On his return home, Burrel found that the horses which he expected
from London had arrived in high condition, having performed the
journey by slow and careful stages. The appearance of this new
accession to his dignity was not, of course, without its effect upon
the good people of Emberton, and, "Have you seen Mr. Burrel's
beautiful horses?" was a general question among the male part of the
inhabitants; while all the ladies of the place, of course, were not in
the least anxious to see the tall, dark, handsome, mysterious stranger
ride forth upon some one of those three steeds whose fame already
filled the town.
Those who had such expectations, however, were long disappointed, for,
during the whole of the following morning, Mr. Burrel never set foot
beyond his door; and it was near four o'clock when his servant, on
horseback, proceeded toward Mrs. Darlington's, with a small traveling
portmanteau, thus giving notice that the master himself was soon to
follow. About half-past four, or a quarter to five, a groom appeared
at the door with a splendid dark bay horse, and a moment after, Burrel
himself came forth, looked at the girths, the stirrups, and the curb,
and then putting his foot in the stirrup, swung himself easily into
the saddle. The horse stood as still as marble till it felt its
master's heel, and then, as if cut out of one piece, away went
both--without the slightest regard to high-road--straight across the
country toward Mrs. Darlington's house, which was seen crowning the
distant hill.
"Happy Mrs. Darlington!"--thought the ladies of Emberton, as they
gazed out, and saw the horseman clear the fence at a bound, and then
canter lightly over the sloping fields that led away toward her
dwelling. "Happy Mrs. Darlington!" and Mrs. Darlington was a happy
woman; but as there are at least a thousand ways, in this intellectual
world, of being happy, we shall take leave to give a slight sketch of
_Mrs. Darlington's way_.
Mrs. Darlington was a widow, and her happiness was farther increased
by being a widow with a large fortune. Nor was her fortune alone
derived from her ci-devant husband, for she had passed through all the
three stages of female felicity--that of co-heiress, heiress, and rich
widow, with a very slight taste of the necessary purgatory preceding
the last happy climax. Who was her father, matters not to this book;
he was dead, and his ancestors had him in the dust--for, as the
Spectator says, "He had ancestors just as well as you and I, if he
could but have told their names." This, however, it was supposed, from
some defect in the family memory, he could not do; but in regard to
his daughter, who was neither very handsome, nor very ugly, the defect
was soon remedied. She had every sort of instruction that the known
world could produce; her father luckily died early; she had no
relations to make her vulgar; she married Mr. Darlington, a man of
rank and station--easily acquired the slang and ease of fashionable
life; and adopted boldly, and without remorse of conscience, the whole
of her husband's relations. Her husband found that his wife brought
him fortune, good luck, and no family. His affairs, to use the
seaman's term, righted, and after four years' marriage, he died,
leaving her, out of pure gratitude, widowhood, fortune, and his
relations.
Mrs. Darlington, having penetrated into the arcana, and got all she
wanted--an introduction and a station in society--determined to taste
no more of matrimony herself; though with laudable zeal she was ever
willing to promote it among her friends and neighbors. She was
naturally somewhat of a sentimental turn, but mingled and kept down by
so sufficient a portion of small sensualities--I mean the eating, and
drinking, and soft lying, and, in short, the comfortable sensualities,
nothing worse--that the sentimentality never became vulgar or
troublesome. Nay, indeed, I might say, it never became apparent, and
showed itself rather as a convenient sort of tender consideration for
the wishes and feelings of young people of suitable ages and
descriptions, and likely to fall in love with each other, than as any
thing personal. In most other things, she was one of those very
ordinary persons, perfectly ladylike and at their ease, with a small
degree of taste in the fine arts--drew tolerably, liked music, and
would sometimes play on the piano--was fond of fine scenery--spoke
French well, with the exception of a slight confusion in the
genders--had an idea or two of Italian, and had sketched the
Colosseum. Added to all these high qualities, she was extremely
good-natured, very fond of her friends, and of herself; quiet, in no
degree obtrusive, with a sufficient share of vanity never to fancy
herself neglected, and yet not enough to run against the vanity of any
one. A little tiresome she was, it is true, from a potent mixture of
insipidity; but who is there so splenetic as not to forgive the only
evil quality over which one can fall sound asleep and wake without a
headache?
