CHAPTER XVIII.

"As many arrows, loosed several ways,

Fly to one mark;

As many fresh streams, run in one self-same sea;
So, many thousand actions, once afoot,

End in one purpose."

YEARS passed on, and still Julian was a wanderer. He yet carried the barbed arrow of disappointed affections in his bosom; and life, even amidst all the varieties of aspect under which he had now the means of viewing it, offered no compensation for the rankling wound his heart had sustained. Twice had that heart put forth the clinging tendrils of young and ardent passion. In the one intance, from the mis-direction of their growth, they had been violently severed from the object

around which they had entwined. He had seen the necessity of their destruction, and acquiesced to the obligation; but still he suffered the aching void in his bosom-the vapid reaction which the cessation of any forcible excitement is accustomed to occasion. With regard to his love for Evelyn, arising as it had with his early years, and though for a time interrupted-gaining strength and ardour from that interruption-it was now the one corroding sorrow of his days. The perfect hopelessness of his affection seemed in no way to diminish it. It had begun with the purity of the feelings of childhood, it continued with the fervency of manhood; and the value of its object being in a measure enhanced on becoming the prize of one so distinguished as his successful rival, lent additional force to a sentiment which was destroying him. He believed that he had been treated with severity. Fancying that Evelyn had once returned his early love, he attributed her change to the one short period.

of his defalcation; and he thought his sin had been too severely visited. While those whom he had been taught to consider as bound to him by the tenderest affection, had looked on as if unmindful of the wreek his every hope had sustained. He knew that he had deserved much of what he had endured; he knew that there was none but himself and Lady Clairville who had been accessory to the present state of things; still he felt out of humour with the rest of the world, at least that world in which his young affections had so delighted. In this spirit he roamed throughout the various countries to which his caprice directed him, with heart and feelings dead to every species of enjoyment which they could offer to one less misanthropical than himself.

With every avenue of happiness closed, in a sense wilfully, the researches of science, the speculations of philosophy, the study of manners, all failed in awakening any interest. in his bosom. He entered the mines of Ger

many, the museums of Sweden, with the same inappetency. He was as little animated in the gay Courts of Vienna or St. Petersburg, as when traversing the vast steppes of Russia, or lost amidst the forests of Bohemia. And when studying the primitive simplicity of Hungarian or Moldavian habits, penetrating the savage courts of Circassian princes, or sharing the sensual indolence of the turbaned denizen of Constantinople, still he was the apathetic and cynical Julian.

At those periods when his exhausted funds at the different bankers to whom he had letters of credit, obliged him to have communication with England, he received the epistles which his devious route had rendered impossible to be forwarded. By one of these occasional despatches, he first learnt his mother's marriage, at the expiration of her year of widowhood, with the Prince de la Roche-Hudon; a young and dissipated Parisian, taking his title from

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some remote terre, which also placed a few thousands of francs within his scanty purse.

A bitter smile passed over the lips of Julian as he read this information. "She has hastened retribution," he muttered gloomily.

He next heard that the noble and wealthy Blanche had indeed given herself to him who had so long been the idolized object of her love. He felt that the Baroness de Cressy could not have better bestowed her hand, than on one who owned every distinction which virtue, talent, and manly beauty could give; though wanting the earthly possessions which, in the world's estimation, would alone render him worthy the prize which he had won. Still the intelligence gave a deeper pang to the heart of Lord Clairville, than its morbid indifference for others had for some time incurred. He recollected that her love had taken rise with his own unrequited passion; that it had ripened with it, and then formed the band of union