that benignant compassionate espionage, with its relentless eye and
restraining hand. Alas and alas! deem not this perversity unnatural
in that headstrong self-destroyer! How many are there whom not a grim,
hard-featured Arabella Crane, but the long-suffering, divine, omniscient,
gentle Providence itself, seeks to warn, to aid, to save; and is shunned,
and loathed, and fled from, as if it were an evil genius! How many are
there who fear nothing so much as the being made good in spite of
themselves?--how many? who can count them?




CHAPTER VI.

The public man needs but one patron; namely, THE LUCKY MOMENT.

"At his house in Carlton Gardens, Guy Darrell, Esq., for the season."

Simple insertion in the pompous list of Fashionable Arrivals! the name
of a plain commoner embedded in the amber which glitters with so many
coronets and stars! Yet such is England, with all its veneration for
titles, that the eyes of the public passed indifferently over the rest
of that chronicle of illustrious "whereabouts," to rest with interest,
curiosity, speculation, on the unemblazoned name which but a day before
had seemed slipped out of date,--obsolete as that of an actor who figures
no more in play-bills. Unquestionably the sensation excited was due,
in much, to the "ambiguous voices" which Colonel Morley had disseminated
throughout the genial atmosphere of club-rooms. "Arrived in London for
the season!"--he, the orator, once so famous, long so forgotten, who had
been out of the London world for the space of more than half a