a portionless cadet, his own way to make in the world, condescended to be
his lordship's private secretary, were rattling over the streets the
first stage to C-----.

It was late at night when Lord Vargrave arrived at the head inn of that
grave and respectable cathedral city, in which once Richard Templeton,
Esq.,--saint, banker, and politician,--had exercised his dictatorial
sway. "Sic transit gloria mundi!" As he warmed his hands by the fire in
the large wainscoted apartment into which he was shown, his eye met a
full length engraving of his uncle, with a roll of papers in his
hand,--meant for a parliamentary bill for the turnpike trusts in the
neighbourhood of C-----. The sight brought back his recollections of
that pious and saturnine relation, and insensibly the minister's thoughts
flew to his death-bed, and to the strange secret which in that last hour
he had revealed to Lumley,--a secret which had done much in deepening
Lord Vargrave's contempt for the forms and conventionalities of decorous
life. And here it may be mentioned--though in the course of this volume
a penetrating reader may have guessed as much--that, whatever that
secret, it did not refer expressly or exclusively to the late lord's
singular and ill-assorted marriage. Upon that point much was still left
obscure to arouse Lumley's curiosity, had he been a man whose curiosity
was very vivacious. But on this he felt but little interest. He knew
enough to believe that no further information could benefit himself
personally; why should he trouble his head with what never would fill his
pockets?

An audible yawn from the slim secretary roused Lord Vargrave from his
revery.

"I envy you, my young friend," said he, good-humouredly. "It is a