The return to town: A visit to Sir Barnard: Admission denied: Enquiries after the wounded stranger, who had disappeared: An endeavour to guard against misrepresentation: The fears and feelings of friends

My determination was taken, my servant was called, my horses ordered, and I immediately departed for London. My thoughts were far from being clear, or of a pleasant kind. The scene I had left was the most odious that I had ever beheld. Hector I was convinced would lose his election; and, what was more valuable, his health. I saw prognostics which I thought could not be mistaken; and which afterward proved as baleful as I then imagined them to be. Whether the contest might not ruin the family was more than I knew; and what the effect might be on Olivia, and even on our hoped for union, I could not foresee.

The enigmatical conduct of Sir Barnard was no less perplexing. His sudden desertion of Hector, and of the cause which he had so loudly defended, were alarming. For what other interpretation could be put upon the voters in the Baronet's interest, who not only refused to poll according to their promise, but were all of them brought up in support of the Idford candidate? Yet I was loth to conclude that an event so fatal to all my hopes, as well to my private affections as to my public duties, had taken place.

My horses were excellent, and carried us seventy miles in less time than it would have taken to go post. I intended to have ordered a chaise for the remainder of the way: but a mail coach was to pass in half an hour, and I waited. There happened to be a vacancy in which I seated myself; and by these means I arrived in town early in the morning.

As soon as the day was far enough advanced, my first care was to visit Sir Barnard; and I own I approached the street and the house with a foreboding heart. What had happened could not be unintentional. It was too decided, too abrupt, and had too many marks of unprincipled treachery. I knocked, made my enquiries, and was informed the Baronet was not at home. I asked for Lady Bray; and not at home was again the answer.

As this was what I apprehended, it excited but little surprise, though much vexation. However I left my card; and departed more full of meditation even than I came. Not at home I had no doubt signified that my visits were no longer welcome.

Still it was necessary I should know the truth; and, as I had been too intimate with the family to be ignorant of the haunts of Sir Barnard, I went to the Cocoa tree, a place to which he daily resorted, and there lounged away between two and three hours over the papers; hoping he would come.

I was again disappointed. The Baronet did not make his appearance; and I began to conjecture that perhaps the servant had told me truly: he might be out early; on business, or I knew not what.

As it was past his hour at the Cocoa tree, perhaps I should now find him at home. I therefore went back; and again made my enquiries, and again received the same dry laconic answer. It had an ill face: but I had no immediate remedy.

My next most pressing object of attention was the wounded stranger; whom I had left under the care of the physician, and whom I immediately determined to enquire after: not without some silent reproaches to myself, for having so long been absent on schemes such as those in which I had been concerned, to the neglect of perhaps a more serious duty. For duty seemed to require that men should rather abstain from elections, such as they are at present, than become aiders and abettors of them.

My horses not being arrived, and disliking the vehicle of a hackney coach, I walked forward to the inn at which the stranger had been left; musing much on the prospect before me, which was once more beginning to be heavily overcast.

Being come to my journey's end, I found the stranger had been removed two days after I left him to London: but the people of the inn could give me no farther intelligence, concerning him or the place of his residence.

I then asked them to direct me to the house of the physician: which they did, but told me that he had left the kingdom.

Determined however to make every possible enquiry, I went to the house; where I found only a person who was left in charge of the premises, and who knew nothing more than that the physician was gone with a patient to Lisbon.

These little incidents, trifling as they appeared, afforded me an excellent proof of the absurdity of false modesty: which induces men, from the egoistical fear of being thought vain, to conceal or disguise the truth. The physician had bestowed high eulogiums on my humanity: after which, he had hinted a desire, but with well-bred reserve, to know who I was; and I, catching the apparent delicacy of his feelings and thinking but very little on the subject, imagined there would be ostentation in personally taking to myself his praises, by giving him my name and place of abode. I therefore told him I would answer that question when we became better acquainted; if he should then find he had no reason to alter his good opinion of me.

Thus do men by affecting not to be vain, indulge a kind of double refined vanity; and lead themselves and others into error.

Being disappointed in all my enquiries of this day, my next care was to see Miss Wilmot. Surrounded as I was by persons who thought me inimical to them, and therefore were probably my inveterate enemies, I knew not what false reports might be spread; nor how to guard against them in the public opinion. But I had one consolation. Olivia had declared she was resolved to enquire, before she again gave the least credit to calumny. It was therefore essentially necessary that I should acquaint Miss Wilmot with all that had passed.

It was now evening; and, when I came to her lodgings, I found her brother and Turl both there. Though my absence had been short, the meeting gave me no little pleasure. It would likewise save me the trouble of a thrice told tale: for to friends like these my heart was always open; and I had something like an abhorrence of concealment, and secret transactions. I wished them to share in all my joys; and, as to my griefs, they not only excited their sympathy but produced remarks and counsel, by which they had often been cured.

I told my story; and it may well be imagined my hearers were neither inattentive nor unmoved. The selfishness and depravity into which men are driven, and the vices of which being thus impelled they are capable, exemplified as these vices were in my narration, drew heavy sighs from the gentle and kind hearted Lydia, made her much oppressed brother groan in spirit, and excited in Turl those comprehensive powers that trace the history of facts through a long succession, and teach, by miseries that are past, how miseries in future are to be avoided.

The general feeling however was that danger was hovering over me. The indignation of Wilmot, at the treatment of men who most endeavoured to deserve well of their age and country, was very strong.

Neither was Turl less moved. His manner was placid, yet his feelings were acute. But, though they might vibrate for a moment toward discord, they touched the true harmony at last. He who has fixed principles of action is soon called to a recollection of his duties, and the manner in which he ought to act.

Roused by his friendship for me, I should rather say by his affection, he collected his faculties; and presented to the imagination so sublime a picture of fortitude, and of the virtue of enduring injuries and oppression with dignity, that he prepared my mind most admirably for the trials that were to succeed.