EUGENE ARAM

By Edward Bulwer-Lytton



BOOK II.

CHAPTER I.

THE MARRIAGE SETTLED.--LESTER'S HOPES AND SCHEMES.--GAIETY OF
TEMPER A GOOD SPECULATION.--THE TRUTH AND FERVOUR OF
ARAM'S LOVE.

Love is better than a pair of spectacles, to make
every thing seem greater which is seen through it.
--Sir Philip Sydney's Arcadia.

Aram's affection to Madeline having now been formally announced to
Lester, and Madeline's consent having been somewhat less formally
obtained, it only remained to fix the time for their wedding. Though
Lester forbore to question Aram as to his circumstances, the Student
frankly confessed, that if not affording what the generality of persons
would consider even a competence, they enabled one of his moderate wants
and retired life to dispense, especially in the remote and cheap district
in which they lived, with all fortune in a wife, who, like Madeline, was
equally with himself enamoured of obscurity. The good Lester, however,
proposed to bestow upon his daughter such a portion as might allow for
the wants of an increased family, or the probable contingencies of Fate.
For though Fortune may often slacken her wheel, there is no spot in which