"I don't see it. Nothing can compensate for my lost youth. He has enjoyed all the advantages that, but for him, I should have had. And yet "-here the barrister spoke with gentler feeling, and with some regret-" when I saw him, he spoke me fair, and honestly, and nobly. Poor Philip, what a trial he must have had!"

"That's just it. Poor human nature! You see, Mr Wade, that, upon his first hearing of this terrible news, he was ready to act upon his fresh, generous impulses; and upon the honour which his education had instilled in him."

"Exactly. And he will continue to do so; or rather, he has continued?"

Edgar Wade put this-it seemed almost purposely, although the words dropped from him quite naturally-as a question; as if he asked from his elder and companion his opinion of the matter.

"That's just where it is. When you know human life as well as I do, you will see somewhat more clearly."

"Conceited old party!" thought Edgar Wade. "How these old folks do pride themselves upon the few short years they have passed prior to our existence !

"Upon his first impulse he was, I will grant you," continued Old Forster, getting up and putting down a square-tipped forefinger, so as to make himself more impressive, "generous, right-minded, and even noble. Then you leave him to reflection; and the drear reality of loss of birth, position, fortune, is borne in upon him. He finds the sacrifice too great. He casts about him; remembers the letters you have shown him, and that they were upon your unsupported evidence. He thinks again, and remembers that there is but one witness alive whose testimony is worth anything. His father may deny those letters-they may be but forgeries. He seeks this woman-a venal creature, as her history proves. He goes there without confessing his purpose, even to himself. He will, let us say, temporise with her; perhaps bribe her, and get her to be on his side."

"It might have been so," uttered Mr Wade, looking with those dark, distant, feeling eyes of his across Garden Court and at the old Temple Hall.

"It was so, no doubt. The devil never puts the worst face upon the temptation that he offers us. He bids us seek for truth, that he may make us embrace a lie : to clear our innocence, he plunges us into a blacker crime. Poor human nature ! "

"Poor, indeed," uttered the barrister, in a meditative sort of voice. "Perhaps it was, indeed, as you say, although I don't want to think so; and shall, indeed, dismiss all that you have urged against Philip Stanfield from my mind."

"What a generous, clear soul!" thought Old Daylight. Then he continued-" It was so. Obeying, then, this second impulse, which came to him when the first had grown faint and weak, he seeks this woman."

"You speak as if you had been at his elbow."

"It is nothing but a clear induction from facts afterwards ascertained," said the inductive philosopher. "He seeks this woman. He finds her alone. He ascertains that what you have said is true; that she has papers which corroborate yours; that she is possibly not so much inclined to be upon the old lord's side as she was; that time has made her reflect; and that, before she dies, she would fain make reparation and a clean breast of it, as these people call it; as if you could stain marble with ink for years, and wash it clean in a day. Then, sitting alone and waiting in her parlour while she gets refreshment, the temptation comes."

:

"Poor Philip," murmured the barrister, in a tone which was sad but convinced. 66 My poor deeply tried brother!" "The temptation comes: it is too strong for him-for the devil had prepared him in case of accident, you know he yields to the temptation. The lonely place, the solitary woman, the want of help-all are in his favour for the crime. He springs hurriedly on her-pulling the cloth with him as he rises and stabs her. One blow is enough. She falls; and he is a murderer."

The barrister walked up and down his room, in great agitation, as the old philosopher described the scene as if he had been present. He said nothing; but his face expressed sorrow for the criminal so suddenly tried. Then he muttered

"Say no more, Mr Forster, do not convince me too fully of my brother's guilt."

The inductive philosopher had spoken.

"That's how the murder was done," he added. know as much as I do."

"Now you

Here the old man applied his bandana; for he, too, had been agitated by his recital.

"And yet you would hang that man; that grievously tempted man?"

"Mr Wade," said the philosopher, stoutly, "since you put it to me, I would. Men are made to resist a temptation, not to go out and meet it. My two books are the Bible and Shakespeare. One says, 'Being in the way, the LORD met me.' Awful, is it not? What if it should be, 'Being in the way, the devil met me?'"

"You must not apply texts in that fashion, Mr Forster," interjected Edgar, in a low voice.

"The other says-now listen !—

'How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds

Makes ill deeds done.'

