heart swelled with rage. He dropped
threats, which alarmed all the fears of Lady Lansmere, and even the
prudent apprehensions of his friend, Audley Egerton. At the request
of the mother, and equally at the wish of the son, Audley consented to
visit at Lady Jane's, and make acquaintance with Nora.

"I have such confidence in you," said Lady Lansmere, "that if you once
know the girl, your advice will be sure to have weight with her. You
will show her how wicked it would be to let Harley break our hearts and
degrade his station."

"I have such confidence in you," said young Harley, "that if you once
know my Nora, you will no longer side with my mother. You will recognize
the nobility which nature only can create, you will own that Nora is
worthy a rank more lofty than mine; and my mother so believes in your
wisdom, that, if you plead in my cause, you will convince even her."

Audley listened to both with his intelligent, half-incredulous smile;
and wholly of the same opinion as Lady Lansmere, and sincerely anxious
to save Harley from an indiscretion that his own notions led him to
regard as fatal, he resolved to examine this boasted pearl, and to find
out its flaws. Audley Egerton was then in the prime of his earnest,
resolute, ambitious youth. The stateliness of his natural manners had
then a suavity and polish which, even in later and busier life, it never
wholly lost; since, in spite of the briefer words and the colder looks
by which care and power mark the official man, the minister had ever
enjoyed that personal popularity which the indefinable, external
something, that wins and pleases, can alone confer. But he had even
then, as ever, that felicitous reserve which Rochefoucauld has called
the "mystery of the body,"--that thin yet guardian veil which reveals
but the strong outlines of character, and excites so much of interest
by provoking so much of conjecture. To the man who is born with this
reserve, which is wholly distinct from shyness, the world gives credit
for qualities and talents beyond those that it perceives; and such
characters are attractive to others in proportion as these last are
gifted with the imagination which loves to divine the unknown.

At the first interview, the impression which this man produced upon Nora
Avenel was profound and strange. She had heard of him before as the one.
whom Harley most loved and looked up to; and she recognized at once
in his mien, his aspect, his words, the very t