Without economy, who can be just?
And what are charity, generosity, but the poetry and the beauty of justice ?" No man ever asked Maltravers twice for a just debt; and no man ever once asked him to fulfil a promise.

You felt that, come what would, you might rely upon his word.

To him might have been applied the witty eulogium passed by Johnson upon a certain nobleman: "If he had promised you an acorn, and the acorn season failed in England, he would have sent to Norway for one!" It was not, therefore, the mere Norman and chivalrous spirit of honour, which he had worshipped in youth as a part of the Beautiful and the Becoming, but which in youth had yielded to temptation, as a _sentiment_ ever must yield to a passion, but it was the more hard, stubborn, and reflective _principle_, which was the later growth of deeper and nobler wisdom, that regulated the conduct of Maltravers in this crisis of his life.

Certain it is, that he had never but once loved as he loved Evelyn; and yet that he never yielded so little to the passion.
"If engaged to another," thought he, "that engagement it is not for a third person to attempt to dissolve.

I am the last to form a right judgment of the strength or weakness of the bonds which unite her to Vargrave, for my emotions would prejudice me despite myself.