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Harley's peculiar exertions in his favor, by supposing that Harley, unpracticed in elections, and deceived by the Blue Committee, believed Egerton to be perfectly safe, and sought, for the honor of the family interest, to secure both the seats. Randal's public cares thus deprived him of all opportunity of pressing his courtship on Violante; and, indeed, if ever he did find a moment in which he could steal to her reluctant side, Harley was sure to seize that very moment to send him off to canvass an hesitating freeman, or harangue in some public-house.

Leslie was too acute not to detect some motive hostile to his wooing, however plausibly vailed in the guise of zeal for his election, in this officiousness of Harley's. But Lord L'Estrange's manner to Violante was so little like that of a jealous lover, and he was so well aware of her engagement to Randal, that the latter abandoned the suspicion he had before conceived, that Harley was his rival. And he was soon led to believe that Lord L'Estrange had another, more disinterested, and less formidable motive for thus stinting his opportunities to woo the heiress.

"Mr. Leslie," said Lord L'Estrange, one day, "the Duke has confided to me his regret at his daughter's reluctance to ratify his own promise; and, knowing the warm interest I take in her welfare-for his sake, and her own; believing, also, that some services to herself, as well as to the father she so loves, give me a certain influence over her inexperienced judgment, he has even requested me to speak a word to her in your behalf."

"Ah! if you would!" said Randal, surprised. You must give me the power to do so. You were obliging enough to volunteer to me the same explanations which you gave to the Duke, his satisfaction with which induced him to renew or confirm the promise of his daughter's hand. Should those explanations content me, as they did him, I hold the Duke bound to fulfill his engagement, and I am convinced that his daughter would, in that case, not be inflexible to your suit. But, till these explanations be given, my friendship for the father, and my interest in the child, do not allow me to assist a cause, which, however, at present, suffers little by delay."

The rival parties met from time to time, in the streets and lanes, in all the pomp of warbanners streaming, fifes resounding (for bands and colors were essential proofs of public spirit, and indispensable items in a candidate's bills, in those good old days). When they thus encountered, very distant bows were exchanged between the respective chiefs. But Randal, contriving ever to pass close to Avenel, had ever the satisfaction of perceiving that gentleman's countenance contracted into a knowing wink, as much as to say, "All right, in spite of this tarnation humbug."

But now that both parties were fairly in the field, to the private arts of canvassing were added the public arts of oratory. The candidates had to speak-at the close of each day's canvass

out from wooden boxes, suspended from the windows of their respective hotels, and which looked like dens for the exhibition of wild beasts. They had to speak at meetings of committeesmeetings of electors-go the nightly round of enthusiastic public-houses, and appeal to the sense of an enlightened people through wreaths of smoke and odors of beer.

The alleged indisposition of Audley Egerton had spared him the excitement of oratory, as well as the fatigue of canvassing. The practiced debater had limited the display of his talents to a concise, but clear and masterly exposi tion of his own views on the leading public questions of the day, and the state of parties, which, on the day after his arrival at Lansmere, was delivered at a meeting of his general committeein the great room of their hotel-and which was then printed and circulated among the voters.

Randal, though he expressed himself with more fluency and self-possession than are usually found in the first attempts of a public speaker, was not effective in addressing an unlettered crowd;— for a crowd of this kind is all heart-and we know that Randal Leslie's heart was as small as heart could be. If he attempted to speak at his own intellectual level, he was so subtle and refining as to be incomprehensible; if he fell into the fatal error-not uncommon to inexperienced orators-of trying to lower himself to the intellectual level of his audience, he was only elaborately stupid. No man can speak too well for a crowd-as no man can write too well for the stage; but in neither case should he be rhetorical, or case in periods the dry bones of reasoning. It is to the emotions, or to the humors, that the

Pray, listen at once to those explanations." "Nay, Mr. Leslie, I can now only think of the election. As soon as that is ever, rely on it you shall have the amplest opportunity to dispel any doubts which your intimacy with Count di Pes-speaker of a crowd must address himself: his eye chiera and Madame di Negra may have suggest ed. Apropos of the election-here is a list of voters you must see at once in Fish Lane. Don't lose a moment."

In the mean while, Richard Avenel and Leonard had taken up their quarters in the hotel appropriated to the candidates for the Yellows; and the canvass on that side was prosecuted with all the vigor which might be expected from operations conducted by Richard Avenel, and backed by the popular feeling.

must brighten with generous sentiment, or his lip must expand in the play of animated fancy or genial wit. Randal's voice, too, though pliant and persuasive in private conversation, was thin and poor when strained to catch the ear of a numerous assembly. The falsehood of his nature seemed to come out, when he raised the tones which had been drilled into deceit. Men like Randal Leslie may become sharp debatersadmirable special pleaders: they can no more become orators than they can become poets.

