e
a severe attack; I shall stop at M-----(naming a large town they were
approaching); I shall send for the best physician the place affords;
if I am delirious to-morrow, or unable to give my own orders, have the
kindness to send express for Dr. Holland,--but don't leave me yourself,
my good fellow. At my age, it is a hard thing to have no one in the
world to care for me in illness; d-----n affection when I am well!"

After this strange burst, which very much frightened Mr. Howard, Lumley
relapsed into silence, not broken till he reached M-----. The best
physician was sent for; and the next morning, as he had half foreseen
and foretold, Lord Vargrave _was_ delirious!

CHAPTER VI.

NOUGHT under Heaven so strongly doth allure
The sense of man, and all his mind possess,
As Beauty's love-bait.--SPENSER.

LEGARD was, as I have before intimated, a young man of generous and
excellent dispositions, though somewhat spoiled by the tenor of his
education, and the gay and reckless society which had administered
tonics to his vanity and opiates to his intellect. The effect which the
beauty, the grace, the innocence of Evelyn had produced upon him had
been most deep and most salutary. It had rendered dissipation tasteless
and insipid; it had made him look more deeply into his own heart, and
into the rules of life. Though, partly from irksomeness of dependence
upon an uncle at once generous and ungracious, partly from a diffident
and feeling sense of his own inadequate pretensions to the hand of
Miss Cameron, and partly from the prior and acknowledged claims of Lord
Vargrave, he had accepted, half in despair, the appointment offered to
him, he still found it impossible to banish that image which had been
the first to engrave upon ardent and fresh affections an indelible
impression. He secretly chafed at the thought that it was to a fortunate
rival that he owed the independence and the station he had acquired, and
resolved to seize an early opportunity to free himself from obligations
that he deeply regretted he had incurred. At length he learned that Lord
Vargrave had been refused,--that Evelyn was free; and within a few days
from that intelligence, the admiral was seized with apoplexy; and
Legard suddenly found himself possessed, if not of wealth, at least of
a competence sufficient to redeem his character as a suitor from the
suspicion attached to a fortune-hunter and adventurer. Despite the new
prospects opened to him