He had exhausted Brittany and the South of France in
these rapid scampers; skimmed the cream of their novelty, at any rate. He
did not care very much for field-sports, and hunted and shot in a
jog-trot safe kind of way, with a view to the benefit of his health,
which savoured of old bachelorhood. And as for the rest of his
pleasures--the social rubber at his club, the Blackwall or Richmond
dinners--it seemed only custom that made them agreeable.
"If I had gone to the Bar, as I intended to do before my father's death,
I should have had an object in life," he thought, as he puffed slowly at
his cigar; "but a commercial man has nothing to hope for in the way of
fame--nothing to work for except money. I have a good mind to sell the
business, now that it is worth selling, and go in for the Bar after all,
late as it is."
He had thought of this more than once; but he knew the fancy was a
foolish one, and that his friends would laugh at him for his folly.
He was beyond the grounds of Lidford House by this time, sauntering
onward in the fair summer night; not indifferent to the calm loveliness
of the scene around him, only conscious that there was some void within
himself which these things could not fill. He walked along the road by
which he and his sister had come back from church, and turned into the
lane at the end of which Captain Sedgewick had bidden them good night.
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