Though, as you have said, the vernal bloom
Of his first spirits fading, leaves him changed,
’Tis not to worse. His mind is as a meadow
Of various grasses, rich and fresh beneath,
But o’er the surface some that come to seed
Have cast a colour of sobriety.
EDWIN THE FAIR.
Let us go forth, and resolutely dare
In sweat of brow to toil our little day;
And if a tear flow on our task of care
In memory of those spring hours past away
Brush it not by!
Our hearts to God, to brother men
Aid, labour, blessing, prayer, and then
To these, a sigh.
R. M. MILNES.
Time flies. This is sometimes a truism, trite, unmeaning, and
common-place; and sometimes a truth of very serious import. At the
present moment, the latter character may certainly be claimed for the
remark, for we have to fly rapidly over a large space of time, and
a large portion of life. Ten years have come and gone,--ten years of
youth and vigour,--ten years full of feeling, and full of event, had
we the time to dwell upon them.
It was at the end of these ten years, and again at the close of a
beautiful August evening, that Ernest De Grey stood on the brow of
the hill which overlooked his former home, on the very spot which had
witnessed the announcement of his lost hopes, and his altered destiny.
It is difficult exactly to define in what romance consists; but there
are events in life, peculiar combinations of circumstances to which
the epithet romantic is at once, and without thought, applied. These
events need not be strange or startling; they may be brought about
in the easiest and most natural manner; the steps which lead to the
combination may be each in themselves obvious and commonplace; and
yet over the whole there rests a halo--a poetic colouring, which
is felt by the most unpoetic and insensible. Something, no doubt,
there is in the character of the persons to whom such events occur;
for there are persons whose cold hands and shallow glances turn all
they touch, and all that is spread before them into dryness and
insipidity. It would, however, have required a very remarkable degree
of coldness and dryness to dissipate the romantic colouring which
rested on the circumstance (although nothing could be simpler or more
commonplace than the events which led to it), that Ernest De Grey was
appointed to the living of the parish in which his former home stood.
This appointment was, as it seemed, a mere chance. He was a curate in
an adjoining county, but there was a distance of thirty miles between
his new and his old abode. He was invited by his rector to accompany
him on a visit to the bishop of the diocese. The visit lasted but
a few hours. Ernest spoke little, and little was said to him. He
was not aware,--his rector was not aware,--that he had excited any
peculiar degree of attention; yet a few weeks afterwards the living
of the Parish of Cranleigh was offered to the young curate:
“A chance it seem’d to be,
But such a chance as rules our destiny.”
And once more Ernest stood and gazed upon the beauty of his lost
inheritance;--and fondly and admiringly his eye wandered round; but
the bound of the heart with which he had heard of his destiny,--but
the rapture with which he had contemplated a return to the scenes
of his youth was stilled and faded now. He stood and gazed, but his
heart was heavy, and his thoughts were joyless and sad.
We are, I think, too much disposed to look upon the clergy as an
order of men separate from ourselves; not separate in that sense in
which we _should_ so regard them, separated by a peculiar seal and
sanctity, but separate in nature: we are not, I mean, disposed to
allow for them the temptations and infirmities of a common humanity;
we are too much inclined to suppose that the vows which sever them
from their fellows, withdraw them also from the trials and failures
common to all in fighting against “the world, the flesh, and the
devil.” So at least it has always seemed to me, when the errors,
negligences, and infirmities of those who, while they are clergy,
still are men, are dwelt upon by a harsh-judging world.
Ernest De Grey was not one who would have fulfilled the perfect ideal
of what a clergyman should be. As a child, as a boy, he had been what
has been happily called “very human;” and very human he was still.
The life he led was a life opposed to every feeling and natural
impulse within him; and though he struggled manfully to submit
himself to it, there were many hours when his spirit was bowed by the
weight of unwelcome responsibility; and when his fancy revolted from
the picture of the perpetual struggle and warfare before him. He was
one of those separated by the seal of Heaven from their fellow men;
but many unmarked by that seal were less tied and bound to earth than
he, by the weight of a craving earth-loving nature.
He had never repented of the resolution so suddenly taken in the old
man’s room,--he would have repeated it again and again: but that
resolution had been taken not from any call he had felt to duties
so serious, to an office so holy, but simply from a motive of love
and duty to his mother; and that motive being but a human motive,
was not at all times sufficiently powerful to animate him amidst the
painful, and often thankless, tasks to which he was called to devote
himself. Let it not be supposed that Ernest should be blamed for
having undertaken a responsibility so solemn, from a human motive.
