just entered one of the streets leading into Grosvenor Square, when a
young man, walking quickly from the opposite direction, came full against
him, and drawing back with a brief apology, recognized him, and
exclaimed, "What! you in England, Lord L'Estrange! Accept my
congratulations on your return. But you seem scarcely to remember me."

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Leslie. I remember you now by your smile; but
you are of an age in which it is permitted me to say that you look older
than when I saw you last."

"And yet, Lord L'Estrange, it seems to me that you look younger."

Indeed, this reply was so far true that there appeared less difference of
years than before between Leslie and L'Estrange; for the wrinkles in the
schemer's mind were visible in his visage, while Harley's dreamy worship
of Truth and Beauty seemed to have preserved to the votary the enduring
youth of the divinities.

Harley received the compliment with a supreme indifference, which might
have been suitable to a Stoic, but which seemed scarcely natural to a
gentleman who had just proposed to a lady many years younger than
himself.

Leslie renewed: "Perhaps you are on your way to Mr. Egerton's. If so,
you will not find him at home; he is at his office."

"Thank you. Then to his office I must re-direct my steps."

"I am going to him myself," said Randal, hesitatingly. L'Estrange had no
prepossessions in favour of Leslie from the little he had seen of that