Here, seeing that Egerton came to a full pause, Randal answered readily-- "Still, sir, to go by your advice." "My advice," said Audley, with a softened look, "would perhaps be rude and unpalatable. I would rather place before you an option. On the one hand, recommence life again. I told you that I would keep your name on your college books. You can return--you can take your degree--after that, you can go to the bar--you have just the talents calculated to succeed in that profession. Success will be slow, it is true; but, with perseverance, it will be sure. And, believe me, Leslie, Ambition is only sweet while it is but the loftier name for Hope. Who would care for a fox's brush, if it had not been rendered a prize by the excitement of the chase?" "Oxford--again! It is a long step back in life," said Randal drearily, and little heeding Egerton's unusual indulgence of illustration. "A long step back--and to what? To a profession in which one never begins to rise till one's hair is grey! Besides, how live in the meanwhile?" "Do not let that thought disturb you. The modest income that suffices for a student at the bar, I trust, at least, to insure you from the wrecks of my fortune." "Ah, sir, I would not burthen you farther. What right have I to such kindness, save my name of Leslie?" And in spite of himself, as Randal concluded, a tone of bitterness, that betrayed reproach, broke forth. Egerton was too much the man of the world not to comprehend the reproach, and not to pardon it. "Certainly," he answered calmly, "as a Leslie you are entitled to my consideration, and would have been entitled perhaps to more, had I not so explicitly warned you to the contrary. But the bar does not seem to please you?" "What is the alternative, sir? Let me decide when I hear it," answered Randal sullenly. He began to lose respect for the man who owned he could do so little for him, and who evidently recommended him to shift for himself. If one could have pierced into Egerton's gloomy heart as he noted the young man's change of tone, it may be a doubt whether one would have seen there, pain or pleasure--pain, for merely from the force of habit he had begun to like Randal--or pleasure, at the thought that he might have reason to withdraw that liking. So lone and stoical had grown the man, who had made it his object to have no private life. Revealing, however, neither pleasure nor pain, but with the composed calmness of a judge upon the bench, Egerton replied-- "The alternative is, to continue in the course you have begun, and still to rely on me." "Sir, my dear Mr Egerton," exclaimed Randal, regaining all his usual tenderness of look and voice, "rely on you! But that is all I ask! Only--" "Only, you would say, I am going out of power, and you don't see the chance of my return?" "I did not mean that."