kind to each other, these three children of instinct.




CHAPTER XVI

Lady Blandish, and others who professed an interest in the fortunes and
future of the systematized youth, had occasionally mentioned names of
families whose alliance according to apparent calculations, would not
degrade his blood: and over these names, secretly preserved on an open
leaf of the note-book, Sir Austin, as he neared the metropolis, distantly
dropped his eye. There were names historic and names mushroomic; names
that the Conqueror might have called in his muster-roll; names that had
been, clearly, tossed into the upper stratum of civilized lifer by a
millwheel or a merchant-stool. Against them the baronet had written M.
or Po. or Pr.--signifying, Money, Position, Principles, favouring the
latter with special brackets. The wisdom of a worldly man, which he
could now and then adopt, determined him, before he commenced his round
of visits, to consult and sound his solicitor and his physician
thereanent; lawyers and doctors being the rats who know best the merits
of a house, and on what sort of foundation it may be standing.

Sir Austin entered the great city with a sad mind. The memory of his
misfortune came upon him vividly, as if no years had intervened, and it
were but yesterday that he found the letter telling him that he had no
wife and his son no mother. He wandered on foot through the streets the
first night of his arrival, looking strangely at the shops and shows and
bustle of the world from which he had divorced himself; feeling as
destitute as the poorest vagrant. He had almost forgotten how to find