Mount Royal: A Novel. Volume 1 of 3. Braddon Mary Elizabeth

the son who resembled that departed father – save in lacking some of his best qualities! How she doated on Leonard, the most commonplace and unattractive of young men! The thought of her cousin set Christabel on a new train of speculation. If Leonard had been at home when Mr. Hamleigh came to Mount Royal, how would they two have suited each other? Like fire and water, like oil and vinegar, like the wolf and the lamb, like any two creatures most antagonistic by nature. It was a happy accident that Leonard was away. She was still thinking when she fell asleep, with that uneasy sense of pain and trouble in the future which was always suggested to her by Leonard's image – a dim unshapen difficulty waiting for her somewhere along the untrodden road of her life – a lion in the path.

      CHAPTER III

      "TINTAGEL, HALF IN SEA, AND HALF ON LAND."

      There was no sense of fear or trouble of any kind in the mind of anybody next morning after breakfast, when Christabel, Miss Bridgeman, and Mr. Hamleigh started, in the young lady's own particular pony carriage, for an exploring day, attended by Randie, who was intensely excited, and furnished with a picnic basket which made them independent of the inn at Trevena, and afforded the opportunity of taking one's luncheon under difficulties upon a windy height, rather than with the commonplace comforts of an hotel parlour, guarded against wind and weather. They were going to do an immense deal upon this first day. Christabel, in her eagerness, wanted to exhibit all her lions at once.

      "Of course, you must see Tintagel," she said; "everybody who comes to this part of the world is in a tremendous hurry to see King Arthur's castle. I have known people set out in the middle of the night."

      "And have you ever known any one of them who was not just a little disappointed with that stupendous monument of traditional royalty?" asked Miss Bridgeman, with her most prosaic air. "They expect so much – halls, and towers, and keep, and chapel – and find only ruined walls, and the faint indication of a grave-yard. King Arthur is a name to conjure with, and Tintagel is like Mont Blanc or the Pyramids. It can never be so grand as the vision its very name has evoked."