I have wronged you deeply, and I cannot bear to look upon your face." To these words Algernon attached a general, but they cloaked a peculiar, meaning: in three years, he returned to England; his father had been dead some months, and the signification of his parting address was already deciphered,--but of this hereafter.
In his travels Mordaunt encountered an Englishman whose name I will not yet mention: a person of great reputed wealth; a merchant, yet a man of pleasure; a voluptuary in life, yet a saint in reputation; or, to abstain from the antithetical analysis of a character which will not be corporeally presented to the reader till our tale is considerably advanced, one who drew from nature a singular combination of shrewd but false conclusions, and a peculiar philosophy, destined hereafter to contrast the colours and prove the practical utility of that which was espoused by Mordaunt.
There can be no education in which the lessons of the world do not form a share.

Experience, in expanding Algernon's powers, had ripened his virtues.

Nor had the years which had converted knowledge into wisdom failed in imparting polish to refinement.

His person had acquired a greater grace, and his manners an easier dignity than before.

His noble and generous mind had worked its impress upon his features and his mien; and those who could overcome the first coldness and shrinking hauteur of his address found it required no minute examination to discover the real expression of the eloquent eye and the kindling lip.
He had not been long returned before he found two enemies to his tranquillity,--the one was love, the other appeared in the more formidable guise of a claimant to his estate.