it you. Don't
say anything about it when you are there; it is better not to publish my
intention all over the county. I shall have Sir Gregory Gubbins offering
to buy it if you do!"

"You may depend on my discretion. Have you heard anything of your
brother lately?"

"Yes; I fancy he is going to Switzerland. He would soon be in England,
if he heard I was going to part with Lisle Court!"

"What, it would vex him so?"

"I fear it would; but he has a nice old place of his own, not half so
large, and therefore not half so troublesome as Lisle Court."

"Ay! and he _did_ talk of selling that nice old place."

"Selling Burleigh! you surprise me. But really country places in England
_are_ a bore. I suppose he has his Gubbins as well as myself!"

Here the chief minister of the government adorned by Lord Vargrave's
virtues passed by, and Lumley turned to greet him.

The two ministers talked together most affectionately in a close
whisper,--so affectionately, that one might have seen, with half an eye,
that they hated each other like poison!

CHAPTER V.

INSPICERE tanquam in speculum, in vitas omnium
Jubeo.*--TERENCE.

* "I bid you look into the lives of all men, as
it were into a mirror."

ERNEST MALTRAVERS still lingered at Paris: he gave up all notion of
proceeding farther. He was, in fact, tired of travel. But there was
another reason that chained him to that "Navel of the Earth,"--there is
not anywhere a better sounding-board to London rumours than the English
_quartier_ between the Boulevard des Italiennes and the Tuileries; here,
at all events, he should soonest learn the worst: and every day, as he
took up the English newspapers, a sick feeling of apprehension and fear
came over him. No! till the seal was set upon the bond, till the Rubicon
was passed, till Miss Cameron was the wife of Lord Vargrave, he could
neither return to the home that was so eloquent with the recollections
of Evelyn, nor, by removing farther from England, delay the receipt of
an intelligence which he vainly told himself he was prepared to meet.

He continued to seek such distractions from thought as were within
his reach; and as his heart was too occupied for pleasures which had,
indeed, long since palled, those distractions were of the grave and
noble character which it is a prerogative of the intellect to afford to
the passions.

De Montaigne was neither a Doctrinaire nor a Republican,--and yet,
perhaps, he was a lit