"I can't account," said Levy, "for what has gone so cross in this confounded election. It is L'Estrange that puzzles me; but I know that he hates Egerton. I know that he will prove that hate by one mode of revenge, if he has lost it in another. But it is well, Randal, that you are secure of Hazeldean's money and the rich heiress's hand; otherwise—"

"Otherwise, what?"

"I should wash my hands of you, mon cher; for, in spite of all your cleverness, and all I have tried to do for you, somehow or other I begin to suspect that your talents will never secure your fortune. A carpenter's son beats you in public speaking, and a vulgar mill-owner tricks you in private negotiation. Decidedly, as yet, Randal Leslie, you are—a failure. And, as you so admirably said, 'a man from whom we have nothing to hope or fear we must blot out of the map of the future.'"

Randal's answer was cut short by the appearance of the groom of the chambers.

"My Lord is in the saloon, and requests you and Mr. Leslie will do him the honour to join him there." The two gentlemen followed the servant up the broad stairs.

The saloon formed the centre room of the suite of apartments. From its size, it was rarely used save on state occasions. It had the chilly and formal aspect of rooms reserved for ceremony.

Riccabocca, Violante, Helen, Mr. Dale, Squire Hazeldean, and Lord L'Estrange were grouped together by the cold Florentine marble table, not littered with books and female work, and the endearing signs of habitation, that give a living smile to the face of home; nothing thereon save a great silver candelabrum, that scarcely lighted the spacious room, and brought out the portraits on the walls as a part of the assembly, looking, as portraits do look, with searching, curious eyes upon every eye that turns to them.

But as soon as Randal entered, the squire detached himself from the group, and, coming to the defeated candidate, shook hands with him heartily.

"Cheer up, my boy; 't is no shame to be beaten. Lord L'Estrange says you did your best to win, and man can do no more. And I'm glad, Leslie, that we don't meet for our little business till the election is over; for, after annoyance, something pleasant is twice as acceptable. I've the money in my pocket. Hush! and I say, my dear, dear boy, I cannot find out where Frank is, but it is really all off with that foreign woman, eh?"

"Yes, indeed, sir, I hope so. I'll talk to you about it when we can be alone. We may slip away presently, I trust."

"I'll tell you a secret scheme of mine and Harry's," said the squire, in a still low whisper. "We, must drive that marchioness, or whatever she is, out of the boy's head, and put a pretty English girl into it instead. That will settle him in life too. And I must try and swallow that bitter pill of the post-obit. Harry makes worse of it than I do, and is so hard on the poor fellow that I've been obliged to take his part. I've no idea of being under petticoat government, it is not the way with the Hazeldeans. Well, but to come back to the point: Whom do you think I mean by the pretty girl?"

"Miss Sticktorights?"

"Zounds, no!—your own little sister, Randal. Sweet pretty face! Harry liked her from the first, and then you'll be Frank's brother, and your sound head and good heart will keep him right. And as you are going to be married too (you must tell me all about that later), why, we shall have two marriages, perhaps, in the family on the same day."

Randal's hand grasped the squire's, and with an emotion of human gratitude,—for we know that, hard to all else, he had natural feelings for his fallen family; and his neglected sister was the one being on earth whom he might almost be said to love. With all his intellectual disdain for honest simple Frank, he knew no one in the world with whom his young sister could be more secure and happy. Transferred to the roof, and improved by the active kindness, of Mrs. Hazeldean, blest in the manly affection of one not too refined to censure her own deficiencies of education, what more could he ask for his sister, as he pictured her to himself, with her hair hanging over her ears, and her mind running into seed over some trashy novel. But before he could reply, Violante's father came to add his own philosophical consolations to the squire's downright comfortings.

"Who could ever count on popular caprice? The wise of all ages had despised it. In that respect, Horace and Machiavelli were of the same mind," etc. "But," said the duke, with emphatic kindness "perhaps your very misfortune here may serve you elsewhere. The female heart is prone to pity, and ever eager to comfort. Besides, if I am recalled to Italy, you will have leisure to come with us, and see the land where, of all others, ambition can be most readily forgotten, even" added the Italian with a sigh—"even by her own sons!"

Thus addressed by both Hazeldean and the duke, Randal recovered his spirits. It was clear that Lord L'Estrange had not conveyed to them any unfavourable impression of his conduct in the Committee-room. While Randal had been thus engaged, Levy had made his way to Harley, who retreated with the baron into the bay of the great window.

"Well, my Lord, do you comprehend this conduct on the part of Richard Avenel? He secure Egerton's return!—he!"

"What so natural, Baron Levy,—his own brother-in-law?" The baron started, and turned very pale.

"But how did he know that? I never told him. I meant indeed—"

"Meant, perhaps, to shame Egerton's pride at the last by publicly declaring his marriage with a shopkeeper's daughter. A very good revenge still left to you; but revenge for what? A word with you, now, Baron, that our acquaintance is about to close forever. You know why I have cause for resentment against Egerton. I do but suspect yours; will you make it clear to me?"

"My Lord, my Lord," faltered Baron Levy, "I, too, wooed Nora Avenel as my wife; I, too, had a happier rival in the haughty worldling who did not appreciate his own felicity; I too—in a word, some women inspire an affection that mingles with the entire being of a man, and is fused with all the currents of his life-blood. Nora Avenel was one of those women."

Harley was startled. This burst of emotion from a man so corrupt and cynical arrested even the scorn he felt for the usurer. Levy soon recovered himself. "But our revenge is not baffled yet. Egerton, if not already in my power, is still in yours. His election may save him from arrest, but the law has other modes of public exposure and effectual ruin."

"For the knave, yes,—as I intimated to you in your own house,—you who boast of your love to Nora Avenel, and know in your heart that you were her destroyer; you who witnessed her marriage, and yet dared to tell her that she was dishonoured!"

"My Lord—I—how could you know—I mean, how think that—that—" faltered Levy, aghast.

"Nora Avenel has spoken from her grave," replied Harley, solemnly. "Learn that, wherever man commits a crime, Heaven finds a witness!"

"It is on me, then," said Levy, wrestling against a superstitious thrill at his heart—"on me that you now concentre your vengeance; and I must meet it as I may. But I have fulfilled my part of our compact. I have obeyed you implicitly—and—"

"I will fulfil my part of our bond, and leave you undisturbed in your wealth."

"I knew I might trust to your Lordship's honour," exclaimed the usurer, in servile glee.

"And this vile creature nursed the same passions as myself; and but yesterday we were partners in the same purpose, and influenced by the same thought!" muttered Harley to himself. "Yes," he said aloud, "I dare not, Baron Levy, constitute myself your judge. Pursue your own path,—all roads meet at last before the common tribunal. But you are not yet released from our compact; you must do some good in spite of yourself. Look yonder, where Randal Leslie stands, smiling secure, between the two dangers he has raised up for himself. And as Randal Leslie himself has invited me to be his judge, and you are aware that he cited yourself this very day as his witness, here I must expose the guilty; for here the innocent still live, and need defence."

Harley turned away, and took his place by the table. "I have wished," said he, raising his voice, "to connect with the triumph of my earliest and dearest friend the happiness of others in whose welfare I feel an interest. To you, Alphonso, Duke of Serrano, I now give this despatch, received last evening by a special messenger from the Prince Von ———, announcing your restoration to your lands and honours."

The squire stared with open mouth. "Rickeybockey a duke? Why, Jemima's a duchess! Bless me, she is actually crying!" And his good heart prompted him to run to his cousin and cheer her up a bit.

Violante glanced at Harley, and flung herself on her father's breast. Randal involuntarily rose, and moved to the duke's chair.

"And you, Mr. Randal Leslie," continued Harley, "though you have lost your election, see before you at this moment such prospects of wealth and happiness, that I shall only have to offer you congratulations to which those that greet Mr. Audley Egerton may well appear lukewarm and insipid, provided you prove that you have not forfeited the right to claim that promise which the Duke di Serrano has accorded to the suitor of his daughter's hand. Some doubts resting on my mind, you have volunteered to dispel them. I have the duke's permission to address to you a few questions, and I now avail myself of your offer to reply to them."

"Now,—and here, my Lord?" said Randal, glancing round the room, as if deprecating the presence of so many witnesses. "Now,—and here. Nor are those present so strange to your explanations as your question would imply. Mr. Hazeldean, it so happens that much of what I shall say to Mr. Leslie concerns your son."

Randal's countenance fell. An uneasy tremor now seized him.

"My son! Frank? Oh, then, of course, Randal will speak out. Speak, my boy!"

Randal remained silent. The duke looked at his working face, and drew away his chair.

"Young man, can you hesitate?" said he. "A doubt is expressed which involves your honour."

"'s death!" cried the squire, also gazing on Randal's cowering eye and quivering lip, "what are you afraid of?"

"Afraid!" said Randal, forced into speech, and with a hollow laugh—"afraid?—I? What of? I was only wondering what Lord L'Estrange could mean."

"I will dispel that wonder at once. Mr. Hazeldean, your son displeased you first by his proposals of marriage to the Marchesa di Negra against your consent; secondly, by a post-obit bond granted to Baron Levy. Did you understand from Mr. Randal Leslie that he had opposed or favoured the said marriage,—that he had countenanced or blamed the said post-obit?"

