to the honourable career which you seem to have
abandoned!"

"Miss Wardour," said Lovel, "I will obey your wishes, if, within one
little month I cannot show you the best of reasons for continuing to
abide at Fairport."

At this moment Sir Arthur sent down a message to say that he would like
to see his old friend, the Laird of Monkbarns, in his bedroom. Miss
Wardour instantly declared that she would show Mr. Oldbuck the way, and
so left Lovel to himself. It chanced that in the interview which
followed Sir Arthur let out by accident that his daughter had already
met with Lovel in Yorkshire, when she had been there on a visit to her
aunt. The Antiquary was at first astonished, and then not a little
indignant, that neither of them should have told him of this when they
were introduced, and he resolved to catechise his young friend Lovel
strictly upon the point as soon as possible. But when at last he bade
farewell to his friend Sir Arthur and returned below, another subject
occupied his mind. Lovel and he were walking home over the cliffs, and
when they reached the summit of the long ridge, Oldbuck turned and
looked back at the pinnacles of the castle--at the ancient towers and
walls grey with age, which had been the home of so many generations of
Wardours.

"Ah," he muttered, sighing, half to himself, "it wrings my heart to say
it--but I doubt greatly that this ancient family is fast going to the
ground."

Then he revealed to the surprised Lovel how Sir Arthur's foolish
speculations, and especially his belief in a certain German swindler,
named Dousterswivel, had caused him to engage in some very costly mining
ventures, which were now almost certain to result in complete failure.

As the Antiquary described Dousterswivel, Lovel remembered to have seen
the man in the inn at Fairport, where he had been pointed out to him as
one of the _illuminati_, or persons who have dealings with the dwellers
in another world. But while thus talking and tarrying with his friend
Monkbarns, an important letter was on its way to call Lovel back to
Fairport. Oldbuck had so far taken his young friend to his heart, that
he would not let him depart without making sure that the trouble he read
on Lovel's face was not the want of money.

"If," he said, "there is any pecuniary inconvenience, I have fifty, or a
hundred, guineas at your service--till Whitsunday--or indeed as long as
you like!"

But Lovel, assuring him that the letter boded no