e?"

"Well, and in truth I fancy so,--pretty nearly. You know my grandmother
is not alive! But that is something really worth looking at!" And
Percival pointed, almost with a child's delight, at an illumination more
brilliant than the rest.

"I suppose, when you come of age, you will have all the cedars at
Laughton hung with coloured lamps. Ah, you must ask me there some day; I
should so like to see the old place again."

"You never saw it, I think you say, in my poor father's time?"

"Never."

"Yet you knew him."

"But slightly."

"And you never saw my mother?"

"No; but she seems to have such influence over you that I am sure she
must be a very superior person,--rather proud, I suppose."

"Proud, no,--that is, not exactly proud, for she is very meek and very
affable. But yet--"

"'But yet--' You hesitate: she would not like you to be seen, perhaps,
walking in Piccadilly with Gabriel Varney, the natural son of old Sir
Miles's librarian,--Gabriel Varney the painter; Gabriel Varney the
adventurer!"

"As long as Gabriel Varney is a man without stain on his character and
honour, my mother would only be pleased that I should know an able and
accomplished person, whatever his origin or parentage. But my mother
would be sad if she knew me intimate with a Bourbon or a Raphael, the
first in rank or the first in genius, if either prince or artist had
lost, or even sullied, his scutcheon of gentleman. In a word, she is
most sensitive as to honour and conscience; all else she disregards."

"Hem!" Varney stooped down, as if examining the polish of his boot,
while he continued carelessly: "Impossible to walk the streets and keep
one's boots out of the mire. Well--and you agree with your mother?"

"It would be strange if I did not. When I was scarcely four years old,
my poor father used to lead me through the long picture-gallery at
Laughton and say: 'Walk through life as if those brave gentlemen looked
down on you.' And," added St. John, with his ingenuous smile, "my mother
would put in her word,--'And those unstained women too, my Percival.'"

There was something noble and touching in the boy's low accents as
he said this; it gave the key to his unusual modesty and his frank,
healthful innocence of character.

The devil in Varney's lip sneered mockingly.

"My young friend, you have never loved yet. Do you think you ever
shall?"

"I have dreamed that I could love one day. But I can wait."

Varney was about to