This letter revived all Oswald's remorse at having even thought of detaching himself from his love. The commanding intellectual mildness of its reproof affected him deeply. A superiority so vast, so real, yet so simple, appeared to him out of all ordinary rule. He was never insensible that this was not the tender creature his fancy had chosen for the partner of his life: all he remembered of Lucy Edgarmond, at twelve years of age, better accorded with that ideal. But who could be compared with Corinne? She was a miracle formed by nature, in his behalf, he dared believe; since he might flatter himself that he was dear to her. Yet what would be his prospects if he declared his inclination to make her his wife? Such, he thought, would be his decision; yet the idea that her past life had not been entirely irreproachable, and that such a union would assuredly have been condemned by his father, again overwhelmed him with painful anxiety. He was not so subdued by grief as he had been ere he met Corinne; but he no longer felt the calm which may accompany repentance, when a whole life is devoted to expiate our faults. Formerly, he did not fear yielding to his saddest memories, but now he dreaded the meditations which revealed to him the secrets of his heart. He was preparing to seek Corinne, to thank her for her letter, and obtain pardon for his own, when his apartment was suddenly entered by Mr. Edgarmond, the young Lucy's near relation. This gentleman had lived chiefly on his estate in Wales; he possessed just the principles and the prejudice that serve to keep things as they are; and this is an advantage where things are as well arranged as human reason permits. In such a case, the partisans of established order, even though stubbornly bigoted to their own ways of thinking, deserve to be regarded as rational and enlightened men. Lord Nevil shuddered as this name was announced. All the past seemed to rise before him in an instant; and his next idea was, that Lady Edgarmond, the mother of Lucy, had charged her kinsman with reproaches. This thought restored his self-command; he received his countryman with excessive coldness; though not a single aim of the good man's journey concerned our hero. He was travelling for his health, exercising himself in the chase, and drinking "Success to King George and old England!" He was one of the best fellows in the world, with more wit and education than would have been supposed; ultra-English, even on points where it would have been advisable to be less so; keeping up, in all countries, the habit of his own, and avoiding their natives, not from contempt, but a reluctance to speak in foreign tongues, and a timidity which, at the age of fifty, rendered him extremely shy of new acquaintance.