The minister and his protege were seated at breakfast, the first reading the newspaper, the last glancing over his letters; for Randal had arrived to the dignity of receiving many letters,—ay, and notes, too, three-cornered and fantastically embossed. Egerton uttered an exclamation, and laid down the newspaper. Randal looked up from his correspondence. The minister had sunk into one of his absent reveries.
After a long silence, observing that Egerton did not return to the newspaper, Randal said, “Ahem, sir, I have a note from Frank Hazeldean, who wants much to see me; his father has arrived in town unexpectedly.”
“What brings him here?” asked Egerton, still abstractedly. “Why, it seems that he has heard some vague reports of poor Frank’s extravagance, and Frank is rather afraid or ashamed to meet him.”
“Ay, a very great fault, extravagance in the young!—destroys independence; ruins or enslaves the future. Great fault,—very! And what does youth want that it should be extravagant? Has it not everything in itself, merely because it is? Youth is youth—what needs it more?”
Egerton rose as he said this, and retired to his writing-table, and in his turn opened his correspondence. Randal took up the newspaper, and endeavoured, but in vain, to conjecture what had excited the minister’s exclamations and the revery that succeeded it.
Egerton suddenly and sharply turned round in his chair—“If you have done with the ‘Times,’ have the goodness to place it here.”
Randal had just obeyed, when a knock at the street-door was heard, and presently Lord L’Estrange came into the room, with somewhat a quicker step and somewhat a gayer mien than usual.
Audley’s hand, as if mechanically, fell upon the newspaper,—fell upon that part of the columns devoted to births, deaths, and marriages. Randal stood by, and noted; then, bowing to L’Estrange, left the room.
“Audley,” said L’Estrange, “I have had an adventure since I saw you,—an adventure that reopened the Past, and may influence my future.”
“How?”