azing wood-fire, and the other hand hung listlessly
at his side. The expression of the sick man's face was that of deep
melancholy--not the mere gloom of recent suffering, but the deep-cut
traces of a long-carried affliction, a sorrow which had eaten into his
very heart, and made its home there.

At the second fireplace sat his son, and, though a mere boy, the
lineaments of his father marked the youth's face with a painful
exactness. The same intensity was in the eyes, the same haughty
character sat on the brow; and there was in the whole countenance the
most extraordinary counterpart of the gloomy seriousness of the older
face. He had been reading, but the fast-falling night obliged him to
desist, and he sat now contemplating the bright embers of the wood fire
in dreamy thought. Once or twice was he disturbed from his revery by the
whispered voice of an old serving-man, asking for something with that
submissive manner assumed by those who are continually exposed to the
outbreaks of another's temper; and at last the boy, who had hitherto
scarcely deigned to notice the appeals to him, flung a bunch of keys
contemptuously on the ground, with a muttered malediction on his
tormentor.

"What's that?" cried out the sick man, startled at the sound.

"'Tis nothing, my lord, but the keys that fell out of my hand," replied
the old man, humbly. "Mr. Craggs is away to Leenane, and I was going to
get out the wine for dinner."

"Where's Mr. Charles?" asked Lord Glencore.

"He's there beyant," muttered the other, in a low voice, while he
pointed towards the distant fireplace; "but he looks tired and weary,
and I did n't like to disturb him."

"Tired! weary!--with what? Where has he been; what has he been doing?"
cried he, hastily. "Charles, Charles, I say!"

And slowly rising from his seat, and with an air of languid
indifference, the boy came towards him.

Lord Glencore's face darkened as he gazed on him.

"Where have you been?" asked he, sternly.

"Yonder," said the boy, in an accent like the echo of his own.

"There's Mr. Craggs, now, my lord," said the old butler, as he looked
out of the window, and eagerly seized the opportunity to interrupt the
scene; "there he is, and a gentleman with him."

"Ha! go and meet him, Charles,--it's Harcourt. Go and receive him, show
him his room, and then bring him here to me."

The boy heard without a word, and left the room with the same slow step
and the same look of apathy. Just