fixed beliefs have frequently a quantity of latent doubt about them which overbalances the belief; and this was powerful with the Earl.

The barrister sat and watched him silently, but not the less closely. Presently he read his mind, or thought he did, for he said

"You think as I do, my lord."

"I do.

I am forced to do so, my son," returned Lord Chesterton, sadly.

Eagerly the barrister rose, and grasped his hand; and then, raising it to his lips, he kissed it.

"This matter is not new to me, my lord," he said. "My mind is quick, and I have thought day and night-day and night," he repeated, to give emphasis to what he was saying, "upon it. We will defend Philip with our heart, with our blood, with our souls!"

"Generous enthusiasm," thought the Earl, in his older and less hopeful mood. "It is easy to speak like that," he said, "but not so easy to stir the cold blood of the English law. What can the enthusiasm of a brother's or of a father's love do against that?"

"Your power is great," continued Edgar. "Your rent-roll is large, and untouched; your purse can buy anything almost in this vendible country."

"All but the verdict of a jury," said the Earl, with a sad smile. "A dozen of the cleverest counsel, the most profound lawyers, the wisest advisers "

"It is beyond them, my lord," said Edgar; "beyond them, I am afraid. I have looked into matters pretty closely, while others have slept. I see no way out of it for my brother, if he is tried."

"If he is tried! Why, man, can he help it?"

"There are a thousand ways. He is not committed yet—he has only had a preliminary and private examination. Don't let it become public."

"Who can stop the babbling mouths of the press?" asked his lordship in dismay. "If they get hold of it in any way, they will not let us hear the last of it."

"And people," said Edgar," are now clamouring for Reform,

which the House of Lords has withstood.

Such a fact as the

one we have debated would make the fortune of the lucky demagogue who first uses it against an hereditary aristocracy. No, my lord, we will not let the honour of the family be stained thus. Your money must be otherwise applied. The magistrate who has taken this in hand is "

"Mr George Horton, an honourable man."

"So they are all honourable men," said Edgar, with a sneer. "But I think, with you, there's no hope there."

"No; I am sure not. Mr Horton will do his duty even against his own best interests. It was said that he was in love with, or had proposed to, Miss Vaughan. Indeed, I think that Lady Sark wrote me, in one of her gossiping letters, something of the sort."

"There might be some hope there," continued the barrister, dreamily looking out of his dark eyes at the candles without seeing them; seeing something far distant, in fact, and out of present ken. "She might bring to bear some influence even upon honourable men."

"I would not have her tried, sir," said the nobleman, angrily even. "Philip, I am sure, would rather die on the scaffold himself."

"All is fair in love and war-and law," urged the barrister, again speaking dreamily. "If Mr Boom, now, had been the magistrate, he might have been approached. He is such an eccentric old fellow-as honest as the day, no doubt, but”

"For Heaven's sake, man!" cried Lord Chesterton, in impatience, "don't weigh to me the possibility of securing any connivance in guilt. We are not so fallen as that.”

"Guilt makes us fall, my lord," said the barrister, "even to that. I have learnt that at the bar, and in enduring poverty which you, in your lofty station, could not understand, and would wonder at with a supreme phlegm. We are here placed -as many a poor creature is in a fever-stricken court-so close that we suffer the contagion ourselves. There is no hope else. Philip must fly the country."

"Good heavens! can it have come to that? Can you counsel so base".

"Base or not base, it is the only thing that circumstances

can and will counsel.

They are our great advisers. schooled by circumstances.

Listen to Who is not

them. We must be the creature of his surroundings, the victim of his friends and their follies, of his parents' sins?"

The deep, sad tone of the barrister, the measured cadence, the mockery of the satire, all bore in upon the Earl the sad strait to which he was reduced. He nodded his poor white head, as if in acquiescence, and rocked to and fro in his chair. The barrister saw that he had gained his point; and again Old Daylight's warning, "Stand on your own rights, Edgar Wade; do not parley with the Earl," seemed to be repeated in his ear. He hesitated for more than a moment-for many moments-while the pendulum of the clock upon the mantel ticked away the brief moments of the ambitious creature, man. He then spoke.

"And now, my lord," he said, "we have been occupied so entirely with my brother Philip's business, that we have entirely forgotten mine. What do you intend to do? Do you receive me as your son?"

"My son-ah! yes," muttered the Earl. "I was thinking of him-poor Philip. My son? There can be no doubt of that."

