om Experience,
except a few current coins of worldly wisdom (and not very valuable
those!) while he has lost much of that nobler wealth with which youthful
enthusiasm sets out on the journey of life. Experience is an open giver,
but a stealthy thief. There is, however, this to be said in her favour,
that we retain her gifts; and if ever we demand restitution in earnest,
'tis ten to one but what we recover her thefts. Maltravers had lived in
lands where public opinion is neither strong in its influence, nor rigid
in its canons; and that does not make a man better. Moreover, thrown
headlong amidst the temptations that make the first ordeal of youth,
with ardent passions and intellectual superiority, he had been led by
the one into many errors, from the consequences of which the other
had delivered him; the necessity of roughing it through the world--of
resisting fraud to-day, and violence to-morrow,--had hardened over the
surface of his heart, though at bottom the springs were still fresh and
living. He had lost much of his chivalrous veneration for women, for he
had seen them less often deceived than deceiving. Again, too, the
last few years had been spent without any high aims or fixed pursuits.
Maltravers had been living on the capital of his faculties and
affections in a wasteful, speculating spirit. It is a bad thing for a
clever and ardent man not to have from the onset some paramount object
of life.

All this considered, we can scarcely wonder that Maltravers should have
fallen into an involuntary system of pursuing his own amusements and
pursuits, without much forethought of the harm or the good they were to
do to others or himself. The moment we lose forethought, we lose sight
of duty; and though it seems like a paradox, we can seldom be careless
without being selfish.

In seeking the society of Madame de Ventadour, Maltravers obeyed but the
mechanical impulse that leads the idler towards the companionship which
most pleases his leisure. He was interested and excited; and Valerie's
manners, which to-day flattered, and to-morrow piqued him, enlisted
his vanity and pride on the side of his fancy. But although Monsieur
de Ventadour, a frivolous and profligate Frenchman, seemed utterly
indifferent as to what his wife chose to do--and in the society in which
Valerie lived, almost every lady had her cavalier,--yet Maltravers would
have started with incredulity or dismay had any one accused him of a
systematic design