d shades of eve
and glowing like the heavens, Cadurcis joined his companions as they
entered the gardens of Cherbury. When they had arrived at home it
seemed that exhaustion had suddenly succeeded all the excitement
of the day. The Doctor, who was wearied, retired immediately. Lady
Annabel pressed Cadurcis to remain and take tea, or, at least to ride
home; but his lordship, protesting that he was not in the slightest
degree fatigued, and anticipating their speedy union on the morrow,
bade her good night, and pressing with fondness the hand of Venetia,
retraced his steps to the now solitary abbey.

CHAPTER VII.

Cadurcis returned to the abbey, but not to slumber. That love of
loneliness which had haunted him from his boyhood, and which ever
asserted its sway when under the influence of his passions, came over
him now with irresistible power. A day of enjoyment had terminated,
and it left him melancholy. Hour after hour he paced the moon-lit
cloisters of his abbey, where not a sound disturbed him, save the
monotonous fall of the fountain, that seems by some inexplicable
association always to blend with and never to disturb our feelings;
gay when we are joyful, and sad amid our sorrow.

Yet was he sorrowful! He was gloomy, and fell into a reverie about
himself, a subject to him ever perplexing and distressing. His
conversation of the morning with Doctor Masham recurred to him. What
did the Doctor mean by his character not being formed, and that
he might yet live to change all his opinions? Character! what was
character? It must be will; and his will was violent and firm. Young
as he was, he had early habituated himself to reflection, and the
result of his musings had been a desire to live away from the world
with those he loved. The world, as other men viewed it, had no charms
for him. Its pursuits and passions seemed to him on the whole paltry
and faint. He could sympathise with great deeds, but not with bustling
life. That which was common did not please him. He loved things that
were rare and strange; and the spell that bound him so strongly to
Venetia Herbert was her unusual life, and the singular circumstances
of her destiny that were not unknown to him. True he was young;
but, lord of himself, youth was associated with none of those
mortifications which make the juvenile pant for manhood. Cadurcis
valued his youth and treasured it. He could not conceive love, and the
romantic life that love should lead, w