l
discussions on ladies' hair, fingering a thousand delicious locks, from
those of Cleopatra to the Borgia's. "Fair! fair! all of them fair!" sighs
the melancholy curate, "as are those women formed for our perdition! I
think we have in this country what will match the Italian or the Greek."
His mind flutters to Mrs. Doria, Richard blushes before the vision of
Lucy, and Ralph, whose heroine's hair is a dark luxuriance, dissents, and
claims a noble share in the slaughter of men for dark-haired Wonders.
They have no mutual confidences, but they are singularly kind to each
other, these three children of instinct.

CHAPTER XVI

Lady Blandish, and others who professed an interest in the fortunes and
future of the systematized youth, had occasionally mentioned names of
families whose alliance according to apparent calculations, would not
degrade his blood: and over these names, secretly preserved on an open
leaf of the note-book, Sir Austin, as he neared the metropolis, distantly
dropped his eye. There were names historic and names mushroomic; names
that the Conqueror might have called in his muster-roll; names that had
been, clearly, tossed into the upper stratum of civilized lifer by a
millwheel or a merchant-stool. Against them the baronet had written M. or
Po. or Pr.--signifying, Money, Position, Principles, favouring the latter
with special brackets. The wisdom of a worldly man, which he could now
and then adopt, determined him, before he commenced his round of visits,
to consult and sound his solicitor and his physician thereanent; lawyers
and doctors being the rats who know best the merits of a house, and on
what sort of foundation it may be standing.

Sir Austin entered the great city with a sad mind. The memory of his
misfortune came upon him vividly, as if no years had intervened, and it
were but yesterday that he found the letter telling him that he had no
wife and his son no mother. He wandered on foot through the streets the
first night of his arrival, looking strangely at the shops and shows and
bustle of the world from which he had divorced himself; feeling as
destitute as the poorest vagrant. He had almost forgotten how to find his
way about, and came across his old mansion in his efforts to regain his
hotel. The windows were alight--signs of merry life within. He stared at
it from the shadow of the opposite side. It seemed to him he was a ghost
gazing upon his living past. And then the phantom which ha