"Why, of course," cried the squire, "that he had opposed both the one and the other."

"Is it so, Mr. Leslie?"

"My Lord—I—I—my affection for Frank, and my esteem for his respected father—I—I—" (He nerved himself, and went on with firm voice)—"Of course, I did all I could to dissuade Frank from the marriage; and as to the post-obit, I know nothing about it."

"So much at present for this matter. I pass on to the graver one, that affects your engagement with the Duke di Serrano's daughter. I understand from you, Duke, that to save your daughter from the snares of Count di Peschiera, and in the belief that Mr. Leslie shared in your dread of the count's designs, you, while in exile and in poverty, promised to that gentleman your daughter's hand? When the probabilities of restoration to your principalities seemed well-nigh certain, you confirmed that promise on learning from Mr. Leslie that he had, however ineffectively, struggled to preserve your heiress from a perfidious snare. Is it not so?"

"Certainly. Had I succeeded to a throne, I could not recall the promise that I had given in penury and banishment; I could not refuse to him who would have sacrificed worldly ambition in wedding a penniless bride, the reward of his own generosity. My daughter subscribes to my views."

Violante trembled, and her hands were locked together; but her gaze was fixed on Harley.

Mr. Dale wiped his eyes, and thought of the poor refugee feeding on minnows, and preserving himself from debt amongst the shades of the Casino.

"Your answer becomes you, Duke," resumed Harley. "But should it be proved that Mr. Leslie, instead of wooing the princess for herself, actually calculated on the receipt of money for transferring her to Count Peschiera; instead of saving her from the dangers you dreaded, actually suggested the snare from which she was delivered,—would you still deem your honour engaged to—"

"Such a villain? No, surely not!" exclaimed the duke. "But this is a groundless hypothesis! Speak, Randal."

"Lord L'Estrange cannot insult me by deeming it otherwise than a groundless hypothesis!" said Randal, striving to rear his head.

"I understand then, Mr. Leslie, that you scornfully reject such a supposition?"

"Scornfully—yes. And," continued Randal, advancing a step, "since the supposition has been made, I demand from Lord L'Estrange, as his equal (for all gentlemen are equals where honour is to be defended at the cost of life), either instant retractation—or instant proof."

"That's the first word you have spoken like a man," cried the squire. "I have stood my ground myself for a less cause. I have had a ball through my right shoulder."

"Your demand is just," said Harley, unmoved. "I cannot give the retractation,—I will produce the proof."

He rose and rang the bell; the servant entered, received his whispered order, and retired. There was a pause painful to all. Randal, however, ran over in his fearful mind what evidence could be brought against him—and foresaw none. The folding doors of the saloon were thrown open and the servant announced—

THE COUNT DI PESCHIERA.

A bombshell, descending through the roof could not have produced a more startling sensation. Erect, bold, with all the imposing effect of his form and bearing, the count strode into the centre of the ring; and after a slight bend of haughty courtesy, which comprehended all present, reared up his lofty head, and looked round, with calm in his eye and a curve on his lip,—the self-assured, magnificent, high-bred Daredevil.

"Duke di Serrano," said the count, in English, turning towards his astounded kinsman, and in a voice that, slow, clear, and firm, seemed to fill the room, "I returned to England on the receipt of a letter from my Lord L'Estrange, and with a view, it is true, of claiming at his hands the satisfaction which men of our birth accord to each other, where affront, from what cause soever, has been given or received. Nay, fair kinswoman,"—and the count, with a slight but grave smile, bowed to Violante, who had uttered a faint cry,—"that intention is abandoned. If I have adopted too lightly the old courtly maxim, that 'all stratagems are fair in love,' I am bound also to yield to my Lord L'Estrange's arguments, that the counter-stratagems must be fair also. And, after all, it becomes me better to laugh at my own sorry figure in defeat, than to confess myself gravely mortified by an ingenuity more successful than my own." The count paused, and his eye lightened with sinister fire, which ill suited the raillery of his tone and the polished ease of his bearing. "Ma foi!" he continued, "it is permitted me to speak thus, since at least I have given proofs of my indifference to danger, and my good fortune when exposed to it. Within the last six years I have had the honour to fight nine duels, and the regret to wound five, and dismiss from the world four, as gallant and worthy gentlemen as ever the sun shone upon."

"Monster!" faltered the parson.

The squire stared aghast, and mechanically rubbed the shoulder which had been lacerated by Captain Dashinore's bullet. Randal's pale face grew yet more pale, and the eye he had fixed upon the count's hardy visage quailed and fell.

"But," resumed the count, with a graceful wave of the hand, "I have to thank my Lord L'Estrange for reminding me that a man whose courage is above suspicion is privileged not only to apologize if he has injured another, but to accompany apology with atonement. Duke of Serrano, it is for that purpose that I am here. My Lord, you have signified your wish to ask me some questions of serious import as regards the duke and his daughter; I will answer them without reserve."

"Monsieur le Comte," said Harley, "availing myself of your courtesy, I presume to inquire who informed you that this young lady was a guest under my father's roof?"

"My informant stands yonder,—Mr. Randal Leslie; and I call upon Baron Levy to confirm my statement."

"It is true," said the baron, slowly, and as if overmastered by the tone and mien of an imperious chieftain.

There came a low sound like a hiss from Randal's livid lips.

"And was Mr. Leslie acquainted with your project for securing the person and hand of your young kinswoman?"

"Certainly,—and Baron Levy knows it." The baron bowed assent. "Permit me to add—for it is due to a lady nearly related to myself—that it was, as I have since learned, certain erroneous representations made to her by Mr. Leslie which alone induced that lady, after my own arguments had failed, to lend her aid to a project which otherwise she would have condemned as strongly as, Duke di Serrano, I now with unfeigned sincerity do myself condemn it."

There was about the count, as he thus spoke, so much of that personal dignity which, whether natural or artificial, imposes for the moment upon human judgment,—a dignity so supported by the singular advantages of his superb stature, his handsome countenance, his patrician air,—that the duke, moved by his good heart, extended his hand to the perfidious kinsman, and forgot all the Machiavellian wisdom which should have told him how little a man of the count's hardened profligacy was likely to be influenced by any purer motives, whether to frank confession or to manly repentance. The count took the hand thus extended to him, and bowed his face, perhaps to conceal the smile which would have betrayed his secret soul. Randal still remained mute, and pale as death. His tongue clove to his mouth. He felt that all present were shrinking from his side. At last, with a violent effort, he faltered out, in broken sentences,

"A charge so sudden may well—may well confound me. But—but—who can credit it? Both the law and commonsense pre-suppose some motive for a criminal action; what could be my motive here? I—myself the suitor for the hand of the duke's daughter—I betray her! Absurd—absurd! Duke, Duke, I put it to your own knowledge of mankind whoever goes thus against his own interest—and—and his own heart?"

This appeal, however feebly made, was not without effect on the philosopher. "That is true," said the duke, dropping his kinsman's hand; "I see no motive."

"Perhaps," said Harley, "Baron Levy may here enlighten us. Do you know of any motive of self-interest that could have actuated Mr. Leslie in assisting the count's schemes?"

Levy hesitated. The count took up the word. "Pardieu!" said he, in his clear tone of determination and will—"pardieu! I can have no doubt thrown on my assertion, least of all by those who know of its truth; and I call upon you, Baron Levy, to state whether, in case of my marriage with the duke's daughter, I had not agreed to present my sister with a sum, to which she alleged some ancient claim, and which would have passed through your hands?"

"Certainly, that is true," said the baron.

"And would Mr. Leslie have benefited by any portion of that sum?"

Levy paused again.

"Speak, sir," said the count, frowning.

"The fact is," said the baron, "that Mr. Leslie was anxious to complete a purchase of certain estates that had once belonged to his family, and that the count's marriage with the signora, and his sister's marriage with Mr. Hazeldean, would have enabled me to accommodate Mr. Leslie with a loan to effect that purchase."

"What! what!" exclaimed the squire, hastily buttoning his breast-pocket with one hand, while he seized Randal's arm with the other—"my son's marriage! You lent yourself to that, too? Don't look so like a lashed hound! Speak out like a man, if man you be!"

"Lent himself to that, my good sir!" said the count. "Do you suppose that the Marchesa di Negra could have condescended to an alliance with a Mr. Hazeldean—"

"Condescended! a Hazeldean of Hazeldean!" exclaimed the squire, turning fiercely, and half choked with indignation. "Unless," continued the count, imperturbably, "she had been compelled by circumstances to do that said Mr. Hazeldean the honour to accept a pecuniary accommodation, which she had no other mode to discharge? And here, sir, the family of Hazeldean, I am bound to say, owe a great debt of gratitude to Mr. Leslie; for it was he who most forcibly represented to her the necessity for this misalliance; and it was he, I believe, who suggested to my friend the baron the mode by which Mr. Hazeldean was best enabled to afford the accommodation my sister deigned to accept."

"Mode! the post-obit!" ejaculated the squire, relinquishing his hold of Randal to lay his gripe upon Levy.