Educated audiences are essential to them, and | about a hundred and fifty voters, chiefly freemen. the smaller the audience (that is, the more the brain supersedes the action of the heart) the better they can speak.

Would they vote Yellow-would they vote Blue? No one could venture to decide; but they declared that they would all vote the same way. Dick kept his secret "caucuses," as he called them, constantly nibbling at this phalanx. A hundred and fifty voters!-they had the election in their hands! Never were hands so cordially shaken-so caressingly clung to-so fondly lingered upon! But the votes still stuck as firm to the hands as if a part of the skin, or of the dirtwhich was much the same thing.

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CHAPTER XX.

WHENEVER Audley joined the other guests of an evening-while Harley was perhaps closeted with Levy and committee-men, and Randal was going the round of the public-houses-the one with whom he chiefly conversed was Violante. He had been struck at first, despite his gloom, less perhaps by her extraordinary beauty, than by something in the expression of her countenance

Dick Avenel was generally very short and very pithy in his addresses. He had two or three favorite topics, which always told. He was a fellow townsman-a man who had made his own way in life-he wanted to free his native place from aristocratic usurpation-it was the battle of the electors, not his private cause, etc. He said little against Randal-" Pity a clever young man should pin his future to two yards of worn-out red tape"-" He had better lay hold of the strong rope, which the people, in compassion to his youth, were willing yet to throw out, to save him from sinking," etc. But as for Audley Egerton, "the gentleman who would not show, who was afraid to meet the electors, who could only find his voice in a hole-and-corner meeting, accustomed all his venal life to dark and nefarious jobs"-Dick, upon that subject, delivered philippics truly Demosthenian. Leonard, on the contrary, never attack-which, despite differences in feature and comed Harley's friend, Mr. Egerton; but he was plexion, reminded him of Nora; and when, by merciless against the youth who had filched repu- his praises of Harley, he drew her attention, and tation from John Burley, and whom he knew that won into her liking, he discovered, perhaps, that Harley despised as heartily as himself. And Ran- the likeness which had thus impressed him, came dal did not dare to retaliate (though boiling over from some similarities in character between the with indignant rage), for fear of offending Leon-living and the lost one-the same charming comard's uncle. Leonard was unquestionably the bination of lofty thought and childlike innocence popular speaker of the three. Though his tem--the same enthusiasm-the same rich exuberperament was a writer's, not an orator's-though ance of imagination and feeling. Two souls that he abhorred what he considered the theatrical resemble each other will give their likeness to the exhibition of self, which makes what is called looks from which they beam. On the other hand, delivery" more effective than ideas-though he the person with whom Harley most familiarly had little interest at any time in party politics-associated, in his rare intervals of leisure, was though at this time his heart was far away from the Blues and Yellows of Lansmere, sad and forlorn-yet, forced into action, the eloquence that was natural to his conversation poured itself forth. He had warm blood in his veins; and his dislike to Randal gave poignancy to his wit, and barbed his arguments with impassioned invective. In fact, Leonard could conceive no other motive for Lord L'Estrange's request to take part in the election, than that nobleman's desire to defeat the man whom they both regarded as an impostor. And this notion was confirmed by some inadvertent expressions which Avenel let fall, and which made Leonard suspect that, if he were not in the field, Avenel would have exerted all his interest to return Randal instead of Egerton. With Dick's dislike to that statesman, Leonard found it impossible to reason; nor, on the other hand, could all Dick's scoldings or coaxings induce Leonard to divert his siege on Randal to an assault upon the man who, Harley had often said, was dear to him as a brother.

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In the mean while, Dick kept the canvassbook of the Yellows as closely as Harley kept that of the Blues; and, in despite of many pouting fits and gusts of displeasure, took precisely the same pains for Leonard as Harley took for Randal. There remained, however, apparently unshaken by the efforts on either side, a compact body of

