e one you espouse at present, much
joy of the acquisition it has made.'

The secretary rubbed his hands and bowed, as though he would disarm
his adversary by humbling himself before him. Sir John Chester again
exclaimed, with an air of great gaiety, 'Now, really, this is a
most remarkable meeting!' and took a pinch of snuff with his usual
self-possession.

'Mr Haredale,' said Gashford, stealthily raising his eyes, and
letting them drop again when they met the other's steady gaze, is too
conscientious, too honourable, too manly, I am sure, to attach unworthy
motives to an honest change of opinions, even though it implies a doubt
of those he holds himself. Mr Haredale is too just, too generous, too
clear-sighted in his moral vision, to--'

'Yes, sir?' he rejoined with a sarcastic smile, finding the secretary
stopped. 'You were saying'--

Gashford meekly shrugged his shoulders, and looking on the ground again,
was silent.

'No, but let us really,' interposed Sir John at this juncture, 'let us
really, for a moment, contemplate the very remarkable character of this
meeting. Haredale, my dear friend, pardon me if I think you are not
sufficiently impressed with its singularity. Here we stand, by no
previous appointment or arrangement, three old schoolfellows, in
Westminster Hall; three old boarders in a remarkably dull and shady
seminary at Saint Omer's, where you, being Catholics and of necessity
educated out of England, were brought up; and where I, being a promising
young Protestant at that time, was sent to learn the French tongue from
a native of Paris!'

'Add to the singularity, Sir John,' said Mr Haredale, 'that some of you
Protestants of promise are at this moment leagued in yonder building, to
prevent our having the surpassing and unheard-of privilege of teaching
our children to read and write--here--in this land, where thousands of
us enter your service every year, and to preserve the freedom of which,
we die in bloody battles abroad, in heaps: and that others of you, to
the number of some thousands as I learn, are led on to look on all men
of my creed as wolves and beasts of prey, by this man Gashford. Add
to it besides the bare fact that this man lives in society, walks the
streets in broad day--I was about to say, holds up his head, but that he
does not--and it will be strange, and very strange, I grant you.'

'Oh! you are hard upon our friend,' replied Sir John, with an engaging
smile. 'You are really ve