Next day found Louis in a state far from tranquillized. Thorough dissatisfaction with himself, had prevented his eyes closing during the night; and he arose in the morning, only to continue his self-accusations. He condemned the indulgence of feelings so inconsistent with his usual candour in dubious circumstances, and which had hurried him, not only into an unreasonable despair of his own situation, but, with the most dishonouring suspicions, to provoke the man, who, it was madness to doubt, was the confidential colleague of the Baron de Ripperda. And yet, while he vowed to himself, that no privation of air or action, no solitude and monotony of life, should ever excite him to a second murmur; while he panted for the moment in which he might repair, by a full apology to the Sieur, the indignity he had cast upon him; he could not warm the chill at his heart, when he recollected that the first amends Ignatius was likely to demand of him, would be to relinquish all hope of seeing the Duke of Wharton.

This conviction threw his still agitated mind into tumults. In the parting interview between him and Mr. Athelstone, that venerable man had taken off the absolute terms of his interdiction respecting the Duke. In the wide and busy world, his nephew and Wharton might meet again; and in circumstances that Louis could not bend to his promise of avoidance. On this ground, the Pastor now left him to his own discretion. "But, remember," added he, "it is to your discretion!"

Louis thought on this licence from his revered uncle, with the outstretching arms of his soul towards his beloved friend; and, he vainly pursued his laborious penmanship, to get rid of the attendant ideas. The well-known voice, calling on him through the crowd, haunted his ear. Again, and again, the form of his friend, leaning towards him from the car, rose before him. He threw down his pen, and rested his working brain upon his hand. He could not recollect how Wharton looked, for he had not seen how he looked; all that his glad eyes had taken in of that dear apparition, was, that it was him! That it was his resplendent countenance which shone on him from that gay eminence!

"And I must not see it again!" cried Louis, "all with whom I am connected, seem leagued at one time or other to exclude him from my society. But they never can shut him from my heart. His gracious selection of me, from a crowd, older and of more approved merit than myself; his own distinguished qualities and irrepressible confidence in my honour, have bound me to love him through a life that is condemned to fly him, as if he were my direst enemy."

Louis opened his writing-case to recreate his eyes with the sight of Wharton's letter, that he might hear him speak through that at least; but as soon as he touched it, and saw the superscription, whose characters again recalled the image of the writer, and with it the home in which he had first read the letter; he dropped it back into the case.

"I will not further un-nerve myself," cried he, "by pressing memory on my heart! I will not pervert hours of past happiness to the purposes of present wretchedness. I must remember that I am called to self-denial; and you, dear generous Wharton! fated to be my first, are to continue my repeated sacrifice."

Louis was found at noon by his punctual visitor, seated at his desk with his former diligence. A slight hectic coloured his cheek as he rose to receive him.—The Sieur smiled. Louis again saw the heaven open, which had beguiled him into confidence on his first arrival, and this smile was not so flitting as its predecessor. It dwelt on his features like a bending seraph lingering on its cloud.

"Louis," cried he, "I come to trust you."

Louis caught the hand which was extended to him, and pressed it to his lips.

"I come to trust you," said he, "but not as I see you expect; I come to call again upon your faith, to fulfil the whole of this affair, while you must yet remain ignorant of its particular purpose; to trust in your honour, that you will not further doubt the integrity of the man on whom your father has conferred confidence without reserve. His interests and mine are united, never to be separated in this world: we rise, or we fall together. You redden Louis! But I do not trifle with you. It is possible that accident, if not design, may betray a scheme of such important bearings; and I will not leave it in the power of malice to accuse the son of Baron de Ripperda of treachery, or of imprudence in such a case."

"My recent conduct," replied he, "gives you no reliance on my prudence; and you believe me unworthy of fuller confidence."

