ries. He hastened to one of his country seats, where that nobleman
had been sojourning for the time, but found him a very different man
from that which he had appeared before. He was not ill enough to need or
to desire nursing and tendance, but he was quite ill enough to be
irritable, impatient, and selfish; for it is a strange fact, that the
very condition which renders us the most dependent on our
fellow-creatures too often renders us likewise indifferent to their
comfort, in our absorbing consideration of our own. Although he could
sit up and walk about, and go forth into his gardens, yet he suffered
great pain, which did not seem to diminish; and a frequent spitting of
blood rendered him impatient and querulous, whenever his lowest words
were not instantly heard and comprehended.
It was a painful lesson to the youth he had brought up; and when the
time for Wilton's return to Oxford arrived, and the Earl, with seeming
satisfaction, put him in mind that it was time to go, the young
gentleman, in truth, felt it a relief from a situation in which he
neither well knew how to satisfy himself, or to satisfy the invalid,
towards whom he was so anxious to show his gratitude.
He returned, then, to the university, where the allowance made him by
the Earl, of two hundred per annum, together with the little income
which a successful competition at school had placed at his disposal,
enabled him to maintain the society of that class with which he had
always associated in life, and to do so with ease to himself; though not
without economy. [Footnote: I think that the same was the college
allowance of the well-known Evelyn.] The Earl had asked him twice, if he
had found the sum enough, and seemed much pleased when Wilton had
replied that it was perfectly so. But from that expression he easily
divined, that had it been otherwise, the Earl might have said nothing
reproachful, but would not have been well satisfied.
Wilton did not mistake the motives of the Earl: he knew him to be
anything but a penurious man; and he had long seen and been aware of the
motives on which that nobleman acted towards him. He knew that it was
with a wish to give him everything that was necessary and appropriate to
the situation in which he was placed, but by no means to encourage
expensive habits, or desires which might unfit him for the first
laborious steps which he was destined to tread in the path of life. He
felt, indeed, that there was an ambitious spirit in his own heart, and
it cost