MIDSUMMER AND MAY.
[Continued.]
II.
When Miss Kent, the maternal great-aunt of Mr. Raleigh, devised her
property, the will might possibly have been set aside as that of a
monomaniac, but for the fact that he cared too little about anything to
go to law for it, and for the still more important fact that the
heirs-at-law were sufficiently numerous to ingulf the whole property and
leave no ripple to attest its submerged existence, had he done so; and
on deserting it, he was better pleased to enrich the playfellow of his
childhood than a host of unknown and unloved individuals. I cannot say
that he did not more than once regret what he had lost: he was not of a
self-denying nature, as we know; on the contrary, luxurious and
accustomed to all those delights of life generally to be procured only
through wealth. But, for all that, there had been intervals, ere his
thirteen years' exile ended, in which, so far from regret, he
experienced a certain joy at remembrance of this rough and rugged point
of time where he had escaped from the chrysalid state to one of action
and freedom and real life. He had been happy in reaching India before
his uncle's death, in applying his own clear understanding to the
intricate entanglements of the affairs before him, in rescuing his
uncle's commercial good name, and in securing thus for himself a
foothold on the ladder of life, although that step had not occurred to
him till thrust there by the pressure of circumstances.
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