Mr. Falconer saw that the storm had blown over, the darkness was past--Lord Oldborough, firm and superior, stood bright in power, and before him the commissioner bent more obsequious, more anxious than ever. Anxious he might well be--unhappy father! the life, perhaps, of one of his sons, his honour, certainly, at stake--the fortune of another--his existence ruined! And what hopes of propitiating him, who had so suffered by the favour he had already shown, who had been betrayed by one of the family and disgraced by another. The commissioner’s only hope was in the recollection of the words, “I pity you from my soul, sir,” which burst from Lord Oldborough even at the moment when he had most reason to be enraged against Colonel Falconer. Following up this idea, and working on the generous compassion, of which, but for this indication, he should not have supposed the stern Lord Oldborough to be susceptible, the commissioner appeared before him every day the image of a broken-hearted father. In silence Lord Oldborough from time to time looked at him; and by these looks, more than by all the promises of all the great men who had ever spoken to him, Mr. Falconer was reassured; and, as he told Mrs. Falconer, who at this time was in dreadful anxiety, he felt certain that Lord Oldborough would not punish him for the faults of his sons--he was satisfied that his place and his pension would not be taken from him--and that, at least in fortune, they should not be utterly ruined. In this security the commissioner showed rather more than his customary degree of strength of mind, and more knowledge of Lord Oldborough’s character than he had upon most other occasions evinced.