ed in all the
expressions of a quick and offended temper; but since his intimacy
with the Herberts, Plantagenet had learnt to control his emotions,
and often successfully laboured to prevent those scenes of domestic
recrimination once so painfully frequent. There often, too, was a note
from Lady Annabel to Mrs. Cadurcis, or some other slight memorial,
borne by her son, which enlisted all the kind feelings of that lady in
favour of her Cherbury friends, and then the evening was sure to pass
over in peace; and, when Plantagenet was not thus armed, he exerted
himself to be cordial; and so, on the whole, with some skill in
management, and some trials of temper, the mother and child contrived
to live together with far greater comfort than they had of old.

Bedtime was always a great relief to Plantagenet, for it secured
him solitude. He would lie awake for hours, indulging in sweet and
unconscious reveries, and brooding over the future morn, that always
brought happiness. All that he used to sigh for, was to be Lady
Annabel's son; were he Venetia's brother, then he was sure he never
should be for a moment unhappy; that parting from Cherbury, and the
gloomy evenings at Cadurcis, would then be avoided. In such a mood,
and lying awake upon his pillow, he sought refuge from the painful
reality that surrounded him in the creative solace of his imagination.
Alone, in his little bed, Cadurcis was Venetia's brother, and he
conjured up a thousand scenes in which they were never separated, and
wherein he always played an amiable and graceful part. Yet he loved
the abbey; his painful infancy was not associated with that scene; it
was not connected with any of those grovelling common-places of his
life, from which he had shrunk back with instinctive disgust, even
at a very tender age. Cadurcis was the spot to which, in his most
miserable moments at Morpeth, he had always looked forward, as the
only chance of emancipation from the distressing scene that surrounded
him. He had been brought up with a due sense of his future position,
and although he had ever affected a haughty indifference on the
subject, from his disrelish for the coarse acquaintances who were
perpetually reminding him, with chuckling self-complacency, of his
future greatness, in secret he had ever brooded over his destiny as
his only consolation. He had imbibed from his own reflections, at a
very early period of life, a due sense of the importance of his lot;
he was pro