That motive, filial duty, is in itself so pure, is from “passion’s
dross so refined and clear,” so contains within itself the germ of
all religious feeling, that none have ever acted upon it, in any
course of duty, or condition of life, and failed to find a blessing.
It is but the statement--a fact,--it was a human motive; and though
sufficiently powerful to prevent his resolution from wavering, it
could not at all times turn his repulsive tasks into a labour of
love and delight.
There was no want of seriousness in the manner in which Ernest first
prepared for, and finally entered upon his labours. Once resolved, he
endeavoured as best he could to render himself not unworthy the holy
office he held. His mind was so true and sincere, that there was no
tampering with his conscience,--no excusing himself under the plea of
natural unfitness; so far as he saw his duties, he tried to fulfil
them. He was not perhaps very quick in discovering them: other eyes
might see them straight before him, and he might pass them by; but
once beheld, they were firmly and unshrinkingly performed. On minds
of this character a blessing must ever rest; for there is nothing to
be compared in value to truth and sincerity of heart. But improvement
is a gradual process: day by day the strife of inclination with duty
has to be renewed; and they are strong indeed who never faint and
are weary. Ernest had not this strength: he was far, still very
far, from perfection; his duties were to him but duties still, hard
oftentimes and laborious: his life was warfare still; his future, a
future still on which his eyes scarcely dared to rest.
Since last we met him he had passed from boyhood into manhood; and
the deepened expression of his countenance, and the subdued and even
serious quietness of his manners bore witness to the change. But the
change was not very deep,--in heart he was still a boy: the thirst
for happiness was still as strong, the tastes of his boyhood still
springing up as fresh and vigorous within him. It was not therefore
strange that as he stood and gazed upon the scenes of his free and
happy youth,--as he thought of the days when the name of duty had
been a light and unfelt burden, his spirits should sink and a cloud
of unusual melancholy settle about his head.
Fully, however, to understand his mood of mind, more perfectly to
pourtray his character, and to reveal him in all the weakness and
humanity of his nature, we must go back to an earlier hour of the
day, and bear him company on his first arrival at his new home.
It was about four o’clock when he dismounted from a post-chaise, and
entered the parsonage house. It was a pretty low-roofed picturesque
building with a green lawn before it, and a flower-garden on one
side. It stood at the borders of the village, thirty or forty yards
from the road, shadowed from the heat by fine spreading oaks, and
guarded from intrusive eyes by a well-covered trellised paling.
In former days he had often regarded it with admiration; of late
he had often thought of it with pleasure, but as he entered it
now he sighed. It was in all the dreary discomfort and untidiness
of a new arrival; and although such a state of things is to some
minds an incentive to exertion, and an agreeable excitement, it
was not so to him. He was not luxurious,--he had never been so:
but he liked comfort,--he liked domestic comfort, he liked to
feel at home. He walked into the lonely drawing-room, and sighed
again. He was now to live alone; and of late he had thought of
this with much pleasure--(for although naturally of a joyous and
elastic disposition, he was fastidious in his tastes; not endowed
with superhuman patience when those tastes were offended; and much
had suffered under the trite remarks and harmless, but unmeaning
pleasantries of the good dull rector, with whom he had hitherto
resided): but now as he entered the disorderly room, a sense of
desolation made his heart sink. And while still looking about him
with a gaze of blank despair, his temper was assailed, and well-nigh
overcome, by the worry of domestic cares, and the demand upon his
wandering attention for considerations of household economy. In
short, the first effect of the return to scenes which, at a distance,
he had pictured as “redolent with joy and youth,” was far from
bringing with it the fresh and joyous feeling of “a second spring.”
“Pray have these boxes carried away, it looks so uncomfortable,” he
said to the lady who had been selected from the village to preside
over his household, as he wandered round the carpetless drawing-room,
strewed as it was with hay and straw, paper, and lids of boxes.
“I can’t do it myself, sir,” replied Mrs. Cook, who was heated with
scrubbing and unpacking, and who among her many virtues did not boast
of an imperturbable temper; “and Thomas says he can’t do it, and John
is looking after the horse.”
“Well, Mrs. Cook, I shall go out for a walk; and if you can get
anybody to clear the room, I shall be much obliged to you.”
“If you please, sir, will you give me the keys of the linen-chest?
