weakness and restored his mental balance; so that from this time he went
about more like the man he had once been, grasping more thoroughly the
great truth, that This World is well designed. Nay, he could laugh on
hearing Adrian, in reminiscence of the ill luck of one of the family
members at its first manifestation, call the uneasy spirit, Algernon's
Leg.

Mrs. Doria was outraged. She maintained that her child had
seen---- Not to believe in it was almost to rob her of her personal
property. After satisfactorily studying his old state of mind in her,
Sir Austin, moved by pity, took her aside one day and showed her that her
Ghost could write words in the flesh. It was a letter from the unhappy
lady who had given Richard birth,--brief cold lines, simply telling him
his house would be disturbed by her no more. Cold lines, but penned by
what heart-broken abnegation, and underlying them with what anguish of
soul! Like most who dealt with him, Lady Feverel thought her husband a
man fatally stern and implacable, and she acted as silly creatures will
act when they fancy they see a fate against them: she neither petitioned
for her right nor claimed it: she tried to ease her heart's yearning by
stealth, and, now she renounced all. Mrs. Doria, not wanting in the
family tenderness and softness, shuddered at him for accepting the
sacrifice so composedly: but he bade her to think how distracting to this
boy would be the sight of such relations between mother and father. A
few years, and as man he should know, and judge, and love her. "Let this
be her penance, not inflicted by me!" Mrs. Doria bowed to the System for
another, not opining when it would be her turn to bow for herself.

Further behind the scenes we observe Rizzio and Mary grown older, much
disenchanted: she discrowned, dishevelled,--he with gouty fingers on a
greasy guitar. The Diaper Sandoe of promise lends his pen for small