Wilton sat down and did as he was bid, feeling, it is true, that he could give a good deal more information upon the subject than the Earl possessed, if he thought fit to do so.  This, of course, he did not choose to do; and after the letter to the Lord Lieutenant was written, the Earl allowed him to depart, saying—­“Our business is somewhat light to-day, Wilton; but do not be the least afraid on account of this fair lady.  The Duke’s foolish pride will come down when he hears more.”

Wilton departed, in a meditative mood; for notwithstanding every assurance given him, he could not but feel apprehensive, sad, and despondent.  He might ask himself, in deed—­for the Earl’s words naturally led to such a mistaken question—­“Who, then, am I?  Who is it they would have me believe myself, that so proud a man should seek the alliance which he now scorns, as soon as he knows who I am?” But there seemed to him a sort of mockery in the very idea, which made him cast it from him as a vain delusion.

Though freed from ordinary business, and at liberty to go where he liked, with a thousand refined tastes which he was accustomed to gratify in his own dwelling, yet Wilton felt not the slightest inclination to turn his steps homeward on the present occasion.  Music, he knew full well, was by no means calculated to soothe his mind under the first effects of bitter disappointment.  Had it been but the disappointment of seeing Laura at the time he expected to do so—­had circumstances compelled him to be absent from her for a week or a month longer than he had expected—­had the bright dreams which he always conjured up of pleasant hours and happy days, and warm smiles and sweet words, when he proposed to go down to Somersbury, been left unrealized by the interposition of some unexpected event—­the disappointment would certainly have been great; but nevertheless he might have then found a pleasure, a consolation in music, in singing the songs, in playing the airs, of which Laura was fond; in calling up from memory the joys that were denied to hope, which can never so well be done, so powerfully, as by the magic voice of song.

But now all was uncertain:  his heart was too full of despondency and grief to find relief by re-awakening even the brightest memories of the past:  he could not gaze upon the days gone by, like the painter or the poet looking upon some beautiful landscape, for his situation he felt to be that rather of some unhappy exile looking back upon a bright land that he loved, when quitting it, perhaps never to return.  Neither could books afford him relief; for his own sorrowful feelings were now too actively present to suffer him to rove with the gay imagination of others, or to meditate on abstracted subjects with the thoughtful and the grave.

To fly from the crowds that at that time thronged the streets—­to seek solitary thought—­to wander on, changing his place continually—­to suffer and give way to all the many strange and confused ideas and feelings of grief, and disappointment, and bitterness of heart, and burning indignation, at ill-merited scorn, and surprise and curiosity in regard to the hopes that were held out to him, and despairing rejection of those hopes, even while the voice of the never-dying prophetess of blessings was whispering in his heart that those very hopes might be true—­was all that Wilton could do at that moment.