wavering,
were more assured, his career fairly commenced. This was not his
strongest motive, though it was one. He shrank from the discovery of
his wrong to his friend, desired to delay the self-humiliation of such
announcement, until, as he persuaded himself, Harley's boyish passion
was over, had yielded to the new allurements that would naturally beset
his way. Stifling his conscience, Audley sought to convince himself that
the day would soon come when Harley could hear with indifference that
Nora Avenel was another's. "The dream of an hour, at his age," murmured
the elder friend; "but at mine the passion of a life!" He did not speak
of these latter motives for concealment to Nora. He felt that to own the
extent of his treason to a friend would lower him in her eyes. He spoke
therefore but slightingly of Harley, treated the boy's suit as a thing
past and gone. He dwelt only on reasons that compelled self-sacrifice
on his side or hers. She did not hesitate which to choose. And so, where
Nora loved, so submissively did she believe in the superiority of the
lover, that she would not pause to hear a murmur from her own loftier
nature, or question the propriety of what he deemed wise and good.

Abandoning prudence in this arch affair of life, Audley still
preserved his customary caution in minor details. And this indeed was
characteristic of him throughout all his career, heedless in large
things, wary in small. He would not trust Lady Jane Horton with his
secret, still less Lady Lansmere. He simply represented to the former
that Nora was no longer safe from Harley's determined pursuit under Lady
Jane's roof, and that she had better elude the boy's knowledge of
her movements, and go quietly away for a while, to lodge with some
connection of her own.

And so, with Lady Jane's acquiescence, Nora went first to the house of
a very distant kinswoman of her mother's, and afterwards to one that
Egerton took as their bridal home, under the name of Bertram. He
arranged all that might render their marriage most free from the chance
of premature discovery. But it so happened on the very morning of their
bridal, that one of the witnesses he selected (a confidential servant of
his own) was seized with apoplexy. Considering, in haste, where to find
a substitute, Egerton thought of Levy, his own private solicitor, his
own fashionable money-lender, a man with whom he was then as intimate
as a fine gentleman is with the lawyer of his own