nt still, my dear sister," whispered Randal, "and keep
your heart whole for two years longer."

The young man was gay and good-humored over his simple meal, while his
family grouped round him. When it was over, Mr. Leslie lighted his pipe,
and called for his brandy and water. Mrs. Leslie began to question about
London and Court, and the new King and the new Queen, and Mr. Audley
Egerton, and hoped Mr. Egerton would leave Randal all his money, and
that Randal would marry a rich woman, and that the King would make him a
prime-minister one of these days; and then she would like to see if
Farmer Jones would refuse to send his wagon for coals! And every now and
then, as the word "riches" or "money" caught Mr. Leslie's ear, he shook
his head, drew his pipe from his mouth, and muttered, "A Spratt should
not have what belonged to my great-great-grandfather. If I had a good
sum of ready-money!--the old family estates!" Oliver and Juliet sat
silent, and on their good behavior; and Randal, indulging his
own reveries, dreamily heard the words "money," "Spratt,"
"great-great-grandfather," "rich, wife," "family estates;" and they
sounded to him vague and afar off, like whispers from the world of
romance and legend--weird prophecies of things to be.

Such was the hearth which warmed the viper that nestled and gnawed at
the heart of Randal, poisoning all the aspirations that youth should
have rendered pure, ambition lofty, and knowledge beneficent and divine.

CHAPTER VI.

When the rest of the household were in deep sleep, Randal stood long at
his open window, looking over the dreary, comfortless scene--the moon
gleaming from skies half-autumnal, hall-wintry, upon squalid decay,
through the ragged fissures of the firs; and when he lay down to rest,
his sleep was feverish, and troubled by turbulent dreams.

However, he was up early, and with an unwonted color in his cheeks,
which his sister ascribed to the country air. After breakfast, he took
his way towards Hazeldean, mounted upon a tolerable horse, which he
hired of a neighboring farmer who occasionally hunted. Before noon, the
garden and terrace of the Casino came in sight. He reined in his horse,
and by the little fountain at which Leonard had been wont to eat his
radishes and con his book, he saw Riccabocca seated under the shade of
the red umbrella. And by the Italian's side stood a form that a Greek of
old might have deemed the Naiad of the Fount; for in its youthful beaut