The longer that the earl continued at Yatton--in which he could not have more thoroughly established himself if he had in the ordinary way engaged it for the autumn--the more he was struck with its beauties; and the oftener they presented themselves to his mind's eye, the keener became his regrets at the split in the family interests which had so long existed, and his desire to take advantage of what seemed almost an opportunity, specially afforded by Providence, for reuniting them. As the earl took his solitary walks, he thought with deep anxiety of his own advanced age, and sensibly increasing feebleness. The position of his affairs was not satisfactory. When he died, he would leave behind him an only child--and that a daughter--on whom would devolve the splendid responsibility of sustaining, alone, the honors of her ancient family. Then there was his newly discovered kinsman, Mr. Titmouse, sole and unembarrassed proprietor of this fine old family property; simple-minded and confiding, with a truly reverential feeling towards them, the heads of the family; also the undoubted, undisputed proprietor of the borough of Yatton; who entertained and avowed the same liberal and enlightened political opinions, which the earl had ever maintained with dignified consistency and determination; and who, by a rare conjunction of personal merit and of circumstance, had been elevated to an unprecedented pitch of popularity, in the highest regions of society; and who was, moreover, already next in succession, after himself and the Lady Cecilia, to the ancient barony of Drelincourt and the estates annexed to it. How little was there, in reality, to set against all this? An eccentricity of manner, for which nature only, if any one, was to blame; a tendency to extreme modishness in dress, and a slight deficiency in the knowledge of the etiquette of society, but which daily experience and intercourse were rapidly supplying; and a slight disposition towards the pleasures of the table, which no doubt would disappear on the instant of his having an object of permanent and elevating attachment. Such was Mr. Titmouse. He had as yet, undoubtedly, made no advances to Lady Cecilia, nor evinced any disposition to do so, though numerous and favorable had been, and continued to be, the opportunities for his doing so. Might not this, however, be set down entirely to the score of his excessive diffidence--distrust of his pretensions to aspire after so august an alliance as that with the Lady Cecilia? Yet there certainly was another way of accounting for his conduct: had he got already entangled with an attachment elsewhere?--Run after in society, as he had been, in a manner totally unprecedented during his very first season--had his affections been inveigled?--When the earl dwelt upon this dismal possibility, if it were when he was lying awake in bed, he would be seized with a fit of intolerable restlessness--and getting up, wrap himself in his dressing-gown, and