Mrs. Darlington's common course of life was to travel during six
months of the year, accompanied by as many young marriageable friends
as she thought might do credit to her taste and kindness; and as she
had a very extensive circle of acquaintances, at whose dwellings she
was always welcome, these journeys were generally pleasant, and
sometimes fortunate. Of the other six months, two were spent in
London, where Mrs. Darlington, dressed by Carson, in a manner at once
the most splendid and the most becoming her age, figured at dinner and
evening parties, and was exceedingly useful, both as a chaperon and a
fill-up; while the other four months were passed at her estate near
Emberton, with a house seldom entirely vacant, and dinner-parties
renowned for the delicacy of the _manger_.
Such was the lady to whose house Henry Burrel, Esq., had received an
invitation, solely upon the strength of the gossip of the village, and
a vague report, that Captain Delaware had met him at the Earl of
Ashborough's. The fact indeed was, that Mrs. Darlington's house was
completely vacant at the time, or she might have felt some scruples as
to asking a stranger, without some farther information regarding his
station in society than could be derived from the panegyric of the
doctor, whose knowledge of him went no farther than the cut of his
coat. She did, indeed, feel a little apprehensive after she had
dispatched the invitation, but the appearance of Burrel's servant, who
brought her his reply, the form of the note that contained it, and the
very handwriting, all convinced her that Henry Burrel must be a
gentleman, though it was in vain that she racked her imagination to
find out which of all the Burrels it could be.
When, about half-past four, Mr. Burrel's servant arrived, and
proceeded to prepare the room assigned to his master, with a sort of
ceremonious accuracy which argued the constant habit and custom of
ease and care, the footman, feeling for the anxiety of his
mistress--for footmen and ladies' maids know every thing--communicated
to Mrs. Hawkins, his mistress's maid, the result of his own
observations; and Mrs. Darlington sat down, with a composed mind, to
finish a sketch of the west shrubbery walk, till Mr. Burrel should
arrive; while of the rest of the guests she had invited, some had not
appeared, and some had retired to dress.
At length her eye caught, from the window, the apparition of some
person on horseback approaching the house, and in a few minutes Mr.
Burrel was announced. Graceful, easy, _posé_, Burrel's whole
appearance carried its own recommendation with it. He was one of those
men who, in speaking little, say much, and in a very few minutes he
was in high favor with Mrs. Darlington.
It now became necessary for him to dress, as he well knew that a lady
whose fondness for the good things of this life was so admitted as
Mrs. Darlington's world not brook the spoiling of her dinner; and
accordingly he rang, and was shown to his room. His toilet, indeed,
was not very long; and a few minutes after six, the hour named, found
him entering the drawing-room.
There were four persons already assembled, of whom Mrs. Darlington
herself was one. The face of the young lady who sat by her on the sofa
was, he thought, familiar to him; but it cost him more than one
glance, ere he recognized in the beautiful girl he now beheld, and who
was certainly as lovely a thing as ever the female part of creation
produced--it is saying a great deal, but it is true, nevertheless--it
required more than one glance, I say, before he recognized in her the
lady he had seen hanging upon the arm of Captain Delaware on the
preceding day.
Burrel, however, never looked surprised; and his claim upon Miss
Delaware's acquaintance was immediately admitted with a degree of
frank and smiling kindness, which arose partly, perhaps, from the high
character her brother had drawn of his stage-coach companion, but more
still, in all probability, from feeling that her father's reserve
might have given pain and offense. While he was still speaking with
Mrs. Darlington and Miss Delaware, and was just at one of these
before-dinner pauses in which the conversation flags, some one laid
his hand upon Burrel's arm, and turning round, he confronted a thin,
but hale elderly man, dressed in black, on whose fine gentlemanly
countenance was playing a smile, which had as much archness in its
composition as habitual gravity of expression would allow.
"My dear Henry," said the clergyman--for no one could look in his face
for a moment and doubt that he was a clergyman--"my dear Henry, what
have you been doing with yourself this many a day?"
The first look had shown Burrel an old and dear friend, and he shook
his hand heartily as Dr. Wilton. "I am still, I believe, acting as one
of what Tillotson calls '_fools at large_,'" replied the young
stranger, "and wandering about the world doing nothing."
"Nay, nay, Henry!" replied the other, "your report of yourself was
always less favorable than you deserved. You are not one to wander
about the world doing nothing--but speak to me a moment," and he drew
his younger companion gently toward the hollow of the bay window,
where they conversed for a few moments in a low tone, while one or two
of the neighboring gentlemen and ladies were announced, and entered
the room.
The dinner-bell rang immediately after; and the doors being thrown
open, Burrel advanced and took in Mrs. Darlington, though he would,
perhaps, have preferred a nearer place to Miss Delaware. But Dr.
