uncourteous indifference. A remark of Lionel on the portraits in the
room turned the conversation chiefly upon pictures, and the host showed
himself thoroughly accomplished in the attributes of the various schools
and masters. Lionel, who was very fond of the art, and indeed painted
well for a youthful amateur, listened with great delight.

"Surely, sir," said he, struck much with a very subtile observation
upon the causes why the Italian masters admit of copyists with greater
facility than the Flemish,--"surely, sir, you yourself must have
practised the art of painting?"

"Not I; but I instructed myself as a judge of pictures, because at one
time I was a collector."

Fairthorn, speaking for the first time: "The rarest collection,--such
Albert Durers! such Holbeins! and that head by Leonardo da Vinci!"
He stopped; looked extremely frightened; helped himself to the port,
turning his back upon his host, to hold, as usual, the glass to the
light.

"Are they here, sir?" asked Lionel.

Darrell's face darkened, and he made no answer; but his head sank on his
breast, and he seemed suddenly absorbed in gloomy thought. Lionel
felt that he had touched a wrong chord, and glanced timidly towards
Fairthorn; but that gentleman cautiously held up his finger, and then
rapidly put it to his lip, and as rapidly drew it away. After that
signal the boy did not dare to break the silence, which now lasted
uninterruptedly till Darrell rose, and with the formal and superfluous
question, "Any more wine?" led the way back to the library. There he
ensconced himself in an easy-chair, and saying, "Will you find a book
for yourself, Lionel?" took a volume at random from the nearest shelf,
and soon seemed absorbed in its contents. The room, made irregular by
baywindows, and shelves that projected as in public libraries, abounded
with nook and recess. To one of these Fairthorn sidled himself, and
became invisible. Lionel looked round the shelves. No belles lettres of
our immediate generation were found there; none of those authors most
in request in circulating libraries and literary institutes. The shelves
disclosed no poets, no essayists, no novelists, more recent than the
Johnsonian age. Neither in the lawyer's library were to be found any law
books; no, nor the pamphlets and parliamentary volumes that should have
spoken of the once eager politician. But there were superb copies of the
ancient classics. French and Italian authors were not want