were going on, ordered the servant to drive immediately to the head-
quarters of the party; where a permanent committee watched every phasis of
the impending revolution; and where every member of the Opposition, of
note and trust, was instantly admitted to receive or to impart
intelligence.

It was certainly not without emotion that Coningsby contemplated his first
interview with his grandfather. All his experience of the ties of
relationship, however limited, was full of tenderness and rapture. His
memory often dwelt on his mother's sweet embrace; and ever and anon a
fitful phantom of some past passage of domestic love haunted his gushing
heart. The image of his father was less fresh in his mind; but still it
was associated with a vague sentiment of kindness and joy; and the
allusions to her husband in his mother's letters had cherished these
impressions. To notice lesser sources of influence in his estimate of the
domestic tie, he had witnessed under the roof of Beaumanoir the existence
of a family bound together by the most beautiful affections. He could not
forget how Henry Sydney was embraced by his sisters when he returned home;
what frank and fraternal love existed between his kinsman and his elder
brother; how affectionately the kind Duke had welcomed his son once more
to the house where they had both been born; and the dim eyes, and saddened
brows, and tones of tenderness, which rather looked than said farewell,
when they went back to Eton.

And these rapturous meetings and these mournful adieus were occasioned
only by a separation at the most of a few months, softened by constant
correspondence and the communication of mutual sympathy. But Coningsby was
to meet a relation, his near, almost his only, relation, for the first
time; the relation, too, to whom he owed maintenance, education; it might
be said, existence. It was a great incident for a great drama; something