to see me; his father has arrived in town unexpectedly."

"What brings him here?" asked Egerton, still abstractedly. "Why, it
seems that he has heard some vague reports of poor Frank's extravagance,
and Frank is rather afraid or ashamed to meet him."

"Ay, a very great fault, extravagance in the young!--destroys
independence; ruins or enslaves the future. Great fault,--very! And what
does youth want that it should be extravagant? Has it not everything in
itself, merely because it is? Youth is youth--what needs it more?"

Egerton rose as he said this, and retired to his writing-table, and in
his turn opened his correspondence. Randal took up the newspaper, and
endeavoured, but in vain, to conjecture what had excited the minister's
exclamations and the revery that succeeded it.

Egerton suddenly and sharply turned round in his chair--"If you have
done with the 'Times,' have the goodness to place it here."

Randal had just obeyed, when a knock at the street-door was heard, and
presently Lord L'Estrange came into the room, with somewhat a quicker
step and somewhat a gayer mien than usual.

Audley's hand, as if mechanically, fell upon the newspaper,--fell upon
that part of the columns devoted to births, deaths, and marriages.
Randal stood by, and noted; then, bowing to L'Estrange, left the room.

"Audley," said L'Estrange, "I have had an adventure since I saw you,--an
adventure that reopened the Past, and may influence my future."

"How?"

"In the first place, I have met with a relation of--of--the Avenels."

"Indeed! Whom,--Richard Avenel?"

"Richard--Richard--who is he? Oh, I remember, the wild lad who went off
to America; but that was when I was a mere child."

"That Richard Avenel is now a rich, thriving trader, and his marriage is
in this newspaper,--married to an Honourable Mrs. M'Catchley. Well, in
this country who should plume himself on birth?"

"You did not say so always, Egerton," replied Harley, with a tone of
mournful reproach.

"And I say so now pertinently to a Mrs. M'Catchley, not to the heir of
the L'Estranges. But no more of these--these Avenels."

"Yes, more of them. I tell you I have met a relation of theirs--a nephew
of--of--"

"Of Richard Avenel's?" interrupted Egerton; and then added in the slow,
deliberate, argumentative tone in which he was wont to speak in public,
"Richard Avenel the trader! I saw him once,--a presuming and intolerable
man!"

"The nephew has not those sins. He is