Wilton took the end of the widow's table, and laughingly secured the
younger ladies to himself; so that Burrel was obliged to content
himself with talking elaborate nonsense to Mrs. Darlington, which to
do him all manner of justice, he executed with great gravity and
success.
"I do not like this Mr. Burrel," thought a sensible, middle-aged
county woman, who sat next to him on the other hand. "He's a coxcomb!"
thought a rough, shrewd, wealthy proprietor opposite. The shy young
fox-hunter, who sat a little farther down, and whose ideas were
strangely confined to horses, and dogs, and fences, and five-barred
gates, was inclined to cry, with Mungo, "D--n his impudence!" and, in
short, at the end of the table at which he himself sat, Burrel most
perversely contrived to give very general dissatisfaction to every one
but Mrs. Darlington. With her he ran over the slang of cookery, and
criticism, and ton, with the most wonderful emptiness.
There is certainly some strange perversity in the human heart, which
renders it so pleasant sometimes to make one's self disagreeable--ay,
and, for the express purpose of doing so, to assume a character
totally different from one's own. So, however, it is; and perhaps
Burrel was especially giving himself forth as a fop at the one end of
the table, because he very well knew that Dr. Wilton would not fail to
portray him differently at the other.
Such, indeed, was the fact. Blanche Delaware was a sort of pet of the
worthy clergyman; and he used to declare that he was always the
proudest man in the county when in company with her, for that he was
the only man she ever was known to flirt with. The affectionate term,
"My dear," which he always applied to Miss Delaware, was felt by her
as he intended it; and she looked up to him as, in some degree, a
second parent. His conversation with her almost immediately turned to
Burrel, whose appearance there had evidently surprised him.
"You seem an old friend of his?" said Miss Delaware, as soon as the
soup was gone, and a general buzz suffered her to ask the question
without particular notice. "Pray, is he so very admirable and charming
as he has convinced my brother he is, in a short journey of a hundred
miles?"
"He is something better than charming, my dear," replied Dr. Wilton.
"He is one of the noblest-hearted, finest-minded men in England."
At that very moment there was one of those unhappy breaks which make
low voices loud; and Burrel was heard descanting upon the merits of
Madeira after soup. "For Heaven's sake, never think of taking Sherry,
my dear madam!" he exclaimed. "After soup or macaroni, Madeira is the
only thing bearable."
Blanche Delaware looked up in Dr. Wilton's face with a smile full of
playful meaning. "Do not judge him by that," replied the clergyman,
speaking to the smile's purport--"do not judge him by that; I have
known him from his boyhood. He was my pupil as a youth, and has been
my friend as a man--and--"
"And that is evidence beyond rejection that he is all that is good and
amiable?" said Miss Delaware, seriously.
"Ay, and though he can talk her own kind of nonsense to a worthy lady
like that," replied Dr. Wilton, determined to revenge himself on Miss
Delaware for her smile, "he can talk nonsense equally agreeable to
younger and fairer ladies, my dear Blanche. So take care of your
little heart, my pretty dame."
Miss Delaware laughed gayly, in the full, ignorant confidence of a
heart that had known no wound; and the conversation dropped as far as
it regarded Burrel. He himself prolonged the idle gossip with which he
was amusing himself for some time; but finding, or fancying, that the
elder lady who sat next to him possessed a mind that could appreciate
better things, he gradually led the conversation to matters of more
general interest than _pieds de cochons à la St. Menehould_, or the
portraiture of gravel walks.
It is the most difficult man[oe]uvre in the tactics of conversation,
and shows greater skill, when executed neatly, than any other
evolution whatever, to change at once from the flimsy and the foolish
to the substantial and the good, without deviating into the heavy--to
slide down the diapason from the high notes of common-place chatter, to
the fine tenor of calm and sensible discourse, touching each semitone
and enharmonic difference as one goes, till the change is scarcely
felt, though the music may be richer. Burrel could do it when he
liked; but now he overdid it. From French dishes he speedily got to
France and the French people, and thence to the difference between the
French and English character, with an easy facility that made the
alteration of the subject seem nothing strange; but then he went a
little beyond.
"The French," he said, in answer to a question from his neighbor,
"have nothing of that sort of thing that we would call 'national
modesty.' They would look upon it as _mauvaise honte_, and each
Frenchman thinks himself fully justified in praising his own country
to the skies. It is they who believe it, that are foolish. They, the
French, call themselves the most civilized, well-informed people in
the world; and yet go into the provinces, and you will find a
peasantry more generally ignorant than perhaps any other country can
show. I myself resided for many months in a part of one of the most
cultivated departments of France, where the farmer on either hand of
the house in which I dwelt during the hunting season--each renting
many hundreds of acres of land--could neither read nor write. Where
could such a thing be found in England?"
