»»»

The ladies at the Hall, Sir Willoughby's mother, and his aunts Eleanor and
Isabel, were more affected than he by the circumstance of their having
a Patterne in the Marines. But how then! We English have ducal blood
in business: we have, genealogists tell us, royal blood in common
trades. For all our pride we are a queer people; and you may be
ordering butcher's meat of a Tudor, sitting on the cane-bottom chairs
of a Plantagenet. By and by you may . . . but cherish your reverence.
Young Willoughby made a kind of shock-head or football hero of his
gallant distant cousin, and wondered occasionally that the fellow had
been content to dispatch a letter of effusive thanks without availing
himself of the invitation to partake of the hospitalities of Patterne.

He was one afternoon parading between showers on the stately garden
terrace of the Hall, in company with his affianced, the beautiful and
dashing Constantia Durham, followed by knots of ladies and gentlemen
vowed to fresh air before dinner, while it was to be had. Chancing with
his usual happy fortune (we call these things dealt to us out of the
great hidden dispensary, chance) to glance up the avenue of limes, as
he was in the act of turning on his heel at the end of the terrace, and
it should be added, discoursing with passion's privilege of the passion
of love to Miss Durham, Sir Willoughby, who was anything but obtuse,
experienced a presentiment upon espying a thick-set stumpy man crossing
the gravel space from the avenue to the front steps of the Hall,
decidedly not bearing the stamp of the gentleman "on his hat, his coat,
his feet, or anything that was his," Willoughby subsequently observed
to the ladies of his family in the Scriptural style of gentlemen who do
bear the stamp. His brief sketch of the creature was repulsive. The
visitor carried a bag, and his coat-collar was up, his hat was
melancholy; he had the appearance of a bankrupt tradesman absconding;
no gloves, no umbrella.

As to the incident we have to note, it was very slight. The card of
Lieutenant Patterne was handed to Sir Willoughby, who laid it on the
salver, saying to the footman, "Not at home."


He had been disappointed in the age, grossly deceived in the appearance
of the man claiming to be his relative in this unseasonable fashion;
and his acute instinct advised him swiftly of the absurdity of
introducing to his friends a heavy unpresentable senior as the
celebrated gallant Lieutenant of Marines, and the same as a member of
his family! He had talked of the man too much, too enthusiastically, to
be able to do so. A young subaltern, even if passably vulgar in figure,
can be shuffled through by the aid of the heroical story humourously
exaggerated in apology for his aspect. Nothing can be done with a
mature and stumpy Marine of that rank. Considerateness dismisses him on
the spot, without parley. It was performed by a gentleman supremely
advanced at a very early age in the art of cutting.

Young Sir Willoughby spoke a word of the rejected visitor to Miss
Durham, in response to her startled look: "I shall drop him a cheque,"
he said, for she seemed personally wounded, and had a face of crimson.

The young lady did not reply.

Dating from the humble departure of Lieutenant Crossjay Patterne up the
limes-avenue under a gathering rain-cloud, the ring of imps in
attendance on Sir Willoughby maintained their station with strict
observation of his movements at all hours; and were comparisons in
quest, the sympathetic eagerness of the eyes of caged monkeys for the
hand about to feed them, would supply one. They perceived in him a
fresh development and very subtle manifestation of the very old thing
from which he had sprung.

