When breakfast was over, Charles ordered his packages to be taken down to the lodge, and bade his mother farewell. Lady Tyrrell melted into tears, and retired immediately into her own room. Sir Francis shook hands with his son, wished him good-by, and returned to his newspaper again. Mr. Driesen accompanied Charles to the lodge, and left him fully satisfied that he had established a hold upon the young man's regard which he had never before possessed.
The coach came up in a few minutes, the luggage was taken up, Charles mounted on the top, the horses started, and he was borne away from the scenes which were endeared to him by early reflections, but still more by the one sweet attaching tie of his love for Lucy Effingham.
"Nella strada della Licatia vi è una chiesetta mal fornita, ove suole annidarsi uno dei romiti girovagi, ed anni sono vi abitava uno di barba e pelo rosso, che si procacciava il vitto colle spontanee limosine de' passaggieri, conforme a tutti i suoi antecessori. Teneva egli un cane addestrato in maniera che ad un cenno quasi indiscernibile investiva con gran furia i passaggieri, e ad un altro cenno faceva mille ossequiosi atteggiamenti e giuocarelli."
So said our worthy old friend, the Canon Joseph Recupero, and therein he afforded an excellent allegory, representing in faint colours the passions of a violent and irritable man, which, at the lightest sign, imperceptible in fact to any but his own eyes and to the feelings that he acts upon, now rise into unprovoked aggression, now sink into fondling and uncalled-for affection.
Ere Charles Tyrrell had been much more than a month at Oxford, he received a letter from his father, commanding him imperatively to return to Harbury Park, without assigning the slightest reason or motive whatever for the conduct he thus pursued. On first reading the letter, Charles was inclined--and what young mind is not so inclined?--to give way to hope; to imagine that the purpose of his father was, as Mr. Driesen had prognosticated, to propose to him that union which he desired more than any other thing on earth, to offer to him voluntarily all that he thought necessary to render him as happy as he conceived it possible for a human being to be.