conjured up a thousand scenes in which they were never separated, and
wherein he always played an amiable and graceful part. Yet he loved
the abbey; his painful infancy was not associated with that scene; it
was not connected with any of those grovelling common-places of his
life, from which he had shrunk back with instinctive disgust, even
at a very tender age. Cadurcis was the spot to which, in his most
miserable moments at Morpeth, he had always looked forward, as the
only chance of emancipation from the distressing scene that surrounded
him. He had been brought up with a due sense of his future position,
and although he had ever affected a haughty indifference on the
subject, from his disrelish for the coarse acquaintances who were
perpetually reminding him, with chuckling self-complacency, of his
future greatness, in secret he had ever brooded over his destiny as
his only consolation. He had imbibed from his own reflections, at a
very early period of life, a due sense of the importance of his lot;
he was proud of his hereditary honours, blended, as they were, with
some glorious passages in the history of his country, and prouder of
his still more ancient line. The eccentric exploits and the violent
passions, by which his race had been ever characterised, were to him a
source of secret exultation. Even the late lord, who certainly had
no claims to his gratitude, for he had robbed the inheritance to the
utmost of his power, commanded, from the wild decision of his life,
the savage respect of his successor. In vain Mrs. Cadurcis would
pour forth upon this, the favourite theme for her wrath and her
lamentations, all the bitter expressions of her rage and woe.
Plantagenet had never imbibed her prejudices against the departed, and
had often irritated his mother by maintaining that the late lord was
perfectly justified in his conduct.

But in these almost daily separations between Plantagenet and Venetia,