"I want my purpose and my will, and my old character, and the nature God gave me. I want the half of my soul which has fallen from me. I want such love as may replace to me the vanished affections. Reason not—I throw the helve after the hatchet."
CHAPTER XXI.
Randall Leslie, on leaving Audley, repaired to Frank's lodgings, and after being closeted with the young guardsman an hour or so, took his way to Limmer's hotel, and asked for Mr. Hazeldean. He was shown into the coffee-room, while the waiter went upstairs with his card, to see if the Squire was within, and disengaged. The Times newspaper lay sprawling on one of the tables, and Randal, leaning over it, looked with attention into the column containing births, deaths, and marriages. But in that long and miscellaneous list, he could not conjecture the name which had so excited Mr. Egerton's interest.
"Vexatious!" he muttered; "there is no knowledge which has power more useful than that of the secrets of men."
He turned as the waiter entered and said that Mr. Hazeldean would be glad to see him.
As Randal entered the drawing-room, the Squire shaking hands with him, looked toward the door as if expecting some one else, and his honest face assumed a blank expression of disappointment when the door closed, and he found that Randal was unaccompanied.
"Well," said he bluntly, "I thought your old school-fellow, Frank, might have been with you."
"Have not you seen him yet, sir?"
"No, I came to town this morning; traveled outside the mail; sent to his barracks, but the young gentleman does not sleep there—has an apartment of his own; he never told me that. We are a plain family, the Hazeldeans—young sir; and I hate being kept in the dark, by my own son too."
Randal made no answer, but looked sorrowful. The Squire, who had never before seen his kinsman, had a vague idea that it was not polite to entertain a stranger, though a connection to himself, with his family troubles, and so resumed good-naturedly.