"No, Louis,—that I still hold you in ignorance, is a greater proof of my dependence on your fidelity, than if I bound your personal interests with your honour, by unfolding to you any part of the glorious plan on which you are employed. Your oath ties your conscience to the fulfilment of your duty, but I want your free-will. I want, what I thought I had. The open eye of faith in the virtue of your cause,—the forward hand of zealous devotedness in the execution. Give me your mind, Louis, and I shall no longer see that changing cheek and languid frame? Zeal is life."

"Again I pledge myself," returned he, "I will be all you require, only trust me!" Then with a sudden paleness displacing the flush of resolution, and with a forced smile, he added, "I know I must prove my sincerity by a victim; and I yield a dear one. I will not see the Duke of Wharton, till you or my father grant me that privilege."

"To see him," replied the Sieur, resuming his usual austerity, "it is probable you may one day have perfect liberty, but never to cultivate his friendship."

"How?—Wherefore?"

"He is the enemy of your father."

"O, No—I have reason to believe he would gladly make my father his friend."

The moment this had escaped him, Louis could have plucked his tongue out for having uttered so inconsiderate a speech; so much did he fear that Ignatius would immediately demand what was that reason. But for once, the sagacious politician lost an opportunity of acquiring information respecting the views of a rival. Absorbed in the haughty consciousness of his own pre-eminence, he did not put the dreaded question, but with a scornful motion of his lips, replied.—

"I doubt it not.—But Philip Wharton would purchase without gold. He may defraud, but he cannot bestow."

"I do not understand you, Sir?"

"Future events will speak plainly," returned the Sieur, "and meanwhile, I rely on your engagement to avoid him."

Louis smothered an indignant rising in his bosom, and without answering, bowed his head in ratification of his promise.

Ignatius turned to the table, and gathering up the manuscripts prepared for him, told his now silent companion, that he need not resume his labours till he had taken the air on the terrace. "But," added he, "you must not forget that for every day, until I direct otherwise, the garden is your utmost limits."

"I shall not wish to extend them," replied Louis, with a resigned but lofty bow, and the Sieur left the room.

With his expanding heart again closed by the repulsive demeanor of his governor, Louis saw him depart. A feeling of complete desolation spread over his soul. Without having found comfort in his presence, he felt a more dreary loneliness when he was gone, as the hope of winning at all on his unbending nature, seemed utterly at an end. He had tried it, by anticipating what he knew would be exacted, the resignation of his friend. But Ignatius had received the sacrifice, not merely without sensibility, but with the most unsparing remarks. The tender care with which all his good dispositions had been fostered by the secluded guardians of his youth, made him doubly feel how sterile is the communion of the world. Interest may bind man to man, and extort the convenience of virtue; but affection is not there, to nourish or to reward its growth.

"Misjudging Ignatius! he demands my mind, when he might have my heart! I would love him, but he will not let me. In vain I watched for another of those smiles; the first, I hailed on my arrival as an earnest of a gracious master! And the second, which greeted me to-day, as a pledge of forgiveness of my yesterday's impatience, how soon was it displaced by the hard aspect of despotic command! But I deserve it," exclaimed he, "did not my humiliation, at having so frantically rebelled, vanish as soon? I was even on the point of a second violence, had not some good angel stilled the tumult in my breast." Having walked his dismal apartment some time, continuing the same soliloquy, he threw himself into a chair to compose his mind, and to confirm it. He arraigned himself for the weakness of his present discontents, and summoned his best reason to the forming a steady resolution of pursuing his duty upon the principle of enduring as well as acting. He reviewed the past and the present with an impartial eye; and where he saw he failed, condemned himself with an inexorable judgement.

