new development of the man out of the boy, was fain to dry her poor eyes and cling to his arm, and coax him to go in to prepare for the greater trial of the night. While these two forlorn young creatures were thus engaged, another conversation was taking place at a distance from the scene of the festivities, in the park of Fontanel. Mr Courtenay Gateshead had come down to be present at the tenants’ dinner in his capacity as legal adviser to Mr Summerhayes; but the young lawyer looked on with a preoccupied air, sometimes casting a keen look of inspection at the master of the feast. When the party from the great house left the humble revellers, Courtenay, instead of joining Mr Summerhayes, beckoned aside his uncle and partner. Old Gateshead had stayed for the children’s sake; but had found it totally impossible to change Mr Summerhayes’s first determination. He would not consent to read, much less to sign the document hastily prepared by the anxious old lawyer. He would think it over, he repeated, and see Courtenay, with an implied slight upon the powers and skill of Courtenay’s uncle, which galled the old man to the last degree. The young lawyer found his relative exceedingly sulky and out of temper. “I have something particular to consult you about,” Courtenay said, who did not yet know anything about the destruction of the deed; and Mr Gateshead, who had that disclosure to make, followed him with no very pleasant feelings to the verge of the wood, not very far from where Charley and Loo were wandering in the despair of their hearts. But the old lawyer was much taken by surprise by the question which his nephew did not put to him till they were quite alone, and sheltered from all eavesdroppers by the broad expanse of the park. “Uncle, you have a wonderful memory. I suppose you remember John Clifford, this boy’s grandfather—he who broke the entail,” said Courtenay, in rather a hurried voice. “John Clifford—what on earth has he got to do with it?” cried old Gateshead, whose memory was wonderful, but whose powers of comprehension were not equally vivid. “Oh, nothing, I daresay,” said his nephew. “I want to know what you recollect about him, that’s all—he who joined his father in breaking the entail——” “A very silly thing to do, Courtenay—a fatal thing to do. Good Lord, only think what a different position these poor children might have been in!” cried old Gateshead. “Yes, yes—to be sure; but do you recollect anything about John?” said the young man. “I recollect everything about him,” said the uncle. “Though he was Harry Clifford’s father, and they are both dead ages ago, he was no older than I am. I think we were born in the same year——” “The same year? and you are seventy; that must have been ‘87. Was it ‘87, uncle? how can we make sure?” said young Courtenay. “I must hunt up the register of baptisms to-morrow.”