The baron shrugged his shoulders. "Any friend of Mr. Frank Hazeldean's would have recommended the same, as the most economical mode of raising money."

Parson Dale, who had at first been more shocked than any one present at these gradual revelations of Randal's treachery, now turning his eyes towards the young man, was so seized with commiseration at the sight of Randal's face, that he laid his hand on Harley's arm, and whispered him, "Look, look at that countenance!—and one so young! Spare him, spare him!"

"Mr. Leslie," said Harley, in softened tones, "believe me that nothing short of justice to the Duke di Serrano—justice even to my young friend Mr. Hazeldean—has compelled me to this painful duty. Here let all inquiry terminate."

"And," said the count, with exquisite blandness, "since I have been informed by my Lord L'Estrange that Mr. Leslie has represented as a serious act on his part that personal challenge to myself, which I understood was but a pleasant and amicable arrangement in our baffled scheme, let me assure Mr. Leslie that if he be not satisfied with the regret that I now express for the leading share I have taken in these disclosures, I am wholly at Mr. Leslie's service."

"Peace, homicide," cried the parson, shuddering; and he glided to the side of the detected sinner, from whom all else had recoiled in loathing.

Craft against craft, talent against talent, treason against treason—in all this Randal Leslie would have risen superior to Giulio di Peschiera. But what now crushed him was not the superior intellect,—it was the sheer brute power of audacity and nerve. Here stood the careless, unblushing villain, making light of his guilt, carrying it away from disgust itself, with resolute look and front erect. There stood the abler, subtler, profounder criminal, cowering, abject, pitiful; the power of mere intellectual knowledge shivered into pieces against the brazen metal with which the accident of constitution often arms some ignobler nature.

The contrast was striking, and implied that truth so universally felt, yet so little acknowledged in actual life, that men with audacity and force of character can subdue and paralyze those far superior to themselves in ability and intelligence. It was these qualities which made Peschiera Randal's master; nay, the very physical attributes of the count, his very voice and form, his bold front and unshrinking eye, overpowered the acuter mind of the refining schemer, as in a popular assembly some burly Cleon cows into timorous silence every dissentient sage. But Randal turned in sullen impatience from the parson's whisper, that breathed comfort or urged repentance; and at length said, with clearer tones than he had yet mustered,

"It is not a personal conflict with the Count di Peschiera that can vindicate my honour; and I disdain to defend myself against the accusations of a usurer, and of a mam who—"

"Monsieur!" said the count, drawing himself up.

"A man who," persisted Randal, though he trembled visibly, "by his own confession, was himself guilty of all the schemes in which he would represent me as his accomplice, and who now, not clearing himself, would yet convict another—"

"Cher petit monsieur!" said the count, with his grand air of disdain, "when men like me make use of men like you, we reward them for a service if rendered, or discard them if the service be not done; and if I condescend to confess and apologize for any act I have committed, surely Mr. Randal Leslie might do the same without disparagement to his dignity. But I should never, sir, have taken the trouble to appear against you, had you not, as I learn, pretended to the hand of the lady whom I had hoped, with less presumption, to call my bride; and in this, how can I tell that you have not tricked and betrayed me? Is there anything in our past acquaintance that warrants me to believe that, instead of serving me, you sought but to serve yourself? Be that as it may, I had but one mode of repairing to the head of my house the wrongs I have done him, and that was by saving his daughter from a derogatory alliance with an impostor who had abetted my schemes for hire, and who now would filch for himself their fruit."

"Duke!" exclaimed Randal.

The duke turned his back. Randal extended his hands to the squire. "Mr. Hazeldean—what? you, too, condemn me, and unheard?"

"Unheard!—zounds, no! If you have anything to say, speak truth, and shame the devil."

"I abet Frank's marriage! I sanction the post-obit! Oh!" cried Randal, clinging to a straw, "if Frank himself were but here!"

Harley's compassion vanished before this sustained hypocrisy.

"You wish for the presence of Frank Hazeldean? It is just." Harley opened the door of the inner room, and Frank appeared at the entrance.

"My son! my son!" cried the squire, rushing forward, and clasping Frank to his broad, fatherly breast.

This affecting incident gave a sudden change to the feelings of the audience, and for a moment Randal himself was forgotten. The young man seized that moment. Reprieved, as it were, from the glare of contemptuous, accusing eyes, slowly he crept to the door, slowly and noiselessly, as the viper, when it is wounded, drops its crest and glides writhing through the grass. Levy followed him to the threshold, and whispered in his ear,

"I could not help it,—you would have done the same by me. You see you have failed in everything; and when a man fails completely, we both agreed that we must give him up altogether."

Randal said not a word, and the baron marked his shadow fall on the broad stairs, stealing down, down, step after step, till it faded from the stones.

"But he was of some use," muttered Levy. "His treachery and his exposure will gall the childless Egerton. Some little revenge still!"

The count touched the arm of the musing usurer,

"J'ai bien joue mon role, n'est ce pas?"—(I have well played my part, have I not?)

"Your part! Ah, but, my dear count, I do not quite understand it."

"Ma foi, you are passably dull. I had just been landed in France, when a letter from L'Estrange reached me. It was couched as an invitation, which I interpreted to—the duello. Such invitations I never refuse. I replied: I came hither, took my lodgings at an inn. My Lord seeks me last night.

"I begin in the tone you may suppose. Pardieu! he is clever, milord! He shows me a letter from the Prince Von ——-, Alphonse's recall, my own banishment. He places before me, but with admirable suavity, the option of beggary and ruin, or an honourable claim on Alphonso's gratitude. And as for that petit monsieur, do you think I could quietly contemplate my own tool's enjoyment of all I had lost myself? Nay, more, if that young Harpagon were Alphonso's son-inlaw, could the duke have a whisperer at his ear more fatal to my own interests? To be brief, I saw at a glance my best course. I have adopted it. The difficulty was to extricate myself as became a man de sang et de jeu. If I have done so, congratulate me. Alphonso has taken my hand, and I now leave it to him to attend to my fortunes, and clear up my repute."

"If you are going to London," said Levy, "my carriage, ere this, must be at the door, and I shall be proud to offer you a seat, and converse with you on your prospects. But, peste, mon cher, your fall has been from a great height, and any other man would have broken his bones."

"Strength is ever light," said the count, smiling; "and it does not fall; it leaps down and rebounds."

Levy looked at the count, and blamed himself for having disparaged Peschiera and overrated Randal.

While this conference went on, Harley was by Violante's side.

"I have kept my promise to you," said he, with a kind of tender humility. "Are you still so severe on me?"

"Ah," answered Violante, gazing on his noble brow, with all a woman's pride in her eloquent, admiring eyes, "I have heard from Mr. Dale that you have achieved a conquest over yourself, which makes me ashamed to think that I presumed to doubt how your heart would speak when a moment of wrath (though of wrath so just) had passed away."

"No, Violante, do not acquit me yet; witness my revenge (for I have not foregone it), and then let my heart speak, and breathe its prayer that the angel voice, which it now beats to hear, may still be its guardian monitor."

"What is this?" cried an amazed voice; and Harley, turning round, saw that the duke was by his side; and, glancing with ludicrous surprise, now to Harley, now to Violante, "Am I to understand that you—"

"Have freed you from one suitor for this dear hand, to become myself your petitioner!"

"Corpo di Bacco!" cried the sage, almost embracing Harley, "this, indeed, is joyful news. But I must not again make a rash pledge,—not again force my child's inclinations. And Violante; you see, is running away."

The duke stretched out his arm, and detained his child. He drew her to his breast, and whispered in her ear. Violante blushed crimson, and rested her head on his shoulder. Harley eagerly pressed forward.

"There," said the duke, joining Harley's hand with his daughter's, "I don't think I shall hear much more of the convent; but anything of this sort I never suspected. If there be a language in the world for which there is no lexicon nor grammar, it is that which a woman thinks in, but never speaks."

"It is all that is left of the language spoken in paradise," said Harley.

"In the dialogue between Eve and the serpent,—yes," quoth the incorrigible sage. "But who comes here?—our friend Leonard."

Leonard now entered the room; but Harley could scarcely greet him, before he was interrupted by the count. "Milord," said Peschiera, beckoning him aside, "I have fulfilled my promise, and I will now leave your roof. Baron Levy returns to London, and offers me a seat in his carriage, which is already, I believe, at your door. The duke and his daughter will readily forgive me if I do not ceremoniously bid them farewell. In our altered positions, it does not become me too intrusively to claim kindred; it became me only to remove, as I trust I have done, a barrier against the claim. If you approve my conduct, you will state your own opinion to the duke." With a profound salutation the count turned to depart; nor did Harley attempt to stay him, but attended him down the stairs with polite formality.

"Remember only, my Lord, that I solicit nothing. I may allow myself to accept,—voilia tout." He bowed again, with the inimitable grace of the old regime, and stepped into the baron's travelling carriage.

Levy, who had lingered behind, paused to accost L'Estrange. "Your Lordship will explain to Mr. Egerton how his adopted son deserved his esteem, and repaid his kindness. For the rest, though you have bought up the more pressing and immediate demands on Mr. Egerton, I fear that even your fortune will not enable you to clear those liabilities which will leave him, perhaps, a pauper!"

