suspicions, are "as bats among birds, and fly by
twilight." Harley had ridiculed the idea of challenge and strife between
Audley and himself; but still Lady Lansmere dreaded the fiery emotions
of the last, and the high spirit and austere self-respect which were
proverbial to the first. Involuntarily she strengthened her intimacy
with Helen. In case her alarm should appear justified, what mediator
could be so persuasive in appeasing the angrier passions, as one whom
courtship and betrothal sanctified to the gentlest?

On arriving at Lansmere, the countess, however, felt somewhat relieved.
Harley had received her, if with a manner less cordial and tender
than had hitherto distinguished it, still with easy kindness and calm
self-possession. His bearing towards Audley Egerton still more reassured
her: it was not marked by an exaggeration of familiarity or friendship,
which would at once have excited her apprehensions of some sinister
design,--nor; on the other hand, did it betray, by covert sarcasms, an
ill-suppressed resentment. It was exactly what, under the circumstances,
would have been natural to a man who had received an injury from an
intimate friend, which, in generosity or discretion, he resolved to
overlook, but which those aware of it could just perceive had cooled or
alienated the former affection. Indefatigably occupying himself with
all the details of the election, Harley had fair pretext for absenting
himself from Audley, who, really looking very ill, and almost worn out,
pleaded indisposition as an excuse for dispensing with the fatigues of
a personal canvass, and, passing much of his time in his own apartments,
left all the preparations for contest to his more active friends. It
was not till he had actually arrived at Lansmere that Audley became
acquainted with the name of his principal opponent. Richard Avenel! the
brother of Nora! rising up from obscurity, thus to stand front to front
against him in a contest on which all his fates were cast. Egerton
quailed as before an appointed avenger. He would fain have retired from
the field; he spoke to Harley.

"How can you support all the painful remembrances which the very name of
my antagonist must conjure up?"

"Did you not tell me," answered Harley, "to strive against such
remembrances,--to look on them as sickly dreams? I am prepared to brave
them. Can you be more sensitive than I?"

Egerton durst not say more. He avoided all further reference to the
sub