Wilton Brown was now once more moving at ease.  He had his horses and his servant, and his small convenient apartments at no great distance from the Earl of Byerdale’s.  He could enjoy the various objects which the metropolis presented from time to time to satisfy the taste or the curiosity of the public, and he could mingle in his leisure hours with the few amongst the acquaintances he had made in passing through a public school, or residing at the University, whom he had learned to love or to esteem.  He sought them not, indeed, and he courted no great society; for there was not, perhaps, one amongst those he knew whose taste, and thoughts, and feelings, were altogether congenial with his own.  Indeed, when any one has found such, in one or two instances, throughout the course of life, he may sit himself down, saying, “Oh! happy that I am, in the wide universe of matter and of spirit I am not alone!  There are beings of kindred sympathies linked to myself by ties of love which it never can be the will of Almighty Beneficence that death itself should break!”

If Wilton felt thus towards any one, it was towards the Earl of Sunbury; but yet there was a difference between his sensations towards that kind friend and those of which we have spoken, on which we need not pause in this place.  Except in his society, however, Wilton’s thoughts were nearly alone.  There were one or two young noblemen and others, for whom he felt a great regard, a high esteem, a certain degree of habitual affection, but that was all, and thus his time in general passed solitarily enough.

With the Earl of Byerdale he did not perhaps interchange ten words in three months, although when he was writing in the same room with him he had more than once remarked the eyes of the Earl fixed stern and intent upon him from beneath their overhanging brows, as if he would have asked him some dark and important question, or proposed to him some dangerous and terrible act which he dared hardly name.

“Were he some Italian minister,” thought Wilton, sometimes, “and I, as at present, his poor secretary, I should expect him every moment to commend the assassination of some enemy to my convenient skill in such affairs.”

At length one morning when he arrived at the house of the Earl to pursue his daily task, he saw a travelling carriage at the door with two servants, English and foreign, disencumbering it from the trunks which were thereunto attached in somewhat less convenient guise than in the present day.  He took no note, however, and entered as usual, proceeding at once to the cabinet, where he usually found the Earl at that hour.  He was there and alone, nor did the entrance of Wilton create any farther change in his proceedings than merely to point to another table, saying, “Three letters to answer there, Mr. Brown—­the corners are turned down, with directions.”