aturally giving to wealth and station and ability their
fixed importance in life; not over-apt to single out for eulogium some
quiet goodness; rather inclined to speak with irony of pretensions to
virtue; rarely speaking but with respect of the worldly seemings which
rule mankind. All these had their inevitable effect upon that keen,
quick, yet moody and reflective intellect.

Sir Miles removed at last to Laughton. He gave up London,--why, he
acknowledged not to himself; but it was because he had outlived his age.
Most of his old set were gone; new hours, new habits, had stolen in.
He had ceased to be of importance as a marrying man, as a personage
of fashion; his health was impaired; he shrank from the fatigues of a
contested election; he resigned his seat in parliament for his native
county; and once settled at Laughton, the life there soothed and
flattered him,--there all his former claims to distinction were still
fresh. He amused himself by collecting, in his old halls and chambers,
his statues and pictures, and felt that, without fatigue or trouble, he
was a greater man at Laughton in his old age than he had been in London
during his youth.

Lucretia was then thirteen. Three years afterwards, Olivier Dalibard
was established in the house; and from that time a great change became
noticeable in her. The irregular vehemence of her temper gradually
subsided, and was replaced by an habitual self-command which rendered
the rare deviations from it more effective and imposing. Her pride
changed its character wholly and permanently; no word, no look of scorn
to the low-born and the poor escaped her. The masculine studies which
her erudite tutor opened to a grasping and inquisitive mind, elevated
her very errors above the petty distinctions of class. She imbibed
earnestly what Dalibard assumed or felt,--the more dangerous pride of
the fallen angel,--and set up the intellect as a deity. All belonging
to the mere study of mind charmed and enchained her; but active and
practical in her very reveries, if she brooded, it was to scheme, to
plot, to weave, web, and mesh, and to smile in haughty triumph at
her own ingenuity and daring. The first lesson of mere worldly wisdom
teaches us to command temper; it was worldly wisdom that made the once
impetuous girl calm, tranquil, and serene. Sir Miles was pleased by
a change that removed from Lucretia's outward character its chief
blot,--perhaps, as his frame declined, he sighed someti