PART VI.




CHAPTER I.


"I don't know that," said my father.

What is it my father does not know? My father does not know that
"happiness is our being's end and aim."

And pertinent to what does my father reply, by words so sceptical,
to an assertion so seldom disputed?

Reader, Mr. Trevanion has been half an hour seated in our little
drawing-room. He has received two cups of tea from my mother's fair
hand; he has made himself at home. With Mr. Trevanion has come another
friend of my father's, whom he has not seen since he left college,--Sir
Sedley Beaudesert.

Now, you must understand that it is a warm night, a little after nine
o'clock,--a night between departing summer and approaching autumn. The
windows are open; we have a balcony, which my mother has taken care to
fill with flowers; the air, though we are in London, is sweet and fresh;
the street quiet, except that an occasional carriage or hackney
cabriolet rolls rapidly by; a few stealthy passengers pass to and fro
noiselessly on their way homeward. We are on classic ground,--near that
old and venerable Museum, the dark monastic pile which the taste of the