As Lord Cadurcis slowly directed his way through the woods and park of
Cherbury, past years recurred to him like a faint yet pleasing dream.
Among these meads and bowers had glided away the only happy years of
his boyhood, the only period of his early life to which he could look
back without disgust. He recalled the secret exultation with which, in
company with his poor mother, he had first repaired to Cadurcis, about
to take possession of what, to his inexperienced imagination, then
appeared a vast and noble inheritance, and for the first time in his
life to occupy a position not unworthy of his rank. For how many
domestic mortifications did the first sight of that old abbey
compensate! How often, in pacing its venerable galleries and solemn
cloisters, and musing over the memory of an ancient and illustrious
ancestry, had he forgotten those bitter passages of daily existence,
so humbling to his vanity and so harassing to his heart! Ho had beheld
that morn, after an integral of many years, the tomb of his mother.
That simple and solitary monument had revived and impressed upon him a
conviction that too easily escaped in the various life and busy scenes
in which he had since moved, the conviction of his worldly desolation
and utter loneliness.
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