too scrupulous in not wounding
vanity; he was now too indifferent to it. But if sometimes this
unamiable trait of character, as displayed to others, chilled or
startled Evelyn, the contrast of his manner towards herself was a
flattery too delicious not to efface all other recollections. To her ear
his voice always softened its tone; to her capacity of mind ever bent
as by sympathy, not condescension; to her--the young, the timid, the
half-informed--to her alone he did not disdain to exhibit all the stores
of his knowledge, all the best and brightest colours of his mind. She
modestly wondered at so strange a preference. Perhaps a sudden and blunt
compliment which Maltravers once addressed to her may explain it. One
day, when she had conversed more freely and more fully than usual, he
broke in upon her with this abrupt exclamation,--

"Miss Cameron, you must have associated from your childhood with
beautiful minds. I see already that from the world, vile as it is, you
have nothing of contagion to fear. I have heard you talk on the most
various matters, on many of which your knowledge is imperfect; but you
have never uttered one mean idea, or one false sentiment. Truth seems
intuitive to you."

It was indeed this singular purity of heart which made to the
world-wearied man the chief charm in Evelyn Cameron. From this purity
came, as from the heart of a poet, a thousand new and heaven-taught
thoughts which had in them a wisdom of their own,--thoughts that often
brought the stern listener back to youth, and reconciled him with
life. The wise Maltravers learned more from Evelyn than Evelyn did from
Maltravers.

There was, however, another trait--deeper than that of temper--in
Maltravers, and which was, unlike the latter, more manifest to her
than to others,--his contempt for all the things her young and fresh
enthusiasm had been taught to prize, the fame that endeared and hallowed
him to her eyes, the excitement of ambition, and its rewards. He spoke
with such bitter disdain of great names and great deeds. "Children of a
larger growth they were," said he, one day, in answer to her defence of
the luminaries of their kind, "allured by baubles as poor as the rattle
and the doll's house. How many have been made great, as the word is,
by their vices! Paltry craft won command to Themistocles; to escape his
duns, the profligate Caesar heads an army, and achieves his laurels;
Brutus, the aristocrat, stabs his patron, that patricia