Mrs. Dacre died, and the widower and his daughter returned to England.
In the meantime, the Duke of St. James had not been idle.
CHAPTER II.
_Tender Relatives_
THE departure and, at length, the total absence of Mr. Dacre from
England yielded to Lord Fitz-pompey all the opportunity he had long
desired. Hitherto he had contented himself with quietly sapping the
influence of the guardian: now that influence was openly assailed. All
occasions were seized of depreciating the character of Mr. Dacre,
and open lamentations were poured forth on the strange and unhappy
indiscretion of the father who had confided the guardianship of his son,
not to his natural and devoted friends, but to a harsh and repulsive
stranger. Long before the young Duke had completed his sixteenth year
all memory of the early kindness of his guardian, if it had ever
been imprinted on his mind, was carefully obliterated from it. It was
constantly impressed upon him that nothing but the exertions of his aunt
and uncle had saved him from a life of stern privation and irrational
restraint: and the man who had been the chosen and cherished confidant
of the father was looked upon by the son as a grim tyrant, from whose
clutches he had escaped, and in which he determined never again to find
himself.
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