"Then I'll just take my evening stroll, and think over matters. You can rejoin Mrs. Templeton. And I say, Lumley,--I read prayers at nine o'clock. Never forget your Maker, and He will not forget you. The barony will be an excellent thing--eh?--an English peerage--yes--an English peerage! very different from your beggarly countships abroad!" So saying, Mr. Templeton rang for his hat and cane, and stepped into the lawn from the window of the dining-room. "'The world's mine oyster, which I with sword will open,'" muttered Ferrers; "I would mould this selfish old man to my purpose; for, since I have neither genius to write nor eloquence to declaim, I will at least see whether I have not cunning to plot and courage to act. Conduct--conduct--conduct--there lies my talent; and what is conduct but a steady walk from a design to its execution?" With these thoughts Ferrers sought Mrs. Templeton. He opened the folding-doors very gently, for all his habitual movements were quick and noiseless, and perceived that Mrs. Templeton sat by the window, and that she seemed engrossed with a book which lay open on a little work-table before her. "Fordyce's /Advice to Young Married Women/, I suppose. Sly jade! However, I must not have her against me." He approached; still Mrs. Templeton did not note him; nor was it till he stood facing her that he himself observed that her tears were falling fast over the page. He was a little embarrassed, and, turning towards the window, affected to cough, and then said, without looking at Mrs. Templeton, "I fear I have disturbed you." "No," answered the same low, stifled voice that had before replied to Lumley's vain attempts to provoke conversation; "it was a melancholy employment, and perhaps it is not right to indulge in it." "May I inquire what author so affected you." "It is but a volume of poems, and I am no judge of poetry; but it contains thoughts which--which--" Mrs. Templeton paused abruptly, and Lumley quietly took up the book. "Ah!" said he, turning to the title-page--"my friend ought to be much flattered." "Your friend?" "Yes: this, I see, is by Ernest Maltravers, a very intimate ally of mine." "I should like to see him," cried Mrs. Templeton, almost with animation. "I read but little; it was by chance that I met with one of his books, and they are as if I heard a dear friend speaking to me. Ah! I should like to see him!" "I'm sure, madam," said the voice of a third person, in an austere and rebuking accent, "I do not see what good it would do your immortal soul to see a man who writes idle verses, which appear to me, indeed, highly immoral. I just looked into that volume this morning and found nothing but trash--love-sonnets, and such stuff." Mrs. Templeton made no reply, and Lumley, in order to change the conversation, which seemed a little too matrimonial for his taste, said, rather awkwardly, "You are returned very soon, sir." "Yes, I don't like walking in the rain!"