at the War
Office, and get him, perhaps, the mastership of a barrack."

"You had better; for, if you do not, I swear I will turn Radical, and
come down to your own city to oppose you, with Hunt and Cobbett to
canvass for me."

"I should be very glad to see you come into parliament, even as a
Radical, and at my expense," said Audley, with great kindness; "but the
air is growing cold, and you are not accustomed to our climate. Nay, if
you are too poetic for catarrhs and rheums, I'm not,--come in."

CHAPTER VI.

Lord L'Estrange threw himself on a sofa, and leaned his cheek on his
hand thoughtfully. Audley Egerton sat near him, with his arms folded,
and gazed on his friend's face with a soft expression of aspect, which
was very unusual to the firm outline of his handsome features. The two
men were as dissimilar in person as the reader will have divined that
they were in character. All about Egerton was so rigid, all about
L'Estrange so easy. In every posture of Harley's there was the
unconscious grace of a child. The very fashion of his garments showed
his abhorrence of restraint. His clothes were wide and loose; his
neckcloth, tied carelessly, left his throat half bare. You could see
that he had lived much in warm and southern lands, and contracted a
contempt for conventionalities; there was as little in his dress as
in his talk of the formal precision of the North. He was three or four
years younger than Audley, but he looked at least twelve years younger.
In fact, he was one of those men to whom old age seems impossible;
voice, look, figure, had all the charm of youth: and perhaps it was from
this gracious youthfulness--at all events, it was characteristic of the
kind of love he inspired--that neither his parents, nor the few
friends admitted into his intimacy, ever called him, in their habitual
intercourse, by the name of his title. He was not L'Estrange with them,
he was Harley; and by that familiar baptismal I will usually designate
him. He was not one of those men whom author or reader wish to view at a
distance, and remember as "my Lord"--it was so rarely that he remembered
it himself. For the rest, it had been said of him by a shrewd wit, "He
is so natural that every one calls him affected." Harley L'Estrange was
not so critically handsome as Audley Egerton; to a commonplace observer,
he was only rather good-looking than otherwise. But women said that
he had "a beautiful countenance," and they were not w