outset, so that
Louis, alarmed lest he should absolutely drop asleep, skipped all his
favourite passages, and came at once to the results of the recent
inquiries. The Earl was roused. Who could have learnt those facts?
That was telling--well put, but how did he get hold of it. The very
thing he had said himself--What Quarterly was it? Surely the Christmas
number was not out. Hitherto Louis had kept his countenance and voice,
but in an hiatus, where he was trying to extemporize, his father came
to look over his shoulder to see what ailed the book, and, glancing
upwards with a merry debonnaire face, he made a gesture as if convicted.

'Do you mean that this is your own composition?'

'I beg your pardon for the pious fraud!'

'It is very good! Excellently done!' said Lord Ormersfield. 'There
are redundancies--much to betray an unpractised hand--but--stay, let me
hear the rest--' Very differently did he listen now, broad awake,
attacking the logic of every third sentence, or else double shotting it
with some ponderous word, and shaking his head at Utopian views of
crime to be dried up at the fountain head. Next, he must hear the
beginning, and ruthlessly picked it to pieces, demolishing all the
Vehme Gericht and Santissima Hermandad as irrelevant, and, when he had
made Louis ashamed and vexed with the whole production, astonishing him
by declaring that it would tell, and advising him to copy it out fair
with these _little_ alterations.

These _little_ alterations would, as he was well aware, evaporate all
the spirit, and though glad to have pleased his father, his
perseverance quailed before the task; but he said no more than thank
you. The next day, before he had settled to anything, Lord Ormersfield
came to his room, saying, 'You will be engaged with your more important
studies for the next few hours. Can you spare the paper you read to me
last night?'

'I can spare it better than you can read it, I fear,' said Louis,
producing a mass of blotted MS in all his varieties of penmanship, and
feeling a sort of despair at the prospect of being brought to book on
all his details.

His father carried it off, and they did not meet again till late in the
day, when the first thing Louis heard was, 'I thought it worth while to
have another opinion on your manuscript before re-writing it. I tried
to read it to Mrs. Ponsonby, but we were interrupted, and I left it
with her.'

Presently after. 'I have made an engage