frank kindness, goes so far when it emanates from the rays of a crown.
But Vernon was stronger than Lucretia deemed him; once contemplating the
prospect of a union which was to consign to his charge the happiness of
another, and feeling all that he should owe in such a marriage to the
confidence both of niece and uncle, he evinced steadier principles than
he had ever made manifest when he had only his own fortune to mar, and
his own happiness to trifle with. He joined his old companions, but he
kept aloof from their more dissipated pursuits. Beyond what was then
thought the venial error of too devout libations to Bacchus, Charley
Vernon seemed reformed.

Ardworth had joined a regiment which had departed for the field of
action. Mainwaring was still with his father, and had not yet announced
to Sir Miles any wish or project for the future.

Olivier Dalibard, as before, passed his mornings alone in his
chamber,--his noons and his evenings with Sir Miles. He avoided all
private conferences with Lucretia. She did not provoke them. Young
Gabriel amused himself in copying Sir Miles's pictures, sketching from
Nature, scribbling in his room prose or verse, no matter which (he never
showed his lucubrations), pinching the dogs when he could catch them
alone, shooting the cats, if they appeared in the plantation, on
pretence of love for the young pheasants, sauntering into the cottages,
where he was a favourite because of his good looks, but where he always
contrived to leave the trace of his visits in disorder and mischief,
upsetting the tea-kettle and scalding the children, or, what he loved
dearly, setting two gossips by the ears. But these occupations were over
by the hour Lucretia left her apartment. From that time he never left
her out of view; and when encouraged to join her at his usual privileged
times, whether in the gardens at sunset or in her evening niche in
the drawing-room, he was sleek, silken, and caressing as Cupid, after
plaguing the Nymphs, at the feet of Psyche. These two strange persons
had indeed apparently that sort of sentimental familiarity which is
sometimes seen between a fair boy and a girl much older than himself;
but the attraction that drew them together was an indefinable instinct
of their similarity in many traits of their several characters,--the
whelp leopard sported fearlessly around the she-panther. Before
Olivier's midnight conference with his son, Gabriel had drawn close and
closer to Luc