a few months, for it would look bad for the senators who were to be freshly bought to seem to change their opinions too suddenly. Europe would laugh if men who declared in April that union meant destruction were in May to turn round and vote in favour of it. Finally Mr. Pitt sent his tool home again, bidding him be discreet and diligent, and laughed in his sleeve so soon as his back was turned. Lord Clare was puffed out with self-importance when he strutted into his house and found Madam Gillin ensconced there as though she were its mistress. Taking no heed of his frowns, she wagged her feathers with satisfaction, and straightway unfolded her budget. He was as much astonished as she could possibly desire. Shane then was illegitimate, and Terence the true Lord Glandore! This was the clue to much which had seemed inexplicable in my lady. Poor old friend! how she must have suffered--and she innocent, except in aiding and abetting her husband when it was too late to do anything else. It was evident that, born of the same parents, it was a cruel law which would treat one brother (and the elder one too) as a pariah for lack of a few sentences droned through the nose. It was natural that a mother should feel this strongly, and in a wrong-headed feminine way make difficulties greater in her efforts to gloze them over. But the old lord was right when he spoke the warning. His sons were only boys; they might have stepped into their legal places then without much harm resulting. But now after the long lapse of years, the situation wore another aspect. Shane had grown to manhood--to the prime of life--under the impression that he was true master of wealth and broad acres. His life had taken its permanent shape. It would be a smashing blow to him were his brother to come forward and claim his own. The position of Terence too was a singularly unhappy one. He had been bitterly wronged. Of that there could be no doubt, and his mother must have walked on red-hot ploughshares when she beheld him going straight to ruin. If he had been acknowledged as 'my lord' he would have done, of course, as the majority of lords did--would never have thought of joining the popular party, would not now be preparing to leave his country--a brokenhearted exile. For even the most virtuous in the Upper House were content at this juncture to remain neutral. Poor, poor old friend! What anguish must have been hers when she contemplated all this, as she must have done daily, without having strength to say the words she should have said! Actually she had been doomed to watch her own son drifting into the dark waters, and with her own hands to cut the rope which might have saved him. No wonder if her hair was white--her face of ashen pallor. No wonder if she was haunted by a ghost who never left her side. Mrs. Gillin's story actually took away the breath of the chancellor as his mind wandered through the fields of the past, putting this and that together, fitting pieces of a