But all this time, in spite of handsome, dark-eyed Julia’s kindness, in spite of all the benefits to be derived from intimate relations with such agreeable people as the guests who were always to be found at Twickenham, the one charm that had held the young man constant to the Cedars,--like some spell-bound knight in a fairy story, who cannot leave an enchanted castle, though he knows that peril and ruin lurk within its walls,--the one supreme influence that had taken possession of Francis Tredethlyn had been the presence of Maude Hillary. From first to last his faith had never wavered, but his devotion had been the servile worship of an idolater, who was prepared to find his divinity hard and merciless. No thought of ever being anything nearer to Maude Hillary than he now was entered the young man’s mind. She was beautiful, amiable, loving,--for had he not seen her with her father? She was all that is most lovely and adorable in womankind: but she was not for him. In her presence his ignorance and awkwardness seemed to weigh him down to the very dust; and yet she was never unkind to him, or supercilious, or insolent. She was only indifferent: but Oh, the bitterness of her indifference! the anguish of the slavish worshipper who prostrates himself before his idol, and knows all the while that it is stone, and cannot have pity upon him! Again and again Francis Tredethlyn had determined that he would come no more to the Cedars. He would call on Mr. Hillary in the City some morning, and thank him for his hospitable kindness; and then he would buy a commission in a cavalry regiment newly ordered for Indian service. “Why should I be always coming here?” he thought. “They’re all very good to me, the young swells. But I feel awkward amongst them still; and even if I could fall into their ways, and make myself like them, which I can’t, where would be the good? I don’t want to be a ‘swell;’ I should like to be a soldier, with a regiment of glorious fellows to call me captain; or a farmer, with half a county to ride over, and a thousand sturdy labourers to take wages from me on a Saturday night; or a merchant, like Mr. Hillary, with a small fleet of ships on the high seas. That sort of thing would be life. But to dawdle in a billiard-room; or lounge at Tattersall’s, and buy a horse one doesn’t want, out of sheer idleness, and sell him at a loss three weeks afterwards; or to go for a yachting excursion off the Isle of Wight, with men to do all the work, and nothing to do one’s self except lie on one’s back and smoke and drink pale ale all day long: I can’t fancy such a life as that. So, why should I come here any more? I can’t fall naturally into these people’s habits. I think sometimes that I was happier out yonder, brushing the captain’s clothes and talking to the convicts. What a fellow that Surly Bill was! By Jove, that man _had_ seen life!”