"Ay, sir," cried the wealthy country gentleman, opposite; "but
their laws, sir, their laws--their wise and equitable courts of
justice--their civil and political liberty, sir--a model for all
nations; and which I hope some day to see fully adopted in this
country."
"May God forbid!" cried Burrel. "As to their political liberty, we
can not speak of it; for a thing that has never existed for ten years
together, without deviating into anarchy on the one hand, or sinking
into tyranny on the other, is something very like a nonentity. As to
civil liberty they have no such thing; and may Heaven avert the day
when an Englishman's house will be open to domiciliary visits at the
caprice of any man or body of men, or when he can not ride twenty
miles without being subjected to interruption, and a demand for his
passport!"
He now found that his conversation was getting too heavy, and would
fain have dropped it; but the other urged him somewhat warmly with,
"Their laws, sir--their laws! their courts of justice!" and Burrel
resolved that he should not rest even upon that.
"As to their courts," he replied, "I have been in many, and never did
I see the forms of justice so completely mocked. The judge renders
himself a party, and that party the accuser. The unhappy man who is to
be tried, placed on an elevated station in the face of all the court,
is himself cross-examined, and tortured by interrogations without end;
every tittle of the evidence against him is urged upon him by the
judge: he is obliged to answer and to plead to the accusation of each
witness on the adverse part, and woe be to him if he trip in the
smallest particular! If ever there was a plan invented for condemning
the innocent and the timid, and letting the guilty and the daring
escape, it is that of a French trial. The only security is in the
individual integrity and discrimination of the judges--in general most
exemplary men."
"That may be all very true, sir," replied the other, who, like many of
our countrymen, had been talked into believing the French system very
fine, without ever taking the trouble of examining accurately what the
French system is--"that may be all very true; but yet their laws,
sir--their laws!"
"I think," replied Burrel, more calmly than he had before spoken; for
the common-place absurdity of the other's commendation of what he did
not understand, had thrown even his cool mind off its guard--"I think,
if you will take the trouble of reading the book which contains their
codes, you will find that it is confined both in scope and detail; and
to show how iniquitous as well as absurd their laws are, we have only
to look at their law of succession, which prevents a man from
disposing of his property at his death, according to his own judgment
and inclination, whether he have acquired it by his personal labor or
by inheritance."
"A foolish law it is, indeed," said Dr. Wilton, who had been listening
attentively; "and would be a disgrace to the common sense of any
nation under the sun."
"Already," continued Burrel, "although the time since its enactment
has been so short--it is beginning to paralyze industry and commerce
in France--to degrade the higher orders, and to starve the lower."
"They must repeal it!" said Dr. Wilton; "they must repeal it, if they
be sane!"
"But there are some points, my dear sir, on which whole nations become
insane," replied Burrel, laughing, "and none more than the French. One
thing, however, is evident. They must either repeal it, or it will
effect the most baleful change that country ever underwent. Already
one sees every where fields no bigger than a handkerchief, which in
the next generation will have to be divided again between three or
four sons. Every thing else is split in the same way; and the argument
which the French hold, that commerce and industry will remedy the
effects of this continual partition, is a vain absurdity; for the
natural tendency of the partition itself is, by want of capital, to
ruin the commerce and paralyze the industry which they think will
remove its evils. Under its influence, the French must gradually
decline till they become a nation of beggars--universal beggary must
beget universal ignorance--and thus from a nation of beggars they must
become a nation of barbarians, with a country too small to support
their increased numbers, a fierce necessity of conquest, and the
concomitant hatred of better institutions than their own. Then woe to
Europe and the world! but beyond doubt--at least it is to be
hoped--they will change a law, the glaring absurdity of which strikes
every person of common understanding even in France."
"Why not let each individual control his property as he pleases?"
demanded Dr. Wilton. "Though I can not but feel that entails are often
beneficial, let them be done away if they will, but at least leave
each man to dispose of his property as he judges best in its immediate
transmission from himself to another."
"Nay, Mr. Burrel!" cried Mrs. Darlington, seeing him about to
reply--"nay, nay! have pity, I beseech you, upon us poor women."
"I must indeed apologize," answered Burrel, laughing; "but in truth,
we live in such a scientific age, that railroads and steam-engines,
geology and legislation, now form the staple chit-chat of society; and
mathematics is the food of babes and sucklings."
