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Rh himself holds but lightly. You drew your sword for higher motives than that hats should be worn without feathers, and sermons preached without surplices."

Sir Robert might have said, that if there be one habit more than another the dry-rot of all that is high and generous in youth, it is the habit of ridicule. The lip ever ready with the sneer, the eye ever on the watch for the ludicrous, must always dwell upon the external; and most of what is good and great ever lies below the surface. But, rejoiced at his child's return, he had little inclination to moralise; he was now again under his own roof, and he trusted, as affection ever trusts, that the future would make him all he could wish. Ah, the future! the dreaming, the deceiving future, which promises everything, and performs nothing—what would the present be without it?