kept his own opinion upon the subject, but dropped it as a matter of
conversation. The evening passed over as pleasantly as the illness of
the Earl would permit; and certainly, if Wilton Brown was not well
pleased with the Earl of Byerdale, it was not from any lack of
politeness on the part of that gentleman. That he felt no particular
inclination towards him is not to be denied; but nevertheless he was
grateful for his kindness, even of demeanour, and doubted not--such was
his inexperience of the world--that the Earl of Byerdale would always
treat him in the same manner.

After this day, which proved, in reality, an eventful one in the life of
Wilton Brown, about a week elapsed before the Earl set out for the
Continent. Wilton saw him on board, and dropped down the river with him;
and after his noble friend had quitted the shores of England, he turned
his steps again towards Oxford, without lingering at all in the capital.
It must be confessed, that he felt a much greater degree of loneliness,
than he had expected to experience on the departure of the Earl. He knew
now, for the first time, how much he had depended upon, and loved and
trusted, the only real friend that he ever remembered to have had. It is
true, that while the Earl was resident in London, and he principally in
Oxford, they saw but little of each other; but still it made a great
change, when several countries, some at peace and some at war with
England, lay between them, and when the cold melancholy sea stretched
its wide barrier to keep them asunder. He felt that he had none to
appeal to for advice or aid, when advice or aid should be wanting; that
the director of his youth was gone, and that he was left to win for
himself that dark experience of the world's ways, which never can be
learned, without paying the sad price of sorrow and disappointment.

Such were naturally his first feelings; and though the acuteness of them