"The matter has become perfectly absurd," said Dr. Wilton: "and
whether from ignorance or design, I know not, but those who cater for
the lower orders in these things, instead of giving them those
instructions which may be useful to them in their station, which would
make them better, wiser, and more contented, choose for them alone
that species of knowledge which may make them discontented with their
state, without aiding to raise them honestly to a better."
"I will not be tempted any more to grave discussions, my dear sir,"
said Burrel, laughing, and looking toward Mrs. Darlington; "yet I can
not help adding, that the new-fashioned education of children is just
as ill adapted to children as the instruction forced upon mechanics is
unfitted for them. Lord deliver us from the little pragmatical race of
half-learned pedants that are springing up! I understand that they
have been obliged to dissolve one infant school in London, because it
was divided into two such furious parties of Neptunists and
Vulcanists; and the son of a cousin of my own talked to me upon reform
the other day so like Sir Francis Burdett, that I asked when the
little legislator was to be breeched."
The conversation soon became more general, though the party consisted
of ten--that most inconvenient of all numbers; and Burrel soon
regained that middle strain, half playful, half serious, which was
calculated to be more generally pleasing. This continued till the
ladies rose; and the few minutes that ensued ere the gentlemen
followed them, were passed by Burrel and Dr. Wilton in calling up
remembrances of old times, when they had lived together as pupil and
preceptor.
"Well, my dear doctor," said Burrel, "I always thought that your head
was fitted for a miter; and I doubt not that we shall see it so
adorned ere long."
"Not for a world!" cried Dr. Wilton; "and you, my dear boy, do nothing
toward it, I insist. I would not change my present state, with all the
blessed sufficiency that attends it--its opportunities of doing some
good to my fellow-creatures in quiet and unassailed obscurity--for the
painful, anxious, ill-requited life of a bishop, whom every rude,
unprincipled, and vulgar churl dares to attack, solely because he
knows that the churchman can neither rail again, nor chastise him as
other men would do. I would not change it, I say, on any account
whatever. I am happy as I am here in the country, and I want nothing
more."
"Now I could understand that, Dr. Wilton," said the young fox-hunter,
"if you ever mounted a red coat and followed the hounds. But you never
hunt nor shoot; and, unless your magisterial capacity affords you some
amusement, I can not conceive how you can like the country, which,
without hunting or shooting, is dull enough."
"Never dull to me!" replied Dr. Wilton; "never dull, and always
tranquil; and in it I shall be well contented to pass my life away,
saying with Seneca,
'Sic cum transiêrint mei
Nullo cum strepitu dies
Plebeius moriar senex!'"
A Latin quotation was of course enough to put an end to the session,
and the whole party rose.
It would seem that the purpose of assembling to dine together--the
mere act and fact of which assimilates one to the hog, as somebody has
said before me--is solely with a view to familiarize people with each
other by the open submission to a general infirmity--teaching the most
conceited that he must gulp and guzzle like the rest, and showing the
most diffident that the brightest and the best he can meet with, is
but a beast of prey like himself. Men therefore assemble at dinner,
and then generalize best. After dinner--when the tea and the coffee,
and the various tables laid out with their various calls upon
attention, prompt people to break into smaller parties--then is the
time to choose your own little knot, and individualize.
It matters very little how or why--though the arrangement was made by
the simplest process imaginable--but after dinner, Henry Burrel found
himself seated, in the far part of the room, with a sofa-table, and
innumerable books of drawings and prints upon it before him, and by
the side of Blanche Delaware. It is wonderful what stepping-stones
prints, and drawings, and annuals are to pleasant conversation, even
though the first be not quite so well handled as the pictures of Prout
or Stanley, and the latter contain nothing half so beautiful as
Liddell's "Lines upon the Moors."
Burrel had managed his approaches well, though he did it
unconsciously. He first stooped over the book of drawings that Miss
Delaware was examining, to look at one of those fair Italian scenes
where the long sunshine seems to stream forth from a spot beyond the
picture, and pour onward, till one can absolutely see its wavy
softness skip from point to point in its advance. He then spoke a few
words, in a quiet, every-day tone, upon Italian scenery. Miss Delaware
said that she had never had an opportunity of visiting Italy, but had
often heard her brother speak of it, with all his own wild rapture.
