+here you are; the pistols--I will not fight so. I am a wild beast. Let
+us rend each other with our teeth and talons!”
+
+Huddled up like a heap of confused and jointless limbs in the furthest
+corner of the room, lay the wretch, a raving maniac;--two men keeping
+their firm gripe on him, which, ever and anon, with the mighty strength
+of madness, he shook off, to fall back senseless and exhausted; his
+strained and bloodshot eyes starting from their sockets, the slaver
+gathering round his lips, his raven hair standing on end, his delicate
+and symmetrical features distorted into a hideous and Gorgon aspect. It
+was, indeed, an appalling and sublime spectacle, full of an awful moral,
+the meeting of the foes! Here stood Maltravers, strong beyond the common
+strength of men, in health, power, conscious superiority, premeditated
+vengeance--wise, gifted; all his faculties ripe, developed, at his
+command;--the complete and all-armed man, prepared for defence and
+offence against every foe--a man who, once roused in a righteous
+quarrel, would not have quailed before an army; and there and thus was
+his dark and fierce purpose dashed from his soul, shivered into atoms
+at his feet. He felt the nothingness of man and man’s wrath--in the
+presence of the madman on whose head the thunderbolt of a greater curse
+than human anger ever breathes had fallen. In his horrible affliction
+the Criminal triumphed over the Avenger!
+
+“Yes! yes!” shouted Cesarini, again; “they tell me she is dying; but
+he is by her side;--pluck him thence--he shall not touch her hand--she
+shall not bless him--she is mine--if I killed her, I have saved her from
+him--she is mine in death. Let me in, I say,--I will come in,--I will, I
+will see her, and strangle him at her feet.” With that, by a tremendous
+effort, he tore himself from the clutch of his holders, and with a
+sudden and exultant bound sprang across the room, and stood face to
+face with Maltravers. The proud brave than turned pale, and recoiled a
+step--“It is he! it is he!” shrieked the maniac, and he leaped like a
+tiger at the throat of his rival. Maltravers quickly seized his arm, and
+whirled him round. Cesarini fell heavily on the floor, mute, senseless,
+and in strong convulsions.
+
+“Mysterious Providence!” murmured Maltravers, “thou hast justly rebuked
+the mortal for dreaming he might arrogate to himself thy privilege of
+vengeance. Forgive the sinner, O God, as I do--as thou teachest this
+stubborn heart to forgive--as she forgave who is now with thee, a
+blessed saint in heaven!”
+
+When, some minutes afterwards, the doctor, who had been sent for,
+arrived, the head of the stricken patient lay on the lap of his foe, and
+it was the hand of Maltravers that wiped the froth from the white lips,
+and the voice of Maltravers that strove to soothe, and the tears of
+Maltravers that were falling on that fiery brow.
+
+“Tend him, sir, tend him as my brother,” said Maltravers, hiding his
+face as he resigned the charge. “Let him have all that can alleviate and
+cure--remove him hence to some fitter abode--send for the best advice.
+Restore him, and--and--” He could say no more, but left the room
+abruptly.
+
+It was afterwards ascertained that Cesarini had remained in the streets
+after his short interview with Ernest, that at length he had knocked at
+Lord Saxingham’s door just in the very hour when death had claimed
+its victim. He heard the announcement--he sought to force his way
+up-stairs--they thrust him from the house, and nothing more of him
+was known till he arrived at his own door, an hour before Danvers and
+Maltravers came, in raging frenzy. Perhaps by one of the dim erratic
+gleams of light which always chequer the darkness of insanity, he
+retained some faint remembrance of his compact and assignation with
+Maltravers, which had happily guided his steps back to his abode.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+It was two months after this scene, a lovely Sabbath morning, in the
+earliest May, as Lumley, Lord Vargrave, sat alone, by the window in
+his late uncle’s villa, in his late uncle’s easy-chair--his eyes were
+resting musingly on the green lawn on which the windows opened, or
+rather on two forms that were seated upon a rustic bench in the middle
+of the sward. One was the widow in her weeds, the other was that fair
+and lovely child destined to be the bride of the new lord. The hands of
+the mother and daughter were clasped each in each. There was sadness in
+the faces of both--deeper if more resigned on that of the elder, for the
+child sought to console her parent, and grief in childhood comes with a
+butterfly’s wing.
