When Duke Hildebrod had withdrawn, Nigel's first impulse was an
irresistible feeling to laugh at the sage adviser, who would have thus
connected him with age, ugliness, and ill-temper; but his next thought
was pity for the unfortunate father and daughter, who, being the only
persons possessed of wealth in this unhappy district, seemed like a
wreck on the sea-shore of a barbarous country, only secured from
plunder for the moment by the jealousy of the tribes among whom it had
been cast. Neither could he help being conscious that his own
residence here was upon conditions equally precarious, and that he was
considered by the Alsatians in the same light of a godsend on the
Cornish coast, or a sickly but wealthy caravan travelling through the
wilds of Africa, and emphatically termed
