ngs; profuse
in minor luxuries and inclined to the respectable practice of a decorous
profligacy; peering through the window of a clubhouse as if they were
discovering a planet; and usually much excited about things with which
they have no concern, and personages who never heard of them.

All this was not in Hatton's way, who was free from all pretension,
and who had acquired, from his severe habits of historical research,
a respect only for what was authentic. These nonentities flitted about
him, and he shrunk from an existence that seemed to him at once dull and
trifling. He had a few literary acquaintances that he had made at
the Antiquarian Society, of which he was a distinguished member; a
vice-president of that body had introduced him to the Athenaeum. It
was the first and only club that Hatton had ever belonged to, and he
delighted in it. He liked splendour and the light and bustle of a great
establishment. They saved him from that melancholy which after a day
of action is the doom of energetic celibacy. A luxurious dinner without
trouble, suited him after his exhaustion; sipping his claret, he
revolved his plans. Above all, he revelled in the magnificent library,
and perhaps was never happier, than when after a stimulating repast he
adjourned up stairs, and buried himself in an easy chair with Dugdale or
Selden, or an erudite treatise on forfeiture or abeyance.

To-day however Hatton was not in this mood. He came in exhausted
and excited; eat rapidly and rather ravenously; despatched a pint of
champagne; and then called for a bottle of Lafitte. His table cleared; a
devilled biscuit placed before him, a cool bottle and a fresh glass,
he indulged in that reverie, which the tumult of his feelings and the
physical requirements of existence had hitherto combined to prevent.

"A strange day," he thought, as with an abstracted air he filled his
glass, and sipping the wine, leant back in his chair. "The son of Walter
Gerard! A chartist delegate! The best blood in England! What would I not
be, were it mine.

"Those infernal papers! They made my fortune--and yet, I know not how it
is, the deed has cost me many a pang. Yet it seemed innoxious! the old
man dead--insolvent; myself starving; his son ignorant of all, to whom
too they could be of no use, for it required thousands to work them, and
even with thousands they could only be worked by myself. Had I not done
it, I should ere this probably have been swept from the s