smiss his carriage, and that they should
walk home, Algernon consented not unwillingly to the proposal. He felt,
indeed, an unwonted relief in companionship; and the still air and the
deep heavens seemed to woo him from more unwelcome thoughts, as with a
softening and a sister's love.

"Let us, before we return home," said Lord Ulswater, "stroll for a few
moments towards the bridge: I love looking at the river on a night like
this."

Whoever inquires into human circumstances will be struck to find how
invariably a latent current of fatality appears to pervade them. It is
the turn of the atom in the scale which makes our safety or our peril,
our glory or our shame, raises us to the throne or sinks us to the
grave. A secret voice at Mordaunt's heart prompted him to dissent
from this proposal, trifling as it seemed and welcome as it was to his
present and peculiar mood: he resisted the voice,--the moment passed
away, and the last seal was set upon his doom; they moved onward towards
the bridge. At first both were silent, for Lord Ulswater used the
ordinary privilege of a lover and was absent and absorbed, and his
companion was never the first to break a taciturnity natural to his
habits. At last Lord Ulswater said, "I rejoice that you are now in
the sphere of action most likely to display your talents: you have not
spoken yet, I think; indeed, there has been no fitting opportunity, but
you will soon, I trust."

"I know not," said Mordaunt, with a melancholy smile, "whether you
judge rightly in thinking the sphere of political exertion the one most
calculated for me; but I feel at my heart a foreboding that my planet
is not fated to shine in any earthly sphere. Sorrow and misfortune have
dimmed it in its birth, and now it is waning towards its decline."

"Its decline!" repeated his companion, "no, rather its meridian. You are
in the vigor of your years, the noon of your prosperity, the height of
your intellect and knowledge; you require only an effort to add to these
blessings the most lasting of all,--Fame!"

"Well," said Mordaunt, and a momentary light flashed over his
countenance, "the effort will be made. I do not pretend not to have felt
ambition. No man should make it his boast, for it often gives to our
frail and earth-bound virtue both its weapon and its wings; but when the
soil is exhausted its produce fails; and when we have forced our hearts
to too great an abundance, whether it be of flowers that perish or