Mr. Percy followed his lordship’s lead immediately to Italy, to France, to Paris, and talking over old times and youthful days, the conversation grew gay and familiar. Lord Oldborough seemed enlivened and pleased, and yet, as if it were a reminiscence of a former state of existence, he often repeated, “Ah! those were young days--very young: I was a boy then--quite a boy.” At last Mr. Percy touched upon love and women, and, by accident, mentioned an Italian lady whom they had known abroad.--A flash of pale anger, almost of frenzy, passed across Lord Oldborough’s countenance: he turned short, darted full on Mr. Percy a penetrating, imperious, interrogative look.--Answered by the innocence, the steady openness of Mr. Percy’s countenance, Lord Oldborough grew red instantly, and, conscious of his unusual change of colour, stood actually abashed. A moment afterward, commanding his agitation, he forced his whole person to an air of tranquillity--took up the red book which lay upon his table, walked deliberately to a window, and, looking earnestly through his glass, asked if Mr. Percy could recollect who was member for some borough in the neighbourhood? The conversation after this languished; and though some efforts were made, it never recovered the tone of ease and confidence. Both parties felt relieved from an indefinable sort of constraint by the return of the other gentlemen. Mr. Falconer begged Mr. Percy to go and look at a carriage of a new construction, which the colonel had just brought from town; and the colonel accompanying Mr. Percy, the stage was thus left clear for the commissioner to open his business about M. de Tourville’s packet. He did it with so much address, and with so little circumlocution, that Lord Oldborough immediately comprehended how important the papers might be to him, and how necessary it was to secure the decipherer. When Mr. Percy returned, he found the commissioner and his lordship in earnest and seemingly confidential conversation. Both Mr. Falconer and Mr. Percy were now pressed to stay to dine and to sleep at Clermont-park; an invitation which Mr. Percy declined, but which the commissioner accepted.