The sudden announcement of the Earl’s determination to go abroad, without any intimation that the young man whom he had fostered from youth to manhood was to accompany him, or to follow him to the continent, might very well set Wilton musing on his circumstances and his prospects; but that was not the cause of his meditative mood on the present occasion, though it was the immediate cause of his giving way to it.  In truth, the inclination which he felt to low, desponding, though deep and clear thought, had pursued him for the last four-and-twenty hours, and it was to cast it off that he had in fact ridden so hard that very morning.  Now, however, he found it necessary to yield to it; and as he rode along, he gave up his mind entirely to the consideration of the past, of the present, and the future.

The Earl had announced to him at once in his letter, that he was about to leave England, but he had made no reference whatsoever to the future fate of him whom he had hitherto protected and supported.  Was that protection and support still to continue?  Wilton asked himself.  His friend had told him that he was to win his way in the world, and was the struggle now to begin?  The next question that came was, naturally, Who and what am I, then? and his thoughts plunged at once into a gulf where they had often lost themselves before.

His boyhood had passed away unheeding, and he had attached no importance to his previous fate, nor made any effort to impress upon his own recollection the circumstances which preceded the period of his reception into the Earl’s house.  Indeed, he had never thought much upon the matter, till at length, when he had reached the age of fifteen, the Earl had kindly and judiciously spoken with him upon his future prospects; and in order to stimulate him to exertion, had pointed out to him that his fortunes depended on himself.  He had then, for the first time, asked himself, “Who and what am I?” and had striven to recollect as much as possible of the past, in order to gather thence some knowledge of the present.  His efforts had not been very successful.

Time, the great destroyer, envies even memory the power of preserving images of the things that he has done away or altered; and he is sure, if possible, to deface the pictures altogether, or to leave the lines less clear.  With Wilton he had done much to blot out and to confuse.  At first, memory seemed all a blank beyond the period of his schoolboy days; but gradually one image after another rose out of the void, and one called up another as they came.  Still they were clouded and indistinct, like the vague phantoms of a dream.  It was with great difficulty that he recollected any names, and could not at all tell in what land it was, that some of the brightest of his memories lay.  It was all unconnected, too, with the present, and from it Wilton could derive no clue in regard to the great change that was coming.  Between him and the future there appeared to hang a dark pall, which his eye could not penetrate, but behind which was Fate.  He tried to combat such feelings:  he tried long, as he rode, to conquer them; to put them down by the power of a vigorous mind; to overthrow sensation by thought.