feelings that would have wrung the soul, and wounded the
sensibilities of one far less gentle and susceptible than
himself.

Between Sir Everard Valletort and Charles de Haldimar,
who, it has already been remarked, were lieutenants in
Captain Blessington's company, a sentiment of friendship
had been suffered to spring up almost from the moment of
Sir Everard's joining. The young men were nearly of the
same age; and although the one was all gentleness, the
other all spirit and vivacity, not a shade of disunion
had at any period intervened to interrupt the almost
brotherly attachment subsisting between them, and each
felt the disposition of the other was the one most
assimilated to his own. In fact, Sir Everard was far from
being the ephemeral character he was often willing to
appear. Under a semblance of affectation, and much assumed
levity of manner, never, however, personally offensive,
he concealed a brave, generous, warm, and manly heart,
and talents becoming the rank he held in society, such
as would not have reflected discredit on one numbering
twice his years. He had entered the army, as most young
men of rank usually did at that period, rather for the
agremens it held forth, than with any serious view to
advancement in it as a profession. Still he entertained
the praiseworthy desire of being something more than what
is, among military men, emphatically termed a feather-bed
soldier; and, contrary to the wishes of his fashionable
mother, who would have preferred seeing him exhibit his
uniform in the drawing-rooms of London, had purchased