that he might
have reason to withdraw that liking. So lone and stoical had grown
the man who had made it his object to have no private life! Revealing,
however, neither pleasure nor pain, but with the composed calmness of a
judge upon the bench, Egerton replied,--

"The alternative is, to continue in the course you have begun, and still
to rely on me."

"Sir, my dear Mr. Egerton," exclaimed Randal, regaining all his usual
tenderness of look and voice, "rely on you! But that is all I ask. Only"

"Only, you would say, I am going out of power, and you don't see the
chance of my return?"

"I did not mean that."

"Permit me to suppose that you did: very true; but the party I belong to
is as sure of return as the pendulum of that clock is sure to obey the
mechanism that moves it from left to right. Our successors profess to
come in upon a popular question. All administrations who do that are
necessarily short-lived. Either they do not go far enough to please
present supporters, or they go so far as to arm new enemies in the
rivals who outbid them with the people. 'T is the history of all
revolutions, and of all reforms. Our own administration in reality is
destroyed for having passed what was called a popular measure a year
ago, which lost us half our friends, and refusing to propose another
popular measure this year, in the which we are outstripped by the men
who hallooed us on to the last. Therefore, whatever our successors
do, we shall by the law of reaction, have another experiment of power
afforded to ourselves. It is but a question of time; you can wait for
it,--whether I can is uncertain. But if I die before that day arrives, I
have influence enough still left with those who will come in, to obtain
a promise of a better provision for you than that which you have lost.
The promises of public men are proverbially uncertain; but I shall
entrust your cause to a man who never failed a friend, and whose rank
will enable him to see that justice is done to you,--I speak of Lord
L'Estrange."

"Oh, not he; he is unjust to me; he dislikes me; he--"

"May dislike you (he has his whims), but he loves me; and though for no
other human being but you would I ask Harley L'Estrange a favour, yet
for you I will," said Egerton, betraying, for the first time in that
dialogue, a visible emotion,--"for you, a Leslie, a kinsman, however
remote, to the wife from whom I received my fortune! And despite all my
cautions, it is possible t