patient policy, to which he obstinately clung. How far his reasonings
and patience served to his ends remains yet to be seen. But could our
contempt for the baseness of Randal himself be separated from the
faculties which he elaborately degraded to the service of that baseness,
one might allow that there was something one could scarcely despise in
this still self-reliance, this inflexible resolve. Had such qualities,
aided as they were by abilities of no ordinary acuteness, been applied to
objects commonly honest, one would have backed Randal Leslie against any
fifty picked prize-men from the colleges. But there are judges of weight
and metal who do that now, especially Baron Levy, who says to himself as
he eyes that pale face all intellect, and that spare form all nerve,
"This is a man who must make way in life; he is worth helping."

By the words "worth helping" Baron Levy meant "worth getting into my
power, that he may help me."




CHAPTER XIV.

But parliament had met. Events that belong to history had contributed
yet more to weaken the administration. Randal Leslie's interest became
absorbed in politics, for the stake to him was his whole political
career. Should Audley lose office, and for good, Audley could aid him no
more; but to abandon his patron, as Levy recommended, and pin himself, in
the hope of a seat in parliament, to a stranger,--an obscure stranger,
like Dick Avenel,--that was a policy not to be adopted at a breath.
Meanwhile, almost every night, when the House met, that pale face and
spare form, which Levy so identified with shrewdness and energy, might be