The things must be got somehow before night; and there’s more to do
than a horse could do already.”
“I haven’t got the keys.”
“Thomas bade me ask you, sir: he says you gave _him_ no keys.”
After a search, the keys were found; and Ernest took up his hat and
prepared for a retreat.
“What do you please to have for dinner, sir?” Mrs. Cook began again.
“Oh, I leave that entirely to you. I suppose you have ordered
something into the house?”
“I did, sir, make so bold, without orders, for I got no orders from
nobody. And where will you please to dine; and what time, sir, do you
please to have dinner served up? It isn’t my way, sir, to be without
orders, and it’s more than a servant can abear to have no notice
taken when she does her best.”
“I will take more notice another day,” Ernest said, good-naturedly.
“Put dinner where you please, wherever you can find an empty table;
and it had better be ready at seven o’clock.”
“There’s no end of things wanting in the kitchen, sir; there isn’t
a boiler to be seen, and the jack is in a sad ricketty state, and I
can’t find no pastry-roller nowhere; and to-morrow’s Sunday, too!”
“Never mind for the present,” he said, indifferently; “I suppose we
shall get right in time.” And he put on his hat and opened the door.
“There’s been no orders given, sir, about the rooms; there’s been no
orders given about nothing. I never heard of such a way of coming
to a place. I made so bold as to choose an apartment for myself and
my small matters; but Thomas has got no orders, and he doesn’t know
where to lay out your honour’s things; and the house will all be
topsy-turvy, if there isn’t some notice taken.”
Ernest put down his hat, and followed his conductress over the house,
agreeing to every suggestion she chose to make; till coming to a room
a few steps higher than the others, from the window of which a sight
of Clare Abbey might be caught, he said, “No, Mrs. Cook, I change my
mind: this shall be my room.”
“This, sir? Why, it’s no better than a coalhole compared to those
more spacious apartments. It will do for a young gentleman from
college, sir, or for a traveller for a night or so, but not for your
honour.”
“It must do for me,” he said, laughing, “and the travellers shall
have the more spacious rooms;” and he stood leaning against the
window, unheeding the remonstrances which were poured upon his ear.
He was choosing for himself a dangerous indulgence. How dangerous he
could not guess.
“Is Lord Vere in the country?” he inquired at last.
“Yes, sir; his lordship is always in the country.”
“Has he many children?”
“He has but the two, sir--Mr. St. Maur and the young lady.” In the
anticipation of a little gossip, Mrs. Cook drew nearer, and laying
aside her state and offended dignity, and with her dignity her more
select phraseology, she continued: “If you wants to know about the
fam’ly, sir, I can’t tell you but very little about them; for though
they lives here the whole year round, they never comes amongst the
poor as your good mamma used to do. Sometimes I sees her ladyship and
the young lady in the bairooche, as they drives through Cranleigh
now and again; and now and again I sees them at Church: but they
isn’t very regular church-goers, only when Mr. St. Maur is at home.
He is a very fine young gentleman, sir, and discreet in his ways,
I hears; but then he’s as haught and as proud as--, I forgets the
caparison, sir. Oh! they all wants a deal of good doing to them, and
a deal of preaching, sir, and that’s the truth.”
“We all do that, Mrs. Cook,” said Ernest, gravely, retreating from
the window. There was no feeling stronger in his mind than charity in
his judgments. His sense of his own weakness made him, perhaps, even
faultily tender in dealing with the temptations and infirmities of
others.
“Well, they does, sir,” she said, complacently; “but some wants it
more nor others: and I often thinks as I sees my lady prancing along
in her bairooche, how hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of
heaven.”
Ernest said no more; but leaving Mrs. Cook to arrange the house,
he set off on the lonely ramble to which alone his melancholy mood
of mind was suited. Few as her words of gossip had been, they had
excited another train of sad and a new train of repining feeling
within. He remembered his own youthful dreams of philanthropy, vague
indeed, but dwelt on many an hour fondly in his breast. He remembered
how he had intended to be the father of the tenantry; realizing
some perhaps never perfectly fulfilled ideal of a gentleman of the
olden time,--how his cares and attentions to their welfare were
to bring in “a golden year,” where there was to be no more want,
no more distress, no more crime. He turned his eye as he passed
along upon the Church, still disfigured by unsightly additions and
monstrous deformities, and he remembered the hopes he had once so
enthusiastically formed of restoring it to the beauty and purity of
its original proportions; and dreaming as he went, he marvelled why
the opportunities had been denied to him which would have been used
to the glory of God and for the good of man. And while he indulged in
the easy pleasure of imaginative virtue and benevolence, he scarcely
thought of the holier, if not higher, labours to which he had been
called.
