Lord Ormersfield looked at him anxiously, and, hesitating, said, 'You do not think him out of spirits?' 'Oh, he carries it off very well. I know no one with so strong a sense of duty,' replied Jem, never compassionate to the father. Again the Earl paused, then said, 'He may probably speak more unreservedly to you than to me.' 'He shuns the topic. He says there is no use in aggravating the feelings by discussion. He would fain submit in heart as well as in will.' Lord Ormersfield sighed, but did not appear disposed to say more; and, charitably hoping that a dagger had been implanted in him, Jem ran up-stairs, and found Louis sitting writing at a table, which looked as if Mary had never been near it. 'Jem! That's right! I've not seen you this age.' 'What are you about?' 'I wanted particularly some one to listen. It is an essay on the Police--' 'Is this earnest?' 'Sober earnest. Sir Miles and all that set are anxious to bring the matter forward, and my father has been getting it up, as he does whatever he may have to speak upon. His eyes are rather failing for candle-light work, so I have been helping him in the evening, till it struck me that it was a curious subject to trace in history,--the Censors, the attempts in Germany and Spain, to supply the defective law, the Spanish and Italian dread of justice. I became enamoured of the notion, and when I have thrown all the hints together, I shall try to take in my father by reading them to him as an article in the Quarterly.' 'Oh, very well. If your soul is there, that is an end of the matter.' 'Of what matter?' 'Things cannot run on in this way. It is not a thing to lay upon me to go on working in your cause with her when you will not stir a step in your own behalf.' 'I am very much obliged to you, but I never asked you to work in my cause. I beg your pardon, Jem, don't fly into a Welsh explosion. No one ever meant more kindly and generously--' He checked himself in amaze at the demonstration he had elicited; but, as it was not accompanied with words, he continued, 'No one can be more grateful to you than I; but, as far as I can see, there is nothing for it but to be thankful that no more harm has been done, and to let the matter drop;' and he dropped his hand with just so much despondency as to make Jem think him worth storming at, instead of giving him up; and he went over the old ground of Louis being incapable of true passion and unworthy of such a being if he could yield her without an effort, merely for the sake of peace. 'I say, Jem,' said Louis, quietly, 'all this was bad enough on neutral ground; it is mere treason under my father's own roof, and I will have no more of it.' 'Then,' cried James, with a strange light in his eyes, 'you henceforth renounce all hopes--all pretensions?'