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Book, page 411 / 508 not make speeches: I trust, my dear guardian--my father, when I was left fatherless--I trust you believe I have some gratitude in me." "I do," cried Sir Ulick, much moved; "and, by Heaven, it is impossible to-- I mean--in short, it is impossible not to love you, Harry Ormond." * * * * * CHAPTER XXIII. There are people who can go on very smoothly with those whose principles and characters they despise and dislike. There are people who, provided they live in _company_, are happy, and care but little of what the company is composed. But our young hero certainly was not one of these contented people. He was perhaps too much in the other extreme. He could not, without overt words or looks of indignation, endure the presence of those whose characters or principles he despised--he could not, even without manifest symptoms of restlessness or ennui, submit long to live with mere companions; he required to have friends; nor could he make a friend from ordinary materials, however smooth the grain, or however fine the polish they might take. Even when the gay world at Castle Hermitage was new to him--amused and enchanted as he was at first with that brilliant society, he could not have been content or happy without his friends at Vicar's Dale, to whom, once at least in the four-and-twenty hours, he found it necessary to open his heart. We may then judge how happy he now felt in returning to Annaly: after the sort of moral constraint which he had endured in the company of Marcus O'Shane, we may guess what an expansion of heart took place. The family union and domestic happiness which he saw at Annaly, certainly struck him at this time more forcibly, from the contrast with what he had just seen at Castle Hermitage. The effect of contrast, however, is but transient. It is powerful as a dramatic resource, but in real life it is of no permanent consequence. There was here a charm which operates with as great certainty, and with a power secure of increasing instead of diminishing from habit--the charm of _domestic politeness_, in the every day manners of this mother, son, and daughter, towards each other, as well as towards their guests. Ormond saw and felt it irresistibly. He saw the
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