for he was himself a defaulter in collegiate attendance. 'I was just going to write to him to see whether one could not keep half a term.'

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'Oh! nothing will prevent his taking his degree,' said the Duchess, but I fear there must be some delay. There is a vacancy for our county-Mr. Sandstone is dead, and they insist upon returning Bertram. hope he will be of age before the nomination. The Duke is much opposed to it; he wishes him to wait; but in these days it is not so easy for young men to get into Parliament. It is not as it used to be; we cannot choose.'

'This is an important event,' said Lothair to Lady Corisande.

'I think it is; nor do I believe Bertram is too young for public life. These are not times to be laggard.'

'There is no doubt they are very serious times,' said Lothair.

'I have every confidence in Bertram-in his ability and his principles.'

The ladies began to talk about the approaching Drawing-room and Lady Corisande's presentation, and Lothair thought it right to make his obeisance and withdraw. He met in the hall Father Coleman, who was in fact looking after him, and would have induced him to repair to the Father's room and hold some interesting conversation, but Lothair was not so congenial as usual. He was even abrupt, and the Father, who never pressed anything, assuming that Lothair had some engagement, relinquished with a serene brow, but not without chagrin, what he had deemed might have proved golden opportunity.

And yet Lothair had no engagement, and did not know where to go or what to do with himself. But he wanted to be alone, and of all persons in the world at that moment, he had a sort of instinct that the one he wished least to converse with was Father Coleman.

'She has every confidence in his principles,' said Lothair to himself as he mounted

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his horse, and his principles were mine six months ago, when I was at Brentham. Delicious Brentham! It seems like a dream; but everything seems like a dream: I hardly know whether life is agony or bliss.'

CHAPTER XX.

THE Duke was one of the few gentlemen in London who lived in a palace. One of the half dozen of those stately structures that our capital boasts had fallen to his lot.

An heir apparent to the throne, in the earlier days of the present dynasty, had resolved to be lodged as became a prince, and had raised, amid gardens which he had diverted from one of the royal parks, an edifice not unworthy of Vicenza in its best days, though on a far more extensive scale than any pile that favoured city boasts. Before the palace was finished the prince died, and irretrievably in debt. His executors were glad to sell to the trustees of the ancestors of the chief of the house of Brentham the incomplete palace, which ought never to have been commenced. The an

cestor of the Duke was by no means so strong a man as the Duke himself, and prudent people rather murmured at the exploit. But it was what is called a lucky familythat is to say, a family with a charm that always attracted and absorbed heiresses; and perhaps the splendour of CRECY HOUSE, for it always retained its original title, might have in some degree contributed to fascinate the taste or imagination of the beautiful women who, generation after generation, brought their bright castles and their broad manors to swell the state and rent-rolls of the family who were so kind to Lothair.

The centre of Crecy House consisted of a hall of vast proportion, and reaching to the roof. Its walls commemorated, in paintings by the most celebrated artists of the age, the exploits of the Black Prince; and its coved ceiling, in panels resplendent with Venetian gold, contained the forms and portraits of English heroes. A corridor round this hall contained the most