+
+Lumley gazed on them both, and on the child more earnestly.
+
+“She is very lovely,” he said; “she will be very rich. After all, I
+am not to be pitied. I am a peer, and I have enough to live upon at
+present. I am a rising man--our party wants peers; and though I could
+not have had more than a subaltern’s seat at the Treasury Board six
+months ago, when I was an active, zealous, able commoner, now that I am
+a lord, with what they call a stake in the country, I may open my mouth
+and--bless me! I know not how many windfalls may drop in! My uncle was
+wiser than I thought in wrestling for this peerage, which he won and I
+wear!--Then, by and by, just at the age when I want to marry and have an
+heir (and a pretty wife saves one a vast deal of trouble), L200,000 and
+a young beauty! Come, come, I have strong cards in my hands if I play
+them tolerably. I must take care that she falls desperately in love
+with me. Leave me alone for that--I know the sex, and have never failed
+except in--ah, that poor Florence! Well, it is no use regretting! Like
+thrifty artists, we must paint out the unmarketable picture, and call
+luckier creations to fill up the same canvas!”
+
+Here the servant interrupted Lord Vargrave’s meditation by bringing in
+the letters and the newspapers which had just been forwarded from
+his town house. Lord Vargrave had spoken in the Lords on the previous
+Friday, and he wished to see what the Sunday newspapers said of his
+speech. So he took up one of the leading papers before he opened the
+letters. His eyes rested upon two paragraphs in close neighbourhood with
+each other: the first ran thus:
+
+
+“The celebrated Mr. Maltravers has abruptly resigned his seat for the
+------ of ------, and left town yesterday on an extended tour on
+the Continent. Speculation is busy on the causes of the singular and
+unexpected self-exile of a gentleman so distinguished--in the very
+zenith of his career.”
+
+
+“So, he has given up the game!” muttered Lord Vargrave; “he was never
+a practical man--I am glad he is out of the way. But what’s this about
+myself?”
+
+
+“We hear that important changes are to take place in the government---it
+is said that ministers are at last alive to the necessity of
+strengthening themselves with new talent. Among other appointments
+confidently spoken of in the best-informed circles, we learn that
+Lord Vargrave is to have the place of ------. It will be a popular
+appointment. Lord Vargrave is not a holiday orator, a mere declamatory
+rhetorician--but a man of clear business-like views, and was highly
+thought of in the House of Commons. He has also the art of attaching
+his friends, and his frank, manly character cannot fail to have its due
+effect with the English public. In another column of our journal our
+readers will see a full report of his excellent maiden speech in the
+House of Lords, on Friday last: the sentiments there expressed do the
+highest honour to his lordship’s patriotism and sagacity.”
+
+
+“Very well, very well indeed!” said Lumley, rubbing his hands; and
+turning to his letters, his attention was drawn to one with an enormous
+seal, marked “Private and confidential.” He knew before he opened
+it that it contained the offer of the appointment alluded to in the
+newspaper. He read, and rose exultantly; passing through the French
+windows, he joined Lady Vargrave and Evelyn on the lawn, and, as he
+smiled on the mother and caressed the child, the scene and the group
+made a pleasant picture of English domestic happiness.
+
+Here ends the First Portion of this work: it ends in the view that
+bounds us when we look on the practical world with the outward
+unspiritual eye--and see life that dissatisfies justice,--for life is so
+seen but in fragments. The influence of fate seems so small on the man
+who, in erring, but errs as the egotist, and shapes out of ill some use
+that can profit himself. But Fate hangs a shadow so vast on the heart
+that errs but in venturing and knows only in others the sources of
+sorrow and joy.
+
+Go alone, O Maltravers, unfriendly, remote--thy present a waste, and
+thy past life a ruin, go forth to the future!--Go, Ferrers, light
+cynic--with the crowd take thy way,--complacent, elated,--no cloud upon
+conscience, for thou seest but sunshine on fortune.--Go forth to the
+future!
+
+Human life is compared to the circle.--Is the simile just? All lines
+that are drawn from the centre to touch the circumference, by the law
+of the circle, are equal. But the lines that are drawn from the heart
+of the man to the verge of his destiny--do they equal each other?--Alas!
+some seem so brief, and some lengthen on as for ever.
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Ernest Maltravers, Complete, by
+Edward Bulwer-Lytton
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