In this hour's communing with himself, he found how different is the real from the imaginary contest; how wise is speculation, how absurd practice; how easy profession, how difficult performance; and that of all conquests, that of reason over a refractory heart, is the hardest to acquire. After these humbling reflections, he walked forth a victor, though a wounded one, to cheer himself with the glories of the setting sun. Its reclining orb had never failed to recall the compact which his heart had made, when he beheld it for the last time on the verge of his native hills. But this evening, its mild religious light, gradually withdrawing into the clouds, as the golden disk sunk beneath the earth, reminded him so touchedly of the venerable saint whose emblem he had called it, that he could not forbear exclaiming,

"Yes, my revered uncle! Those pious hands shall not always be raised in vain. I trust, that henceforth I shall do my duty in a manner more befitting the character you fondly believed mine; but on which, recent experience has too repeatedly shewn me, how slight ought to have been my dependance. For your sake, dear instructor of my youth! I will do all, and be all, that is required of me. I will forget your graciousness, that, in this land of severity, I may act worthy of your hopes. They who led me away captive, require of me a song, and melody in my heaviness! and, for thine honour, gentlest of human beings, I will take my harp from the willows, and be as happy as this stubborn heart will let me."

For several succeeding weeks, Louis steadily obeyed the law he had enjoined himself. The exasperation of his mind gradually subsided; his awakened sensibilities sunk to repose; and he concentrated his thoughts as much as possible upon his unchanging toil. As he constantly passed part of every day in the open air, he found companions, and even social ones, in the birds he fed with the crumbs from his breakfast. Their grateful chirpings were cheerful; and as he paced the snows of the garden, his blood regained its vigour, and the elasticity of his spirits revived. Again his cheek wore the brightness of health; and his volant step, too often reminded him how narrow were his boundaries. His eye, however, was yet free to range; and its excursions were wide as the horizon. It sought the heights of Mount Calemberg, whose hoary summits mingled with the hazy west; or when the winter day put on a fairer garb, he contemplated their snowy peaks piercing the glittering sky, and cloathed in all its splendor. A little convent, like Paraclete's white walls and silver springs, stood in an umbrageous cleft of the mountain; whose icicled trees, and frozen stream, promise a luxuriant scene in verdant summer.

But Mount Calemberg, with all its beauties, was not as fair to him, as cloud-capt Cheviot, clad in her storms, and standing sublime amidst the roaring torrent, and the shouts of the hunters echoing from her hills. He sighed for the joyous chace, for the jocund hour of return. He thought the voices of his uncle's boon companions, would no more sound discordant in his ear; even for the cry of their dogs, and their own loud halloos, reverberating from the walls of the old hall of Bamborough, what would he now give?

"Churl that I was," cried he, "not to allow people to be happy, but in my own way! And fool too, to despise them for being happy, with the humbler talents bestowed on them by the God of nature!"

Louis blushed to feel, that we must suffer, to value all that is bestowed.

His wandering eye could not elude the attraction of another point. It often turned to the yet frozen Danube, and tried, by straining its powers, to discern amongst the variegated groups, any thing like the person of his interdicted friend; but he gazed in vain. The river was too distant to distinguish individuals; and all he saw, was a moving pageantry, which might interest, but could never satisfy him, as it was probable it contained Wharton, and it was impossible for him to see him, if it did.

Louis was constant in these walks, and the Sieur as regular in his evening visits. The one, always greeted his governor with cheerfulness; and the other, his pupil, with a stateliness, which shewed approbation, only by silence from reproof. But Louis was content, and the whole glided smoothly on.

The name of Wharton never occurred between them, to disturb the unruffled surface, but once; and that was occasioned by the Duke's parting letter to Louis, dropping out of his private portfolio, one evening when Ignatius asked if he could furnish him with a sheet of paper bearing the English water-mark. As the letter fell with the seal to the floor, the Sieur's observing eye recognised the hand-writing, and, though unused to the bending mood, he stooped to take it up.

"You have corresponded with Wharton!" cried he, holding the letter in his hand; "what, did he tell you, was his object in leaving England last autumn?" "Nothing, Sir;" replied Louis, stretching out his hand rather too eagerly to receive the letter; but Ignatius retained it. "That was the first, and the only letter, with which he ever honoured me."

"It is in answer then, to one from yourself?"

"No; I have never written to him. That was sent to me the night he quitted England, to go——he did not say whither; and so the correspondence ended."

