He would lie awake for hours, indulging in sweet and
unconscious reveries, and brooding over the future morn, that always
brought happiness. All that he used to sigh for, was to be Lady
Annabel's son; were he Venetia's brother, then he was sure he never
should be for a moment unhappy; that parting from Cherbury, and the
gloomy evenings at Cadurcis, would then be avoided. In such a mood,
and lying awake upon his pillow, he sought refuge from the painful
reality that surrounded him in the creative solace of his imagination.
Alone, in his little bed, Cadurcis was Venetia's brother, and he
conjured up a thousand scenes in which they were never separated, and
wherein he always played an amiable and graceful part. Yet he loved
the abbey; his painful infancy was not associated with that scene; it
was not connected with any of those grovelling common-places of his
life, from which he had shrunk back with instinctive disgust, even
at a very tender age. Cadurcis was the spot to which, in his most
miserable moments at Morpeth, he had always looked forward, as the
only chance of emancipation from the distressing scene that surrounded
him. He had been brought up with a due sense of his future position,
and although he had ever affected a haughty indifference on the
subject, from his disrelish for the coarse acquaintances who were
perpetually reminding him, with chuckling self-complacency, of his
future greatness, in secret he had ever brooded over his destiny as
his only consolation.
Pages:
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67