»»»
So might it be amplified. A simple-seeming word of this import is the
triumph of the spiritual, and where it passes for coin of value, the
society has reached a high refinement: Arcadian by the aesthetic route.
Observation of Willoughby was not, as Miss Eleanor Patterne pointed out
to Lady Culmer, drawn down to the leg, but directed to estimate him
from the leg upward. That, however, is prosaic. Dwell a short space on
Mrs. Mountstuart's word; and whither, into what fair region, and with
how decorously voluptuous a sensation, do not we fly, who have, through
mournful veneration of the Martyr Charles, a coy attachment to the
Court of his Merrie Son, where the leg was ribanded with love-knots and
reigned. Oh! it was a naughty Court. Yet have we dreamed of it as the
period when an English cavalier was grace incarnate; far from the boor
now hustling us in another sphere; beautifully mannered, every gesture
dulcet. And if the ladies were . . . we will hope they have been
traduced. But if they were, if they were too tender, ah! gentlemen
were gentlemen then--worth perishing for! There is this dream in the
English country; and it must be an aspiration after some form of
melodious gentlemanliness which is imagined to have inhabited the
island at one time; as among our poets the dream of the period of a
circle of chivalry here is encouraged for the pleasure of the
imagination.

Mrs. Mountstuart touched a thrilling chord. "In spite of men's hateful
modern costume, you see he has a leg."

That is, the leg of the born cavalier is before you: and obscure it as
you will, dress degenerately, there it is for ladies who have eyes. You
see it: or, you see he has it. Miss Isabel and Miss Eleanor disputed
the incidence of the emphasis, but surely, though a slight difference
of meaning may be heard, either will do: many, with a good show of
reason, throw the accent upon leg. And the ladies knew for a fact that
Willoughby's leg was exquisite; he had a cavalier court-suit in his
wardrobe. Mrs. Mountstuart signified that the leg was to be seen
because it was a burning leg. There it is, and it will shine through!
He has the leg of Rochester, Buckingham, Dorset, Suckling; the leg that
smiles, that winks, is obsequious to you, yet perforce of beauty
self-satisfied; that twinkles to a tender midway between imperiousness
and seductiveness, audacity and discretion; between "You shall worship
me", and "I am devoted to you;" is your lord, your slave, alternately
and in one. It is a leg of ebb and flow and high-tide ripples. Such a
leg, when it has done with pretending to retire, will walk straight
into the hearts of women. Nothing so fatal to them.

Self-satisfied it must be. Humbleness does not win multitudes or the
seks. It must be vain to have a sheen. Captivating melodies (to provë to
you the unavoidableness of self-satisfaction when you know that you
have hit perfection), listen to them closely, have an inner pipe of
that conceit almost ludicrous when you detect the chirp.

And you need not be reminded that he has the leg without the
naughtiness. You see eminent in him what we would fain have brought
about in a nation that has lost its leg in gaining a possibly cleaner
morality. And that is often contested; but there is no doubt of the
loss of the leg.

Well, footmen and courtiers and Scottish Highlanders, and the corps de
ballet, draymen too, have legs, and staring legs, shapely enough. But
what are they? not the modulated instrument we mean--simply legs for
leg-work, dumb as the brutes. Our cavalier's is the poetic leg, a
portent, a valiance. He has it as Cicero had a tongue. It is a lute to
scatter songs to his mistress; a rapier, is she obdurate. In sooth a
leg with brains in it, soul.

And its shadows are an ambush, its lights a surprise. It blushes, it
pales, can whisper, exclaim. It is a peep, a part revelation, just
sufferable, of the Olympian god--Jove playing carpet-knight.

For the young Sir Willoughby's family and his thoughtful admirers, it
is not too much to say that Mrs. Mountstuart's little word fetched an
epoch of our history to colour the evening of his arrival at man's
estate. He was all that Merrie Charles's court should have been,
subtracting not a sparkle from what it was. Under this light he
danced, and you may consider the effect of it on his company.

