Alice, or the Mysteries — Book 06

								

development of your forces."
"You mistake me,--I am but a spectator."
"Yes; but you desire to go behind the scenes; and he who once grows
familiar with the green-room, longs to be an actor."
With Madame de Ventadour and the De Montaignes Maltravers passed the
chief part of his time.  They knew how to appreciate his nobler and to
love his gentler attributes and qualities; they united in a warm interest
for his future fate; they combated his Philosophy of Inaction; and they
felt that it was because he was not happy that he was not wise.
Experience was to him what ignorance had been to Alice.  His faculties
were chilled and dormant.  As affection to those who are unskilled in all
things, so is affection to those who despair of all things.  The mind of
Maltravers was a world without a sun!

CHAPTER III.


COELEBS, quid agam?*--HORACE.


* "What shall I do, a bachelor?"
IN a room at Fenton's Hotel sat Lord Vargrave and Caroline Lady
Doltimore,--two months after the marriage of the latter.
"Doltimore has positively fixed, then, to go abroad on your return from
Cornwall?"
"Positively,--to Paris.  You can join us at Christmas, I trust?"
"I have no doubt of it; and before then I hope that I shall have arranged
certain public matters, which at present harass and absorb me even more
than my private affairs."
"You have managed to obtain terms with Mr. Douce, and to delay the
repayment of your debt to him?"
"Yes, I hope so, till I touch Miss Cameron's income; which will be mine,
I trust, by the time she is eighteen."
"You mean the forfeit money of thirty thousand pounds?"
"Not I; I mean what I said!"
"Can you really imagine she will still accept your hand?"
"With your aid, I do imagine it!  Hear me.  You must take Evelyn with you
to Paris.  I have no doubt but that she will be delighted to accompany
you; nay, I have paved the way so far.  For, of course, as a friend of
the family, and guardian to Evelyn, I have maintained a correspondence
with Lady Vargrave.  She informs me that Evelyn has been unwell and
low-spirited; that she fears Brook-Green is dull for her, etc.  I wrote,
in reply, to say that the more my ward saw of the world, prior to her
accession, when of age, to the position she would occupy in it, the more
she would fulfil my late uncle's wishes with respect to her education and
so forth.  I added that as you were going to Paris, and as you loved her
so much, there could not be a better opportunity for her entrance into
life under the most favourable auspices.  Lady Vargrave's answer to this
letter arrived this morning: she will consent to such an arrangement
should you propose it."
"But what good will result to yourself in this project?  At Paris you
will be sure of rivals, and--"
"Caroline," interrupted Lord Vargrave, "I know very well what you would
say: I also know all the danger I must incur.  But it is a choice of
evils, and I choose the least.  You see that while she is at Brook-Green,