Alice, or the Mysteries — Complete

								

himself that this was the case, he had intended at Dover to hurry at
once to Burleigh, and merely write to Cleveland that he was returned to
England. But his heart would not suffer him to enjoy this cruel luxury
of self-mortification, and his horses' heads were turned to Richmond
when within a stage of London. He had spent two days with the good old
man, and those two days had so warmed and softened his feelings that
he was quite appalled at his own dereliction from fixed principles!
However, he went before Cleveland had time to discover that he was
changed; and the old man had promised to visit him shortly.
This, then, was the state of Ernest Maltravers at the age of
thirty-six,--an age in which frame and mind are in their fullest
perfection; an age in which men begin most keenly to feel that they are
citizens. With all his energies braced and strengthened; with his mind
stored with profusest gifts; in the vigour of a constitution to which a
hardy life had imparted a second and fresher youth; so trained by stern
experience as to redeem with an easy effort all the deficiencies and
faults which had once resulted from too sensitive an imagination and too
high a standard for human actions; formed to render to his race the most
brilliant and durable service, and to secure to himself the happiness
which results from sobered fancy, a generous heart, and an approving
conscience,--here was Ernest Maltravers, backed, too, by the appliances
and gifts of birth and fortune, perversely shutting up genius, life,
and soul in their own thorny leaves, and refusing to serve the fools and
rascals who were formed from the same clay, and gifted by the same God.
Morbid and morose philosophy, begot by a proud spirit on a lonely heart!

CHAPTER V.


LET such amongst us as are willing to be children again, if it be
only for an hour, resign ourselves to the sweet enchantment that
steals upon the spirit when it indulges in the memory of early
and innocent enjoyment.
D. L. RICHARDSON.
AT dinner, Caroline's lively recital of their adventures was received
with much interest, not only by the Merton family, but by some of the
neighbouring gentry who shared the rector's hospitality. The sudden
return of any proprietor to his old hereditary seat after a prolonged
absence makes some sensation in a provincial neighbourhood. In this
case, where the proprietor was still young, unmarried, celebrated, and
handsome, the sensation was of course proportionably increased. Caroline
and Evelyn were beset by questions, to which the former alone gave
any distinct reply. Caroline's account was, on the whole, gracious and
favourable, and seemed complimentary to all but Evelyn, who thought that
Caroline was a very indifferent portrait-painter.
It seldom happens that a man is a prophet in his own neighbourhood; but
Maltravers had been so little in the county, and in his former visit his