CONSTANTIA DURHAM

The great question for the county was debated in many households,
daughter-thronged and daughterless, long subsequent to the memorable
day of Willoughby's coming of age. Lady Busshe was for Constantia
Durham. She laughed at Mrs Mountstuart Jenkinson's notion of Laetitia
Dale. She was a little older than Mrs. Mountstuart, and had known
Willoughby's father, whose marriage into the wealthiest branch of the
Whitford family had been strictly sagacious. "Patternes marry money;
they are not romantic people," she said. Miss Durham had money, and she
had health and beauty: three mighty qualifications for a Patterne
bride. Her father, Sir John Durham, was a largë landowner in the
western division of the county; a pompous gentleman, the picture of a
father-in-law for Willoughby. The father of Miss Dale was a battered
army surgeon from India, tenant of one of Sir Willoughby's cottages
bordering Patterne Park. His girl was portionless and a poetess. Her
writing of the song in celebration of the young baronet's birthday was
thought a clever venture, bold as only your timid creatures can be
bold. She let the cat out of her bag of verse before the multitude; she
almost proposed to her hero in her rhymes. She was pretty; her
eyelashes were long and dark, her eyes dark-blue, and her soul was
ready to shoot like a rocket out of them at a look from Willoughby. And
he looked, he certainly looked, though he did not dance with her once
that night, and danced repeatedly with Miss Durham. He gave Laetitia to
Vernon Whitford for the final dance of the night, and he may have
looked at her so much in pity of an elegant girl allied to such a
partner. The "Phoebus Apollo turned fasting friar" had entirely
forgotten his musical gifts in motion. He crossed himself and crossed
his bewildered lady, and crossed everybody in the figure, extorting
shouts of cordial laughter from his cousin Willoughby. Be it said that
the hour was four in the morning, when dancers must laugh at somebody,
if only to refresh their feet, and the wit of the hour administers to
the wildest laughter. Vernon was likened to Theseus in the maze,
entirely dependent upon his Ariadne; to a fly released from a jam-pot;
to a "salvage", or green, man caught in a web of nymphs and made to go
the paces. Willoughby was inexhaustible in the happy similes he poured
out to Miss Durham across the lines of Sir Roger de Coverley, and they
were not forgotten, they procured him a reputation as a convivial
sparkler. Rumour went the round that he intended to give Laetitia to
Vernon for good, when he could decide to take Miss Durham to himself;
his generosity was famous; but that decision, though the rope was in
the form of a knot, seemed reluctant for the conclusive close haul; it
preferred the state of slackness; and if he courted Laetitia on behalf
of his cousin, his cousinly love must have been greater than his
passion, one had to suppose. He was generous enough for it, or for
marrying the portionless girl himself.

There was a story of a brilliant young widow of our aristocracy who had
very nearly snared him. Why should he object to marry into our
aristocracy? Mrs. Mountstuart asked him, and he replied that the girls
of that class have no money, and he doubted the quality of their blood.
He had his eyes awake. His duty to his House was a foremost thought
with him, and for such a reason he may have been more anxious to give
the slim and not robust Laetitia to Vernon than accede to his personal
inclination. The mention of the widow singularly offended him,
notwithstanding the high rank of the lady named. "A widow?" he said.
"I!" He spoke to a widow; an oldish one truly; but his wrath at the
suggestion of his union with a widow led him to be for the moment
oblivious of the minor shades of good taste. He desired Mrs.
Mountstuart to contradict the story in positive terms. He repeated his
desire; he was urgent to have it contradicted, and said again, "A
widow!" straightening his whole figure to the erectness of the letter
I. She was a widow unmarried a second time, and it has been known of
the stedfast women who retain the name of their first husband, or do
not hamper his title with a little new squire at their skirts, that
they can partially approve the objections indicated by Sir Willoughby.
They are thinking of themselves when they do so, and they will rarely
say, "I might have married;" rarely within them will they avow that,
with their permission, it might have been. They can catch an idea of a
gentleman's view of the widow's cap. But a niceness that could feel
sharply wounded by the simple rumour of his alliance with the young
relict of an earl was mystifying. Sir Willoughby unbent. His military
letter I took a careless glance at itself lounging idly and proudly at
ease in the glass of his mind, decked with a wanton wreath, as he
dropped a hint, generously vague, just to show the origin of the
rumour, and the excellent basis it had for not being credited. He was
chidden. Mrs. Mountstuart read him a lecture. She was however able to
contradict the tale of the young countess. "There is no fear of his
marrying her, my dears."

