CHAPTER III.
"O Love, forsake me not; Mine were a lone dark lot Bereft of thee." HEMANS, _Genius singing to Love_.
I FEAR that as yet Ernest Maltravers had gained little from Experience, except a few current coins of worldly wisdom (and not very valuable those!) while he has lost much of that nobler wealth with which youthful enthusiasm sets out on the journey of life.

Experience is an open giver, but a stealthy thief.

There is, however, this to be said in her favour, that we retain her gifts; and if ever we demand restitution in earnest, 'tis ten to one but what we recover her thefts.

Maltravers had lived in lands where public opinion is neither strong in its influence, nor rigid in its canons; and that does not make a man better.

Moreover, thrown headlong amidst the temptations that make the first ordeal of youth, with ardent passions and intellectual superiority, he had been led by the one into many errors, from the consequences of which the other had delivered him; the necessity of roughing it through the world--of resisting fraud to-day, and violence to-morrow,--had hardened over the surface of his heart, though at bottom the springs were still fresh and living.