Markham was glad that Mr. Martindale’s visit had terminated without discovering the unpleasant circumstances in which the young man’s father had been involved: and as soon as the elder Markham was sufficiently recovered to attend to his usual occupation, the young man took his leave of his parents and returned to town.

Now another season was commencing in the great metropolis, and the family of Colonel Rivolta had become tolerably well naturalised. The Colonel himself, from his relation to so opulent a man as old John Martindale, became a person of some consequence, and he had the honor to lounge and yawn about the streets with divers persons who bore titles or were in expectation of titles. Much as ignorant and superficial people may laugh at the old story of Jack helping Dick to do nothing, we are firmly and seriously of opinion that a man is never so much in need of assistance as when he has nothing to do. Colonel Rivolta found many persons in London in this predicament, and such was the natural benevolence of his mind that he took an inexpressible delight in affording them all the assistance in his power. The Colonel was never without a cigar in his mouth; and therefore he was peculiarly acceptable to those young noblemen and gentlemen who could not for the weakness of their heads smoke in the morning, because though they could not smoke they could employ themselves with sniffing the fumes of the Colonel’s cigars.

The Colonel was not indeed very intimate with the English language so as to enjoy and understand its delicacies and niceties; but he was sufficiently well acquainted with the language and air and style of fashionable impertinence and coxcomical exclusiveness, and he could laugh remarkably well. He was also exceedingly well-dressed, and had that exquisitely ridiculous military air, which if it be not the glory is at least the pride of most of those green ones who have entered the army since 1815. The Colonel had also in very great perfection the imitative faculty, which enabled him to catch to the very life the manners of the people with whom he associated. He caught with great facility all the fashionable fool’s tricks of the dinner-table; and notwithstanding his imperfect knowledge of the English language, he had no difficulty in understanding and in making himself understood in all matters touching eating and drinking: on these subjects he was eloquent and animated. The Colonel was not a very young man, as may be inferred from the age of his daughter, but he had the air and manners of youth; and he was thus more ridiculous, if possible, than those young men with whom he chiefly associated. This, however, could be said for him which could not be said for them; namely, that he had seen actual and severe service, and had undergone many hardships: there was therefore something of philosophy in his very flippancy of character and manner.

Of a gentleman of this description while sauntering about in time of peace, it is very clear that the historian’s pen can have little or nothing to record: nor can our readers be much surprised if, when speaking of the interests of Clara Rivolta, we should say little or nothing of her father as influencing her destiny or directing her actions. It is not indeed to be supposed that such a woman as Signora Rivolta should pay very great deference to the opinions of Colonel Rivolta, even if he had any opinions, which, by the way, he had not. If any of our readers are astonished at the fact that the daughter of John Martindale should, in spite of all her good natural understanding, have condescended to marry such a man as Colonel Rivolta, we can only say that such readers must have a very limited circle of acquaintance, or be gifted with the not unusual faculty of being blind to one half of that which passes immediately before their eyes. We have hinted before at this apparent incongruity, and our reference to it again in this place to account for the omission of Colonel Rivolta’s name or observations in some part of our narrative, which is now about to be opened; and we wish also to avoid any thing which might appear disrespectful to the nobler sex: for it would be very wrong to represent the disposal of a daughter’s hand as being more at the will or under the influence of the mother than of the father, unless some special and peculiar reason were given for the fact. Man is the lord of the creation, and he has right because he has power. If any body can find a better reason let them, we will not quarrel with them or dispute the point; our business is not philosophy.

To our narrative then. Horatio Markham no sooner arrived in town than he went to pay his respects to his noble patron. He was graciously received. He made a few common-place apologies, which were received with due common-place politeness, and that business was soon over.

From the house of his noble patron he made the best of his way to the residence of his queer old friend, John Martindale. Almost all single men, who are not downright hermits, have some peculiar pet place of call; some friend’s house, where they uniformly make their first and last visit; where they pop in without fear of intruding. Sometimes, such is the fickleness of humanity, these places are changed; and even Markham, with all his steadiness, was once in great danger of substituting the house of Mr. Henderson for that of Mr. Martindale. A thousand blessings on the head of Dr. Crack for supplanting him there!