Meanwhile there was a fear that he would lose his chance of marrying
the beautiful Miss Durham.

»»»
Laetitia did continue. She saw Miss Durham at Patterne on several
occasions. She admired the pair. She had a wish to witness the bridal
ceremony. She was looking forward to the day with that mixture of
eagerness and withholding which we have as we draw nigh the
disenchanting termination of an enchanting romance, when Sir Willoughby
met her on a Sunday morning, as she crossed his park solitarily to
church. They were within ten days of the appointed ceremony. He should
have been away at Miss Durham's end of the county. He had, Laetitia
knew, ridden over to her the day before; but there he was; and very
unwontedly, quite surprisingly, he presented his arm to conduct
Laetitia to the church-door, and talked and laughed in a way that
reminded her of a hunting gentleman she had seen once rising to his
feet, staggering from an ugly fall across hedge and fence into one of
the lanes of her short winter walks. "All's well, all sound, never
better, only a scratch!" the gentleman had said, as he reeled and
pressed a bleeding head. Sir Willoughby chattered of his felicity in
meeting her. "I am really wonderfully lucky," he said, and he said that
and other things over and over, incessantly talking, and telling an
anecdote of county occurrences, and laughing at it with a mouth that
would not widen. He went on talking in the church porch, and murmuring
softly some steps up the aisle, passing the pews of Mrs. Mountstuart
Jenkinson and Lady Busshe. Of course he was entertaining, but what a
strangeness it was to Laetitia! His face would have been half under an
antique bonnet. It çame very close to hers, and the scrutiny he bent on
her was most solicitous.

After the service, he avoided the great ladies by sauntering up to
within a yard or two of where she sat; he craved her hand on his arm to
lead her forth by the park entrance to the church, all the while
bending to her, discoursing rapidly, appearing radiantly interested in
her quiet replies, with fits of intentness that stared itself out into
dim abstraction. She hazarded the briefest replies for fear of not
having understood him.

One question she asked: "Miss Durham is well, I trust?"

And he answered "Durham?" and said, "There is no Miss Durham to my
knowledge."

The impression he left with her was, that he might yesterday during his
ride have had an accident and fallen on his head.

She would have asked that, if she had not known him for so thorough an
Englishman, in his dislike to have it thought that accidents could hurt
even when they happened to him.

He called the next day to claim her for a walk. He assured her she had
promised it, and he appealed to her father, who could not testify to a
promise he had not heard, but begged her to leave him to have her walk.
So once more she was in the park with Sir Willoughby, listening to his
raptures over old days. A word of assent from her sufficed him. "I am
now myself," was one of the remarks he repeated this day. She dilated
on the beauty of the park and the Hall to gratify him.

He did not speak of Miss Durham, and Laetitia became afraid to mention
her name.

At their parting, Willoughby promised Laetitia that he would call on
the morrow. He did not come; and she could well excuse him, after her
hearing of the tale.

It was a lamentable tale. He had ridden to Sir John Durham's mansion, a
distance of thirty miles, to hear, on his arrival, that Constantia had
quitted her father's house two days previously on a visit to an aunt in
London, and had just sent word that she was the wife of Captain Oxford,
hussar, and messmate of one of her brothers. A letter from the bride
awaited Willoughby at the Hall. He had ridden back at night, not
caring how he used his horse in order to get swiftly home, so forgetful
of himself was he under the terrible blow. That was the night of
Saturday. On the day following, being Sunday, he met Laetitia in his
park, led her to church, led her out of it, and the day after that,
previous to his disappearance for some weeks, was walking with her in
full view of the carriages along the road.

