ch has tempered, by
such a wise dispensation, the too-eager blood of your race.'

'I should be sorry to pull down the old place,' said Ferdinand.

'It must not be,' said Glastonbury; 'we have lived there happily, though
humbly.'

'I would we could move it to another part of the park, like the house of
Loretto,' said Ferdinand with a smile.

'We can cover it with ivy,' observed Glastonbury, looking somewhat
grave.

The morning stole away in these agreeable plans and prospects. At
length the friends parted, agreeing to meet again at dinner. Glastonbury
repaired to his tower, and Ferdinand, taking his gun, sauntered into the
surrounding wilderness.

But he felt no inclination for sport. The conversation with Glastonbury
had raised a thousand thoughts over which he longed to brood. His
life had been a scene of such constant excitement since his return to
England, that he had enjoyed little opportunity of indulging in calm
self-communion; and now that he was at Armine, and alone, the contrast
between his past and his present situation struck him so forcibly that
he could not refrain from falling into a reverie upon his fortunes. It
was wonderful, all wonderful, very, very wonderful. There seemed indeed,
as Glastonbury affirmed, a providential dispensation in the whole
transaction. The fall of his family, the heroic, and, as it now
appeared, prescient firmness with which his father had clung, in all
their deprivations, to his unproductive patrimony, his own education,
the extinction of his mother's house, his very follies, once to him a
cause of so much unhappiness, but which it now seemed were all the time
compelling him, as it were, to his prosperity; all these and a thousand
other traits and circumstances flitted over his mind, and were each in
turn the subject of his manifold meditation. Willing was he to credit
that destiny had reserved for him the character of restorer; that duty
indeed he had accepted, and yet----

He looked around him as if to see what devil was whispering in his
ear. He was alone. No one was there or near. Around him rose the
silent bowers, and scarcely the voice of a bird or the hum of an insect
disturbed the deep tranquillity. But a cloud seemed to rest on the fair
and pensive brow of Ferdinand Armine. He threw himself on the turf,
leaning his head on one hand, and with the other plucking the wild
flowers, which he as hastily, almost as fretfully, flung away.

'Conceal it as I will,' he e