"Dreams, Jack, idle dreams; pleasant enough in the dreaming, soap-bubbles floating in the sunlight, radiant with all the colours of the prism, and vanishing into thin air while we watch them. Better perhaps the alembic and the pentagon than the faro-table and the dice-box. As you are a man who must have some kind of excitement, who cannot live out of a fever, perhaps Vincenti is no worse a hobby than any other. The old man is harmless, and devoted to you." "Does he like Lavendale Manor, Herrick? Is he contented with his new quarters?" asked his lordship. "I saw you had a letter from him this morning." "He says the old rooms delight him, and that the house is full of the influence of your forefathers. You know his ideas about the influence of the dead--that those in whom mind has been superior to matter never cease to be--that for such death is but transition from the visible to the invisible. The body may rot in the grave, but the mind, which in this life dominated the body, still walks the earth, and exercises a mystic power over the mind of the living." "Would that my mother's spirit could revisit that old house and hold commune with her wretched son!" exclaimed Lavendale. "She was the only being who ever influenced me for good, and Fate snatched her from me before my character was formed. I might have been a better man had she lived. I would not have grieved her gentle nature by the parade of my vices." "And you might have been a hypocrite as well as a rake, Jack." "No, Herrick; if I had but been happy I need have been neither rake nor hypocrite. It is the sense of a void here that drives us into evil courses. Had there been some pure affection to sustain my youth, I should never have gone wrong. When I met Judith I was too far gone; the rot was in the ship, and she must needs go to pieces. There is a stage in evil at which even virtuous love cannot save the sinner." "And 'fore Heaven I know no more potent cure," said Herrick. "There goes Mrs. Howard, looking just a little older and deafer than when we saw her last: they say the Prince neglects her shamefully, and is more devoted to his wife than ever. Yes, Lavendale, a true-hearted woman is your only redeeming angel below the skies. But I doubt if Lady Judith belongs to the angelic order. She is a creature of passions and impulses, like yourself--a woman who would sacrifice every duty to the promptings of an undisciplined heart. May Fate keep two such fires asunder!"