ad an eye for that sort of thing, and was so fond of riding.

Vaudemont was astonished at this change, but his delight was greater
than the astonishment. He began to perceive that his identity was
suspected; perhaps Beaufort, more generous than he had deemed him, meant
to repay every early wrong or harshness by one inestimable blessing.
The generous interpret motives in extremes--ever too enthusiastic or
too severe. Vaudemont felt as if he had wronged the wronger; he began to
conquer even his dislike to Robert Beaufort. For some days he was thus
thrown much with Camilla; the questions her father forced her to put
to him, uttered tremulously and fearfully, seemed to him proof of
her interest in his fate. His feelings to Camilla, so sudden in
their growth--so ripened and so favoured by the Sub-Ruler of the
world--CIRCUMSTANCE--might not, perhaps, have the depth and the
calm completeness of that, One True Love, of which there are many
counterfeits,--and which in Man, at least, possibly requires the touch
and mellowness, if not of time, at least of many memories--of perfect
and tried conviction of the faith, the worth, the value and the beauty
of the heart to which it clings;--but those feelings were, nevertheless,
strong, ardent, and intense. He believed himself beloved--he was in
Elysium. But he did not yet declare the passion that beamed in his eyes.
No! he would not yet claim the hand of Camilla Beaufort, for he imagined
the time would soon come when he could claim it, not as the inferior or
the suppliant, but as the lord of her father's fate.

CHAPTER X.

"Here's something got amongst us!"--Knight of Malta.

Two or three nights after his memorable conversation with Robert
Beaufort, as Lord Lilburne was undressing, he said to his valet:

"Dykeman, I am getting well."

"Indeed, my lord, I never saw your lordship look better."

"There you lie. I looked better last year--I looked better the year
before--and I looked better and better every year back to the age of
twenty-one! But I'm not talking of looks, no man with money wants looks.
I am talking of feelings. I feel better. The gout is almost gone. I have
been quiet now for a month--that's a long time--time wasted when, at
my age, I have so little time to waste. Besides, as you know, I am very
much in love!"

"In love, my lord? I thought that you told me never to speak of--"

"Blockhead! what the deuce was the good of speaking about it when I was
wrappe