More delicate from the first than the two brothers who had gone
before him, Lord Fordham had never been at school, had studied
irregularly, and had never been from under his mother's wing till
this summer, when she was detained by the slow decay of his
grandmother. Languor and listlessness had beset the youth, and he
had been ordered mountain air, and thus it was that Mrs. Evelyn had
despatched both her sons to Switzerland, under the attendance of a
highly recommended physician, a young man bright and attractive, who
had over-worked himself at an hospital, and needed thorough
relaxation. Rightly considering Lucas Brownlow as the cause of most
of Cecil's Eton follies, she had given her eldest son a private hint
to elude joining forces with the family, and he was the most docile
and obedient of sons. Yet was it the perversity of human nature that
made him infinitely more animated and interested in John Brownlow's
race and the distressed travellers on the Schwarenbach than he had
been since-—no one could tell when?
Perhaps it was the novelty of being left alone and comparatively
unwatched. Certain it was that he ate enough to rejoice the heart of
his devoted and tyrannical attendant Reeves; and that he walked about
in much anxiety all the afternoon, continually using his telescope to
look up the mountain wherever a bit of the track was visible through
the pine woods.
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