There's the whole history of crime which has puzzled even judges," said the old fellow, as if judges were the essence of wisdom.

"I shall defend my brother still," said Edgar Wade.

He rose, and signified that the conference was at an end. Mr Tom Forster took his hat; and, like one foiled in an ardent desire, sighed as he walked up to the beautiful bouquet, and smelled the flowers.

"Ah!" " said he, "how grateful will she be for these! You are a noble fellow, Mr Wade. Will you bring them with you?"

He was thinking of poor Madame Eugenie Wade, lying almost unconscious.

'No; not now. I am going to call on Lord Chesterton. He wishes to see me."

"Phew!" whistled Old Daylight; and then he thought to himself, as he passed through the office of the industrious Scorem, who kept scratching away with his pen, "What new complication is this? Edgar is not out of the wood yet!"

CHAPTER XXXI.

"SO HERE WE MEET AT LAST! ART THOU MY SON?”

WHEN Edgar Wade lifted his eyes, which he had cast down in great humility, he saw before him one of the most beautiful young women he had ever seen, standing by the side of a stately gentleman-his father. What relation the lady was to Lord Chesterton, or whether she bore any, he knew not. He saw that she clung to him with confidence of support; and that, in her turn, her presence instilled some confidence into him.

Furthermore, he could see, from those dark and dreamy half-closed eyes of his, that the Earl was much shaken and troubled what to do. Nay, that his own presence there was not the most welcome in the world.

Old Daylight's warnings came back to him.

"Stand on your own right, Edgar Wade," said the old gentleman. "Mind you do not parley with the Earl; those people know of matters that you and I do not."

While he resolved these things in his mind-quick, agile, and flexible that mind was-the young lady, very strong, very straight, and very determined, said, with emphasis—

"And this is Mr Edgar Wade, is it?"

"Yes, my dear," said the Earl, putting up his soft, white hand, deprecatingly. "Let me introduce you to him, and then you can speak."

"Then I can be spoken to ; but not until after introduction," thought Edgar Wade, shutting his teeth. "Well, I suppose

it is the right way in this proud circle."

"My lord," returned the lady, her clear voice ringing in the large stately room, "I will introduce myself to Mr Edgar Wade."

How curious is sympathy, with its twin sister, or its second self, antipathy! When Edgar Wade saw the lady standing by the Earl's side, "a presentation," as Mrs Preen would have called it, passed through him, and he saw there would, necessarily, be some antagonism. On her side, Winifred

thought there was a certain cause for caution, and she experienced an undefined nervous agitation. Her hair, as the French would say, "dressed itself on her head," and her voice became deeper, and somewhat more unmanageable.

To say the truth, all very strong emotion was with Winifred unmanageable. She was a creature of impulse, and of very admirable and true impulses, too. It is only those cold and calculating people, who do not know the power and truth which reside in impulse, who are so ready to blame it.

This deep, rich, unmanageable voice then said, seeming strange even to Winifred herself

"I will introduce myself to Mr Edgar Wade. I am the wife of Philip Stanfield, whom he would dispossess. I am the Viscountess Wimpole!"

The histrionic feeling which underlies all true passionhence, when people understand deep emotion and passion, they understand good acting; when they are hypocrites, slight things, fribbles, and fools, they laugh at tragedy and sneer at Shakespeare-came out very strongly here. Mrs Siddons might well have studied the firm pose, the elevation of figure, and the honest assertion of her rights, that the lady conveyed by her manner. If he her husband himself-and all that were around doubted of his rights, she did not.

Thus it often happens. Long after a man knows he is beaten, and has given himself over to the devil or to ill-luck, his friends believe in him, in his talent, his energy, his goodness; as the horse that will only reach the goal to lose the race, and who feels defeat in every flagging nerve, has, doubtless, his eager backers as he skims the turf and flees along the ground.

The Earl raised his head a little, and said

"The lady asserts the truth. She is "-then he faltered"the wife of my dear son-Philip!"

"Viscount Wimpole," said the lady, proudly.

She would not bate one jot of her rights. Poor little soul. If all had gone happily with her, and she had become suddenly the Countess of Chesterton, she would have hidden her coronet beneath the sofa-squab, and put rank out of sight. But when any one forcibly put away her due, she fought bravely