He reached the brow of the hill which overlooked the valley, and
there, leaning his back against a gate, he stood with folded arms
indulging in a luxury of meditation; while unreproved, although
unbidden, these vague, regretful, distrustful thoughts chased each
other through his mind.
He was roused from his reverie by the sound of a sweet voice and a
musical laugh from the high-road. Turning hastily round, he observed
two figures on horseback approaching at a rapid pace. He felt
interested and excited, and contemplated them with much curiosity.
One was a young man, extremely handsome and _aristocratic_ in his
appearance, whose proud and stately bearing, visible even at a first
glance, suited well with the lofty style of his beauty. The other
was a young lady,--very young,--she could not be much more than
sixteen. Her likeness to her companion betrayed at once the nature of
their relationship; but it was a likeness of a peculiar kind, which
struck you strangely at first, and was almost forgotten afterwards.
Her features were the same finely-carved regular features--her head
had the same peculiar stately grace--her whole appearance the same
air of “patrician beauty.” But in her movements, in her countenance,
in her large, long-shaped hazel eyes, half mischievous, half
melancholy, there was a wildness, an airiness, a grace, which gave
to the character of her beauty an expression totally dissimilar. She
was dressed in a fashion which is, I hope, gradually displacing the
modern ungraceful riding-dress. A prettily-shaped jacket of black
velvet fell over the skirt of her habit, and the long curls of her
bright gold, or pale auburn hair, floated from beneath a low Spanish
hat, round which a lace veil was loosely streaming. She formed the
very ideal for the lady of a hawking picture of the olden time;
indeed about her and about her companion likewise there was that
ideal, poetic, colouring, which one expresses, perhaps somewhat
vaguely by the words “looking like a picture.”
In passing the place where Ernest stood, the horse of the young lady,
either from a rut or other obstruction in the road, or from some
carelessness on the part of the fair rider, stumbled, and, for a
moment, there was danger of her being thrown to the ground. With one
bound, Ernest swung himself over the gate, and laid his hand upon the
bridle; but before he could grasp it, the young lady had recovered
her seat, and laughingly patting the beautiful and penitent creature,
exclaimed, “Poor Brenda, I wonder whose fault it was!”
Looking up immediately afterwards, she was about to thank Ernest, who
had retreated to the side of the road; but she was forestalled by her
companion. With some haughtiness the young man raised his hat, and
slightly bending his head, said,
“My sister is much obliged to you for your assistance”; then,
stooping down, and stroking Brenda’s flowing mane, he continued,
“Come, Camilla, it is late;” and immediately put his own horse in
motion.
The young lady followed without speaking, but turning with a smile to
Ernest, and a flitting blush on her fair cheek, she courteously bowed
her head, her long curls sweeping over the horse’s neck as she bent,
and rode away.
Ernest looked after them with an eager, intense, inquiring gaze, till
they were out of sight; he then bounded over the gate, and rapidly
retraced his steps homewards. But he was no longer the same person
who had so languidly wandered along an hour before. He glanced over
the valley, and brighter than the noon-day sun fell the shadows
of approaching evening across his path. Where was the gloom of
despondency, where were the cheerless prospects of a life of struggle
and warfare? A ray of light had fallen across his path, a spark of
interest was kindling the future into beauty. His life, which of late
he had contemplated as “toward evening,” shone bright again with
“hues of the rich unfolding morn.” New thoughts, new hopes, new
strength, new self-devotion, new animation,
“By some soft touch invisible
Around his path were taught to swell.”
How or wherefore this change of temper, he could not perhaps himself
have explained; yet there was nothing strange or miraculous in it.
The mere sight of these two beings, by fancy easily named,--strangers
in their individual character, but no strangers to the haunts of his
imagination:--the sight of them in their youth and their beauty,
and gifted with that lofty high-born air, which so strongly appeals
to the fancy, this was in itself enough to lure him into a future
he sometimes shrank from contemplating, with thoughts of hope, and
interest, and companionship. But such sudden changes of mood are by
no means uncommon. Ernest’s lively and sensitive mind was peculiarly
susceptible of sudden impressions; for his was
“That nature of humanity
Which both ways doth rebound--rejoicing now
With soarings of the soul, anon brought low.”
