Goren coloured, and soon after rose. "D—n my luck!" said he, as he passed me. "I wonder I continue to play—but there are such sharpers in the room. Avoid a gaming house, Mr. Pelham, if you wish to live."
"And let live," thought I.
I was just going away, when I heard a loud laugh on the stairs, and immediately afterwards Thornton entered, joking with one of the markers. He did not see me; but approaching the table, drew out the identical twenty pound note I had given him, and asked for change with the air of a millionaire. I did not wait to witness his fortune, good or ill; I cared too little about it. I descended the stairs, and the servant, on opening the door for me, admitted Sir John Tyrrell. "What," I thought, "is the habit still so strong?" We stopped each other, and after a few words of greeting, I went, once more, up stairs with him.
Thornton was playing as eagerly with his small quota as Lord C—with his ten thousands. He nodded with an affected air of familiarity to Tyrrell, who returned his salutation with the most supercilious hauteur; and very soon afterwards the baronet was utterly engrossed by the chances of the game. I had, however, satisfied my curiosity, in ascertaining that there was no longer any intimacy between him and Thornton, and accordingly once more I took my departure.
CHAPTER LVI.
The times have been
That when the brains were out, the man would die,
And there an end—but now they rise again.
—Macbeth.
It was a strange thing to see a man like Glanville, with costly tastes, luxurious habits, great talents, peculiarly calculated for display, courted by the highest members of the state, admired for his beauty and genius by half the women in London, yet living in the most ascetic seclusion from his kind, and indulging in the darkest and most morbid despondency. No female was ever seen to win even his momentary glance of admiration. All the senses seemed to have lost, for his palate, their customary allurements. He lived among his books, and seemed to make his favourite companions amidst the past. At nearly all hours of the night he was awake and occupied, and at day-break his horse was always brought to his door. He rode alone for several hours, and then, on his return, he was employed till the hour he went to the House, in the affairs and politics of the day. Ever since his debut, he had entered with much constancy into the more leading debates, and his speeches were invariably of the same commanding order which had characterised his first.
It was singular that, in his parliamentary display, as in his ordinary conversation, there were none of the wild and speculative opinions, or the burning enthusiasm of romance, in which the natural inclination of his mind seemed so essentially to delight. His arguments were always remarkable for the soundness of the principles on which they were based, and the logical clearness with which they were expressed. The feverish fervour of his temperament was, it is true, occasionally shown in a remarkable energy of delivery, or a sudden and unexpected burst of the more impetuous powers of oratory; but these were so evidently natural and spontaneous, and so happily adapted to be impressive of the subject, rather than irrelevant from its bearings, that they never displeased even the oldest and coldest cynics and calculators of the House.
It is no uncommon contradiction in human nature (and in Glanville it seemed peculiarly prominent) to find men of imagination and genius gifted with the strongest common sense, for the admonition or benefit of others, even while constantly neglecting to exert it for themselves. He was soon marked out as the most promising and important of all the junior members of the House; and the coldness with which he kept aloof from social intercourse with the party he adopted, only served to increase their respect, though it prevented their affection.
Lady Roseville's attachment to him was scarcely a secret; the celebrity of her name in the world of ton made her least look or action the constant subject of present remark and after conversation; and there were too many moments, even in the watchful publicity of society, when that charming but imprudent person forgot every thing but the romance of her attachment. Glanville seemed not only perfectly untouched by it, but even wholly unconscious of its existence, and preserved invariably, whenever he was forced into the crowd, the same stern, cold, unsympathizing reserve, which made him, at once, an object of universal conversation and dislike.