"You must not keep the chaise waiting—the gentleman is very punctual."
"But he is not come."
"No, he has walked on before, and will get in after you are out of the town."
"What is his name, and why should he care for me, grandmother?"
"He will tell you himself. Now, come."
"But you will bless me again, grandmother? I love you already."
"I do bless you," said Mrs. Avenel firmly. "Be honest and good, and beware of the first false step." She pressed his hand with a convulsive grasp, and led him to the outer door.
The postboy clanked his whip, the chaise rattled off. Leonard put his head out of the window to catch a last glimpse of the old woman. But the boughs of the pollard oak, and its gnarled decaying trunk, hid her from his eye. And look as he would, till the road turned, he saw but the melancholy tree.
FOOTNOTES:
[K] This aphorism has been probably assigned to Lord Bacon upon the mere authority of the index to his works. It is the aphorism of the index-maker, certainly not of the great master of inductive philosophy. Bacon has, it is true, repeatedly dwelt on the power of knowledge, but with so many explanations and distinctions, that nothing could be more unjust to his general meaning than to attempt to cramp into a sentence what it costs him a volume to define. Thus, if in one page he appears to confound knowledge with power, in another he sets them in the strongest antithesis to each other; as follows, "Adeo, signanter Deus opera potentiæ et sapientiæ discriminavit." But it would be as unfair to Bacon to convert into an aphorism the sentence that discriminates between knowledge and power as it is to convert into an aphorism any sentence that confounds them.