handed to Lothair a letter, which enclosed the key that opened its lock.
The portfolio contained the plans and drawings of the cathedral.

Lothair was lost in admiration of these designs and their execution.
But after the first fever of investigation was over, he required
sympathy and also information. In a truly religious family there would
always be a Father Coleman or a Monsignore Catesby to guide and to
instruct. But a Protestant, if he wants aid or advice on any matter,
can only go to his solicitor. But as he proceeded in his researches he
sensibly felt that the business was one above even an oratorian or a
monsignore. It required a finer and a more intimate sympathy; a taste
at the same time more inspired and more inspiring; some one who blended
with divine convictions the graceful energy of human feeling, and who
would not only animate him to effort but fascinate him to its
fulfilment. The counsellor he required was Miss Arundel.

Lothair had quitted Vauxe one week, and it seemed to him a year. During
the first four-and-twenty hours he felt like a child who had returned to
school, and, the day after, like a man on a desert island. Various
other forms of misery and misfortune were suggested by his succeeding
experience. Town brought no distractions to him; he knew very few
people, and these be had not yet encountered; he had once ventured to
White's, but found only a group of gray-beaded men, who evidently did
not know him, and who seemed to scan him with cynical nonchalance.
These were not the golden youth whom he had been assured by Bertram
would greet him; so, after reading a newspaper for a moment upside
downward, he got away. But he had no harbor of refuge, and was obliged
to ride down to Richmond and dine alone, and meditate on symbols and
celestial adumbrations. Every day he felt how inferior was this
existence to that of a life in a truly religious family.