Lord Albert read Lady Hamlet Vernon's communication with calm indifference. His eyes were unsealed. He knew her character now too thoroughly to be surprised: still less was he to be shaken from his purpose; and was far more firmly resolved to pursue the right course than he had ever been to follow the wrong: and wretched as he was at heart, he found consolation in reflecting deeply on the merciful interposition of a higher power than any earthly one, which had thus snatched him from misery. Wretched as he was at heart, he found consolation; and with this feeling commenced the arduous task of bringing back his mind and heart to former principles of uprightness and virtue.
Lady Hamlet Vernon, on her part, took a different course. Sensible that to betray any feeling on the event would only draw down further remark and observation, she again plunged into the society from which she had of late withdrawn; and prolonging her stay at Brighton, avoided all those unpleasant circumstances which, for a time at least, would have attended her meeting Lord Albert in public.
Lord Albert D'Esterre had formed his resolution on a principle of rectitude, and acted upon it with that degree of promptitude which is the sure test of sincerity in well-doing. When the moment's exertion, however, was over, his mind, enfeebled from the lengthened moral disease under which it so long had laboured, shrunk back in conscious weakness: and he became sensible, that however earnest the will may be, the difficulty is great to retrace our steps from error; and that it is still more difficult to regain firm footing in the path of virtue, when we have wandered from it for any length of time.
The painful recollection of the hours he had lost, or more than lost, the conviction of the misuse of his intellectual faculties, pressed upon him with a leaden weight that seemed to defy all his efforts to recover the power and energy of his mind. That solitude of the heart, too, which was now in prospect before him, shed a gloom around; for, for whom was he to live? was the natural question which now suggested itself, and one not likely to meet a wise reply at the moment.
After-reflection, indeed, might tell him, that there is a higher motive to live to virtue, than any which this world's affections can afford; but to this nobler impulse he had unfortunately for the present become insensible, and in having become so he had lost the surest means of happiness. Lord Albert was, however, notwithstanding this sense of destitution, unwilling, for many reasons, to throw himself on the only stay left him--the supporting friendship of Lord Glenmore: partly, perhaps, from that averseness to humble himself in the sight of another, however dear, or however honourable, the individual may be, which it is so common to human nature to feel; and also from many mixed motives, alike of genuine good and _spurious_ quality, which affect the purposes of all at some times and in some degree.