"And, as certainly, he did not desire its continuance," replied the Sieur. He observed Louis start, and redden with an air of offended incredulity. "Else why," resumed he, "did he omit naming to you the place of his destination? But," added he, throwing the letter contemptuously on the table, "Wharton was always a creature of caprice, and you will not be the last ball his racket will strike out of his careing."

Stung with the sarcasm of this remark, mortified at being supposed liable to such trifling, and jealous for the sincerity of his friend, with flashing eyes Louis took up the letter, and held it silently in his hand. He stood a few minutes, struggling to subdue the resentment that was ready to burst from his lips. The Sieur appeared to have already forgotten the matter, and was calmly examining the manuscripts on the table. This apathy was more galling, than perhaps further remark. Louis pressed on his swelling heart the recollection of the vow he had made to himself, to bear all, as well as to do all, the will of this arrogant man; and turning towards his port-folio, he was replacing the letter in the case, when Ignatius looking up, said in a voice that was careless of being heard,

"It is pity, to see ingenuous youth treasure a counterfeit, for true metal."

"Your observation, Sir," said Louis, "does not touch the Duke of Wharton."

"But it might you, Louis;" coolly answered the Sieur, "for you hold a proof of his ephemeral attachments, in your hand."

Louis felt an instant impulse to disprove at once this contemptuous inference, by requesting Ignatius to read the Duke's letter; but the next moment he bethought him, whether there were ought in the contents his misjudged friend might wish not to be exposed to an enemy. For such, he could not but perceive the inveterate Ignatius was to Wharton. There was a mixture of malignant contempt, with evident apprehension of his influence somewhere, which marked the sentiment the Sieur entertained for him; but whether from personal dislike, or solely on account of the asserted hostility between him and Baron de Ripperda, Louis could not be sure; though he certainly saw hatred in his governor's deeply sunken eyes, whenever he spoke of the Duke.

To persist in silence, seemed to Louis to be sanctioning these calumnies on his friend, and to continue asserting without offering proof, he was aware would only redouble the scorn of his antagonist. Placed in a torturing dilemma, he stood recollecting whether the contents of the Duke's letter were such that he might safely shew; when the Sieur, rising from his seat, said in an exasperating tone of pity; "put up your relic, Louis! though I see you are properly ashamed of a credulity too natural to the vanity of youth."

"No, Sir;" returned he, opening the letter with a trembling hand; "I should detest myself, if I thought I had a spark within me of any thing so mean as vanity. But if I had, Duke Wharton is of too noble a nature to play upon credulity so worthless. That letter, Sir, if you will condescend to read it, will shew you that I am honoured with his friendship."

Ignatius had now wrought Louis to the point at which he aimed, but maintaining his air of indifference, he took the letter from the agitated hand of his pupil, without observation. Louis presented it with a proud look, and stood as proudly watching his countenance while he read it. The Sieur went over it twice; he then coldly returned it, with the remark, "it is beyond my skill to expound so curious a riddle, but as you are his friend, you doubtless have a key?"

All the self-confidence, which a moment before had dilated the indignant heart of Louis, fell in an instant. He did not anticipate this sort of observation on the letter, and alarmed at the impressions which must have given rise to it, he stood in speechless embarrassment.

"This piece of paper," continued Ignatius, "is mere nonsense to me; and proves nothing, of what you to wish prove, unless you can do it by explaining its meaning?"

Louis remained silent.

The Sieur proceeded:—"You ought not to have put such seeming foolery into my hands, unless you were prepared to be its commentary."

"Then return it to me, Sir," cried Louis, overwhelmed with confusion, "and forget that you have seen it."

"I never forget any thing that I have seen, and, I am not to be trifled with. You have called my attention to this letter; you have shewn it to me, as a proof of Duke Wharton's confidence in you: but I see only a farrago of words, which, you have now pledged yourself to put into reasonable meaning by your explanation."

