With this bewildering consciousness of the revolutions of time, yet the steadfastness of some things which were above time, Edgar walked into the little old-fashioned country inn, scarcely venturing to take off his hat for fear of recognition, and was shown into the best parlour, where Mr. Arden awaited him. CHAPTER XV. The Ardens. Arthur Arden, Esq., of Arden, was a different man from the needy cousin of the Squire, the hanger-on of society, the fine gentleman out at elbows, whose position had bewildered yet touched the supposed legal proprietor of the estates, and head of the family, during Edgar’s brief reign. A poor man knocking about the world, when he has once lost his reputation, has no particular object to stimulate him to the effort necessary for regaining it. But when a man who sins by will, and not by weakness of nature, gains a position in which virtue is necessary and becoming, and where vice involves a certain loss of prestige, nothing is easier than moral reformation. Arthur Arden had been a strictly moral man for all these years; he had given up all vagabond vices, the peccadilloes of the Bohemian. He was _rangé_ in every sense of the word. A more decorous, stately house was not in the county; a man more correct in all his duties never set an example to a parish. I do not know that the essential gain was very great. He took his vices in another way; he was hard as the nether millstone to all who came in his way, grasping and tyrannical. He did nothing that was not exacted from him, either by law, or public opinion, or personal vanity; on every other side he was in panoply of steel against all prayers, all intercessions, all complaints. Mrs. Arden made him an excellent wife. She was as proud as he was, and held her head very high in the county. The Countess of Marchmont, Lord Newmarch’s mother, was nothing in comparison with Mrs. Arden of Arden. But people said she was too cold in her manners ever to be popular. When her husband stood for the county, and she had to show the ordinary gracious face to all the farmers and farm-men, Clare’s manners lost more votes than her beauty and her family might have gained. She could not be cordial to save her life. But then the Ardens were always cold and proud--it was the characteristic of the family--except the last poor fellow, who was everybody’s friend, and turned out to be no Arden at all, as anyone might have seen with half an eye.