He had, indeed, you see, been very fortunately, if not considerately,
liberated by Miss Durham. He, as a man of honour, could not have taken
the initiative, but the frenzy of a jealous girl might urge her to such
a course; and how little he suffered from it had been shown to the
world. Miss Durham, the story went, was his mother's choice for him
against his heart's inclinations; which had finally subdued Lady
Patterne. Consequently, there was no longer an obstacle between Sir
Willoughby and Miss Dale. It was a pleasant and romantic story, and it
put most people in good humour with the county's favourite, as his
choice of a portionless girl of no position would not have done without
the shock of astonishment at the conduct of Miss Durham, and the desire
to feel that so prevailing a gentleman was not in any degree pitiable.
Constantia was called "that mad thing". Laetitia broke forth in novel
and abundant merits; and one of the chief points of requisition in
relation to Patterne--a Lady Willoughby who would entertain well and
animate the deadness of the Hall, became a certainty when her
gentleness and liveliness and exceeding cleverness were considered. She
was often a visitor at the Hall by Lady Patterne's express invitation,
and sometimes on these occasions Willoughby was there too,
superintending the filling up of his laboratory, though he was not at
home to the county; it was not expected that he should be yet. He had
taken heartily to the pursuit of science, and spoke of little else.
Science, he said, was in our days the sole object worth a devoted
pursuit. But the sweeping remark could hardly apply to Laetitia, of
whom he was the courteous, quiet wooer you behold when a man has broken
loose from an unhappy tangle to return to the lady of his first and
strongest affections.

Some months of homely courtship ensued, and then, the decent interval
prescribed by the situation having elapsed, Sir Willoughby Patterne
left his native land on a tour of the globe.

»»»
Vernon's dancing in America was capitally described by Willoughby.
"Adieu to our cousins!" the latter wrote on his voyage to Japan. "I
may possibly have had some vogue in their ball-rooms, and in showing
them an English seat on horseback: I must resign myself if I have not
been popular among them. I could not sing their national song--if a
congery of states be a nation--and I must confess I listened with
frigid politeness to their singing of it. A great people, no doubt.
Adieu to them. I have had to tear old Vernon away. He had serious
thoughts of settling, means to correspond with some of them." On the
whole, forgetting two or more "traits of insolence" on the part of his
hosts, which he cited, Willoughby escaped pretty comfortably. The
President had been, consciously or not, uncivil, but one knew his
origin! Upon these interjections, placable flicks of the lionly tail
addressed to Britannia the Ruler, who expected him in some mildish way
to lash terga cauda in retiring, Sir Willoughby Patterne passed from a
land of alien manners; and ever after he spoke of America respectfully
and pensively, with a tail tucked in, as it were. His travels were
profitable to himself. The fact is, that there are cousins who come to
greatness and must be pacified, or they will provë annoying. Heaven
forefend a collision between cousins!

Willoughby returned to his England after an absence of three years. On
a fair April morning, the last of the month, he drove along his park
palings, and, by the luck of things, Laetitia was the first of his
friends whom he met. She was crossing from field to field with a band
of school-children, gathering wild flowers for the morrow May-day. He
sprang to the ground and seized her hand. "Laetitia Dale!" he said. He
panted. "Your name is sweet English music! And you are well?" The
anxious question permitted him to read deeply in her eyes. He found the
man he sought there, squeezed him passionately, and let her go, saying:
"I could not have prayed for a lovelier home-scene to welcome me than
you and these children flower-gathering. I don't believe in chance. It
was decreed that we should meet. Do not you think so?"

Laetitia breathed faintly of her gladness.

He begged her to distribute a gold coin among the little ones; asked
for the names of some of them, and repeated: "Mary, Susan,
Charlotte--only the Christian names, pray! Well, my dears, you will
bring your garlands to the Hall to-morrow morning; and mind, early! no
slugabeds tomorrow; I suppose I am browned, Laetitia?" He smiled in
apology for the foreign sun, and murmured with rapture: "The green of
this English country is unsurpassed. It is wonderful. Leave England
and be baked, if you would appreciate it. You can't, unless you taste
exile as I have done--for how many years? How many?"

