uld have pleaded similar allowances to mine for the wildness of the
style. I should have thanked, but despised the intelligence of one who
framed my excuses for my father, just as the squire, by abusing him,
would have made me a desperate partisan in a minute. The vitality of the
delusion I cherished was therefore partly extinct; not so the love;
yet the love of him could no longer shake itself free from oppressive
shadows.

Out of his circle of attraction books were my resource.

CHAPTER XXIII. MY TWENTY-FIRST BIRTHDAY

Books and dreams, like the two rivers cited by my father, flowed side
by side in me without mixing; and which the bright Rhone was, which the
brown Arve, needs not to be told to those who know anything of youth;
they were destined to intermingle soon enough. I read well, for I felt
ground and had mounting views; the real world, and the mind and passions
of the world, grew visible to me. My tutor pleased the squire immensely
by calling me matter-of-fact. In philosophy and history I hated
speculation; but nothing was too fantastic for my ideas of possible
occurrences. Once away from books, I carried a head that shot rockets to
the farthest hills.

My dear friend Temple was at sea, or I should have had one near me to
detect and control the springs of nonsense. I was deemed a remarkably
quiet sober thoughtful young man, acquiescent in all schemes projected
for my welfare. The squire would have liked to see me courting the
girl of his heart, as he termed Janet Ilchester, a little more
demonstratively. We had, however, come to the understanding that I was
to travel before settling. Traditional notions of the importance of the
Grand Tour in the education of gentlemen led him to consent to my taking
a year on the Continent accompanied by my tutor. He wanted some one, he
said, to represent him when I was out over there; which signified that
he wanted some one to keep my father in check; but as the Rev. Ambrose
Peterborough, successor to the Rev. Simon Hart, was hazy and manageable,
I did not object. Such faith had the quiet thoughtful young man
at Riversley in the convulsions of the future, the whirlwinds and
whirlpools spinning for him and all connected with him, that he did not
object to hear his name and Janet's coupled, though he had not a spark
of love for her.

I tried to realize to myself the general opinion that she was handsome.
Her eyebrows were thick and level and long; her eyes direct in t