"Baron Levy," said Harley, abruptly, "if I have forgiven Mr. Egerton, cannot you too forgive? Me he has wronged; you have wronged him, and more foully."

"No, my Lord, I cannot forgive him. You he has never humiliated, you he has never employed for his wants, and scorned as his companion. You have never known what it is to start in life with one whose fortunes were equal to your own, whose talents were not superior. Look you, Lord L'Estrange, in spite of this difference between me and Egerton, that he has squandered the wealth that he gained without effort, while I have converted the follies of others into my own ample revenues, the spendthrift in his penury has the respect and position which millions cannot bestow upon me. You would say that I am an usurer, and he is a statesman. But do you know what I should have been, had I not been born the natural son of a peer? Can you guess what I should have been if Nora Avenel had been my wife? The blot on my birth, and the blight on my youth, and the knowledge that he who was rising every year into the rank which entitled him to reject me as a guest at his table—he whom the world called the model of a gentleman—was a coward and a liar to the friend of his youth,—all this made me look on the world with contempt; and, despising Audley Egerton, I yet hated him and envied. You, whom he wronged, stretch your hand as before to the great statesman; from my touch you would shrink as pollution. My Lord, you may forgive him whom you love and pity; I cannot forgive him whom I scorn and envy. Pardon my prolixity. I now quit your house." The baron moved a step, then, turning back, said with a withering sneer,—

"But you will tell Mr. Egerton how I helped to expose the son he adopted! I thought of the childless man when your Lordship imagined I was but in fear of your threats. Ha! ha! that will sting."

The baron gnashed his teeth as, hastily entering the carriage, he drew down the blinds. The post-boys cracked their whips, and the wheels rolled away.

"Who can judge," thought Harley, "through what modes retribution comes home to the breast? That man is chastised in his wealth, ever gnawed by desire for what his wealth cannot buy!" He roused himself, cleared his brow, as from a thought that darkened and troubled; and, entering the saloon, laid his hand upon Leonard's shoulder, and looked, rejoicing, into the poet's mild, honest, lustrous eyes. "Leonard," said he, gently, "your hour is come at last."



CHAPTER XXXIV.

Audely Egerton was alone in his apartment. A heavy sleep had come over him, shortly after Harley and Randal had left the house in the early morning; and that sleep continued till late in the day. All the while the town of Lansmere had been distracted in his cause, all the while so many tumultuous passions had run riot in the contest that was to close or re-open for the statesman's ambition the Janus gates of political war, the object of so many fears and hopes, schemes and counter-schemes, had slumbered quietly as an infant in the cradle. He woke but in time to receive Harley's despatch, announcing the success of his election; and adding, "Before the night you shall embrace your son. Do not join us below when I return. Keep calm,—we will come to you."

In fact, though not aware of the dread nature of Audley's complaint, with its warning symptoms, Lord L'Estrange wished to spare to his friend the scene of Randal's exposure.

On the receipt of that letter Egerton rose. At the prospect of seeing his son—Nora's son—the very memory of his disease vanished. The poor, weary, over-laboured heart indeed beat loud, and with many a jerk and spasm. He heeded it not. The victory, that restored him to the sole life for which he had hitherto cared to live, was clean forgotten. Nature claimed her own,—claimed it in scorn of death, and in oblivion of renown.

There sat the man, dressed with his habitual precision,—the black coat, buttoned across the broad breast; his countenance, so mechanically habituated to self-control, still revealing little of emotion, though the sickly flush came and went on the bronzed cheek, and the eye watched the hand of the clock, and the ear hungered for a foot-tread along the corridor. At length the sound was heard,—steps, many steps. He sprung to his feet, he stood on the hearth. Was the hearth to be solitary no more? Harley entered first. Egerton's eyes rested on him eagerly for a moment, and strained onward across the threshold. Leonard came next,—Leonard Fairfield, whom he had seen as his opponent! He began to suspect, to conjecture, to see the mother's tender eyes in the son's manly face. Involuntarily he opened his arms; but, Leonard remaining still, let them fall with a deep sigh, and fancied himself deceived.

"Friend," said Harley, "I give to you a son proved in adversity, and who has fought his own way to fame. Leonard, in the man to whom I prayed you to sacrifice your own ambition, of whom you have spoken with such worthy praise, whose career of honour you have promoted, and whose life, unsatisfied by those honours, you will soothe with your filial love, behold the husband of Nora Avenel! Kneel to your father! O Audley, embrace your son!"

"Here, here!" exclaimed Egerton, as Leonard bent his knee,—"here to my heart! Look at me with those eyes!—kindly, forgivingly: they are your mother's!" His proud head sunk on his son's shoulder.

"But this is not enough," said Harley, leading Helen, and placing her by Leonard's side. "You must open your heart for more. Take into its folds my sweet ward and daughter. What is a home without the smile of woman? They have loved each other from children. Audley, yours be the hand to join,—yours be the lips to bless."

Leonard started anxiously. "Oh, sir!—oh, my father!—this generous sacrifice may not be; for he—he who has saved me for this surpassing joy—he too loves her!"

"Nay, Leonard," said Harley, smiling, "I am not so neglectful of myself. Another home woos you, Audley. He whom you long so vainly sought to reconcile to life, exchanging mournful dreams for happy duties,—he, too, presents you to his bride. Love her for my sake,—for your own. She it is, not I, who presides over this hallowed reunion. But for her, I should have been a blinded, vindictive, guilty, repentant man; and—" Violante's soft hand was on his lips. "Thus," said the parson, with mild solemnity, "man finds that the Saviour's precepts, 'Let not the sun go down upon thy wrath,' and 'Love one another,' are clews that conduct us through the labyrinth of human life, when the schemes of fraud and hate snap asunder, and leave us lost amidst the maze."

Egerton reared his head, as if to answer; and all present were struck and appalled by the sudden change that had come over his countenance. There was a film upon the eye, a shadow on the aspect; the words failed his lips; he sunk on the seat beside him. The left hand rested droopingly upon the piles of public papers and official documents, and the fingers played with them, as the bedridden dying sufferer plays with the coverlid he will soon exchange for the winding-sheet. But his right hand seemed to feel, as through the dark, for the recovered son; and having touched what it sought, feebly drew Leonard near and nearer. Alas! that blissful PRIVATE LIFE—that close centre round the core of being in the individual man—so long missed and pined for, slipped from him, as it were, the moment it reappeared; hurried away, as the circle on the ocean, which is scarce seen ere it vanishes amidst infinity. Suddenly both hands were still; the head fell back. Joy had burst asunder the last ligaments, so fretted away in unrevealing sorrow. Afar, their sound borne into that room, the joy-bells were pealing triumph; mobs roaring out huzzas; the weak cry of John Avenel might be blent in those shouts, as the drunken zealots reeled by his cottage door, and startled the screaming ravens that wheeled round the hollow oak. The boom which is sent from the waves on the surface of life, while the deeps are so noiseless in their march, was wafted on the wintry air into the chamber of the statesman it honoured, and over the grass sighing low upon Nora's grave. But there was one in the chamber, as in the grave, for whom the boom on the wave had no sound, and the march of the deep had no tide. Amidst promises of home, and union, and peace, and fame, Death strode into the household ring, and, seating itself, calm and still, looked life-like,—warm hearts throbbing round it; lofty hopes fluttering upward; Love kneeling at its feet; Religion, with lifted finger, standing by its side.



FINAL CHAPTER.

SCENE—The Hall in the Old Tower of CAPTAIN ROLAND DE CAXTON.

"But you have not done?" said Augustine Caxton.

PISISTRATUS.—"What remains to do?"

MR. CAXTON.—"What! why, the Final Chapter!—the last news you can give us of those whom you have introduced to our liking or dislike."

PISISTRATUS.—"Surely it is more dramatic to close the work with a scene that completes the main design of the plot, and leave it to the prophetic imagination of all whose flattering curiosity is still not wholly satisfied, to trace the streams of each several existence, when they branch off again from the lake in which their waters converge, and by which the sibyl has confirmed and made clear the decree that 'Conduct is Fate.'"

MR. CAXTON.—"More dramatic, I grant; but you have not written a drama. A novelist should be a comfortable, garrulous, communicative, gossiping fortune-teller; not a grim, laconical, oracular sibyl. I like a novel that adopts all the old-fashioned customs prescribed to its art by the rules of the Masters,—more especially a novel which you style 'My Novel' par emphasis."

CAPTAIN ROLAND.—"A most vague and impracticable title 'My Novel'! It must really be changed before the work goes in due form to the public."

