really little left for them to strive for. Had Harley been a poor man's
son, it might have been different."

"I was born to the same fortunes as Harley," said the earl, shrewdly,
"and yet I flatter myself I am of some use to old England."

The countess seized upon the occasion, complimented her Lord, and turned
the subject.




CHAPTER XVII.

Harley spent his day in his usual desultory, lounging manner,--dined in
his quiet corner at his favourite club. Nero, not admitted into the
club, patiently waited for him outside the door. The dinner over,
dog and man, equally indifferent to the crowd, sauntered down that
thoroughfare which, to the few who can comprehend the Poetry of London,
has associations of glory and of woe sublime as any that the ruins of the
dead elder world can furnish,--thoroughfare that traverses what was once
the courtyard of Whitehall, having to its left the site of the palace
that lodged the royalty of Scotland; gains, through a narrow strait, that
old isle of Thorney, in which Edward the Confessor received the ominous
visit of the Conqueror; and, widening once more by the Abbey and the Hall
of Westminster, then loses itself, like all memories of earthly grandeur,
amidst humble passages and mean defiles.

Thus thought Harley L'Estrange--ever less amidst the actual world around
him than the images invoked by his own solitary soul-as he gained the