om fancies, and learning the early
purpose, the terror at the cruel world, the longing for peace and
shelter; the desire to smooth his sister's way, which had led him to
devote himself in heart to the cloister, though never permitted openly to
pledge himself. Then the discovery that the world was less thorny than
he had expected; the allurement of royal favour and greatness; the charm
of amusement, and activity in recovered health; the cowardly dread of
scorn, leading him not merely into the secular life, but into the gradual
dropping of piety and devotion; the actual share he had taken in
forbidden diversions; his attempts at plunder; his ill-will to King
Henry; and, above all, his persecution of Esclairmonde, which he now
regarded as sacrilegious; and he even told how he lay under a half
engagement to Countess Jaqueline to return alone to the Court, and bear
his part in the forcible marriage she projected.

He told all, with no extenuation; nay, rather with such outbursts of
opprobrium on himself, that Dr. Bennet could hardly understand of what
positive evils he had been guilty; and he ended by entreating that the
almoner would at once hear his vow to become a Benedictine monk, ere--

But Dr. Bennet would not listen. He silenced the boy by saying he had no
more right to hear it than Malcolm as yet to make it. Nay, that inner
dedication, for which Malcolm yearned as a sacred bond to his own will,
the priest forbade. It was no moment to make such a promise in his
present mood, when he did not know himself. If broken, he would only be
adding sin to sin; nor was Malcolm, with all his errors fresh upon him,
in any state to dedicate himself worthily. The errors--which in Ralf
Percy, or in most other youths, might have seemed slight--were heavy
stains on one who, like Malcolm, had erred, not thoughtlessly, but with a
conscience of them all, in wilful abandonment of his higher principles.
On these the chaplain mostly dwelt; on these he tried to direct Malcolm's
repentance; and, finding that the youth was in perpetual extremes of
remorse, and that his abject submission was a sort of fresh form of
wilfulness, almost passion at being forbidden to bind himself by the vow,
he told him that the true token of repentance was steadiness and
constancy; and that therefore his absolution must be deferred until he
had thus shown that his penitence was true and sincere--by perseverance,
firstly, in the devotions that the chaplain app