Louis's consternation was so great, at so unlooked for a consequence of what he had done, that he could not recollect what he had said, or might have implied to the Sieur; and he continued to gaze on the ground, humbled to the dust. "Oh!" cried he, in the depths of his soul, "was I then under the immediate control of detested, mischievous vanity, at the very moment I disclaimed its presence in my heart! Wretch that I am, to have been betrayed by any motive, to open the faintest glimmering of light upon the secrets of my friend, to this inexorable man!"

The recollection of Wharton's words, I put my life into your hands! rose before his mental sight in characters of blood; and turning sick at heart, he supported a momentary failure of his limbs, by grasping the back of a chair. The sight of this agitation only stimulated the curiosity of Ignatius, or, whatever else it was that impelled him to persecute his unoffending charge to such a point of distress.—He resumed.

"You have gone too far, to be silent now, I can comprehend, that certain phrases in this enigmatical epistle, refer to former conferences with you. Brutus and Cassius are not usually masquing names in affairs of gallantry, therefore, the nature of your mutual confidence I can guess; and it is necessary for your own, as well as the Duke's honour, that you should tell me their object."

"Sir," said Louis, "I have already done too much for my own honour.—The Duke's can never be injured by any thing I can say or withhold. And, I will mention his name no more."

"Young man," said Ignatius, "you must not add obstinacy to rashness. You have allowed yourself to be made privy to the schemes of a man who is suspected by his country! Be aware, that to conceal treason, is to share it."

Louis did not speak.

The Sieur continued: "Besides, you are answerable to your country, and to your father, who has devoted you with himself, to her interests, to reveal to him, as to your confessor, every event of your life. Much more, then, a circumstance like this. For, on your father's intimate acquaintance with every political device which could possibly disturb Europe, depends his guiding to perfection the mighty machine he is now constructing to give peace to the world. Hence, the glory of your father, as well as your vow to Spain, commands you to bend all minor considerations to the great duty of your life; and to confide to him, through me, every confidence of a political nature which has passed between you and the Duke of Wharton."

"The glory of my father," replied Louis, "can never be augmented by his son's faithlessness. And could Spain require such a proof of my attachment to her, the law of God, which is the everlasting appeal from all human ordinances, would sanction me in abjuring my vow!"

"You grant that Wharton has engaged your faithfulness! A secret implied, is a secret revealed; and further withholding a full acknowledgement, is finesse with me, and irreverence to your father. The Duke left Vienna a few weeks ago, secretly, and I have reason to believe, you could guess whither he is gone?"

"Sir," answered Louis, "I neither say, nor do not say, that I have been honoured with any confidence whatever, by the Duke of Wharton; but I repeat, that neither to my father, nor to any man living, do I think it necessary to betray a trust in me. Therefore, as I cannot repeat discourses I have never heard, and will not repeat discourses confided to me; you cannot be surprized that I hold my peace. My inconsideration, to give it the mildest appellation, has gone far enough, in shewing Duke Wharton's letter, however indifferent its subject, without his permission."

The Sieur fixed his investigating eye upon the determined brow of his pupil.

"Louis de Montemar," cried he, "you have imprudence enough in your composition to ruin a state; and sufficient stubbornness of what you call Honour, to ensure your own destruction. If you do not mean to relax the one, you must learn to confirm your mind against the wild influence of the other. Act less from passion, and more from principle. Be wary of friend, as well as foe; and never speak from your heart, till your words have paused in your head, to take the judgment of your circumspection. Had you shewn this letter to one less interested in your welfare, than your father's friend, the suspicion its style would have awakened, might have wrought consequences ruinous to the Duke, and not much less full of evil to yourself. I shall now drop the subject for ever, because I see that you will not neglect its lesson."

With the gratitude of one escaped from a snare, into which he thought he had desperately, and therefore blameably rushed, Louis took the letter, which the Sieur presented to him. His ingenuous cheek flushed with displeasure at himself for having been beguiled, rather than at the subtle trier of his wariness; and respectfully, though silently, he bowed his head to his unanswerable monitor. Ignatius fell immediately into his usual abstracted mood, and soon after left the room.