There certainly, however, were the means, if they had been resorted to, for every laudable gratification of interest and entertainment at Restormel. And where is the country place in which, if its possessor fulfil the various duties the possession entails on him, the means are wanting; and even as it was, if that sickly appetite for excitement which characterised its present inhabitants could ever have been satisfied, it must have been here, where every thing connected with their system of life was found in profusion; but the factitious smiles which gild the exterior of such a circle as was generally to be met with at Restormel is not the sunshine of real happiness. Easter was now arrived and the party assembled at Restormel, consisted of the Tilneys, the Tenderdens, the Baskervilles, the Leinsengens, Luttermannes, Lord Tonnerre, Lady Hamlet Vernon, Lord Albert D'Esterre (who was asked _on trial_), Lord and Lady Boileau, by the manœuvre which has been described, and one or two single men like Mr. Leslie Winyard, Mr. Spencer Newcomb, &c. &c. These persons all met on the first night of their arrival at an eight o'clock dinner. Lord Albert D'Esterre had been invited at Lady Tilney's suggestion, who considered a country house a good stage for the display of a new _debutant_, and as affording no unpropitious opportunity of forwarding her wishes in regard to Lord Albert's political bias. These wishes, however, were soon doomed to disappointment; Lord Albert had accepted the invitation under the impression that in the country there was more leisure and tranquillity than the hurry of a London life allowed; but whether in the country or town, he might have known, had not the fatal mist of delusion which comes over all who enter on a tortuous path began to blind him, that reflection and serenity of mind do not depend on time or place; that power, that calm, may be destroyed or may be nurtured in cities, as in lonely wilds, it is true; but had he thought for a moment, he would have felt that the gay assemblage in which he was to mix at Restormel, was not calculated to restore him to that state of mind which he believed himself anxious to regain.