I think we should all go early to bed, to be fresh for to-morrow.” When the gentlemen were left alone, the old lord called Val to him. “We will take our wine in the library; I have a great deal to say to you, my boy,” he said, leading the way into his own particular retirement. And then the worst moment of Val’s life came to him unawares. He felt already that there was something to be revealed, from the moment they entered the room in which he had always received his admonitions when a child, and which was associated to him--but up to this time how lightly!--with all the clouds and shadows of his early life. “Sit down here, Val,” said the old lord. “You must pluck up a heart, for there’s something unpleasant coming. Not of any consequence, or that can affect you seriously--but very unpleasant. Val, in every election there’s things of this kind,” he continued, slowly unfolding a paper. “I’ve seen a great deal worse. I’ve seen ill deeds, that a man had forgotten for twenty or thirty years, raked up to bring shame on his grey hairs. Thank God, there’s nothing of that kind possible with you! But it’s unpleasant enough, unpleasant enough.” “For heaven’s sake, sir, tell me what it is at once! Don’t keep me in this suspense.” “Val,” said the old lord, almost sternly, “no passion, sir! none of your outbursts! I’ll almost think it’s true, and that you’re not of my race, if you cannot set your teeth and bear it like a man.” After this adjuration, which was very necessary, I think Val would have let himself be torn to pieces sooner than “give way.” He read the paper in the dim library, lighted only round the table at which they sat, the wall all dark with books, the dark curtains drawn over the windows, the fire without a glimmer in it. Lord Eskside sat watching the lad from under his shaggy eyebrows. So far as he was himself concerned, the old lord had worn out all capacity of feeling in the work he had gone through that day. He had revealed to his friends, in full detail, what he considered as the shame of his family, and had done so like a Stoic, without showing any emotion; but now he watched Val, tender as a mother over her baby, following the boy’s eyes from line to line, his starts of indignation and pain, the furious colour that came over his face, the quick-drawn panting breath, which showed the immense constraint he put on himself. Lord Eskside put out his hand once or twice, and laid it on Val’s arm with an instinctive caress, which from him was more than an embrace would have been from another. Val took a long time to read it, for the struggle was hard; not that the sense of it did not flash into his mind almost in a moment, with all those curious sensations of familiarity--as if it had happened before, or as if we had known and expected it all our lives--which so often attend a great event. When he laid it down at last, he turned to his grandfather, his face partially distorted by that strange dilation of suppressed pain which seems to