Bensi will be here by
that time."

"Will you pardon me, madam," said L'Estrange, rising, "if I decline
entering upon all discussion of these momentous questions with you? I
have no such scholarship as would enable me to prove instructive, and
I have conviction sufficiently strong, in my faith in other men's
learning, to enable me to reject quibbles and be unmoved by subtleties.
Besides," added he, in a sharper tone, "I have come here to have the
honor of making your acquaintance, and not to submit myself to an
examination. May I wish you a good evening?"

How he took his leave, how he descended the stairs, and rushed into the
street, and found his way to the little inn where his sister wearily was
waiting dinner for him, the poor curate never knew to the last day of
his life.

CHAPTER XXXIII. A SMALL LODGING AT LOUVAIN.

In a very humble quarter of the old town of Louvain, at the corner of
La Rue des Moines, Augustus Bramleigh and his sister had taken up their
lodgings. Madame Jervasse, the proprietress of the house, had in her
youth been the _femme-de-chambre_ of some high-born dame of Brussels,
and offered her services in the same capacity to Ellen, while, with the
aid of her own servant, she prepared their meals, thus at once supplying
the modest requirements they needed. Augustus Bramleigh was not a
very resolute or determined man, but his was one of those natures that
acquire solidity from pressure. When once he found himself on the
road of sacrifices, his self-esteem imparted vigor and energy to his
character. In the ordinary course of events he was accustomed to hold
himself--his abilities and his temperament--cheaply enough. No man was
ever less self-opinionated or self-confident. If referred to for advice,
or even for opinion, he would modestly decline the last, and say,
"Marion or Temple perhaps could help you here." He shrank from all
self-assertion whatever, and it was ever a most painful moment to him
when he was presented to any one as the future head of the house and the
heir to the Bramleigh estates. To Ellen, from whom he had no secrets,
he had often confessed how he wished he had been a younger son. All his
tastes and all his likings were those to be enjoyed by a man of moderate
fortune, and an ambition even smaller than that fortune. He would say,
too, half-jestingly, "With such aspiring spirits amongst us as Marion
and Temple, I can afford myself the luxury of obscurity. _They_ are sure
to