k to him mockingly, must have seen that the creature is not
wholly pleased, that he seems as if made to feel a degree of
inferiority. Such also is the case with children; and little Wilton felt
that the Earl was making a sort of playful investigation of his mind,
even while he was jesting with him. I have said felt, because it was
feeling, not thought, that discovered it; and, therefore, though he
loved the Earl notwithstanding all this, he was glad to go where he
heard there were many such young beings as himself.
The Earl did not think him ungrateful on account of the open expression
of his delight. He saw it all, and understood it all; for he had very
few of the smaller selfishnesses, which so frequently blind our eyes to
the most obvious facts which impinge against our own vanities. His was a
high and noble mind, chained and thralled by manifold circumstances and
accidents to the dull pursuits of worldly ambitions. One trait, however,
may display his character: he had practised in regard to the boy a piece
of that high delicacy of feeling of which none but great men are
capable. He had learned and divined, from the short conversation which
had taken place between himself and Lennard Sherbrooke, sufficient in
regard to the boy's unfortunate situation to guide his conduct in
respect to him; and now, even when alone with him in his own
drawing-room or library, he asked no farther questions; he pryed not at
all into what had gone before; and though the youth occasionally
prattled of the wild Irish shores, and the cottage where he had been
brought up, the Earl merely smiled, but gave him no encouragement to say
more.
At length, Wilton Brown went to school; and as the Earl gradually lost a
part of that interest in him which had given prudence the alarm, time
had its effect on Wilton also, drawing one thin airy film after another
over the events of the past, not obliterating them; but, like the effect
of distance upon substantial objects, gathering them together in less
distinct masses, and diminishing them both in size and clearness. When
the time approached for his holidays, which were few and far between, he
was called to the Earl's house, and treated with every degree of
kindness; though with mere boyhood went by boyhood's graces, and the lad
could not be fondled and played with as the child. The Earl never did
anything to make him feel that he was a dependant--no, not for a single
moment; but as the boy's mind expanded, and as a certain degree of the
k