he noise of an opening door, and the hostess,
with an expressive glance at her customers, held up her finger
warningly.

"Hush, please!" she said. "The gentlemen are coming out."

A sudden pause ensued. The men looked round upon one another, half
sheepishly, half sullenly, and their growling voices subsided into a
murmur. The hostess settled the bow at her collar more becomingly, and
her two pretty daughters feigned to be deeply occupied with some drawn
thread work. David Helmsley, noting everything that was going on from
his coign of vantage, recognised at once the dissipated,
effeminate-looking young man, who, stepping out of a private room which
opened on a corridor apparently leading to the inner part of the house,
sauntered lazily up to the bar and, resting his arm upon its oaken
counter, smiled condescendingly, not to say insolently, upon the women
who stood behind it. There was no mistaking him,--it was the same
Reginald Wrotham whose scandals in society had broken his worthy
father's heart, and who now, succeeding to a hitherto unblemished title,
was doing his best to load it with dishonour. He was followed by his
friend Brookfield,--a heavily-built, lurching sort of man, with a nose
reddened by strong drink, and small lascivious eyes which glittered
dully in his head like the eyes of poisonous tropical beetle. The hush
among the "lower" class of company at the inn deepened into the usual
stupid awe which at times so curiously affects untutored rustics who are
made conscious of the presence of a "lord." Said a friend of the present
writer's to a waiter in a country hotel where one of these "lords" was
staying for a few days: "I want a letter to catch to-night's post, but
I'm afraid the mail has gone from the hotel. Could you send some one to
the post-office with it?" "Oh yes, sir!" replied the waiter
grandiloquently. "The servant of the Lord will take it!" Pitiful beyond
most piteous things is the grovelling tendency of that section of human
nature which has not yet been educated sufficiently to lift itself up
above temporary trappings and ornaments; pitiful it is to see men,
gifted in intellect, or distinguished for bravery, flinch and cringe
before one of their own flesh and blood, who, having neither cleverness
nor courage, but only a Title, presumes upon that foolish appendage so
far as to consider himself superior to both valour and ability. As well
might a stuffed boar's head assume a superiority to other