
that it laid him open to ridicule, the mere suspicion of which always stung him
to the quick. When, therefore, he declared to his mother, in the painful
interview on his return to Wanley, that it was almost a relief to him to have
lost the inheritance, he spoke with perfect truth. Amid the tempest which had
fallen on his life there rose in that moment the semblance of a star of hope.
The hateful conditions which had weighed upon his future being finally cast off,
might he not look forward to some nobler activity than had hitherto seemed
possible? Was he not being saved from his meaner self, that part of his nature
which tended to conventional ideals, which was subject to empty pride and
ignoble apprehensions? Had he gone through the storm without companion, hope
might have overcome every weakness, but sympathy with his mother's deep distress
troubled his self-control. At her feet he yielded to the emotions of childhood,
and his misery increased until bodily suffering brought him the relief of
unconsciousness.
    To his mother perhaps he owed that strain of idealism which gave his
character its significance. In Mrs. Eldon it affected only the inner life; in
Hubert spiritual strivings naturally sought the outlet of action. That his
emancipation should declare itself in some exaggerated way was quite to be
expected: impatience of futilities and insincerities made common cause with the
fiery spirit of youth and spurred him into reckless pursuit of that abiding
rapture which is the dream and the despair of the earth's purest souls. The
pistol bullet checked his course, happily at the right moment. He had gone far
enough for experience and not too far for self-recovery. The wise man in looking
back upon his endeavours regrets nothing of which that can be said.
    By the side of a passion such as that which had opened Hubert's intellectual
manhood, the mild, progressive attachments sanctioned by society show so
colourless as to suggest illusion. Thinking of Adela Waltham as he lay
recovering from his illness, he found it difficult to distinguish between the
feelings associated with her name and those which he had owed to other maidens
of the same type. A week or two at Wanley generally resulted in a conviction
that he was in love with Adela; and had Adela been entirely subject to her
mother's influences, had she fallen but a little short of the innocence and
delicacy which were her own, whether for happiness or the reverse, she would
doubtless have been pledged to Hubert long ere this. The merest accident had in
truth prevented it. At home for Christmas, the young man had made up
