l as he knew Elinor, he still thought, as is generally
thought in circumstances so painful, that a great crisis, a great mental
effort, would make her ill. He wanted to know how she was, he wanted to
know how Pippo had borne it, what the boy thought. It had glanced across
him that young Philip might be excited by so wonderful a new thing,
and form some false impression of his father (whom doubtless she would
represent under the best light, taking blame upon herself, not to
destroy the boy's ideal), and be eager to know him--which was a thing,
John felt, which would be very difficult to bear.

The door was opened to him not by good Mrs. Jones, the kind landlady,
but by the magnificent Jones himself, who rarely appeared. John said
"Mrs. Compton?" as a matter of course, and was about to pass in, in his
usual familiar way. But something in the man's air made him pause. He
looked at Jones again, who was bursting with importance. "Perhaps she's
engaged?" he said.

"I think, sir," said John, "that her ladyship is engaged--his lordship
is with her ladyship up-stairs."

"His--what?" John Tatham cried.

"His lordship, Mr. Tatham. I know, sir, as the title is not usually
assumed till after the funeral; but in the very 'ouse where her ladyship
is residing for the moment, there's allowances to be made. Naturally
we're a little excited over it, being, if I may make so bold as to say
so, a sort of 'umble friends, and long patronized by her ladyship, and
young Lord Lomond too."

"Young Lord Lomond too!" John Tatham stood for a moment and stared at
Mr. Jones; and then he laughed out, and turned his back and walked away.

Young Lord Lomond too! The boy! who had been more like John's boy than
anything else, but now tricked out in a new name, a new position, his
father's heir. Oh, yes, it was John himself who had insisted on that
only a few days ago! "The heir to a peerage can't be hid." It was he
that had quoted this as an aphorism worthy of a social sage. But when
the moment came and the boy was taken from him, and introduced into
that other sphere, by the side of that man who had once been the
_dis_-Honourable Phil! Good heavens, what changes life is capable
of! What wrongs, what cruelties, what cuttings-off, what twists and
alterations of every sane thought and thing! John Tatham was a sensible
man as well as an eminent lawyer, and knew that between Elinor's son,
who was Phil Compton's son, and himself, there was no external link