The plaintive accent of thy sad despair?
Lyttleton.
It was, as we have seen, through, the remarkable and unexpected return of Colonel Mires to England, and the no less singular circumstance of the rencontre in the Queen’s Bench, that old Wilton was reinstated in the position from which years back he had been, by the harsh rigour of the law, ruthlessly expelled.
As Nathan Gomer had stated to Mr. Grahame, the Colonel not only came forward to prove the genuineness of his own signature and the integrity of the document to which it was attached, but he was able to show that a duplicate existed, to point out the solicitor in whose hands it had been placed, and to help to refresh this old man’s recollection as to what had become of that most important paper. The individual thus suddenly-dragged from his seclusion, had long retired from practice, but he yet retained many important deeds and documents, to which he had been attesting witness or a party in some way.
It was, therefore, mainly by Colonel Mires’s instrumentality that Wilton was once more a man of wealth and position; and, knowing this, the former felt no scruple in becoming a frequent visitor at Mr. Wilton’s house.
He had, indeed, a secret motive which impelled him to present himself pretty constantly at Mr. Wilton’s table.
He had, not unmoved, looked upon the face of Flora Wilton; first in the courtyard of the Queen’s Prison, and many times since when surrounded by all those accessories to personal charms which elegant dress and freedom from anxiety afford.
At first a high degree of admiration was raised in his breast by a personal beauty of rare excellence, which, at the same time, struck him as being familiar to him. A glorious star, worshipped in boyhood, since lost, and now suddenly reappearing in his sphere, which was only too sparsely studded with orbs of light.
The admiration deepened, as it was fed by frequent observation, into a more ardent emotion. Love and passion were called into being, and the Colonel had not been long the frequent guest at Wilton’s abode, ere he found himself ardently in love with Flora. He was at an age when love is a dangerous tenant in a man’s breast. In youth he had been tinged with romance, but he had had more than enough selfishness to counteract its promptings. His passions were no doubt strong while they lasted, but they were sufficiently evanescent to commit no havoc on his heart. There was one solitary case in which the love which is deaf to the urgings of self-worship, and susceptible to all that is noble, generous, and exalted, sought a home in his bosom; but the heart he coveted had been bestowed, the hand be yearned to obtain was given to another. He was compelled to subdue the fonder workings of his soul; and in a distant clime, amid the whirl of gay, heartless, frivolous society, to deaden the restless action of a sentiment he could not wholly forget. He was so far successful, that he reduced it to subordination. The stirring activity of camp life and warfare, the indolent, intriguing nature of domestic society in India, where ladies are scarce and gentlemen officers are in excess, these and many other causes peculiar to his isolation from all his English ties, kept this emotion deep beneath the surface. It was, however, like a trout in a deep and shady recess in a pool, and would spring to the surface whenever the attracting influence of a tempting object reached it.
He had, as we have said, been but a short time a partaker of the pleasant society of Flora, when he found raging in his breast a flame which burned the fiercer at every attempt he himself made to subdue it.