[Lucretia Complete by Edward Bulwer-Lytton]@TWC D-Link bookLucretia Complete CHAPTER IV 2/23
The season of London was over, but there was always a set, and that set the one in which Charley Vernon principally moved, who found town fuller than the country.
Besides, he went occasionally to Brighton, which was then to England what Baiae was to Rome.
The prince was holding gay court at the Pavilion, and that was the atmosphere which Vernon was habituated to breathe.
He was no parasite of royalty; he had that strong personal affection to the prince which it is often the good fortune of royalty to attract.
Nothing is less founded than the complaint which poets put into the lips of princes, that they have no friends,--it is, at least, their own perverse fault if that be the case; a little amiability, a little of frank kindness, goes so far when it emanates from the rays of a crown. But Vernon was stronger than Lucretia deemed him; once contemplating the prospect of a union which was to consign to his charge the happiness of another, and feeling all that he should owe in such a marriage to the confidence both of niece and uncle, he evinced steadier principles than he had ever made manifest when he had only his own fortune to mar, and his own happiness to trifle with.
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