CHAPTER XVIII.
"But you, ere love misled your wandering eye,
Were sure the chief and best of human race,
Formed in the very pride and boast of nature."
Dryden.
To return again to the family of De Brooke. We left them making preparations for passing the advancing winter in London.
There is a degree of sadness in bidding even a temporary adieu to scenes that are familiar; a feeling which the General more forcibly experienced than his wife or daughters, for as the carriage conveyed them from their tranquil Bower, as it rolled along the winding-road, and as, by intervening objects, the lovely cottage became lost to their sight, it seemed to him as if he were again about plunging himself into the disastrous trials of his past life, from which that spot, so congenial to his feelings, had lately sheltered him.
Our travellers soon lost sight of Wales, and at the same time of those magnificent scenes which had passed in successive review before them.
