advice to suggest, in the shape of two proverbs,--'Wise rats run from a
falling house,' and, 'Make hay while the sun shines.' /A propos/, Mr.
Avenel likes you greatly, and has been talking of the borough of Lansmere
for you. He has contrived to get together a great interest there. Make
much of him."

Randal had indeed been to Mrs. Avenel's /soiree dansante/, and called
twice and found her at home, and been very bland and civil, and admired
the children. She had two, a boy and a girl, very like their father,
with open faces as bold as brass. And as all this had won Mrs. Avenel's
good graces, so it had propitiated her husband's. Avenel was shrewd
enough to see how clever Randal was. He called him "smart," and said "he
would have got on in America," which was the highest praise Dick Avenel
ever accorded to any man. But Dick himself looked a little careworn; and
this was the first year in which he had murmured at the bills of his
wife's dressmaker, and said with an oath, that "there was such a thing as
going too much ahead."

Randal had visited Dr. Riccabocca, and found Violante flown. True to his
promise to Harley, the Italian refused to say where, and suggested, as
was agreed, that for the present it would be more prudent if Randal
suspended his visits to himself. Leslie, not liking this proposition,
attempted to make himself still necessary by working on Riccabocca's
fears as to that espionage on his retreat, which had been among the
reasons that had hurried the sage into offering Randal Violante's hand.
But Riccabocca had already learned that the fancied spy was but his
neighbour Leonard; and, without so saying, he cleverly contrived to make
the supposition of such espionage an additional reason for the cessation
of Leslie's visits. Randal then, in his own artful, quiet, roundabout
way, had sought to find out if any communication had passed between