him, if possible, as the best means of banishing a supposed
rival from the house of his noble relation, Lord Saxingham. But no
opportunity for that step presented itself; so Lumley kept a fit of
convenient rudeness, or an impromptu sarcasm, in reserve, if ever it
should be wanted.

The season and the session were alike drawing to a close, when
Maltravers received a pressing invitation from Cleveland to spend a week
at his villa, which he assured Ernest would be full of agreeable
people; and as all business productive of debate or division was
over, Maltravers was glad to obtain fresh air, and a change of scene.
Accordingly, he sent down his luggage and favourite books, and one
afternoon in early August rode alone towards Temple Grove. He was much
dissatisfied, perhaps disappointed, with his experience of public life;
and with his high-wrought and over-refining views of the deficiencies
of others more prominent, he was in a humour to mingle also censure of
himself, for having yielded too much to the doubts and scruples that
often, in the early part of their career, beset the honest and sincere,
in the turbulent whirl of politics, and ever tend to make the robust
hues that should belong to action

"Sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought."

His mind was working its way slowly towards those conclusions,
which sometimes ripen the best practical men out of the most exalted
theorists, and perhaps he saw before him the pleasing prospect
flatteringly exhibited to another, when he complained of being too
honest for party, viz., "of becoming a very pretty rascal in time!"

For several weeks he had not heard from his unknown correspondent, and
the time was come when he missed those letters, now continued for more
than two years; and which, in their eloquent mixture of complaint,
exhortation, despondent gloom and declamatory enthusiasm, had often
soothed him in dejection, and made him more sensible of triumph. While
revolving in his mind thoughts connected with these subjects--and,
somehow or other, with his more ambitious reveries were always mingled
musings of curiosity respecting his correspondent--he was struck by the
beauty of a little girl, of about eleven years old, who was walking with
a female attendant on the footpath that skirted the road. I said that he
was struck by her beauty, but that is a wrong expression; it was rather
the charm of her countenance than the perfection of her features which
arrested the g