Sits, as became him, tranquil, respectful, intent, scemingly, perhaps
really, unconscious of the sensation he excites. What an eye for an
orator! how like the eye in a portrait; it seems to fix on each other eye
that seeks it,--steady, fascinating. Yon distant members, behind the
Speaker's chair, at the far distance, feel the light of that eye travel
towards them. How lofty and massive, among all those rows of human
heads, seems that forehead, bending slightly down, with the dark strong
line of the weighty eyebrow! But what is passing within that secret
mind? Is there mournfulness in the retrospect? Is there eagerness to
renew the strife? Is that interest in the hour's debate feigned or real?
Impossible for him who gazed upon that face to say. And that eye would
have seemed to the gazer to read himself through and through to the
heart's core, long ere the gazer could hazard a single guess as to the
thoughts beneath that marble forehead,--as to the emotions within the
heart over which, in old senatorial fashion, the arms were folded with so
conventional an ease.




CHAPTER VII.

Darrell and Lionel.

Darrell had received Lionel with some evident embarrassment, which soon
yielded to affectionate warmth. He took to the young man whose fortunes
he had so improved; he felt that with the improved fortunes the young
man's whole being was improved: assured position, early commune with the
best social circles, in which the equality of fashion smooths away all
disparities in rank, had softened in Lionel much of the wayward and