Helen Digby. One day, Audley Egerton, standing mournfully by the window of the sitting-room appropriated to his private use, saw the two, whom he believed still betrothed, take their way across the park, side by side. "Pray Heaven, that she may atone to him for all!" murmured Audley. "But ah, that it had been Violante! Then I might have felt assured that the Future would efface the Past-and found the courage to tell him all. And when last night I spoke of what Harley ought to be to England, how like were her eyes and her smile to Nora's, when Nora listened in delighted sympathy to the hopes of my own young ambition." With a sigh he turned away, and resolutely sat down to read and reply to the voluminous correspondence which covered the table of the busy public man. For Audley's return to Parliament being considered by his political party as secure, to him were transmitted all the hopes and fears of the large and influential section of it whose members looked up to him as their future chief, and who, in that general election (unprecedented for the number of eminent men it was fated to expel from Parliament, and the number of new politicians it was fated to send into it), drew their only hopes of regaining their lost power from Audley's sanguine cfidence in the reaction of that Public Opinion which he had hitherto so profoundly

comprehended; and it was too clearly seen, that | calm. You have not been reared by the world the seasonable adoption of his counsels would have saved the existence and popularity of the late Administration, whose most distinguished members could now scarcely show themselves on the hustings.

Meanwhile Lord L'Estrange led his young companion toward a green hill in the centre of the park, on which stood a circular temple, that commanded a view of the country round for miles. They had walked in silence till they gained the summit of the sloped and gradual ascent; and then, as they stood, still side by side, Harley thus spoke

"Helen, you know that Leonard is in the town, though I can not receive him at the Park, since he is standing in opposition to my guests, Egerton and Leslie."

in the low idolatry of rank and wealth. But even romance can not despise the power of serving others, which rank and wealth bestow. For myself, hitherto indolence, and lately disdain, rob fortune of these nobler attributes. But she who will share my fortune may dispense it so as to atone for my sins of omission. On the other side, grant that there is no bar to your preference for Leonard Fairfield, what does your choice present to you? Those of his kindred with whom you will associate are unrefined and mean. His sole income is derived from precarious labors; the most vulgar of all anxieties-the fear of bread itself for the morrow-must mingle with all your romance, and soon steal from love all its poetry. You think his affection will console you for every sacrifice. Folly!-the love of poets is for a mist-a moonbeam-a denizen of air-a phantom that they call an Ideal. They suppose for a moment that they have found that ideal in Chloe or Phyllis-Helen or a milkmaid. Bah!the first time you come to the poet with the baker's bill, where flies the Ideal? I knew one more brilliant than Leonard-more exquisitely gifted by Nature-that one was a woman: she saw a man hard and cold as that stone at your feet-a false, hollow, sordid worldling; she made him her idol-beheld in him all that history would not recognize in a Cæsar-that mythology would HELEN (looking down).-"I could not force scarcely grant to an Apollo: to him she was the myself to believe in it."

HELEN." But that seems to me so strange. How-how could Leonard do any thing that seems hostile to you?"

HARLEY.-"Would his hostility to me lower him in your opinion? If he knows that I am his rival, does not rivalry include hate?"

HELEN. "Oh, Lord L'Estrange, how can you speak thus ?-how so wrong yourself? Hate! hate to you! and from Leonard Fairfield !"

HARLEY." You evade my question. Would his hate or hostility to me affect your sentiments toward him ?"

HARLEY." Why ?"

plaything of an hour-she died, and before the year was out he had married for money! I knew

HELEN. "Because it would be so unworthy another instance-I speak of myself. I loved of him."

HARLEY.-"Poor child! You have the delusion of your years. You deck a cloud in the hues of the rainbow, and will not believe that its glory is borrowed from the sun of your own fancy. But here, at least, you are not deceived. Leonard obeys but my wishes, and, I believe, against his own will. He has none of man's noblest attribute, Ambition."

HELEN. "No ambition !"

HARLEY.—“It is vanity that stirs the poet to toil-if toil the wayward chase of his own chimeras can be called. Ambition is a more masculine passion."

before I was your age. Had an angel warned me then, I would have been incredulous as you. How that ended no matter: but had it not been for that dream of maudlin delirium, I had lived and acted as others of my kind and my spheremarried from reason and judgment-been now a useful and happy man. Pause, then. Will you still reject me for Leonard Fairfield? For the last time you have the option-me and all the substance of waking life-Leonard Fairfield and the shadows of a fleeting dream. Speak! You hesitate. Nay, take time to decide."

HELEN."Ah! Lord L'Estrange, you who have felt what it is to love, how can you doubt

Helen shook her head gently, but made no an- my answer?-how think that I could be so

swer.

HARLEY.-"If I utter a word that profanes one of your delusions, you shake your head and are incredulous. Pause: listen one moment to my counsels-perhaps the last I may ever obtrude upon you. Lift your eyes; look around. Far as your eye can reach, and far beyond the line which the horizon forms in the landscape, stretch the lands of my inheritance. Yonder you see the home in which my forefathers for many generations lived with honor and died lamented. All these, in the course of nature, might one day have been your own, had you not rejected my proposals. I offered you, it is true, not what is commonly called Love; I offered you sincere esteem, and affections the more durable for their

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HELEN.-"Oh no!-do not say that. Why? scape! In all the seasons of life, how much -wherefore ?"

