But there are malefic vapours rising from the corpse of a past not altogether buried, and most cultivated Englishmen who tarry there long feel their influence as did John Maltravers.

Like so many _decepti deceptores_ of the Neo-Platonic school, he did not practise the abnegation enjoined by the very cult he professed to follow.

Though his nature was far too refined, I believe, ever to sink into the sensualism revealed in Temple's diaries, yet it was through the gratification of corporeal tastes that he endeavoured to achieve the divine _extasis_; and there were constantly lavish and sumptuous entertainments at the villa, at which strange guests were present.
In such a nightmare of a life it was not to be expected that any mind would find repose, and Maltravers certainly found none.

All those cares which usually occupy men's minds, all thoughts of wife, child, and home were, it is true, abandoned; but a wild unrest had hold of him, and never suffered him to be at ease.

Though he never told me as much, yet I believe he was under the impression that the form which he had seen at Oxford and Royston had reappeared to him on more than one subsequent occasion.