made their way along, for the young man turned round and waved his disengaged hand to warn the bystanders away. The blood rushed into Gus Markham’s ears, tingling and throbbing, as he saw this little procession pass, so close to where he sat at his window that he could have touched the chief figure. Sir William was ashy pale, his under lip drooped, one of his hands hung with a look of useless limpness by his side, he shuffled slightly with one foot. The air of a man stricken and broken down as by some great blow was upon him. The spectator gazed with the strangest pang, eagerly, keenly at the face he had never consciously seen before. Not a doubt of who it was crossed his mind. He had expected to meet him coldly, perhaps to be received with doubt and antagonism; but it had never occurred to Gus’s somewhat superficial but not unamiable spirit that anything tragical would be involved in the encounter. Gradually indeed, a sense of issues more serious than any that had ever occurred to him before had been invading the kindly self-satisfaction of his nature. Now he sat and gazed as under a spell. They had shown him Sir William’s portrait at the Chase. Was it he that had made the difference between that self-possessed, dignified, imposing little statesman and this broken and suffering old man? Gus gazed as one who cannot detach his eyes. The whole scene passed before him like a picture. The beautiful, anxious woman, gazing with such circles of trouble round her eyes, watching every step her husband made; the beautiful girl, putting her young companion aside, watching her father creep along through the sunshine; the young man--but here Gus’s thoughts broke off short. Was that Paul? It did not seem to him like the idea of Paul which he had got from all that had been said. The young man was not like any of the others. He had none of that “family look” which distinguishes even in unlikeness members of the same race. His face was serious, but not anxious like the others; he had an air of kind solicitude, not of family trouble. Was it Paul? Was it Sir William’s heir? They passed slowly before him, all the rest of the faces round looking after them, turned towards them, making them the centre, as this far more deeply interested spectator did.