Burrel instantly took up the topic of her brother, well knowing that
it was one, round which that tender-footed thing, a woman's heart,
could play at ease; and while he spoke of Captain Delaware, he glided
quietly into the vacant place by her side, and proceeded with a
conversation which was destined to wander far and wide before it
ended.
There was a kindly gentleness in Burrel's tone as he began, a sort of
dreamy enthusiasm, slightly touched by a more gay and laughing spirit,
as he went on, together with a general leaven of the gentlemanly
feeling that springs from a noble heart, softening and tempering the
whole--which, united, addressed to Miss Delaware the most flattering
compliment that woman can receive, by showing that he knew her to be
worthy of very different conversation from that which he held with any
one else. Such conversation is the adulation of respect, esteem, and
admiration, expressed but not spoken.
Burrel's words were uttered with no particular emphasis--his eyes,
fine and expressive as they were, gave no peculiar meaning to his
sentences--the vainest beauty that ever grew old and ugly, could never
have persuaded herself that he was making love to her; and yet Blanche
Delaware could not but feel that there was a charm in the manners of
Henry Burrel, which might turn the head of many a one with a heart
less cold and indifferent than her own. A cold and indifferent heart
in a girl of nineteen! Ye gods! Such, however, she fancied it to be;
and, consequently, she talked with Henry Burrel of poetry, and
painting, and beautiful scenes, and sweet music, and noble deeds, and
generous feelings, and all those whirling spots of brightness that
dance unconnected through the sunshine of enthusiastic minds, with all
the ardor of innocence and youth, and unblighted feelings, and never
dreamed of its becoming any thing more. Mrs. Darlington, for her part,
had soon perceived that Burrel and Miss Delaware were deep in what
seemed interesting conversation. She did not pretend to divine what
might happen--she prognosticated nothing; she took no notice, and let
things take their course--but she carefully abstained from giving any
interruption; and, by a few slight but skillful turns, prevented their
little _tête-à-tête_ from being broken in upon so soon as it otherwise
would have been.
It was Dr. Wilton, who, in the simplicity of his heart, dissolved it
for the night; for, after having been talking earnestly for a few
minutes with the little surgeon of Emberton, about some of his poor
parishioners who were sick, his eye met that of Blanche Delaware, as
she still sat beside Burrel on the sofa, and it lighted up for a
moment with a glance of gay meaning, that called the blood into her
fair cheek. Burrel marked it all; and the next two answers which Miss
Delaware made to what he was saying, were sufficiently _à travers_ to
show him that the conversation, on her part, at least, rolled no
longer at its ease. To prolong it, under such circumstances, would be
a crime, as he well knew; and therefore he soon furnished her with an
excuse to join Mrs. Darlington.
The evening then proceeded as such evenings usually do, partly in
music and partly in idle gossip. Some stupid people played at whist;
and at ten o'clock the carriages of those who returned home were
announced. Dr. Wilton, who lived at twelve miles distance, and Blanche
Delaware, who lived at five, remained with Mrs. Darlington and Henry
Burrel; and the worthy clergyman, who felt himself in some degree
bound to prove his former pupil as charming as he had depicted him,
took care to lead the conversation to those subjects on which he well
knew Burrel would shine.
He did shine, too, but without striving to do it; and the evening wore
on, for another hour, as pleasantly as moments could fly. There is
something in the last hour of the day, if it have been itself a happy
one, which seems to concentrate all the pleasant things of the past.
It is like a fine evening sky, calm and sweet, and full of rays, that
are all the rosier because they are the last.
I do not know whether it would be fair or proper to follow Blanche
Delaware to her bed-room, and investigate what were her thoughts while
she was undressing and falling asleep; but as no such considerations
forbid with regard to Burrel, we may for a moment intrude upon his
privacy, first premising, that the door of his room opened very nearly
at the top of the great staircase, the landing-place of which formed a
sort of balustraded gallery, with a corridor running to the right and
left. His first thought, as he sat down for his silent servant to pull
off his shoes and stockings, it must be allowed, was of Blanche
Delaware, and he internally pronounced her a very charming girl. "It
is not her beauty," he thought, "though she is very beautiful; but it
is that freshness of mind, that fine unsophisticated heart, whose
rapid emotions, sparkling up unchecked to that sweet face, and
animating every movement of that fair form, give a thousand graces and
lovelinesses that art could never reach. One might very well fall in
love with such a girl as that. I must take care what I am about."
With this resolution to take care, Burrel would have dismissed the
subject; but still he thought of Blanche Delaware a good deal more
than was necessary; and, after having detained his servant full half
an hour longer than usual; went to bed, thinking of her still.