Jobson, who perhaps never knew a grandmother, should foist your own
kinsman from the lands of his fathers. Of one thing I am
convinced,--we squires and sons of squires must make common cause
against those great moneyed capitalists, or they will buy us all out
in a few generations. The old race of country gentlemen is already
much diminished by the grasping cupidity of such leviathans; and if
the race be once extinct, what will become of the boast and strength
of England?

Yours, my dear Mr. Hazeldean, with most affectionate and grateful
respect,

RANDAL LESLIE.

CHAPTER XXII.

Nothing to Leonard could as yet be more distasteful or oppressive than
his share in this memorable election. In the first place, it chafed
the secret sores of his heart to be compelled to resume the name of
Fairfeld, which was a tacit disavowal of his birth. It had been such
delight to him that the same letters which formed the name of Nora
should weave also that name of Oran, to which he had given distinction,
which he had associated with all his nobler toils, and all his hopes of
enduring fame,--a mystic link between his own career and his mother's
obscurer genius. It seemed to him as if it were rendering to her
the honours accorded to himself,--subtle and delicate fancy of the
affections, of which only poets would be capable, but which others
than poets may perhaps comprehend! That earlier name of Fairfield was
connected in his memory with all the ruder employments, the meaner
trials of his boyhood; the name of Oran, with poetry and fame. It was
his title in the ideal world, amongst all fair shapes and spirits. In
receiving the old appellation, the practical world, with its bitterness
and strife, returned to him as at the utterance of a spell. But in
coming to Lansmere he had no choice. To say nothing of Dick, and Dick's
parents with whom his secret would not be safe, Randal Leslie knew that
he had gone by the name of Fairfield,--knew his supposed parentage, and
would be sure to proclaim them. How account for the latter name without
setting curiosity to decipher the anagram it involved, and perhaps
guiding suspicion to his birth from Nora, to the injury of her memory,
yet preserved from stain?

His feelings as connected with Nora--sharpened and deepened as they all
had been by his discovery of her painful narrative-were embittered still
more by coming in contact with her parents. Old John