MR. SQUILLS.—"Certainly the present title cannot be even pronounced by many without inflicting a shock upon their nervous system. Do you think, for instance, that my friend, Lady Priscilla Graves—who is a great novel-reader indeed, but holds all female writers unfeminine deserters to the standard of Man—could ever come out with, 'Pray, sir, have you had time to look at—MY Novel?'—She would rather die first. And yet to be silent altogether on the latest acquisition to the circulating libraries would bring on a functional derangement of her ladyship's organs of speech. Or how could pretty Miss Dulcet—all sentiment, it is true, but all bashful timidity—appall Captain Smirke from proposing with, 'Did not you think the parson's sermon a little too dry in—MY Novel'? It will require a face of brass, or at least a long course of citrate of iron, before a respectable lady or unassuming young gentleman, with a proper dread of being taken for scribblers, could electrify a social circle with 'The reviewers don't do justice to the excellent things in—My Novel.'"

CAPTAIN ROLAND.—"Awful consequences, indeed, may arise from the mistakes such a title gives rise to. Counsellor Digwell, for instance, a lawyer of literary tastes, but whose career at the Bar was long delayed by an unjust suspicion amongst the attorneys that he had written a 'Philosophical Essay'—imagine such a man excusing himself for being late at a dinner of bigwigs, with 'I could not get away from—My Novel!' It would be his professional ruin! I am not fond of lawyers in general, but still I would not be a party to taking the bread out of the mouth of those with a family; and Digwell has children,—the tenth an innocent baby in arms."

MR. CAXTON.—"As to Digwell in particular, and lawyers in general, they are too accustomed to circumlocution to expose themselves to the danger your kind heart apprehends; but I allow that a shy scholar like myself, or a grave college tutor, might be a little put to the blush, if he were to blurt forth inadvertently with, 'Don't waste your time over trash like—MY Novel.' And that thought presents to us another and more pleasing view of this critical question. The title you condemn places the work under universal protection. Lives there a man or a woman so dead to self-love as to say, 'What contemptible stuff is—MY Novel'? Would he or she not rather be impelled by that strong impulse of an honourable and virtuous heart, which moves us to stand as well as we can with our friends, to say, 'Allow that there is really a good thing now and then in—My Novel.' Moreover, as a novel aspires to embrace most of the interests or the passions that agitate mankind,—to generalize, as it were, the details of life that come home to us all,—so, in reality, the title denotes that if it be such as the author may not unworthily call his Novel, it must also be such as the reader, whoever he be, may appropriate in part to himself, representing his own ideas, expressing his own experience, reflecting, if not in full, at least in profile, his own personal identity. Thus, when we glance at the looking-glass in another man's room, our likeness for the moment appropriates the mirror; and according to the humour in which we are, or the state of our spirits and health, we say to ourselves, 'Bilious and yellow!—I might as well take care of my diet!' Or, 'Well, I 've half a mind to propose to dear Jane; I'm not such an ill-looking dog as I thought for!' Still, whatever result from that glance at the mirror, we never doubt that 't is our likeness we see; and each says to the phantom reflection, 'Thou art myself,' though the mere article of furniture that gives the reflection belongs to another. It is my likeness if it be his glass. And a narrative that is true to the Varieties of Life is every Man's Novel, no matter from what shores, by what rivers, by what bays, in what pits, were extracted the sands and the silex, the pearlash, the nitre, and quicksilver which form its materials; no matter who the craftsman who fashioned its form; no matter who the vendor that sold, or the customer who bought: still, if I but recognize some trait of myself, 't is my likeness that makes it 'My Novel.'"

MR. SQUILLS (puzzled, and therefore admiring).—"Subtle, sir,—very subtle. Fine organ of Comparison in Mr. Caxton's head, and much called into play this evening!"

MR. CAXTON (benignly).—"Finally, the author by this most admirable and much signifying title dispenses with all necessity of preface. He need insinuate no merits, he need extenuate no faults; for, by calling his work thus curtly 'MY Novel,' he doth delicately imply that it is no use wasting talk about faults or merits."

PISISTRATUS (amazed).—"How is that, sir?"

MR. CAXTON.—"What so clear? You imply that, though a better novel may be written by others, you do not expect to write a novel to which, taken as a novel, you would more decisively and unblushingly prefix that voucher of personal authorship and identity conveyed in the monosyllable 'My.' And if you have written your best, let it be ever so bad, what can any man of candour and integrity require more from you? Perhaps you will say that, if you had lived two thousand years ago, you might have called it 'The Novel,' or the 'Golden Novel,' as Lucius called his story 'The Ass;' and Apuleius, to distinguish his own more elaborate Ass from all Asses preceding it, called his tale 'The Golden Ass.' But living in the present day, such a designation—implying a merit in general, not the partial and limited merit corresponding only with your individual abilities—would be presumptuous and offensive. True, I here anticipate the observation I see Squills is about to make—"

SQUILLS.—"I, Sir?"

MR. CAXTON.—"You would say that, as Scarron called his work of fiction 'The Comic Novel,' so Pisistratus might have called his 'The Serious Novel,' or 'The Tragic Novel.' But, Squills, that title would not have been inviting nor appropriate, and would have been exposed to comparison with Scarron, who being dead is inimitable. Wherefore—to put the question on the irrefragable basis of mathematics—wherefore as A B 'My Novel' is not equal to B C 'The Golden Novel,' nor to D E 'The Serious or Tragic Novel,' it follows that A B 'My Novel' is equal to P C 'Pisistratus Caxton,' and P C 'Pisistratus Caxton' must therefore be just equal, neither more nor less, to A B 'My Novel,'—which was to be demonstrated." My father looked round triumphantly, and observing that Squills was dumfounded, and the rest of his audience posed, he added mildly,

"And so now, 'non quieta movere,' proceed with the Final Chapter, and tell us first what became of that youthful Giles Overreach, who was himself his own Marrall?"

"Ay," said the captain, "what became of Randal Leslie? Did he repent and reform?"

"Nay," quoth my father, with a mournful shake of the head, "you can regulate the warm tide of wild passion, you can light into virtue the dark errors of ignorance; but where the force of the brain does but clog the free action of the heart, where you have to deal, not with ignorance misled, but intelligence corrupted, small hope of reform; for reform here will need re-organization. I have somewhere read (perhaps in Hebrew tradition) that of the two orders of fallen spirits,—the Angels of Love and the Angels of Knowledge,—the first missed the stars they had lost, and wandered back through the darkness, one by one, into heaven; but the last, lighted on by their own lurid splendours, said, 'Wherever we go, there is heaven!' And deeper and lower descending, lost their shape and their nature, till, deformed and obscene, the bottomless pit closed around them."

MR. SQUILLS.—"I should not have thought, Mr. Caxton, that a book-man like you would be thus severe upon Knowledge."

MR. CAXTON (in wrath).—"Severe upon knowledge! Oh, Squills, Squills, Squills! Knowledge perverted is knowledge no longer. Vinegar, which, exposed to the sun, breeds small serpents, or at best slimy eels, not comestible, once was wine. If I say to my grandchildren, 'Don't drink that sour stuff, which the sun itself fills with reptiles,' does that prove me a foe to sound sherry? Squills, if you had but received a scholastic education, you would know the wise maxim that saith, 'All things the worst are corruptions from things originally designed as the best.' Has not freedom bred anarchy, and religion fanaticism? And if I blame Marat calling for blood, or Dominic racking a heretic, am I severe on the religion that canonized Francis de Sales, or the freedom that immortalized Thrasybulus?"

Mr. Squills, dreading a catalogue of all the saints in the calendar, and an epitome of Ancient History, exclaimed eagerly, "Enough, sir; I am convinced!"

MR. CAXTON.—"Moreover, I have thought it a natural stroke of art in Pisistratus to keep Randal Leslie, in his progress towards the rot of the intellect unwholesomely refined, free from all the salutary influences that deter ambition from settling into egotism. Neither in his slovenly home, nor from his classic tutor at his preparatory school, does he seem to have learned any truths, religious or moral, that might give sap to fresh shoots, when the first rank growth was cut down by the knife; and I especially noted, as illustrative of Egerton, no less than of Randal, that though the statesman's occasional hints of advice to his protege are worldly wise in their way, and suggestive of honour as befitting the creed of a gentleman, they are not such as much influence a shrewd reasoner like Randal, whom the example of the playground at Eton had not served to correct of the arid self-seeking, which looked to knowledge for no object but power. A man tempted by passions like Audley, or seduced into fraud by a cold, subtle spirit like Leslie, will find poor defence in the elegant precept, 'Remember to act as a gentleman.' Such moral embroidery adds a beautiful scarf to one's armour; but it is not the armour itself! Ten o'clock, as I live! Push on, Pisistratus! and finish the chapter."

MRS. CAXTON (benevolently).—"Don't hurry. Begin with that odious Randal Leslie, to oblige your father; but there are others whom Blanche and I care much more to hear about."

Pisistratus, since there is no help for it, produces a supplementary manuscript, which proves that, whatever his doubt as to the artistic effect of a Final Chapter, he had foreseen that his audience would not be contented without one.