"Three," said Laetitia.

"Thirty!" said he. "It seems to me that length. At least, I am
immensely older. But looking at you, I could think it less than three.
You have not changed. You are absolutely unchanged. I am bound to hope
so. I shall see you soon. I have much to talk of, much to tell you. I
shall hasten to call on your father. I have specially to speak with
him. I--what happiness this is, Laetitia! But I must not forget I have
a mother. Adieu; for some hours--not for many!"

He pressed her hand again. He was gone.

»»»
The new arrangement gave Laetitia a companion for her walks.
Pedestrianism was a sour business to Willoughby, whose exclamation of
the word indicated a willingness for any amount of exercise on
horseback; but she had no horse, and so, while he hunted, Laetitia and
Vernon walked, and the neighbourhood speculated on the circumstances,
until the ladies Eleanor and Isabel Patterne engaged her more
frequently for carriage exercise, and Sir Willoughby was observed
riding beside them.

A real and sunny pleasure befell Laetitia in the establishment of young
Crossjay Patterne under her roof; the son of the lieutenant, now
captain, of Marines; a boy of twelve with the sprights of twelve boys
in him, for whose board and lodgement Vernon provided by arrangement
with her father. Vernon was one of your men that have no occupation for
their money, no bills to pay for repair of their property, and are
insane to spend. He had heard of Captain Patterne's largë family, and
proposed to have his eldest boy at the Hall, to teach him; but
Willoughby declined to house the son of such a father, predicting that
the boy's hair would be red, his skin eruptive, and his practices
detestable.

So Vernon, having obtained Mr. Dale's consent to
accommodate this youth, stalked off to Devonport, and brought back a
rosy-cheeked, round-bodied rogue of a boy, who fell upon meats and
puddings, and defeated them, with a captivating simplicity in his
confession that he had never had enough to eat in his life. He had gone
through a training for a plentiful table. At first, after a number of
helps, young Crossjay would sit and sigh heavily, in contemplation of
the unfinished dish. Subsequently, he told his host and hostess that he
had two sisters above his own age, and three brothers and two sisters
younger than he: "All hungry!" said die boy.

His pathos was most comical. It was a good month before he could see
pudding taken away from table without a sigh of regret that he could
not finish it as deputy for the Devonport household. The pranks of the
little fellow, and his revel in a country life, and muddy wildness in
it, amused Laetitia from morning to night. She, when she had caught
him, taught him in the morning; Vernon, favoured by the chase, in the
afternoon.

Young Crossjay would have enlivened any household. He was
not only indolent, he was opposed to the acquisition of knowledge
through the medium of books, and would say: "But I don't want to!" in a
tonë to make a logician thoughtful. Nature was very strong in him. He
had, on each return of the hour for instruction, to be plucked out of
the earth, rank of the soil, like a root, for the exercise of his big
round headpiece on those tyrannous puzzles. But the habits of birds,
and the place for their eggs, and the management of rabbits, and the
tickling of fish, and poaching joys with combative boys of the
district, and how to wheedle a cook for a luncheon for a whole day in
the rain, he soon knew of his great nature. His passion for our naval
service was a means of screwing his attention to lessons after he had
begun to understand that the desert had to be traversed to attain
midshipman's rank. He boasted ardently of his fighting father, and,
chancing to be near the Hall as he was talking to Vernon and Laetitia
of his father, he propounded a question close to his heart, and he put
it in these words, following: "My father's the one to lead an army!"
when he paused. "I say, Mr. Whitford, Sir Willoughby's kind to me, and
gives me crown-pieces, why wouldn't he see my father, and my father
çame here ten miles in the rain to see him, and had to walk ten miles
back, and sleep at an inn?"

