flower-garden was smaller than that at Braefieldville, there were
paths and drives through miles of young plantations and old woodlands
that furnished lazy occupation to an army of labourers. No wonder
that, despite his nominal ten thousand a year, Sir Peter was far from
being a rich man. Exmundham devoured at least half the rental. The
active mind of Leopold Travers also found ample occupation in the
stores of his host's extensive library.

Travers, never much of a reader, was by no means a despiser of
learning, and he soon took to historical and archaeological researches
with the ardour of a man who must always throw energy into any pursuit
that occasion presents as an escape from indolence. Indolent Leopold
Travers never could be. But, more than either of these resources of
occupation, the companionship of Chillingly Gordon excited his
interest and quickened the current of his thoughts. Always fond of
renewing his own youth in the society of the young, and of the
sympathizing temperament which belongs to cordial natures, he had, as
we have seen, entered very heartily into the ambition of George
Belvoir, and reconciled himself very pliably to the humours of Kenelm
Chillingly. But the first of these two was a little too commonplace,
the second a little too eccentric, to enlist the complete
good-fellowship which, being alike very clever and very practical,
Leopold Travers established with that very clever and very practical
representative of the rising generation, Chillingly Gordon. Between
them there was this meeting-ground, political and worldly, a great
contempt for innocuous old-fashioned notions; added to which, in the
mind of Leopold Travers, was a contempt--which would have been
complete, but that the contempt admitted dread--of harmful
new-fashioned notions which, interpreted by his thoughts, threatened
ruin to his country and downfall to the follies of existent society,