Randal Leslie, late at noon the day after he quitted Lansmere Park, arrived on foot at his father's house. He had walked all the way, and through the solitudes of the winter night; but he was not sensible of fatigue till the dismal home closed round him, with its air of hopeless ignoble poverty; and then he sunk upon the floor feeling himself a ruin amidst the ruins. He made no disclosure of what had passed to his relations. Miserable man, there was not one to whom he could confide, or from whom he might hear the truths that connect repentance with consolation! After some weeks passed in sullen and almost unbroken silence, be left as abruptly as he had appeared, and returned to London. The sudden death of a man like Egerton had even in those excited times created intense, though brief sensation. The particulars of the election, that had been given in detail in the provincial papers, were copied into the London journals, among those details, Randal Leslie's conduct in the Committee-room, with many an indignant comment on selfishness and ingratitude. The political world of all parties formed one of those judgments on the great man's poor dependant, which fix a stain upon the character and place a barrier in the career of ambitious youth. The important personages who had once noticed Randal for Audley's sake, and who, on their subsequent and not long-deferred restoration to power, could have made his fortune, passed him in the streets without a nod. He did not venture to remind Avenel of the promise to aid him in another election for Lansmere, nor dream of filling up the vacancy which Egerton's death had created. He was too shrewd not to see that all hope of that borough was over,—he would have been hooted in the streets and pelted from the hustings. Forlorn in the vast metropolis as Leonard had once been, in his turn he loitered on the bridge, and gazed on the remorseless river. He had neither money nor connections,—nothing save talents and knowledge to force his way back into the lofty world in which all had smiled on him before; and talents and knowledge, that had been exerted to injure a benefactor, made him but the more despised. But even now, Fortune, that had bestowed on the pauper heir of Rood advantages so numerous and so dazzling, out of which he had cheated himself, gave him a chance, at least, of present independence, by which, with patient toil, he might have won, if not to the highest places, at least to a position in which he could have forced the world to listen to his explanations; and perhaps receive his excuses. The L5,000 that Audley designed for him, and which, in a private memorandum, the statesman had entreated Harley to see safely rescued from the fangs of the law, were made over to Randal by Lord L'Estrange's solicitor; but this sum seemed to him so small after the loss of such gorgeous hopes, and the up-hill path seemed so slow after such short cuts to power, that Randal looked upon the unexpected bequest simply as an apology for adopting no profession. Stung to the quick by the contrast between his past and his present place in the English world, he hastened abroad. There, whether in distraction from thought, or from the curiosity of a restless intellect to explore the worth of things yet untried, Randal Leslie, who had hitherto been so dead to the ordinary amusements of youth, plunged into the society of damaged gamesters and third-rate roues. In this companionship his very talents gradually degenerated, and their exercise upon low intrigues and miserable projects but abased his social character, till, sinking step after step as his funds decayed, he finally vanished out of the sphere in which even profligates still retain the habits, and cling to the caste of gentlemen. His father died; the neglected property of Rood devolved on Randal, but out of its scanty proceeds he had to pay the portions of his brother and sister, and his mother's jointure; the surplus left was scarcely visible in the executor's account. The hope of restoring the home and fortunes of his forefathers had long ceased. What were the ruined hall and its bleak wastes, without that hope which had once dignified the wreck and the desert? He wrote from St. Petersburg, ordering the sale of the property. No one great proprietor was a candidate for the unpromising investment; it was sold in lots among small freeholders and retired traders. A builder bought the hall for its material. Hall, lands, and name were blotted out of the map and the history of the county.

The widow, Oliver, and Juliet removed to a provincial town in another shire. Juliet married an ensign in a marching regiment; and died of neglect after childbirth. Mrs. Leslie did not long survive her. Oliver added to his little fortune by marriage with the daughter of a retail tradesman, who had amassed a few thousand pounds. He set up a brewery, and contrived to live without debt, though a large family and his own constitutional inertness extracted from his business small profits and no savings. Nothing of Randal had been heard of for years after the sale of Rood, except that he had taken up his residence either in Australia or the United States; it was not known which, but presumed to be the latter. Still, Oliver had been brought up with so high a veneration of his brother's talents, that he cherished the sanguine belief that Randal would some day appear, wealthy and potent, like the uncle in a comedy; lift rip the sunken family, and rear into graceful ladies and accomplished gentlemen the clumsy little boys and the vulgar little girls who now crowded round Oliver's dinner-table, with appetites altogether disproportioned to the size of the joints.

One winter day, when from the said dinner-table wife and children had retired, and Oliver sat sipping his half-pint of bad port, and looking over unsatisfactory accounts, a thin terrier, lying on the threadbare rug by the niggard fire, sprang up and barked fiercely. Oliver lifted his dull blue eyes, and saw opposite to him, at the window, a human face. The face was pressed close to the panes, and was obscured by the haze which the breath of its lips drew forth from the frosty rime that had gathered on the glass.

Oliver, alarmed and indignant, supposing this intrusive spectator of his privacy to be some bold and lawless tramper, stepped out of the room, opened the front door, and bade the stranger go about his business; while the terrier still more inhospitably yelped and snapped at the stranger's heels. Then a hoarse voice said, "Don't you know me, Oliver? I am your brother Randal! Call away your dog and let me in." Oliver stared aghast; he could not believe his slow senses, he could not recognize his brother in the gaunt grim apparition before him; but at length he came forward, gazed into Randal's face, and, grasping his hand in amazed silence, led him into the little parlour. Not a trace of the well-bred refinement which had once characterized Randal's air and person was visible. His dress bespoke the last stage of that terrible decay which is significantly called the "shabby genteel." His mien was that of the skulking, timorous, famished vagabond. As he took off his greasy tattered hat, he exhibited, though still young in years, the signs of premature old age. His hair, once so fine and silken, was of a harsh iron-gray, bald in ragged patches; his forehead and visage were ploughed into furrows; intelligence was still in the aspect, but an intelligence that instinctively set you on your guard,—sinister, gloomy, menacing.

Randal stopped short all questioning. He seized the small modicum of wine on the table, and drained it at a draught. "Poole," said he, "have you nothing that warms a man better than this?" Oliver, who felt as if under the influence of a frightful dream, went to a cupboard and took out a bottle of brandy three-parts full. Randal snatched at it eagerly, and put his lips to the mouth of the bottle. "Ah," said he, after a short pause, "this comforts; now give me food." Oliver hastened himself to serve his brother; in fact, he felt ashamed that even the slipshod maid-servant should see his visitor. When he returned with such provisions as he could extract from the larder, Randal was seated by the fire, spreading over the embers emaciated bony hands, like the talons of a vulture.

He devoured the cold meat set before him with terrible voracity, and nearly finished the spirits left in the bottle; but the last had no effect in dispersing his gloom. Oliver stared at him in fear; the terrier continued to utter a low suspicious growl.

"You would know my history?" at length said Randal, bluntly. "It is short. I have tried for fortune and failed, I am without a penny and without a hope. You seem poor,—

"I suppose you cannot much help me. Let me at least stay with you for a time,—I know not where else to look for bread and for shelter."

Oliver burst into tears, and cordially bade his brother welcome. Randal remained some weeks at Oliver's house, never stirring out of the doors, and not seeming to notice, though he did not scruple to use, the new habiliments, which Oliver procured ready-made, and placed, without remark, in his room. But his presence soon became intolerable to the mistress of the house, and oppressive even to its master. Randal, who had once been so abstemious that he had even regarded the most moderate use of wine as incompatible with clear judgment and vigilant observation, had contracted the habit of drinking spirits at all hours of the day; but though they sometimes intoxicated him into stupor, they never unlocked his heart nor enlivened his sullen mood. If he observed less acutely than of old, he could still conceal just as closely. Mrs. Oliver Leslie, at first rather awed and taciturn, grew cold and repelling, then pert and sarcastic, at last undisguisedly and vulgarly rude. Randal made no retort; but his sneer was so galling that the wife flew at once to her husband, and declared that either she or his brother must leave the house. Oliver tried to pacify and compromise, with partial success; and a few days afterwards, he came to Randal and said timidly, "You see, my wife brought me nearly all I possess, and you don't condescend to make friends with her. Your residence here must be as painful to you as to me. But I wish to see you provided for; and I could offer you something, only it seems, at first glance, so beneath—"

"Beneath what?" interrupted Randal, witheringly. "What I was—or what I am? Speak out!"

"To be sure you are a scholar; and I have heard you say fine things about knowledge and so forth; and you'll have plenty of books at your disposal, no doubt; and you are still young, and may rise—and—"

"Hell and torments! Be quick,—say the worst or the best!" cried Randal, fiercely.

"Well, then," said poor Oliver, still trying to soften the intended proposal, "you must know that our poor sister's husband was nephew to Dr. Felpem, who keeps a very respectable school. He is not learned himself, and attends chiefly to arithmetic and book-keeping, and such matters; but he wants an usher to teach the classics, for some of the boys go to college. And I have written to him, just to sound—I did not mention your name till I knew if you would like it; but he will take my recommendation. Board, lodging, L50 a year; in short, the place is yours if you like it." Randal shivered from head to foot, and was long before he answered. "Well, be it so; I have come to that. Ha, ha! yes, knowledge is power!" He paused a few moments. "So, the old Hall is razed to the ground, and you are a tradesman in a small country town, and my sister is dead, and I henceforth am—John Smith! You say that you did not mention my name to the schoolmaster,—still keep it concealed; forget that I once was a Leslie. Our tie of brotherhood ceases when I go from your hearth. Write, then, to your head-master, who attends to arithmetic, and secure the rank of his usher in Latin and Greek for—John Smith!"

