They were his young days—­beautiful and wicked—­days of clear, rich tints, and sanguine throbbings, and gloria mundi—­when we fancy the spirit perfect, and the body needs no redemption—­when, fresh from the fountains of life, death is but a dream, and we walk the earth like heathen gods and goddesses, in celestial egotism and beauty.  Oh, fair youth!—­gone for ever.  The parting from thee was a sadness and a violence—­sadder, I think, than death itself.  We look behind us, and sigh after thee, as on the pensive glories of a sunset, and our march is toward the darkness.  It is twilight with us now, and will soon be starlight, and the hour and place of slumber, till the reveille sounds, and the day of wonder opens.  Oh, grant us a good hour, and take us to Thy mercy!  But to the last those young days will be remembered and worth remembering; for be we what else we may, young mortals we shall never be again.

Of course Dick Devereux was now no visitor at the Elms.  All that for the present was over.  Neither did he see Lilias; for little Lily was now a close prisoner with doctors, in full uniform, with shouldered canes, mounting guard at the doors.  ’Twas a hard winter, and she needed care and nursing.  And Devereux chafed and fretted; and, in truth, ’twas hard to bear this spite of fortune—­to be so near, and yet so far—­quite out of sight and hearing.

A word or two from General Chattesworth in Doctor Walsingham’s ear, as they walked to and fro before the white front of Belmont, had decided the rector on making this little call; for he had now mounted the stair of Devereux’s lodging, and standing on the carpet outside, knocked, with a grave, sad face on his door panel, glancing absently through the lobby window, and whistling inaudibly the while.

The doctor was gentle and modest, and entirely kindly.  He held good Master Feltham’s doctrine about reproofs.  ‘A man,’ says he, ’had better be convinced in private than be made guilty by a proclamation.  Open rebukes are for Magistrates, and Courts of Justice! for Stelled Chambers and for Scarlets, in the thronged Hall Private are for friends; where all the witnesses of the offender’s blushes are blinde and deaf and dumb.  We should do by them as Joseph thought to have done by Mary, seeke to cover blemishes with secrecy.  Public reproofe is like striking of a Deere in the Herd; it not only wounds him to the loss of enabling blood, but betrays him to the Hound, his Enemy, and makes him by his fellows be pusht out of company.’

So on due invitation from within, the good parson entered, and the handsome captain in all his splendours—­when you saw him after a little absence ’twas always with a sort of admiring surprise—­you had forgot how very handsome he was—­this handsome slender fellow, with his dark face and large, unfathomable violet eyes, so wild and wicked, and yet so soft, stood up surprised, with a look of welcome quickly clouded and crossed by a gleam of defiance.