CHAPTER XXX.
Quae fert adolescentia Ea ne me celet consuefeci filium .-- TERENCE.
["The things which youth proposes I accustomed my son that he should never conceal from me."] The next morning Clarence was lounging over his breakfast, and glancing listlessly now at the pages of the newspapers, now at the various engagements for the week, which lay confusedly upon his table, when he received a note from Talbot, requesting to see him as soon as possible.
"Had it not been for that man," said Clarence to himself, "what should I have been now?
But, at least, I have not disgraced his friendship.

I have already ascended the roughest because the lowest steps on the hill where Fortune builds her temple.

I have already won for the name I have chosen some 'golden opinions' to gild its obscurity.

One year more may confirm my destiny and ripen hope into success: then--then, I may perhaps throw off a disguise that, while it befriended, has not degraded me, and avow myself to her! Yet how much better to dignify the name I have assumed than to owe respect only to that which I have not been deemed worthy to inherit! Well, well, these are bitter thoughts; let me turn to others.

How beautiful Flora looked last night! and, he--he--but enough of this: I must dress, and then to Talbot." Muttering these wayward fancies, Clarence rose, completed his toilet, sent for his horses, and repaired to a village about seven miles from London, where Talbot, having yielded to Clarence's fears and solicitations, and left his former insecure tenement, now resided under the guard and care of an especial and private watchman.
It was a pretty, quiet villa, surrounded by a plantation and pleasure-ground of some extent for a suburban residence, in which the old philosopher (for though in some respects still frail and prejudiced, Talbot deserved that name) held his home.