»»»
In confirmation of the swelling buzz, the Rev. Dr. Middleton and his
daughter paid a flying visit to the Hall, where they were seen only by
the members of the Patterne family. Young Crossjay had a short
conversation with Miss Middleton, and ran to the cottage full of
her--she loved the navy and had a merry face. She had a smile of very
pleasant humour according to Vernon. The young lady was outlined to
Laetitia as tall, elegant, lively; and painted as carrying youth like a
flag. With her smile of "very pleasant humour", she could not but be
winning.

Vernon spoke more of her father, a scholar of high repute; happily, a
scholar of an independent fortune. His maturer recollection of Miss
Middleton grew poetic, or he described her in an image to suit a poetic
end: "She gives you an idea of the Mountain Echo. Doctor Middleton has
one of the grandest heads in England."

"What is her Christian name?" said Laetitia.

He thought her Christian name was Clara.

Laetitia went to bed and walked through the day conceiving the Mountain
Echo the swift, wild spirit, Clara by name, sent fleeting on a far half
circle by the voice it is roused to subserve; sweeter than beautiful,
high above drawing-room beauties as the colours of the sky; and if, at
the same time, elegant and of loveable smiling, could a man resist her?

To inspire the title of Mountain Echo in any mind, a young lady must be
singularly spiritualized. Her father doated on her, Vernon said. Who
would not? It seemed an additional cruelty that the grace of a poetical
attractiveness should be round her, for this was robbing Laetitia of
some of her own little fortune, mystical though that might be. But a
man like Sir Willoughby had claims on poetry, possessing as he did
every manly grace; and to think that Miss Middleton had won him by
virtue of something native to her likewise, though mystically, touched
Laetitia with a faint sense of relationship to the chosen girl. "What
is in me, he sees on her." It decked her pride to think so, as a wreath
on the gravestone. She encouraged her imagination to brood over Clara,
and invested her designedly with romantic charms, in spite of pain; the
ascetic zealot hugs his share of Heaven--most bitter, most blessed--in
his hair-shirt and scourge, and Laetitia's happiness was to glorify
Clara. Through that chosen rival, through her comprehension of the
spirit of Sir Willoughby's choice of one such as Clara, she was linked
to him yet.

Her mood of ecstatic fidelity was a dangerous exaltation; one that in a
desert will distort the brain, and in the world where the idol dwells
will put him, should he come nigh, to its own furnace-test, and get a
clear brain out of a burnt heart. She was frequently at the Hall,
helping to nurse Lady Patterne. Sir Willoughby had hitherto treated her
as a dear insignificant friend, to whom it was unnecessary that he
should mention the object of his rides to Upton Park.

He had, however, in the contemplation of what he was gaining, fallen
into anxiety about what he might be losing. She belonged to his
brilliant youth; her devotion was the bride of his youth; he was a man
who lived backward almost as intensely as in the present; and,
notwithstanding Laetitia's praiseworthy zeal in attending on his
mother, he suspected some unfaithfulness: hardly without cause: she had
not looked paler of late; her eyes had not reproached him; the secret
of the old days between them had been as little concealed as it was
exposed. She might have buried it, after the way of woman, whose bosoms
can be tombs, if we and the world allow them to be; absolutely
sepulchres, where you lie dead, ghastly. Even if not dead and horrible
to think of, you may be lying cold, somewhere in a corner. Even if
embalmed, you may not be much visited. And how is the world to know you
are embalmed?

You are no better than a rotting wretch to the world
that does not have peeps of you in the woman's breast, and see lights
burning and an occasional exhibition of the services of worship. There
are women--tell us not of her of Ephesus!--that have embalmed you, and
have quitted the world to keep the tapers alight, and a stranger comes,
and they, who have your image before them, will suddenly blow out the
vestal flames and treat you as dust to fatten the garden of their
bosoms for a fresh flower of love. Sir Willoughby knew it; he had
experience of it in the form of the stranger; and he knew the
stranger's feelings toward his predecessor and the lady.