'Nor do I, Sir Barnard. But, if you suppose me capable of taking any advantage of what you may now think an ill-placed confidence in me, you egregiously mistake both my intentions and my character.'
'I hope I do, Mr. Trevor. You have a great fluency: but I hope I do.'
I saw him preparing to go; and, being exceedingly anxious to have a determinate answer, I added—'Let me intreat you, Sir Barnard, to give me an explicit declaration of what you expect from me.'
'You must excuse me, Mr. Trevor. I shall say no more, at present. You say I mistake your intentions. I hope I do. Time will tell. When you are my friend, I shall be very glad to see you; and so will Lady Bray. Good morning to you, Mr. Trevor.'
CHAPTER X
Reflections on the mutability of fortune, on money expended, and on the duties of love and friendship: A strange incident, shewing the propensity of man to superstitious terrors: A lamentable and unexpected event
Well might I forebode the approach of evil: and, except that complaint is of no avail, is waste of time, is unhappiness and therefore is immoral, well might I complain of those sudden strokes of fate by which, whenever my prospects began to be flattering, they were suddenly obscured in darkness and despair. But, if I had not supposed myself marked in an extraordinary manner as the child of fortune, to whose smiles and frowns I seemed to be capriciously subjected, I know not what should have induced me to have written my history; or rather the history of my youth; for of what is yet reserved for me I am still ignorant.
Not that I pretend to consider the hypocrisy, selfishness and profligacy of titled folly, and church pride, as things in themselves extraordinary. It was the coincidence and the number and manner of them, by which in the crisis of my fate I seemed to be so repeatedly and so peculiarly affected, that occasioned surprise and pain.
Yet what was all that I had hitherto felt from persons like these, when I remember that which I was now immediately doomed to feel? The perverted and the vicious it is true can excite emotion, and excite it strongly. But how comparatively feeble does their utmost malice seem, as far as it affects only ourselves, when brought in competition with the thunder-bolt that strikes the virtuous; that shuts the gate of hope; and that robs us of those unspeakable pleasures which imagination has fondly stored, as a grand resource against evil, fall when and how it may?
Parting from the Baronet, expecting what was almost certain some change of political sentiment, no matter how brought about, by which my flattering expectations were at once to be rooted up, my thoughts inevitably flowed into that train which was bitterness little short of anguish. Mr. Evelyn was a man of such peculiar virtue and disinterested benevolence, of a heart so generous and so little capable of accusing me in consequence of the baseness of others, that to have suspected him of such a mistake would have been the height of injustice. But I could not forget the sums that he had advanced, in all four hundred pounds, the more than probable failure of all the plans for which they had been advanced, and the incapacity I had and should have to repay these sums.