which compels the really ambitious man to honor, unless his eyes are jaundiced and oblique like Randal Leslie's. It is so necessary in England to be a gentleman. And thus Egerton was emphatically considered a _gentleman_. Without the least pride in other matters, with little apparent sensitiveness, touch him on the point of gentleman, and no one so sensitive and so proud. As Randal saw more of him, and watched his moods with the lynx eyes of the household spy, he could perceive that this hard mechanical man was subject to fits of melancholy, even of gloom, and though they did not last long, there was even in his habitual coldness an evidence of something comprest, latent, painful, lying deep within his memory. This would have interested the kindly feelings of a grateful heart. But Randal detected and watched it only as a clue to some secret it might profit him to gain. For Randal Leslie hated Egerton; and hated him the more because with all his book knowledge and his conceit in his own talents, he could not despise his patron--because he had not yet succeeded in making his patron the mere tool or stepping-stone--because he thought that Egerton's keen eye saw through his wily heart, even while, as if in profound disdain, the minister helped the protégé. But this last suspicion was unsound. Egerton had not detected Leslie's corrupt and treacherous nature. He might have other reasons for keeping him at a certain distance, but he inquired too little into Randal's feelings towards himself to question the attachment, or doubt the sincerity of one who owed to him so much. But that which more than all embittered Randal's feelings towards Egerton, was the careful and deliberate frankness with which the latter had, more than once repeated, and enforced the odious announcement, that Randal had nothing to expect from the ministers--WILL, nothing to expect from that wealth which glared in the hungry eyes of the pauper heir to the Leslies of Rood. To whom, then, could Egerton mean to devise his fortune? To whom but Frank Hazeldean. Yet Audley took so little notice of his nephew--seemed so indifferent to him, that that supposition, however natural, seemed exposed to doubt. The astuteness of Randal was perplexed. Meanwhile, however, the less he himself could rely upon Egerton for fortune, the more he revolved the possible chances of ousting Frank from the inheritance of Hazeldean--in part, at least, if not wholly. To one less scheming, crafty, and remorseless than Randal Leslie with every day became more and more, such a project would have seemed the wildest delusion. But there was something fearful in the manner in which this young man sought to turn knowledge into power, and make the study of all weakness in others subservient to his own ends. He wormed himself thoroughly into Frank's confidence. He learned through Frank all the Squire's peculiarities of thought and temper, and thoroughly pondered over each word in the father's letters, which the son