dst the society in which his youth had been spent. His
uncle, the head of one of those families which yearly vanish from the
commonalty into the peerage, but which once formed a distinguished
peculiarity in the aristocracy of England--families of ancient birth,
immense possessions, at once noble and untitled--held his estates by no
other tenure than his own caprice. Though he professed to like Philip,
yet he saw but little of him. When the news of the illicit connection
his nephew was reported to have formed reached him, he at first resolved
to break it off; but observing that Philip no longer gambled, nor ran
in debt, and had retired from the turf to the safer and more economical
pastimes of the field, he contented himself with inquiries which
satisfied him that Philip was not married; and perhaps he thought it, on
the whole, more prudent to wink at an error that was not attended by the
bills which had here-to-fore characterised the human infirmities of his
reckless nephew. He took care, however, incidentally, and in reference
to some scandal of the day, to pronounce his opinion, not upon the
fault, but upon the only mode of repairing it.

"If ever," said he, and he looked grimly at Philip while he spoke, "a
gentleman were to disgrace his ancestry by introducing into his family
one whom his own sister could not receive at her house, why, he ought
to sink to her level, and wealth would but make his disgrace the more
notorious. If I had an only son, and that son were booby enough to do
anything so discreditable as to marry beneath him, I would rather have
my footman for my successor. You understand, Phil!"

Philip did understand, and looked round at the noble house and
the stately park, and his generosity was not equal to the trial.
Catherine--so great was her power over him--might, perhaps, have easily
triumphed over his more selfish calculations; but her love was too
delicate ever to breathe, of itself, the hope that lay deepest at her
heart. And her children!--ah! for them she pined, but for them she also
hoped. Before them was a long future, and she had all confidence in
Philip. Of late, there had been considerable doubts how far the elder
Beaufort would realise the expectations in which his nephew had been
reared. Philip's younger brother had been much with the old gentleman,
and appeared to be in high favour: this brother was a man in every
respect the opposite to Philip--sober, supple, decorous, ambitious, with
a