corner--there, grey and quaint, was the monastic dial--and there was the
long terrace walk, with discoloured and broken vases, now filled with
the orange or the aloe, which, in honour of his master's arrival, the
gardener had extracted from the dilapidated green-house. The very
evidence of neglect around, the very weeds and grass on the
half-obliterated road, touched Maltravers with a sort of pitying and
remorseful affection for his calm and sequestered residence. And it was
not with his usual proud step and erect crest that he passed from the
porch to the solitary library, through a line of his servants:--the two
or three old retainers belonging to the place were utterly unfamiliar to
him, and they had no smile for their stranger lord.



CHAPTER IV.

"/Lucian./ He that is born to be a man neither should nor can
be anything nobler, greater, and better than a man.

"/Peregrine./ But, good Lucian, for the very reason that he may
not become less than a man, he should be always striving to be
more."--WIELAND'S /Peregrinus Proteus/.

IT was two years from the date of the last chapter before Maltravers
again appeared in general society. These two years had sufficed to
produce a revolution in his fate. Ernest Maltravers had lost the happy
rights of the private individual; he had given himself to the Public; he
had surrendered his name to men's tongues, and was a thing that all had
a right to praise, to blame, to scrutinise, to spy. Ernest Maltravers
had become an author.