portfolio contained the plans and drawings of the cathedral.

Lothair was lost in admiration of these designs and their execution. But
after the first fever of investigation was over, he required sympathy
and also information. In a truly religious family there would always be
a Father Coleman or a Monsignore Catesby to guide and to instruct. But a
Protestant, if he wants aid or advice on any matter, can only go to his
solicitor. But as he proceeded in his researches he sensibly felt
that the business was one above even an oratorian or a monsignore. It
required a finer and a more intimate sympathy; a taste at the same
time more inspired and more inspiring; some one who blended with divine
convictions the graceful energy of human feeling, and who would not
only animate him to effort but fascinate him to its fulfilment. The
counsellor he required was Miss Arundel.

Lothair had quitted Vauxe one week, and it seemed to him a year. During
the first four-and-twenty hours he felt like a child who had returned to
school, and, the day after, like a man on a desert island. Various
other forms of misery and misfortune were suggested by his succeeding
experience. Town brought no distractions to him; he knew very few
people, and these be had not yet encountered; he had once ventured to
White's, but found only a group of gray-beaded men, who evidently did
not know him, and who seemed to scan him with cynical nonchalance. These
were not the golden youth whom he had been assured by Bertram would
greet him; so, after reading a newspaper for a moment upside downward,
he got away. But he had no harbor of refuge, and was obliged to ride
down to Richmond and dine alone, and meditate on symbols and celestial
adumbrations. Every day he felt how inferior was this existence to that
of a life in a truly religious family.

But, of all the members of the family to which his memory recurred with
such unflagging interest, none more frequently engaged his thoughts than
Miss Arundel. Her conversation, which stimulated his intelligence while
it rather piqued his self-love, exercised a great influence over him,
and he had omitted no opportunity of enjoying her society. That society
and its animating power he sadly missed; and now that he had before him
the very drawings about which they had frequently talked, and she was
not by his side to suggest and sympathize and criticism and praise, he
felt unusually depressed.

Lothair corresponded with Lady S