apartment.

Pale and imperfectly streamed the light upon Brandon's face, as he sat in
his large chair, leaning his cheek on one hand, and gazing with the
unconscious earnestness of abstraction on the clear fire. At that moment
a whole phalanx of gloomy thought was sweeping in successive array across
his mind. His early ambition, his ill-omened marriage, the causes of his
after-rise in the wrong-judging world, the first dawn of his reputation,
his rapid and flattering successes, his present elevation, his aspiring
hope of far higher office, and more patrician honours,--all these
phantoms passed before him in checkered shadow and light; but ever with
each stalked one disquieting and dark remembrance,--the loss of his only
son.

Weaving his ambition with the wish to revive the pride of his hereditary
name, every acquisition of fortune or of fame rendered him yet more
anxious to find the only one who could perpetuate these hollow
distinctions to his race.

"I shall recover him yet!" he broke out suddenly and aloud. As he spoke,
a quick, darting, spasmodic pain ran shivering through his whole frame,
and then fixed for one instant on his heart with a gripe like the talons
of a bird; it passed away, and was followed by a deadly sickness.
Brandon rose, and filling himself a large tumbler of water, drank with
avidity. The sickness passed off like the preceding pain; but the
sensation had of late been often felt by Brandon, and disregarded,--for
few persons were less afflicted with the self-torture of hypochondria;
but now, that night, whether it was more keen than usual, or whether his
thought had touched on the string that jars naturally on the most
startling of human anticipations, we know not, but, as he resumed his