Mr. Martindale was not at home when Markham called. That, of course, Markham knew; but he would not suffer any more reproaches from the old gentleman for neglect of attention. Signora Rivolta and her daughter were sitting together; the mother was reading, the daughter was drawing. The mother laid aside her book when Markham entered the room; and she smilingly said, that her time might be better employed than in reading for amusement. The book was a volume of Italian plays. An Englishwoman would have thought herself most learnedly occupied with the same; especially if she had had by her side a dictionary, which she was frequently under the necessity of consulting. There is no waste of time in reading books of amusement when they are not amusing. What a fuss people make about amusement, and very sensible people too! But perhaps there is a pleasure in railing against pleasure, and so we will let it pass.

It was not usual with Signora Rivolta to express herself with so much freedom and cheerfulness to Markham as she did at this interview. There had generally been something of distance and restraint in her, as if fearful of giving the young man too much encouragement.

The time had been that Markham would have been mightily pleased with this manifest change in the deportment of Signora Rivolta; but under present circumstances it appeared to him that it was merely owing to the apparent discontinuance on his part of all serious attention to Clara; and he also felt that it would be morally impossible for him, in the present state of his father’s affairs, to think of making proposals.

With affected ease and cheerfulness he conversed with Signora Rivolta; and with an almost ridiculous affectation of indifference, he took comparatively little notice of Clara. The conversation between Markham and Signora Rivolta was unusually animated. Matters of taste were discussed, politics touched upon, and theology alluded to.

The last was an exceedingly delicate topic. Markham, with all his simplicity and ignorance of what is called the world, had not been inattentive to theology. He had observed and thought much of the influence of religion upon the human mind; this, indeed, had been his first and almost his only speculation. He had been very desirous, even from early youth, of acting and living most accurately and conscientiously. He was as ignorant on the subject of sectarianism as any member of an establishment need wish to be. But sectarianism does not spring from the attractions of heresy so much as from the dissatisfactions of orthodoxy. For so long as the dogmas of our own creed please us, the arguments of another, however ingenious, do not disturb us. Unfortunately, however, for Markham’s orthodoxy, his native town labored under the evil of a schism in the church, which is far more injurious to its stability than a schism from it. The evangelical party was very strong and very numerous, and very noisy; and made a great talk about religion, and paid very great attention to church duties and observances. Markham was a man generally speaking much in earnest, and he therefore gave much attention to this modification of the established theology; and had, when a very young man, contrary to the opinion and advice of his father and mother, sided with this party; and he thought the other party little better than mere indifferentists.

He thought he saw among the evangelical party symptoms of the original and primitive spirit of Christianity; and he used to say so very freely, and to think so very seriously. And his mother used to say, he would know better as he grew older: and in process of time he did grow older; and whether he thought better or not we presume not to say; but we do know, that as he grew older, he acquired a habit of analysing motives and looking into principles. And it came to pass that he found among these evangelicals divers manifestations of a worldly spirit, which did not exactly coincide with his notions of extraordinary spiritual purity. In the mercantile part of that class he saw much that bordered very closely on trickery; in the class a little higher, he found a mighty spirit of conceit and priggishness. Towards their neighbours he saw that many of them were mightily censorious. In conversing with some of them, and those the ringleaders, he found that they were prodigiously ignorant of the very principles on which their peculiarities were founded, and he found them to be unanimous only on one point; namely, that their favorite clergyman was a nice man.

At this discovery he was somewhat tempted to smile; and as in some cases tears lead to thought, so in others do smiles lead to reflection. And is not this the order and ordinance of nature? The human infancy, which is the vestibule of intellect, is a scene commingled of smiles and tears, of passionate sorrows and of noisy joys; then comes reflection. So it had been with Markham in what may be called his theological infancy. Led by circumstances to reflect and to think, he perhaps carried reflection and thought farther than he first intended, or was aware of. But it was something, and indeed a very great matter, that he had penetration enough to see through, what he had charity enough to call, the unconscious mask of fanaticism.

