looked at him, could possibly have supposed that any question of
interest, not to say of deep moment, awaited him; and as he carried
his eyes over the well-filled shelves and the hand some fittings of
the chamber, nothing could be more naturally spoken than the few
complimentary expressions on Sir Stafford's good taste and judgment.

"I shall not ask you to be seated, my Lord," said the old Baronet, whose
tremulous lip and shaking cheek showed how deep-felt was his agitation.
"The few moments of interview I have requested will be, I have no doubt,
too painful to either of us, nor could we desire to prolong them. To me,
I own, they are very, very painful."

These hurried, broken, and unconnected sentences fell from him as he
searched for a letter among a number of others that littered the table.

Lord Norwood bowed coldly, and, without making any reply, turned his
back to the fire, and waited in patience.

"I have, I fear, mislaid the letter," said Sir Stafford, whose nervous
anxiety had now so completely mastered him that he threw the letters and
papers on every side without perceiving it.

The Viscount made no sign, but suffered the search to proceed without
remark.

"It was a letter from Lord Effingdale," continued the Baronet, still
busied in the pursuit, "a letter written after the Newmarket settling,
my Lord; and if I should be unfortunate enough not to find it, I must
only trust to my memory for its contents."

Lord Norwood gave another bow, slighter and colder than the former, as
though to say that he acquiesced perfectly, without knowing in what.

"Ah! here it is! here it is!" cried Sir Stafford, at last detecting the
missing document, which he hastily opened and ran his eyes over. "This
letter, my Lord," continued he, "announces that, in consequence of
certain defalcations on your part, the members of the 'Whip Club'
have erased your Lordship's name from their list, and declared you
incapacitated from either entering a horse, or naming a winner for the
stakes in future. There, there, my Lord, is the paragraph, coupled with
what you will doubtless feel to be a very severe but just comment on the
transaction."

Norwood took the letter and read it leisurely, as leisurely and calmly
as though the contents never concerned him, and then, folding it up,
laid it on the chimney-piece beside him.

"Poor Effingdale!" said he, smiling; "he ought to spell better,
considering that his mother was a governess. He wr