sisting to the earth. But now that, in the calm and
solitude of his chamber, he had leisure to review the fearful events
conspiring to produce this extremity, his anguish of spirit was even
deeper than when the first rude shock of conviction had flashed upon
his understanding. A tide of suffering, that overpowered, without
rendering him sensible of its positive and abstract character, had, in
the first instance, oppressed his faculties, and obscured his
perception; but now, slow, sure, stinging, and gradually succeeding
each other, came every bitter thought and reflection of which that tide
was composed; and the generous heart of Charles de Haldimar was a prey
to feelings that would have wrung the soul, and wounded the
sensibilities of one far less gentle and susceptible than himself.

Between Sir Everard Valletort and Charles de Haldimar, who, it has
already been remarked, were lieutenants in Captain Blessington's
company, a sentiment of friendship had been suffered to spring up
almost from the moment of Sir Everard's joining. The young men were
nearly of the same age; and although the one was all gentleness, the
other all spirit and vivacity, not a shade of disunion had at any
period intervened to interrupt the almost brotherly attachment
subsisting between them, and each felt the disposition of the other was
the one most assimilated to his own. In fact, Sir Everard was far from
being the ephemeral character he was often willing to appear. Under a
semblance of affectation, and much assumed levity of manner, never,
however, personally offensive, he concealed a brave, generous, warm,
and manly heart, and talents becoming the rank he held in society, such
as would not have reflected discredit on one numbering twice his years.
He had entered the army, as most young men of rank usually did at that
period, rather for the agremens it held forth, than with any serious
view to advancement in it as a profession. Still he entertained the
praiseworthy desire of being something more than what is, among
military men, emphatically termed a feather-bed soldier; and, contrary
to the wishes of his fashionable mother, who would have preferred
seeing him exhibit his uniform in the drawing-rooms of London, had
purchased the step into his present corps from a cavalry regiment at
home. Not that we mean, however, to assert he was not a feather-bed
soldier in its more literal sense: no man that ever glittered in gold
and scarlet was fonder of