Sir William, seated in his library by himself, had been thinking, with a difference, much the same thoughts. With a compunction and compassion indescribable, he had been thinking of his son. Paul, with all his foolish democratical notions, was yet the most aristocratic, the most imperious of young men, knowing nothing of the evils he was so ready to take upon him, generous in giving, but to whom it would be bitterness itself to receive. Would Paul ever turn upon him, upbraid him, curse him? A shiver came over his father at the thought--and along with this a horrible sense of the position in which this haughty young heir would find himself, if---- How was it that such a possibility had altogether escaped his mind? He could not tell: he did not know how to answer himself. Forty years is a large slice out of a man’s life. Even had it been some one fully known and loved, it would be unlikely that you should think of him with any persistency of reference after a separation of forty years--and a child, an infant, a thing with no personality at all! But still, he asked himself, had he never thought when Paul was born of the former time, far away in the morning haze of youth, when a young mother and a child had called forth his interest? Yes, he had thought of it; he had thought with alarm of what had happened then; he had been more anxious about his young wife than young husbands usually are--but no more. It had never occurred to him that his child had anything to do with the other. Strange blindness in a man so accurate! He said to himself, “It will come to nothing; it will be arranged; all will be well:” but in the same breath he said, “Poor Paul! God help him! What would happen to Paul, if----” He had not been able to do anything all day for thinking of this: he had kept his blue-book before him, but he had made nothing of it. Sir William, whose understood creed it was that public affairs went before everything, could pay no attention to these public affairs. When the letters came in, in the evening, he received them languidly, not feeling that there was anything there which could interest him so much as his own thoughts. When he saw Paul’s handwriting an unusual stir arose in his elderly bosom. But he put it down, and took up a letter from his chief, which would be no doubt of far more importance to the country, with a last attempt to conquer himself. But the words of his chiefs letter had no sense to him; he could not understand what there was to be so anxious about. Smith’s candidature for Bannockshire--what did it matter? He made a rapid and novel reflection to himself about the trifling character of the incidents which people made so much of; then laid down the solemn sheet with its coronet, and took up the letter of his boy.