The song had ceased, its last cadences softly died away, M'Leech had been enthusiastically applauded, and conversation for a time been resumed, ere De Bohun's vacant chair attracted attention.

"Where is De Bohun?-has he gone?-is he ill?" asked M'Leech concernedly.

"Your thrilling notes were too much for him, doctor; he stole away ere you concluded. As to his being corporeally ill, I know not; there is a trouble in his brain which threatens to derange his intellect. Poor Moreton, as Shelley says, 'He has learnt in suffering what is told in song!'"

The words of the lyric fell with telling effect upon De Bohun; they brought to memory harrowing convictions of the past -aroused emotions which too infrequently slept.

CHAPTER IX.

"Prithee be mindful of thy position;

Thou hadst done well to have remained at home,
Nor ventured here 'mong knaves who'll circumvent
Thy plans for theirs, not thine advantage-

Who would not scruple to denude thee quite
Of thy possessions, nor yet to tumble
Down thine house about thine ears!"

OLD PLAY.

THE far-sighted Godfrey felt inwardly satisfied at the evil deed he had done. He was convinced his scheming had dealt a fatal blow at a matter which had of late so warred

with his peace. The newspaper putting forth Emily's marriage, and the confirmative letter, had effected what argument and persuasion would have signally failed to achieve.

He laid the flattering unction to his soul, that he had averted a lasting misfortune from his family. In Emily's wreck of mind, in her loss of hopes and happiness, he had no sympathy-her destiny was no concern to him. He had not in him the generosity, the common fairness to reflect, that honour, everything in the name of right-doing, bound his son not to forsake a being whose heart he had won. He dispelled such reasonings from his mind, because they could not fail to run counter with his wishes, his ambition, his vanity. Poor Emily was left to her fate.

Godfrey having been informed of the regiment marching to London, he called to mind having certain business matters to transact with his legal adviser, Mr. Gideon Clincher. He thought also that a survey of Moreton's demeanour was desirable, after certain expressions dropped from Sommerton, which had in some degree disquieted him, therefore he decided on a journey to the metropolis.

When Godfrey De Bohun arrived in town,

his first visit was to the office of Mr. Clincher. That irredoubtable gentleman, who prided himself on being one of the lawgivers of his country, was in his externals a kind of prototype of his class. The major part of his existence had been spent in the hotbed of his tribe in those dingy, sombre, smokehued buildings, constituting the quadrangle of Lincoln's Inn Fields, which were once deemed the airy mansions of the great, but which now form a sort of legal rookery, verifying the trite expression, that birds of a feather flock together. De Bohun had long been a client of Clincher, and the former had in years gone by many times visited the same chambers, but his memory failed him, he could with difficulty remember the number. He recollected, however, that the common stair he would have to enter was two doors from the corner, but he did not remember which corner. In repetition he mounted the various steps, and read long rows of names written on the door-posts-to his chagrin neither amongst the newly-painted, nor yet amongst the scarcely readable ad

VOL. I.

L

dresses could his piercing glance descry that of Mr. Gideon Clincher. It was very provoking-very!

He did not altogether relish this pottering about solicitor's offices; there was the remote possibility that one of their county members might be passing, and the fact might be carried by a little bird to Elleringay! He asked two or three persons if they chanced to know where Mr. Clincher's offices could be discovered; but, stupid dolts! they had never heard of Mr. Clincher! Ignorant-very ! No less than three ominous blue bags glided by, but notwithstanding it being a very plausible presupposition that the bearers of the aforesaid bags were interested in the laws and statutes of the country, yet they could give the strange gentleman no particulars relative to the place and person sought. Godfrey was nettled at the laconic rejoinders to his interrogatives, and to one who gave a curt reply, he was on the point of intimating that he was the Squire of Elleringay Manor, and a descendant of the Plantagenets; but the blue bag glided too swiftly away for those lofty declarations.