Thus led to reflection, his mind did not hastily settle. He was entertained by various speculations, and he made many inquiries, and was forced to find answers for them as well as he could. He had, as people say, his own opinions. What those opinions were we know not, and perhaps Markham himself did not exactly know; and therefore, as he apprehended these opinions indistinctly, he could not communicate them, and thus they were likely to continue his own. Whatever were his literal opinions, the spirit of his theological feeling was catholic; not Roman Catholic, gentle reader, but catholic in its widest acceptation. He did at one time reprobate sectarianism not as a nurse of dangerous heresies, but as a violation of the spirit of nature’s catholicism, and an unauthorised earth-born enclosure of heaven’s free blessings; but he, in time, so far surmounted that feeling, as to discern in the constitution of the human mind the elements of sectarianism; and he at length came to the dangerous conclusion, that there must needs be diversity of opinion so long as there was diversity of minds.

This state of mind will easily account for his overlooking the theological education of Clara Rivolta, while and when he thought of paying court to her; and it will also serve to explain the fact of his calmly conversing with Signora Rivolta on subjects connected with theology. For this good lady had also a free and liberal spirit towards dissidents; and did think that in religion there was something eternal and indivisible, which humors of the day could not limit, nor the low walls and fences of sectarianism divide. Her faith, however, and her devotion, however liberal might be her feelings, were modulated and disposed according to the religion in which she had been educated. Those forms she preferred decidedly, but not angrily.

Now that part of the conversation which had reference to theology was on the broadest and most general principles; and the parties, so far as they went, coincided.

Markham had been talking with Signora Rivolta a long while; and he had been so mightily well pleased with his own speculations, freely uttered and candidly received, that he did not notice that all this time Clara had been perfectly silent; and that she had been attentively, to all appearance, occupied with her drawing.

But the conversation on the part of the mother of Clara presently flagged; and the eyes of the Signora were directed to a time-piece that stood on a bracket in the room where they were sitting. The index pointed to the hour of two. Markham recollected having seen that time-piece in poor old Richard Smith’s cottage at Brigland; and when Signora Rivolta looked at it so earnestly, there rushed into the young man’s mind recollections of the past; and he was so lost in these recollections, that he did not think of the proper interpretation of the Signora’s looks at the time-piece.

There was presently an awkward silence; and Clara lifted up her face from the table and looked at her mother, and saw that her mother’s eyes were directed to the time-piece; and there also did she look, and then suddenly her countenance changed, and she looked again at her mother, and slightly at Markham, and she almost sighed.

Markham scarcely heeded these movements for a minute or two; but presently his recollection came to him, and he bethought himself that he had made an unusually long visit, and he rose to take his departure. Then he saw, by the manner in which Signora Rivolta received his motion to depart, that his stay had been quite long enough; and he was still, with all his philosophy, so far in love with Clara, that he fancied that she also seemed glad that he was going. She smiled, indeed, and courteously said, “Good morning, sir.” But if she had not smiled, she must have sighed; and perhaps have almost wept.

As Markham was retiring, he met at the drawing-room door a strange mysterious-looking personage, dressed in black, and having a look of gloom and darkness far beyond any darkness of attire. The stranger fixed his eyes inquiringly on the young barrister, and by his looks seemed to rebuke the young man as an unwelcome intruder. Markham again looked at the stranger, not from wilful curiosity and voluntary impertinence, but almost through a power of fascination. Never had he seen a countenance of such singular and curious expression. It seemed not only unenglish, but unearthly. The eyes were large, flat, and lustreless; the cheeks long, narrow, pendulous, and sadly sallow; the nose aquiline; the forehead low and wrinkled; the hair thick and grizzled; the mouth wide, and the lips thin and pale; and the teeth long and irregular, and alternately black and yellow, like the keys of an old harpsichord. Markham sickened at the sight; he guessed what the stranger was; and so can our readers.