Wild Hyacinth Author:Randolph Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. " The day is done, and the darkness Falls from the wings of night, As a feather is wafted downward From an eagle in his flight." Longfellow... more ». T)UT the quietness was hardly that of former - days. Friends and neighbours, having once been received at Ettrict, were constantly calling and sending invitations, which Sir Lou- doun, once roused from his seclusion, would not allow his daughter to refuse. Though he was not prepared to think that his sister-in-law's presence was necessary to suppress and to counteract Christian's " views," he nevertheless deplored them excessively, and was disposed to hope that more intercourse with the world,and the amusements natural to girls of her age, might be of service in causing her to forget them. So he commenced a life utterly different from that he had lived since his wife's delicate health had caused him to renounce society, and though it was at first a considerable effort, after a very short time he began once more to enjoy it. His natural instincts were most sociable, and it was more the nervous dread of changing his mode of life which had kept him secluded for so many years than any dislike to mixing with his fellow-men. It was very evident that the change was beneficial to him ; his spirits were better, and his conversation brighter than Christian ever remembered, and he soon began to talk of having large parties at Ettrick in the Autumn and Winter, and of taking a house in London in the Spring, to enjoy Hyacinth's society. The projected visit to Glen Ettrick did not take place. It had served its purpose by enabling Sir Loudoun to dislodge his sister-in- law, and Christian too well understood what painful memories must be connected with aspot, to too protracted a stay at which her mother's death was due, to remin...« less