faint remembrance of his compact and assignation with
Maltravers, which had happily guided his steps back to his abode.

* * * * *

It was two months after this scene, a lovely Sabbath morning, in the
earliest May, as Lumley, Lord Vargrave, sat alone, by the window in
his late uncle's villa, in his late uncle's easy-chair--his eyes were
resting musingly on the green lawn on which the windows opened, or
rather on two forms that were seated upon a rustic bench in the middle
of the sward. One was the widow in her weeds, the other was that fair
and lovely child destined to be the bride of the new lord. The hands of
the mother and daughter were clasped each in each. There was sadness in
the faces of both--deeper if more resigned on that of the elder, for the
child sought to console her parent, and grief in childhood comes with a
butterfly's wing.

Lumley gazed on them both, and on the child more earnestly.

"She is very lovely," he said; "she will be very rich. After all, I
am not to be pitied. I am a peer, and I have enough to live upon at
present. I am a rising man--our party wants peers; and though I could
not have had more than a subaltern's seat at the Treasury Board six
months ago, when I was an active, zealous, able commoner, now that I am
a lord, with what they call a stake in the country, I may open my mouth
and--bless me! I know not how many windfalls may drop in! My uncle was
wiser than I thought in wrestling for this peerage, which he won and I
wear!--Then, by and by, just at the age when I want to marry and have an
heir (and a pretty wife saves one a vast deal of trouble), L200,000 and
a young beauty! Come, come, I have strong cards in my hands if I play
them tolerably. I must take care that she falls desperately in love
with me. Leave me alone for that--I know the sex, and have never failed
except in--ah, that poor Florence! Well, it is no use regretting! Like
thrifty artists, we must paint out the unmarketable picture, and call
luckier creations to fill up the same canvas!"

Here the servant interrupted Lord Vargrave's meditation by bringing in
the letters and the newspapers which had just been forwarded from
his town house. Lord Vargrave had spoken in the Lords on the previous
Friday, and he wished to see what the Sunday newspapers said of his
speech. So he took up one of the leading papers before he opened the
letters. His eyes rested upon two paragraphs in close neighbourhood with
each other: the fir