"Oh!" cried the young man coloring deeply, "It was not the threat that pained me, it was that my father could think so meanly of me as to fancy that—well—well, but those were school-boy days. And my father was always more generous than I deserved. We must see a good deal of each other, Randal. How good-natured you were at Eton, making my longs and shorts for me; I shall never forget it. Do call soon."
Frank swung himself into his saddle, and rewarded the slim youth with half-a-crown; a largess four times more ample than his father would have deemed sufficient. A jerk of the rein and a touch of the heel—off bounded the fiery horse and the gay young rider. Randal mused; and as the rain had now ceased, the passengers under shelter dispersed and went their way. Only Randal, Leonard, and Helen remained behind. Then, as Randal, still musing, lifted his eyes, they fell full upon Leonard's face. He started, passed his hand quickly over his brow—looked again, hard and piercingly; and the change in his pale cheek to a shade still paler—a quick compression and nervous gnawing of his lip—showed that he too recognized
an old foe. Then his glance ran over Leonard's dress, which was somewhat dust-stained, but far above the class among which the peasant was born. Randal raised his brows in surprise, and with a smile slightly supercilious—the smile stung Leonard; and with a slow step Randal left the passage, and took his way toward Grosvenor-square. The Entrance of Ambition was clear to him.
Then the little girl once more took Leonard by the hand, and led him through rows of humble, obscure, dreary streets. It seemed almost like an allegory personified, as the sad, silent child led on the penniless and low-born adventurer of genius by the squalid shops, and through the winding lanes, which grew meaner and meaner, till both their forms vanished from the view.
CHAPTER X.
"But do come; change your dress, return and dine with me; you will have just time, Harley. You will meet the most eminent men of our party; surely they are worth your study, philosopher that you affect to be."
Thus said Audley Egerton to Lord L'Estrange, with whom he had been riding (after the toils of his office). The two gentlemen were in Audley's library. Mr. Egerton, as usual, buttoned up, seated in his chair, in the erect posture of a man who scorns "inglorious ease." Harley, as usual, thrown at length on a sofa, his long hair in careless curls, his neckcloth loose, his habiliments flowing—simplex munditiis, indeed—his grace all his own; seemingly negligent, never slovenly; at ease every where and with every one, even with Mr. Audley Egerton, who chilled or awed the ease out of most people.
"Nay, my dear Audley, forgive me. But your eminent men are all men of one idea, and that not a diverting one—politics! politics! politics! The storm in the saucer."
"But, what is your life, Harley?—the saucer without the storm?"
"Do you know, that's very well said, Audley; I did not think you had so much liveliness of repartee. Life—life! it is insipid, it is shallow. No launching argosies in the saucer. Audley, I have the oddest fancy—"