have become bitter, but
Montacute was too tender for malice, and so he only turned melancholy.
On the threshold of manhood, Montacute lost his mother, and this seemed
the catastrophe of his unhappy life. His father neither shared his
grief, nor attempted to alleviate it. On the contrary, he seemed to
redouble his efforts to mortify his son. His great object was to prevent
Lord Montacute from entering society, and he was so complete a master
of the nervous temperament on which he was acting that there appeared
a fair chance of his succeeding in his benevolent intentions. When his
son's education was completed, the duke would not furnish him with the
means of moving in the world in a becoming manner, or even sanction his
travelling. His Grace was resolved to break his son's spirit by keeping
him immured in the country. Other heirs apparent of a rich seignory
would soon have removed these difficulties. By bill or by bond, by
living usury, or by post-obit liquidation, by all the means that private
friends or public offices could supply, the sinews of war would have
been forthcoming. They would have beaten their fathers' horses at
Newmarket, eclipsed them with their mistresses, and, sitting for their
boroughs, voted against their party. But Montacute was not one of those
young heroes who rendered so distinguished the earlier part of this
century. He had passed his life so much among women and clergymen that
he had never emancipated himself from the old law that enjoined him
to honour a parent. Besides, with all his shyness and timidity, he was
extremely proud. He never forgot that he was a Montacute, though he had
forgotten, like the world in general, that his grandfather once bore a
different and humbler name. All merged in the great fact, that he was
the living representative of those Montacutes of Bellamont, whose wild
and politic achievements, or the sustained splendour of whose stately
life had for seven hundred years formed a stirring and superb portion
of the history and manners of our country. Death was preferable, in
his view, to having such a name soiled in the haunts of jockeys and
courtesans and usurers; and, keen as was the anguish which the conduct
of the duke to his mother or himself had often occasioned him, it
was sometimes equalled in degree by the sorrow and the shame which he
endured when he heard of the name of Bellamont only in connection with
some stratagem of the turf or some frantic revel. Without a fr