On the evening of the day after the election, Richard Ross, in Florence, received two telegrams,--one from his father, announcing the result of the election, sent off from the nearest telegraphic station, in Lord Eskside’s own name, and with full official pomp. The other was from Edinburgh, from “Catherine Ross,” asking “Is the boy with you? He has left us, and we don’t know where he has gone. Write at once, or come.” These two announcements threw the clearest light upon each other to Richard. He said to himself that what he had predicted had happened--that his son had been assailed by the story of his birth, and that in shame and rage he had fled as _she_ did. Valentine had not paid his father that long visit for nothing. The _dilettante_ had found out that he was a man after all, with some remnants in him of human feeling. A man’s child brings back this consciousness more easily than his parents do, by some strange law of nature which is very hard upon the old. Probably had Richard gone back to Eskside, he would have been impatient of the old house and its unchangeable order before he had been two days there, and as glad as ever to get away. But Valentine had interfered with none of his habits; he had amused him, he had aroused a spark of paternal pride in his mind, which was so little affected by such emotions; and when the boy went away he missed him, and wondered at himself for doing so. And he had taken an interest of a much stronger character than he could have believed possible in the election. He said to himself now, that he knew and had always predicted what would happen, and a pang of anxiety sprang up within him, the strangest feeling to make itself felt within the polished bosom of a man of the world. Tut! he said to himself; what was he anxious about? a boy who was not a simple rustic from the country, but a man of Eton and Oxford, “up” to everything. He laughed at his own weakness. That very night he was dining out at a brilliant party, the most brilliant that could be collected in the highest circle of Florence at the time of her last revived and temporary magnificence. He was astonished at himself to think how dull he found it. The ladies were less fair, the talk less witty, the diamonds less bright, than he had ever known them. What was the matter with Richard? “You look depressed and out of sorts,” some one said to him next morning. “Oh no, not I; it is a bad dinner I had yesterday.” A bad dinner! He trembled after he had said it, wondering if perhaps his questioner would take the trouble to inquire where he dined. But it was not the dinner which was in fault. He felt himself asking himself in the midst of it--where was the boy? what had become of him? What might Valentine have done if he had been assailed by something specially hard to bear? He was uneasy and restless all night, slept badly, and again asked himself, as soon as he woke, where was the boy? “Confound the boy! he can take care of himself better than I could,”