"I fear it would; but he has a nice old place of his own, not half so large, and therefore not half so troublesome as Lisle Court."
"Ay! and he did talk of selling that nice old place."
"Selling Burleigh! you surprise me. But really country places in England are a bore. I suppose he has his Gubbins as well as myself!"
Here the chief minister of the government adorned by Lord Vargrave's virtues passed by, and Lumley turned to greet him.
The two ministers talked together most affectionately in a close whisper,—so affectionately, that one might have seen, with half an eye, that they hated each other like poison!
CHAPTER V.
INSPICERE tanquam in speculum, in vitas omnium
Jubeo.*—TERENCE.
* "I bid you look into the lives of all men, as
it were into a mirror."
ERNEST MALTRAVERS still lingered at Paris: he gave up all notion of proceeding farther. He was, in fact, tired of travel. But there was another reason that chained him to that "Navel of the Earth,"—there is not anywhere a better sounding-board to London rumours than the English quartier between the Boulevard des Italiennes and the Tuileries; here, at all events, he should soonest learn the worst: and every day, as he took up the English newspapers, a sick feeling of apprehension and fear came over him. No! till the seal was set upon the bond, till the Rubicon was passed, till Miss Cameron was the wife of Lord Vargrave, he could neither return to the home that was so eloquent with the recollections of Evelyn, nor, by removing farther from England, delay the receipt of an intelligence which he vainly told himself he was prepared to meet.
He continued to seek such distractions from thought as were within his reach; and as his heart was too occupied for pleasures which had, indeed, long since palled, those distractions were of the grave and noble character which it is a prerogative of the intellect to afford to the passions.