ions besides
true love, you know; and for these young people, they can't have pined
out their hearts yet, as, by your own showing, they have not been
engaged three months. If it were Sydney himself, I should tell him
that love is all the better for keeping--if it is good for anything;
and where there is such a disparity, it ought, above all, to be tested
by waiting. So tell Master Jem, with my best wishes, to take care of
his grandmother. I shall think myself doing him a kindness in keeping
him out of the school, if it is to hinder him from marrying at
four-and-twenty, and a girl brought up as she has been!'

'And, Mr. Calcott,' said Louis, rising, 'you will excuse my viewing my
cousin's engagement as an additional motive for doing my utmost to
promote his success in obtaining a situation, for which I consider him
as eminently fitted. Good morning, sir.'

'Good morning, my Lord.'

Lord Fitzjocelyn departed so grave, so courteous, so dignified, so
resolute, so comically like his father, that the old Squire threw
himself back in his chair and laughed heartily. The magnificent
challenge of war to the knife, was no more to him than the adjuration
he had heard last year in the justice-room; and he no more expected
these two lads to make any effectual opposition than he did to see them
repeal the game-laws.

The Viscount meanwhile rode off thoroughly roused to indignation. The
good sense of sixty naturally fell hard and cold on the ears of
twenty-two, and it was one of the moments when counsel inflamed instead
of checking him. Never angry on his own account, he could be
exceedingly wrathful for others; and the unlucky word, disparity, drove
him especially wild. In mere charity, he thought it right to withhold
this insult to the Pendragons from his cousin's ears; but this very
reserve seemed to bind him to resent it in James's stead; and he was
far more blindly impetuous than if, as usual, he had seen James so
vehement that he was obliged to try to curb and restrain him.

He would not hear of giving in! When the Ramsbotham candidate
appeared, and James scrupled to divide the contrary interest, Louis
laid the whole blame of the split upon Mr. Calcott; while, as to poor
Mr. Powell, no words were compassionate enough for his dull, slouching,
ungentlemanly air; and he was pronounced to be an old writing-master,
fit for nothing but to mend pens.

But Mr. Walby's was still their sole promise. The grocer followed the