Then the Earl arose, and stood with one wax candle in his hand, shading the light from his own eyes, and reflecting the whole light upon the barrister's fine face-fine, clever, worn with many emotions. The Earl was endeavouring to call up the features of his wife; but, in truth, he had cared so little for her that he forgot, or had lost the power of recalling to his blurred memory, one trick of her countenance.

"He is like me," he murmured-"like that young portrait that hung in my father's room, and which he used to sneer at. Yes, he is my son."

"I am, indeed, my father," said the barrister, with love vibrating in his deep voice; " and I will prove it in my devotion and duty. You will acknowledge this publicly?"

"I have a great deal to do. I must sleep," said the old peer. "I have a trial to go through. I must see her who calls herself Mrs Wade."

The Earl's voice broke into a treble as he pronounced the name, and Edgar shuddered as he spoke.

CHAPTER XXXV.

I BRING A Message from THE LAND OF SLEEP.”

MRS PREEN, called suddenly to attend on a young lady in her master's house-that house which had not "slept" a young lady for some years, as the excellent Preen phrased it; no, not since my lady died-Mrs Preen, under this trial, tried to look as if she knew nothing about Winifred's marriage, and succeeded.

Succeeded wonderfully; for poor Winifred was so full of her own troubles that she hardly thought of anything else, and was only full of thanks for the kindly care of the housekeeper. Everything was ready. The boudoir of the Countess adjoined her bedchamber, and a bright fire burnt in it. There was an easy-chair covered with the warmest foreign chintz-very pretty, but very "subdued" in tone; so was the paper. The quiet, beautifully made, graceful furniture harmonised with all; for somehow, in the angular days of the Empire and Regency, there were upholsterers who could furnish with grace, and cabinetmakers who could turn out work that was by no means a sham, a delusion, and a snare.

The boudoir seemed to have reflected, after the manner of rooms, the tone of the mind of her who had inhabited it. The pictures were religious; the books were religious-and, alas! mournful. Sermons on the corruption of human nature, the sinfulness of man, the biography and evangelical experience of the Rev. Mr Newton, certain tracts by Toplady, and an Exposition by the Prophetic Keach, formed the cheering mental food upon which Lady Chesterton fed. The gentlemen who interpreted Revelation, and were great upon the breaking of the Seals, and the opening of the Vials, had opened the vials of their own wrath upon sinful man; and poor little Winifredwho took up a work with the attractive title of "A Stirring Summons from the Tenth Trumpet," by the author of “ A Dose of Doctrine from Vial V."—almost forgot her trouble in the pictured horrors of lamentation, desolation, and woe, The

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author appeared to be a favourite with certain classes, and fond of alliterative titles; for there were commendatory letters appended from certain ministers upon two "precious" treatises -"Physic for Pharisees," and "Senna for Sinners "—in which the minister had, it would seem, doctored his flock in a very efficient way, and his tracts had purged them of iniquity as quickly as any religious cathartic could have done.

Winifred-who used frequently to read her father's sermons, and those of the Divines of the Church which he had used and pointed out-wondered at the difference of treatment between those shepherds who endeavour to frighten sheep into their folds, and those who follow His method, whose sweet adjuration is the simple words, "Come unto Me."

Had the pious Mr Gurgles found out the treasury of works which formed the library of the late Countess, he, honest as he was, would have been tempted to have borrowed one of the "rousing" tracts which formed the holy marrow of the squab little volumes which, oddly enough, bore the coronet of the Countess and her initials in fat old English letters. For Mr Gurgles confessed that his soul was lethargic, and liked to be roused. He was delighted with anything stirring; and when his minister-a young man with the gloomy imagination of a Puritan Dante and the plain language of John Bunyan-pictured the recalcitrant members of his flock floating on waves of fire, and every now and then submerged, or left to save themselves upon rocks that glowed white-hot, like the hellish antitheses of mundane icebergs, Gurgles drew in his breath for joy.

To return to Winifred, who sat reading until she frightened herself out of her present grief; and then, throwing down her book, wondered at the mother whom Providence had provided for her Philip.

Curious, indeed, was it to consider the union of the courtly but worldly old gentleman, the Earl of Chesterton, and this pious lady; curious to reflect on the lady herself, whose ears had tingled with denunciations of the vanities of the worldof adjurations to "forsake all, and follow me”—still going onward, but loaded with her coronet, her title, her place, and her fashionable society. How would the Earl and Countess