"Yet," resumed Ella, "I can never banish my first impression of him."
"What was it?"
"That he could always keep faith in the letter and break it in the spirit; that he could betray in the most polished manner possible, without ever committing any vulgar error that law or society could fasten upon."
"Upon my soul, you have made a very nice estimate of the only member of your new family with whom you have come in contact. And where, pray, have you found such well-defined ideas of treachery? I did not think there was so much of this world's lore in that pretty little head. How did you learn it?"
"Ah, treachery is a thing I have often known! The wonder is, as my father used to say, that, where so many powerful temptations surrounded us, poor political outcasts, so few proved false."
"Yet you have not learned to be suspicious, Ella?"
"Heaven forbid! No one who is really true at heart ever really learns to be suspicious."
Wilton fulfilled his intention the following day, and wrote a short, simple account of his marriage to Lord St. George, regretting that he should be a source of disappointment to him, and stating that he, of course, held him quite exonerated from any promise, implied or not, respecting his property.
It was quite a relief to him having accomplished this. He had now cut himself adrift from all chances of social preëminence; it remained to work up in his profession, and his thoughts naturally turned to India. Great changes, civil and military, were pending there; his own services had been recognized by men high in office; already the breath of the outer world had somewhat withered the loveliness of his Arcadia—it was time for him to be up and doing.