, with a faint smile; "for they are
called from their quiet archives in order to support my struggle for
that home. But I fear the struggle is in vain, and that the quibbles of
law will transfer into other hands a possession I am foolish enough to
value the more from my inability to maintain it."

Something of this Clarence had before learned from the communicative
gossip of his landlady; and less desirous to satisfy his curiosity than
to lead the conversation from a topic which he felt must be so unwelcome
to Mordaunt, he expressed a wish to see the state apartments of the
house. With something of shame at the neglect they had necessarily
experienced, and something of pride at the splendour which no neglect
could efface, Mordaunt yielded to the request, and led the way up a
staircase of black oak, the walls and ceiling of which were covered with
frescoes of Italian art, to a suite of apartments in which time and dust
seemed the only tenants. Lingeringly did Clarence gaze upon the rich
velvet, the costly mirrors, the motley paintings of a hundred ancestors,
and the antique cabinets, containing, among the most hoarded relics of
the Mordaunt race, curiosities which the hereditary enthusiasm of a line
of cavaliers had treasured as the most sacred of heirlooms, and which,
even to the philosophical mind of Mordaunt, possessed a value he did not
seek too minutely to analyze. Here was the goblet from which the first
prince of Tudor had drunk after the field of Bosworth. Here the ring
with which the chivalrous Francis the First had rewarded a signal feat
of that famous Robert de Mordaunt, who, as a poor but adventurous
cadet of the house, had brought to the "first gentleman of France"
the assistance of his sword. Here was the glove which Sir Walter had
received from the royal hand of Elizabeth, and worn in the lists upon
a crest which the lance of no antagonist in that knightly court could
abase. And here, more sacred than all, because connected with the memory
of misfortune, was a small box of silver which the last king of a fated
line had placed in the hands of the gray-headed descendant of that Sir
Walter after the battle of the Boyne, saying, "Keep this, Sir Everard
Mordaunt, for the sake of one who has purchased the luxury of gratitude
at the price of a throne!"

As Clarence glanced from these relics to the figure of Mordaunt, who
stood at a little distance leaning against the window, with arms folded
on his breast and wi