HARLEY (his brows meeting).-"He is the child of fraud and of shame. His father is my foe, and my hate descends to the son. He, too, the son, filches from me-but complaints are idle. When the next few days are over, think of me but as one who abandons all right over your actions, and is a stranger to your future fate. Pooh!-dry your tears: so long as you love Leonard or esteem me, rejoice that our paths do not cross."

He walked on impatiently; but Helen, alarmed and wondering, followed close, took his arm timidly, and sought to soothe him. She felt that he wronged Leonard-that he knew not how Leonard had yielded all hope when he learned to whom she was affianced. For Leonard's sake she conquered her bashfulness, and sought to explain. But at her first hesitating, faltered words, Harley, who with great effort suppressed the emotions which swelled within him, abruptly left her side, and plunged into the recesses of thick, far-spreading groves, that soon wrapt him from her eye.

of chill or of warmth depends on our choice of the aspect! Sit down; let us reason."

Violante sate down passively, clasping her father's hand in both her own. Reason!harsh word to the ears of Feeling.,

"You shrink," resumed Riccabocca, "from even the courtship, even the presence of the suitor in whom my honor binds me to recognize your future bridegroom."

Violante drew away her hands, and placed them before her eyes, shudderingly.

"But," continued Riccabocca, rather peevishly, "this is not listening to reason. I may object to Mr. Leslie because he has not an adequate rank or fortune to pretend to a daughter of my house; that would be what every one would allow to be reasonable in a father; except, indeed," added the poor sage, trying hard to be sprightly, and catching hold of a proverb to help him-" except, indeed, those wise enough to recollect that admonitory saying, 'Casa il figlio quando vuoi, e la figlia quando puoi'-(Marry your son when you will, your daughter when you can). Seriously, if I overlook those objections to Mr. Leslie, While this conversation occurred between it is not natural for a young girl to enforce them. Lord L'Estrange and his ward, the soi-disant What is reason in you is quite another thing from Riccabocca and Violante were walking slowly reason in me. Mr. Leslie is young, not ill-lookthrough the gardens. The philosopher, unchang-ing, has the air of a gentleman, is passionately ed by his brightening prospects-so far as the enamored of you, and has proved his affection outer man was concerned-still characterized by by risking his life against that villainous Peschithe red umbrella, and the accustomed pipe-era-that is, he would have risked it had Peschitook the way mechanically toward the sunniest quarter of the grounds, now and then glancing tenderly at Violante's downcast melancholy face, but not speaking; only, at each glance, there came a brisker cloud from the pipe, as if obedient to a fuller heave of the heart.

era not been shipped out of the way. If, then, you will listen to reason, pray what can reason say against Mr. Leslie?"

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"Father, I detest him!"

"Cospetto!" persisted Riccabocca, testily, 'you have no reason to detest him. If you had any reason, child, I am sure that I should be the last person to dispute it. How can you know your own mind on such a matter? It is not as if you had seen any one else you could prefer. Not another man of your own years do you even

At length, in a spot which lay open toward the south, and seemed to collect all the gentlest beams of the November sun, screened from the piercing east by dense evergreens, and flanked from the bleak north by lofty walls, Riccabocca paused and seated himself. Flowers still bloom-know-except, indeed, Leonard Fairfield, whom, ed on the sward in front, over which still fluttered the wings of those later and more brilliant butterflies that, unseen in the genial days of our English summer, come with autumnal skies, and sport round the mournful steps of the coming winter-types of those thoughts which visit and delight the contemplation of age, while the current yet glides free from the iron ice, and the leaves yet linger on the boughs; thoughts that associate the memories of the departed summer with messages from suns that shall succeed the winter, and expand colors the most steeped in light and glory, just as the skies through which they gleam are darkening, and the flowers on which they hover fade from the surface of the earth-dropping still seeds, that sink deep out of sight below.

though I grant he is handsomer, and with more imagination and genius than Mr. Leslie, you still must remember as the boy who worked in my garden. Ah! to be sure, there is Frank Hazeldean-fine lad-but his affections are pre-engaged. In short," continued the sage, dogmatically, "there is no one else you can, by any possible caprice, prefer to Mr. Leslie; and for a girl, who has no one else in her head, to talk of detesting a well-looking, well-dressed, clever young man, is-a nonsense-'chi lascia il poco per haver l'assai nè l'uno, nè l'altro avera mai;'which may be thus paraphrased-The young lady who refuses a mortal in the hope of obtaining an angel, loves the one, and will never fall in with the other. So now, having thus shown that the darker side of the question is contrary to reason

