artificial rose, which the men-milliners of society would palm upon us
as more natural than the true."

This principle of justice Maltravers sought to carry out in all
things--not, perhaps, with constant success; for what practice can
always embody theory?--but still, at least his endeavour at success
was constant. This, perhaps, it was which had ever kept him from the
excesses to which exuberant and liberal natures are prone, from the
extravagances of pseudo-genius.

"No man, for instance," he was wont to say, "can be embarrassed in
his own circumstances, and not cause embarrassment to others. Without
economy, who can be just? And what are charity, generosity, but the
poetry and the beauty of justice?"

No man ever asked Maltravers twice for a just debt; and no man ever once
asked him to fulfil a promise. You felt that, come what would, you might
rely upon his word. To him might have been applied the witty eulogium
passed by Johnson upon a certain nobleman: "If he had promised you an
acorn, and the acorn season failed in England, he would have sent to
Norway for one!"

It was not, therefore, the mere Norman and chivalrous spirit of honour,
which he had worshipped in youth as a part of the Beautiful and the
Becoming, but which in youth had yielded to temptation, as a _sentiment_
ever must yield to a passion, but it was the more hard, stubborn, and
reflective _principle_, which was the later growth of deeper and nobler
wisdom, that regulated the conduct of Maltravers in this crisis of
his life. Certain it is, that he had never but once loved as he loved
Evelyn; and yet that he never yielded so little to the passion.

"If engaged to another," thought he, "that engagement it is not for
a third person to attempt to dissolve. I am the last to form a right
judgment of the strength or weakness of the bonds which unite her to
Vargrave, for my emotions would prejudice me despite myself. I may fancy
that her betrothed is not worthy of her,--but that is for her to decide.
While the bond lasts, who can be justified in tempting her to break it?"

Agreeably to these notions, which the world may, perhaps, consider
overstrained, whenever Maltravers met Evelyn, he intrenched himself in
a rigid and almost a chilling formality. How difficult this was with one
so simple and ingenuous! Poor Evelyn! she thought she had offended him;
she longed to ask him her offence,--perhaps, in her desire to rouse
his genius into exertion, she had t