But all men--with the exception of a very few, who, as Fuller says,
“seem to be made of one entire bone, without any joints”--are as
easily acted upon as the chords of the Æolian harp. A fleeting cloud,
whose form we have scarcely time to seize, passes over our brain,
and we sink into gloom; a soft breath, coming we know not whence,
and going we know not where, plays upon the cloud, and it dissolves
into mist again. There are some verses by Hood, which quaintly, but
prettily, describe one of these sudden, insensible changes, from
darkness to light:
“Farewell life! my senses swim,
And the world is growing dim;
Thronging shadows cloud the light,
Like the advent of the night.
Colder, colder, colder still,
Upward starts a vapour chill;
Strong the earthy odour grows,
I smell the mould above the rose.
“Welcome life! the spirit strives,
Strength returns, and hope revives;
Cloudy fears and shapes forlorn
Fly like shadows at the morn;
O’er the earth there comes a bloom,
Sunny light, for sullen gloom;
Warm perfume for vapours cold,
I smell the rose above the mould.”
On Ernest’s return to the parsonage, he found an invitation awaiting
him, from which he would gladly have freed himself. His young curate
stood in the doorway, expressing his regret that duty should have
compelled him to be absent during the afternoon, and requesting,
with an earnestness which would take no denial, that Ernest would
leave his uncomfortable home, and pass the evening with his mother
and himself. Mrs. Cook warmly seconded the propriety of the step,
and Ernest gave way. He had spent four hours of an unceasingly rainy
day at the house of his curate on the occasion of his induction, a
month before this time, and the remembrance of those four hours were
such as to make him shrink from a repetition, especially on this day,
when his mind was full of thoughts on the past, the present, and the
future. But he was one of those people who have an innate dislike to
a fuss; and he was too happy to escape from Mr. Hervey’s persuasions
and Mrs. Cook’s remonstrances by a hasty acquiescence.
Mr. Hervey, the curate, was an amiable young man, exemplary
in his conduct both as a son and a clergyman; but he was dull
and commonplace, and more tedious than dull people usually are,
from the insatiable desire which possessed him for information.
From dulness of a talkative narrating kind it is easy to escape,
the unfettered mind wandering pleasantly during the flow of the
discourse; but questions are a serious infliction. Mr. Hervey’s
conversation was chiefly confined to the interrogative mood. He loved
information,--not valuable information only, but all information.
He would ask in the same breath the price of a horse and its name;
he would follow up a question on an abstruse point of geology or
astronomy by an inquiry as to the relative heights of two unconnected
individuals; and the answers to every question were laid side by side
in his mind, comprehensively classed together under the head of so
much information. His mother was homely and unrefined; but she had
more sense and observation than her son, and a goodness of heart
with which it was impossible not to be pleased. For her habit of
narration also, often tedious and pointless as it was, there was this
great excuse to be made, that it had been acquired, and necessarily
fixed, during the long course of years in which she had been engaged
in bestowing information on her son. They were both, however,
considered in the light of companions, rather serious trials to a
preoccupied and wandering mind.
“Did you make a long journey to-day?” asked Mr. Hervey of Ernest, as
they sat down to dinner.
“Yes; I came from London.”
“What do you suppose to be the exact distance from here to London?”
“I don’t know. I suppose between eighty and ninety miles.”
“You came by the railroad, of course?”
“Oh yes, of course,” Ernest said, smiling.
“And I dare say you came in five or six hours. Wonderful! wonderful!”
sighed old Mrs. Hervey. “I don’t know how it may be, I hope there
is no harm in it; but I sometimes do think it never was intended
that men should fly through the air as they do now-a-days. When
first I came to this part of the country,--we came on a visit to old
Mr. Hargrave, at the Woods,--it’s fifty years ago--I was a girl of
eighteen--we were three days in coming from London. The first night
we slept at Henley-on-Thames, my father was knocked up even then; but
he was an invalid, to be sure; and the second night we slept--where
did we sleep, Edward?--how strange, that I should forget! I know
there was a waiter with a spotty face; for my mother, who was
always nervous about infection, said, ‘I wonder if he has got the
small-pox.’ But, however, that is no matter now: and the third night
we arrived at the Woods.”