Not many days afterwards, the protege of Audley Egerton entered on his duties as usher in one of those large, cheap schools, which comprise a sprinkling of the sons of gentry and clergymen designed for the learned professions, with a far larger proportion of the sons of traders, intended, some for the counting-house, some for the shop and the till. There, to this day, under the name of John Smith, lives Randal Leslie.

It is probably not pride alone that induces him to persist in that change of name, and makes him regard as perpetual the abandonment of the one that he took from his forefathers, and with which he had once identified his vaulting ambition; for shortly after he had quitted his brother's house, Oliver read in the weekly newspaper, to which he bounded his lore of the times in which he lived, an extract from an American journal, wherein certain mention was made of an English adventurer who, amongst other aliases, had assumed the name of Leslie,—that extract caused Oliver to start, turn pale, look round, and thrust the paper into the fire. From that time he never attempted to violate the condition Randal had imposed on him, never sought to renew their intercourse, nor to claim a brother. Doubtless, if the adventurer thus signalized was the man Oliver suspected, whatever might be imputed to Randal's charge that could have paled a brother's cheek, it was none of the more violent crimes to which law is inexorable, but rather (in that progress made by ingratitude and duplicity, with Need and Necessity urging them on) some act of dishonesty which may just escape from the law, to sink, without redemption, the name. However this be, there is nothing in Randal's present course of life which forbodes any deeper fall. He has known what it is to want bread, and his former restlessness subsides into cynic apathy.

He lodges in the town near the school, and thus the debasing habit of unsocial besotment is not brought under the eyes of his superior. The drain is his sole luxury; if it be suspected, it is thought to be his sole vice. He goes through the ordinary routine of tuition with average credit; his spirit of intrigue occasionally shows itself in attempts to conciliate the favour of the boys whose fathers are wealthy, who are born to higher rank than the rest; and he lays complicated schemes to be asked home for the holidays. But when the schemes succeed, and the invitation comes, he recoils and shrinks back,—he does not dare to show himself on the borders of the brighter world he once hoped to sway; he fears that he may be discovered to be—a Leslie! On such days, when his taskwork is over, he shuts himself up in his room, locks the door, and drugs himself into insensibility.

Once he found a well-worn volume running the round of delighted schoolboys, took it up, and recognized Leonard's earliest popular work, which had, many years before, seduced himself into pleasant thoughts and gentle emotions. He carried the book to his own lodgings, read it again; and when he returned it to its young owner, some of the leaves were stained with tears. Alas! perhaps but the maudlin tears of broken nerves, not of the awakened soul,—for the leaves smelt strongly of whiskey. Yet, after that re-perusal, Randal Leslie turned suddenly to deeper studies than his habitual drudgeries required. He revived and increased his early scholarship; he chalked the outline of a work of great erudition, in which the subtlety of his intellect found field in learned and acute criticism. But he has never proceeded far in this work. After each irregular and spasmodic effort, the pen drops from his hand, and he mutters, "But to what end?

"I can never now raise a name. Why give reputation to—John Smith?"

Thus he drags on his life; and perhaps, when he dies, the fragments of his learned work may be discovered in the desk of the usher, and serve as hints to some crafty student, who may filch ideas and repute from the dead Leslie, as Leslie had filched them from the living Burley.

While what may be called poetical justice has thus evolved itself from the schemes in which Randal Leslie had wasted rare intellect in baffling his own fortunes, no outward signs of adversity evince the punishment of Providence on the head of the more powerful offender, Baron Levy. No fall in the Funds has shaken the sumptuous fabric, built from the ruined houses of other men. Baron Levy is still Baron Levy the millionaire; but I doubt if at heart he be not more acutely miserable than Randal Leslie the usher. For Levy is a man who has admitted the fiercer passions into his philosophy of life; he has not the pale blood and torpid heart which allow the scotched adder to dose away its sense of pain. Just as old age began to creep upon the fashionable usurer, he fell in love with a young opera-dancer, whose light heels had turned the lighter heads of half the eligans of Paris and London. The craft of the dancer was proof against all lesser bribes than that of marriage; and Levy married her. From that moment his house, Louis Quinze, was more crowded than ever by the high-born dandies whose society he had long so eagerly courted. That society became his curse. The baroness was an accomplished coquette; and Levy (with whom, as we have seen, jealousy was the predominant passion) was stretched on an eternal rack. His low estimate of human nature, his disbelief in the possibility of virtue, added strength to the agony of his suspicions, and provoked the very dangers he dreaded. His self-torturing task was that of the spy upon his own hearth. His banquets were haunted by a spectre; the attributes of his wealth were as the goad and the scourge of Nemesis. His gay cynic smile changed into a sullen scowl, his hair blanched into white, his eyes were hollow with one consuming care. Suddenly he left his costly house,—left London; abjured all the society which it had been the joy of his wealth to purchase; buried himself and his wife in a remote corner of the provinces; and there he still lives. He seeks in vain to occupy his days with rural pursuits,—he to whom the excitements of a metropolis, with all its corruption and its vices, were the sole sources of the torpid stream that he called "pleasure." There, too, the fiend of jealousy still pursues him: he prowls round his demesnes with the haggard eye and furtive step of a thief; he guards his wife as a prisoner, for she threatens every day to escape. The life of the man who had opened the prison to so many is the life of a jailer. His wife abhors him, and does not conceal it; and still slavishly he dotes on her. Accustomed to the freest liberty, demanding applause and admiration as her rights; wholly uneducated, vulgar in mind, coarse in language, violent in temper, the beautiful Fury he had brought to his home makes that home a hell. Thus, what might seem to the superficial most enviable, is to their possessor most hateful. He dares not ask a soul to see how he spends his gold; he has shrunk into a mean and niggardly expenditure, and complains of reverse and poverty, in order to excuse himself to his wife for debarring her the enjoyments which she anticipated from the Money Bags she had married. A vague consciousness of retribution has awakened remorse, to add to his other stings. And the remorse coming from superstition, not religion (sent from below, not descending from above), brings with it none of the consolations of a genuine repentance. He never seeks to atone, never dreams of some redeeming good action. His riches flow around him, spreading wider and wider—out of his own reach.

The Count di Peschiera was not deceived in the calculations which had induced him to affect repentance, and establish a claim upon his kinsman. He received from the generosity of the Duke di Serrano an annuity not disproportioned to his rank, and no order from his court forbade his return to Vienna. But, in the very summer that followed his visit to Lansmere, his career came to an abrupt close. At Baden-Baden he paid court to a wealthy and accomplished Polish widow; and his fine person and terrible repute awed away all rivals, save a young Frenchman, as daring as himself, and much more in love. A challenge was given and accepted. Peschiera appeared on the fatal ground, with his customary sang-froid, humming an opera air, and looking so diabolically gay that his opponent's nerves were affected in spite of his courage; and the Frenchman's trigger going off before he had even taken aim, to his own ineffable astonishment, he shot the count through the heart, dead.

Beatrice di Negra lived for some years after her brother's death in strict seclusion, lodging within a convent, though she did not take the veil, as she at first proposed. In fact, the more she saw of the sisterhood, the more she found that human regrets and human passions (save in some rarely gifted natures) find their way through the barred gates and over the lofty walls. Finally, she took up her abode in Rome, where she is esteemed for a life not only marked by strict propriety, but active benevolence. She cannot be prevailed on to accept from the duke more than a fourth of the annuity that had been bestowed on her brother; but she has few wants, save those of charity; and when charity is really active, it can do so much with so little gold! She is not known in the gayer circles of the city; but she gathers round her a small society composed chiefly of artists and scholars, and is never so happy as when she can aid some child of genius,—more especially if his country be England.

The squire and his wife still flourish at Hazeldean, where Captain Barnabas Higginbotham has taken up his permanent abode. The captain is a confirmed hypochondriac; but he brightens up now and then when he hears of any illness in the family of Mr. Sharpe Currie, and, at such times, is heard to murmur, "If those seven sickly children should go off, I might still have very great—EXPECTATIONS,"—for the which he has been roundly scolded by the squire, and gravely preached at by the parson. Upon both, however, he takes his revenge in a fair and gentlemanlike way, three times a week, at the whist-table, the parson no longer having the captain as his constant partner, since a fifth now generally cuts in at the table,—in the person of that old enemy and neighbour, Mr. Sticktorights. The parson, thus fighting his own battles unallied to the captain, observes with melancholy surprise that there is a long run of luck against him, and that he does not win so much as he used to do. Fortunately that is the sole trouble—except Mrs. Dale's "little tempers," to which he is accustomed—that ever disturbs the serene tenor of the parson's life. We must now explain how Mr. Sticktorights came to cut in at the Hazeldean whist-table. Frank has settled at the Casino with a wife who suits him exactly, and that wife was Miss Sticktorights. It was two years before Frank recovered the disappointment with which the loss of Beatrice saddened his spirits, but sobered his habits and awoke his reflection. An affection, however misplaced and ill-requited, if honestly conceived and deeply felt, rarely fails to advance the self-education of man. Frank became steady and serious; and, on a visit to Hazeldean, met at a county ball Miss Sticktorights, and the two young persons were instantly attracted towards each other, perhaps by the very feud that had so long existed between their houses. The marriage settlements were nearly abandoned, at the last moment, by a discussion between the parents as to the Right of Way; but the dispute was happily appeased by Mr. Dale's suggestion that as both properties would be united in the children of the proposed marriage, all cause for litigation would naturally cease, since no man would go to law with himself. Mr. Sticktorights and Mr. Hazeldean, however, agreed in the precaution of inserting a clause in the settlements (though all the lawyers declared that it could not be of any legal avail), by which it was declared, that if, in default of heritable issue by the said marriage, the Sticktorights' estate devolved on some distant scion of the Sticktorights family, the right of way from the wood across the waste land would still remain in the same state of delectable dispute in which it then stood. There seems, however, little chance of a lawsuit thus providently bequeathed to the misery of distant generations, since two sons and two daughters are already playing at hide-and-seek on the terrace where Jackeymo once watered the orange-trees, and in the belvidere where Riccabocca had studied his Machiavelli.

