Nora's child. But here he was led
into a mistake which materially affected the tenor of his own life, and
Leonard's future destinies. Mrs. Fairfield had been naturally ordered
by her mother to take another name in the village to which she had gone
with the two infants, so that her connection with the Avenel family
might not be traced, to the provocation of inquiry and gossip. The grief
and excitement through which she had gone dried the source of nutriment
in her breast. She put Nora's child out to nurse at the house of a small
farmer, at a little distance from the village, and moved from her first
lodging to be nearer to the infant. Her own child was so sickly and
ailing, that she could not bear to intrust it to the care of an other.
She tried to bring it up by hand; and the poor child soon pined away
and died. She and Mark could not endure the sight of their baby's grave;
they hastened to return to Hazeldean, and took Leonard with them. From
that time Leonard passed for the son they had lost.

When Egerton arrived at the village, and inquired for the person whose
address had been given to him, he was referred to the cottage in which
she had last lodged, and was told that she had been gone some days,--the
day after her child was buried. Her child buried! Egerton stayed to
inquire no more; thus he heard nothing of the infant that had been put
out to nurse. He walked slowly into the churchyard, and stood for some
minutes gazing on the small new mound; then, pressing his hand on the
heart to which all emotion had been forbidden, he re-entered his chaise
and returned to London. The sole reason for acknowledging his marriage
seemed to him now removed. Nora's name had escaped reproach. Even
had his painful position with regard to Harley not constrained him to
preserve his secret, there was every motive to the world's wise and
haughty son not to acknowledge a derogatory and foolish marriage, now
that none lived whom concealment could wrong.

Audley mechanically resumed his former life,--sought to resettle his
thoughts on the grand objects of ambitious men. His poverty still
pressed on him; his pecuniary debt to Harley stung and galled his
peculiar sense of honour. He saw no way to clear his estates, to repay
his friend, but by some rich alliance. Dead to love, he faced this
prospect first with repugnance, then with apathetic indifference. Levy,
of whose treachery towards himself and Nora he was unaware, still held
over him