Such is a specimen of the conversation with which Mr. and Mrs. Hervey
entertained their guest during dinner and the early part of the
evening. Ernest exerted himself, however, to attend, to control his
thoughts during some thrice-repeated narrations from Mrs. Hervey,
and to bear patiently his curate’s more tedious interrogatories; and
he was at length rewarded for his endeavours by the sudden raising
of a subject which possessed a strange attraction for him, and which
a distaste to prying and gossip, joined to some other mysterious
feelings, had alone prevented him from introducing.
“What do you suppose to be the prevailing style of architecture in
which Clare Abbey is built?” inquired Mr. Hervey.
It was the first time that his former home had been mentioned, Mrs.
Hervey, with more tact than her son, leaving the subject for Ernest
to introduce or not at his pleasure; but the quietness with which he
now entered upon the discussion convinced her that her abstinence (a
very painful one) had been needless; and she joyfully seized upon a
topic on which her tongue had been “itching” to expatiate.
“Are you acquainted with Lord and Lady Vere, Mr. De Grey?” she asked,
when the architecture had been discussed, and her son was satisfied.
“Not at all,” he replied.
“You are not singular in that respect,” remarked Mr. Hervey.
“Edward is quite right,” rejoined his mother. “Nobody can be said to
know them. I don’t know how it is; we have dined at Clare Abbey--how
many times, Edward?--three times, I think, in three years, and Lady
Vere has called here as many times, perhaps; but I don’t know how
it is, we don’t know them; and everybody about here says the same
thing. Lord Vere is never seen. Indeed, Mr. De Grey, you will have
hard work: if he comes to church half a dozen times a year, it is
all he does do. I hope I’m saying nothing unkind, Edward; but Mr. De
Grey will have eyes as well as we have, and the truth is the truth.
Lady Vere was not much better a year or two ago; but Mr. St. Maur,
they say, persuades her to be more regular; and we shall see her
to-morrow, as he is at home, I don’t doubt.”
“Did you ever see the young St. Maurs?” inquired Mr. Hervey.
“Not unless, as I suppose, I met them riding this afternoon.”
“If you met young people riding, Mr. De Grey, there’s no doubt that
you met the young St. Maurs. When Mr. St. Maur is at home, he and
his sister are always together riding and walking. Mr. St. Maur is at
Oxford at present (that is, not at present; you understand, Mr. De
Grey, vacation time); and he remains there a year longer, I believe.
He is remarkably clever as we hear, and they say he is to come into
Parliament in a year or so, and altogether he looks very high. It
is a sad pity that he is so haughty, for there’s no doubt but he is
a well-disposed young man; but that’s the way with genius in this
world. There’s not a soul hereabouts that he thinks fit to associate
with. Edward would be very happy to be a companion when he’s not too
busy, but if he meets him in his walks or his rides, Mr. St. Maur
bows and asks him how he does, and there’s an end of it;--and the
young lady never leaves her brother when he is at home; and when he’s
not at home nobody knows what becomes of her. She leads a sad dull
life, poor thing, and she feels it I’m sure she does; but she’s a
sweet pretty creature,--isn’t she, Mr. De Grey?”
“Very pretty,” he replied quietly; but he coloured slightly as he
spoke, for a quiet “very pretty” was _not_ what he had thought her.
“What a strange thing a family likeness is!” remarked Mr. Hervey.
“Ah! Edward, you say that because you think Miss St. Maur so like her
brother; but I don’t see it. For my part I had rather have one like
Miss St. Maur, than twenty such as that proud young gentleman. It’s
a shame for me to say so, I, Edward’s mother too, for Mr. St. Maur
is far more hopeful and religious, than his sister; but then she’s
young, Mr. De Grey, and she’s a sweet pretty creature, and that’s the
truth; and when she smiles, I could kiss her a hundred times over.
I never see her, but I think of a cousin of my own, dead and gone
these thirty years; sweet Amy Mills! She was just such another sweet
thoughtless thing; there was no seriousness in her! but she fell ill
before she was twenty, and she bore a long painful illness with the
patience of a young saint as she was; and when she died, for she
died in her early youth, she looked so lovely, that there was one
who said she was not a dead child of earth, but a sleeping angel of
heaven. And I’ve often seen it; such is the end of those wild sweet
heedless things. But you are not going, Mr. De Grey; it’s early yet.”
“What is the exact hour by your watch,” inquired Mr. Hervey.
“Nearly ten o’clock; and I have a good deal to arrange to-night.”
“Do you suppose that your time is perfectly correct by London time?”
With some difficulty, Ernest extricated himself from the offered
society of Mr. Hervey, and walked thoughtfully home alone.