ces to its fatal shrine
alike the Past and the Future. Not trusting himself to speak, the father
drew his hand across his eyes, and dashed away the bitter tear
that sprang from a swelling and indignant heart; then he uttered an
inarticulate sound, and, finding his voice gone, moved away to the door,
and left the house.

He walked through the streets, bearing his head very erect, as a proud
man does when deeply wounded, and striving to shake off some affection
that he deems a weakness; and his trembling nervous fingers fumbled at
the button of his coat, trying to tighten the garment across his chest,
as if to confirm a resolution that still sought to struggle out of the
revolting heart.

Thus he went on, and the reader, perhaps, will wonder whither; and the
wonder may not lessen when he finds the squire come to a dead pause in
Grosvenor Square, and at the portico of his "distant brother's" stately
house.

At the squire's brief inquiry whether Mr. Egerton was at home, the
porter summoned the groom of the chambers; and the groom of the
chambers, seeing a stranger, doubted whether his master was not engaged,
but would take in the stranger's card and see.

"Ay, ay," muttered the squire, "this is true relationship!--my child
prefers a stranger to me; why should I complain that I am a stranger in
a brother's house? Sir," added the squire aloud, and very meekly--"sir,
please to say to your master that I am William Hazeldean."

The servant bowed low, and without another word conducted the visitor
into the statesman's library, and announcing Mr. Hazeldean, closed the
door.

Audley was seated at his desk, the grim iron boxes still at his feet,
but they were now closed and locked. And the ex-minister was no longer
looking over official documents; letters spread open before him of far
different nature; in his hand there lay a long lock of fair silken hair,
on which his eyes were fixed sadly and intently. He started at the sound
of his visitor's name, and the tread of the squire's stalwart footstep;
and mechanically thrust into his bosom the relic of younger and warmer
years, keeping his hand to his heart, which beat loud with disease under
the light pressure of that golden hair.

The two brothers stood on the great man's lonely hearth, facing each
other in silence, and noting unconsciously the change made in each
during the long years in which they had never met.

The squire, with his portly size, his hardy sunburned cheek