fitting theme than the celebration of the impending majority. There was
place for all his energy and talent and resources; a great central
inauguration; sympathetical festivals and gatherings in half a dozen
other counties; the troth, as it were, of a sister kingdom to be
pledged; a vista of balls and banquets, and illuminations and addresses,
of ceaseless sports and speeches, and processions alike endless.

"What I wish to effect," said Mr. Giles, as he was giving his
multifarious orders, "is to produce among all classes an impression
adequate to the occasion. I wish the lord and the tenantry alike to
feel they have a duty to perform."

In the mean time, Monsignore Catesby was pressing Lothair to become one
of the patrons of a Roman Catholic Bazaar, where Lady St. Jerome and
Miss Arundel were to preside over a stall. It was of importance to show
that charity was not the privilege of any particular creed.

Between his lawyers, and his monsignores, and his architects, Lothair
began to get a little harassed. He was disturbed in his own mind, too,
on greater matters, and seemed to feel every day that it was more
necessary to take a decided step, and more impossible to decide upon
what it should be. He frequently saw the cardinal, who was very kind to
him, but who had become more reserved on religious subjects. He had
dined more than once with his eminence, and had met some distinguished
prelates and some of his fellow-nobles who had been weaned from the
errors of their cradle. The cardinal, perhaps, thought that the
presence of these eminent converts would facilitate the progress,
perhaps the decision, of his ward; but something seemed always to happen
to divert Lothair in his course. It might-be sometimes apparently a
very slight cause, but yet for the time sufficient; a phrase of Lady