Tristram of Blent by Antonio Hope

Harry Tristram had led Lady Evenswood to believe that he would inform himself of his cousin's state of mind, or even open direct communication with her. He had done nothing to redeem this implied promise, although the remembrance of it had not passed out of his mind. But he was disinclined to fulfil it. In the first place, he was much occupied with the pursuits and interests of his new life; secondly, he saw no way to approach her in which he would not seem a disagreeable reminder; he might even be taken for a beggar or at least regarded as a reproachful suppliant. The splendor, the dramatic effect of his surrender and of the scene which had led up to it, would be endangered and probably spoilt by a resumption of intercourse between them. His disappearance had been magnificent -- no other conclusion could explain the satisfaction with which he looked back on the episode. There was no material yet for a reappearance equally striking. When he thought about her -- which was not very often just now -- it was not to say that he would never meet her again; he liked her too well, and she was too deeply bound up with the associations of his life for that; but it was to decide to postpone the meeting, and to dream perhaps of some progress or turn of events which should present him with his opportunity, and invest their renewed acquaintance with an atmosphere as unusual and as stimulating as that in which their first days together had been spent. Thus thinking of her only as she affected him, he remained at heart insensible to the aspect of the case which Lady Evenswood had commended to his notice. Cecily's possible unhappiness did not come home to him. After all, she had everything and he nothing -- and even he was not insupportably unhappy. His idea, perhaps, was that Blent and a high position would console most folk for somebody else's bad luck; men in bad luck themselves will easily take such a view as that; their intimacy makes a second-hand acquaintance with sorrow seem a trifling trouble.

Yet he had known his mother well. And he had made his surrender. Well, only a very observant man can tell what his own moods may be; it is too much to ask anybody to prophesy another's; and the last thing a man appreciates is the family peculiarities -- unless he happens not to share them.