Jackeymo, though his master has assessed the long arrears of his wages at a sum which would enable him to have orange-groves and servants of his own, still clings to his former duties, and practises his constitutional parsimony. His only apparent deviation into profusion consists in the erection of a chapel to his sainted namesake, to whom he burns many a votive taper,—the tapers are especially tall, and their sconces are wreathed with garlands, whenever a letter with the foreign postmark brings good news of the absent Violante and her English lord.

Riccabocca was long before he reconciled himself to the pomp of his principalities and his title of Duke. Jemima accommodated herself much more readily to greatness; but she retained all her native Hazeldean simplicity at heart, and is adored by the villagers around her, especially by the young of both sexes, whom she is always ready to marry and to portion,—convinced, long ere this, of the redeemable qualities of the male sex by her reverence for the duke, who continues to satirize women and wedlock, and deem himself—thanks to his profound experience of the one, and his philosophical endurance of the other—the only happy husband in the world. Longer still was it before the sage, who had been so wisely anxious to rid himself of the charge of a daughter, could wean his thoughts from the remembrance of her tender voice and loving eyes,—not, indeed, till he seriously betook himself to the task of educating the son with whom, according to his scientific prognostics, Jemima presented him shortly after his return to his native land. The sage began betimes with his Italian proverbs, full of hardhearted worldly wisdom, and the boy was scarce out of the hornbook before he was introduced to Machiavelli. But somehow or other the simple goodness of the philosopher's actual life, with his high-wrought patrician sentiments of integrity and honour, so counteract the theoretical lessons, that the Heir of Serrano is little likely to be made more wise by the proverbs, or more wicked by the Machiavelli, than those studies have practically made the progenitor, whose opinions his countrymen still shame with the title of "Alphonso the Good."

The duke long cherished a strong curiosity to know what had become of Randal. He never traced the adventurer to his closing scene. But once (years before Randal had crept into his present shelter) in a visit of inspection to the hospital at Genoa, the duke, with his peculiar shrewdness of observation in all matters except those which concerned himself, was remarking to the officer in attendance, "that for one dull, honest man whom fortune drove to the hospital or the jail, he had found, on investigation of their antecedents, three sharp-witted knaves who had thereto reduced themselves"—when his eye fell upon a man asleep in one of the sick wards; and recognizing the face, not then so changed as Oliver had seen it, he walked straight up, and gazed upon Randal Leslie.

"An Englishman," said the official. "He was brought hither insensible, from a severe wound on the head, inflicted, as we discovered, by a well-known chevalier d'industrie, who declared that the Englishman had outwitted and cheated him. That was not very likely, for a few crowns were all we could find on the Englishman's person, and he had been obliged to leave his lodgings for debt. He is recovering, but there is fever still."

The duke gazed silently on the sleeper, who was tossing restlessly on his pallet, and muttering to himself; then he placed his purse in the official's hand. "Give this to the Englishman," said he; "but conceal my name. It is true, it is true, the proverb is very true," resumed the duke, descending the stairs, "Piu pelli di volpi the di asini vanno in Pellieciaria." (More hides of foxes than of asses find their way to the tanner's).

Dr. Morgan continues to prescribe globules for grief, and to administer infinitesimally to a mind diseased. Practising what he prescribes, he swallows a globule of caustic whenever the sight of a distressed fellow-creature moves him to compassion,—a constitutional tendency which, he is at last convinced, admits of no radical cure. For the rest, his range of patients has notably expanded; and under his sage care his patients unquestionably live as long—as Providence pleases. No allopathist can say more.

The death of poor John Burley found due place in the obituary of "literary men." Admirers, unknown before, came forward and subscribed for a handsome monument to his memory in Kensall Green. They would have subscribed for the relief of his widow and children, if he had left any. Writers in magazines thrived for some months on collections of his humorous sayings, anecdotes of his eccentricities, and specimens of the eloquence that had lightened through the tobacco-reek of tavern and club-room. Leonard ultimately made a selection from his scattered writings which found place in standard libraries, though their subjects were either of too fugitive an interest, or treated in too capricious a manner, to do more than indicate the value of the ore, had it been purified from its dross and subjected to the art of the mint. These specimens could not maintain their circulation as the coined money of Thought, but they were hoarded by collectors as rare curiosities. Alas, poor Burley!

The Pompleys sustained a pecuniary loss by the crash of a railway company, in which the colonel had been induced to take several shares by one of his wife's most boasted "connections," whose estate the said railway proposed to traverse, on paying L400 an acre, in that golden age when railway companies respected the rights of property. The colonel was no longer able, in his own country, to make both ends meet at Christmas. He is now straining hard to achieve that feat in Boulogne, and has in the process grown so red in the face, that those who meet him in his morning walk on the pier, bargaining for fish, shake their heads and say, "Old Pompley will go off in a fit of apoplexy; a great loss to society; genteel people the Pompleys! and very highly 'connected.'"

The vacancy created in the borough of Lansmere by Audley Egerton's death was filled up by our old acquaintance, Haveril Dashmore, who had unsuccessfully contested that seat on Egerton's first election. The naval officer was now an admiral, and perfectly reconciled to the Constitution, with all its alloy of aristocracy.

Dick Avenel did not retire from parliament so soon as he had anticipated. He was not able to persuade Leonard, whose brief fever of political ambition was now quenched in the calm fountain of the Muse, to supply his place in the senate, and he felt that the House of Avenel needed one representative. He contrived, however, to devote, for the first year or two, much more of his time to his interests at Screwstown than to the affairs of his country, and succeeded in baffling the over-competition to which he had been subjected by taking the competitor into partnership. Having thus secured a monopoly at Screwstown, Dick, of course, returned with great ardour to his former enlightened opinions in favour of free trade. He remained some years in parliament; and though far too shrewd to venture out of his depth as an orator, distinguished himself so much by his exposure of "humbug" on an important Committee, that he acquired a very high reputation as a man of business, and gradually became so in request amongst all the members who moved for "Select Committees," that he rose into consequence; and Mrs. Avenel, courted for his sake, more than her own, obtained the wish of her heart, and was received as an acknowledged habituee into the circles of fashion. Amidst these circles, however, Dick found that his home entirely vanished; and when he came home from the House of Commons, tired to death, at two in the morning, disgusted at always hearing that Mrs. Avenel was not yet returned from some fine lady's ball, he formed a sudden resolution of cutting Parliament, Fashion, and London altogether; withdrew his capital, now very large, from his business; bought the remaining estates of Squire Thornhill; and his chief object of ambition is in endeavouring to coax or bully out of their holdings all the small freeholders round, who had subdivided amongst them, into poles and furlongs, the fated inheritance of Randal Leslie. An excellent justice of the peace, though more severe than your old family proprietors generally are; a spirited landlord, as to encouraging and making, at a proper percentage, all permanent improvements on the soil, but formidable to meet if the rent be not paid to the day, or the least breach of covenant be heedlessly incurred on a farm that he could let for more money; employing a great many hands in productive labour, but exacting rigorously from all the utmost degree of work at the smallest rate of wages which competition and the poor-rate permit; the young and robust in his neighbourhood never stinted in work, and the aged and infirm, as lumber worn out, stowed away in the workhouse,—Richard Avenel holds himself an example to the old race of landlords; and, taken altogether, he is no very bad specimen of the rural civilizers whom the application of spirit and capital raise up in the new.

From the wrecks of Egerton's fortune, Harley, with the aid of his father's experience in business, could not succeed in saving, for the statesman's sole child and heir, more than a few thousand pounds; and but for the bonds and bills which, when meditating revenge, he had bought from Levy, and afterwards thrown into the fire—paying dear for that detestable whistle—even this surplus would not have been forthcoming.

Harley privately paid out of his own fortune the L5,000 Egerton had bequeathed to Leslie; perhaps not sorry, now that the stern duty of exposing the false wiles of the schemer was fulfilled, to afford some compensation even to the victim who had so richly deserved his fate; and pleased, though mournfully, to comply with the solemn request of the friend whose offence was forgotten in the remorseful memory of his own projects of revenge.