Again the Earl paused, then said, 'He may probably speak more unreservedly to you than to me.'
'He shuns the topic. He says there is no use in aggravating the feelings by discussion. He would fain submit in heart as well as in will.'
Lord Ormersfield sighed, but did not appear disposed to say more; and, charitably hoping that a dagger had been implanted in him, Jem ran up-stairs, and found Louis sitting writing at a table, which looked as if Mary had never been near it.
'Jem! That's right! I've not seen you this age.'
'What are you about?'
'I wanted particularly some one to listen. It is an essay on the Police—'
'Is this earnest?'
'Sober earnest. Sir Miles and all that set are anxious to bring the matter forward, and my father has been getting it up, as he does whatever he may have to speak upon. His eyes are rather failing for candle-light work, so I have been helping him in the evening, till it struck me that it was a curious subject to trace in history,—the Censors, the attempts in Germany and Spain, to supply the defective law, the Spanish and Italian dread of justice. I became enamoured of the notion, and when I have thrown all the hints together, I shall try to take in my father by reading them to him as an article in the Quarterly.'
'Oh, very well. If your soul is there, that is an end of the matter.'
'Of what matter?'