of it," said Grounsell.

"All right!" cried Norwood, gayly, as he arose and adjusted the curls
beneath his hat. "My compliments to the old gent, and tell George not to
make himself uneasy. He 's in safe hands. Good-bye."

"Good-bye, my Lord, good-bye," said Grounsell, who, as he looked
after him, felt, as it were, unconsciously recurring to all his former
prejudices and dislikes of the noble Viscount "Those fellows," muttered
he, "are as inexplicable to me as a new malady, of which I neither know
the stages nor the symptoms. The signs I take for those of health may
be precisely the indications of corruption; and what I deem unsound may
turn out to be exactly the opposite." And so be fell into a musing fit,
in which certainly his estimate of Lord Norwood continued steadily
to fall lower and lower the longer he thought of him. "He must be
a rogue!--he must be a scoundrel! Nature makes all its blackguards
plausible, just as poison-berries are always brilliant to look at They
are both intended to be the correctives of rash impressions, and I
was only a fool ever to be deceived by him. Out of this, at all
hazards,--that's the first thing!" muttered Grounsell to himself, as
he walked hastily up and down the room. "The place is like a plague
district, and we must not carry an infected rag away from it! Glorious
Italy, forsooth! There's more true enlightenment, there's a higher
purpose, and a nobler view of life in the humblest English village, than
in the proudest halls of their Eternal City!"

In such pleasant reflections on national character he entered Sir
Stafford's room, and found his friend seated at a table covered with
newly arrived letters; the seals were all unbroken, and the sick man was
turning them over, and gazing at the different handwritings with a sad
and listless apathy.

"I 'm glad you 've come, Grounsell. I have not courage for this," said
he, pointing to the mass of letters before him.

"Begging impostors, one half of them, I 'll be sworn!" said Grounsell,
seating himself to the work. "Was I not right? Here's a Cabinet Minister
suing for your vote on an Irish question, and entreating your speedy
return to England, 'where, he trusts, the object you are both interested
in may be satisfactorily arranged.' Evasive rascal! Could n't he say,
'you shall have the Peerage for your support'? Would n't it be more
frank and more intelligible to declare, 'We take you at your price'?
These," said he, throwing half