"Daughter," said Riccabocca, drawing Vio-—let us look to the brighter. In the first place—” lante to his side, with caressing arm-"Daughter! Mark, how they who turn toward the south can still find the sunny side of the land

"Oh, father, father!" cried Violante passionately, "you to whom I once came for comfort in every childish sorrow! Do not talk to me with

this cutting levity. See, I lay my head upon | round as if taking a last farewell of joy, and peace, your breast-I put my arms around you-and and hope on earth, and then approaching her now, can you reason ine into misery ?" father with a firm step, she said "I never re"Child, child, do not be so wayward. belled, father; I did but entreat. What you say is my law now, as it has ever been; and come what may, never shall you hear complaint or murmur from me. Poor father, you will suffer more than I shall. Kiss me!"

About an hour afterward, as the short day closed in, Harley, returning from his solitary wanderings, after he had parted from Helen, encountered on the terrace, before the house, Lady Lansmere and Audley Egerton arm-in-arm.

Harley had drawn his hat over his brows, and his eyes were fixed on the ground, so that he did not see the group upon which he came unawares, until Audley's voice started him from his reverie.

Strive, at least, against a prejudice that you can not defend. My Violante, my darling, this is no trifle. | Here I must cease to be the fond, foolish father, whom you can do what you will with. Here I am Alphonso Duke di Serrano; for here my honor as noble, and my word as man, are involved. I, then but a helpless exile-no hope of fairer prospects before me-trembling like a coward at the wiles of my unscrupulous kinsman-grasping at all chances to save you from his snares-I myself offered your hand to Randal Leslie-offered, promised, pledged it;—and now that my fortunes seem assured, my rank in all likelihood restored, my foe crushed, my fears at rest-now, does it become me to retract what I myself had urged? It is not the noble, it is the parvenu, who has only to grow rich, in order to forget those whom in poverty he hailed as his friends.* Is it for me to make the poor excuse, never heard on the lips of an Italian prince, 'that I can not command the obedience of my child,'--subject myself to the galling answer-' Duke of Serrano, you could once command that obedience, when, in exile, "It is true," said Harley; "but you, who know penury, and terror, you offered me a bride without that, once engaged in public affairs, one has no a dower.' Child-Violante-daughter of ances-heart left for the ties of private life, will excuse tors on whose honor never slander set a stain, I me. call on you to redeem your father's plighted word."

"Father, must it be so? Is not even the convent open to me? Nay, look not so coldly on me. If you could but read my heart! And, oh! I feel so assured of your own repentance hereafter-so assured that this man is not what you believe him. I so suspect that he has been playing throughout some secret and perfidious. part."

"Ha!" interrupted Riccabocca, "Harley has perhaps infected you with that notion."

"No-no. But is not Harley-is not Lord L'Estrange one whose opinion you have cause to esteem? And if he distrust Mr. Leslie-"

"Let him make good his distrust by such proof as will absolve my word, and I shall share your own joy. I have told him this. I have invited him to make good his suspicions-he puts me off.

He can not do so," added Riccabocca, in a dejected tone; "Randal has already so well explained all that Harley deemed equivocal. Violante, my name and my honor rest in your hands. Cast them away if you will; I can not constrain you, and I can not stoop to implore. Noblesse oblige-With your birth you took its duties. Let them decide between your vain caprice and your father's solemn remonstrance." Assuming a sternness that he was far from feeling, and putting aside his daughter's arms, the exile walked away.

"My dear Harley," said the ex-minister, with a faint smile, "you must not pass us by, now that you have a moment of leisure from the cares of the election. And Harley, though we are under the same roof, I see you so little." Lord L'Estrange darted a quick glance toward his mother-a glance that seemed to say, "You leaning on Audley'■ arm! Have you kept your promise?" And the eye that met his own reassured him.

And this election is so important!"

"And you, Mr. Egerton," said Lady Lansmere, "whom the election most concerns, seem privileged to be the only one who appears indifferent to success."

"Ay-but you are not indifferent ?" said Lord L'Estrange, abruptly.

"No. How can I be so, when my whole future career may depend on it?"

Harley drew Egerton aside. "There is one voter you ought at least to call upon and thank. He can not be made to comprehend that, for the sake of any relation, even for the sake of his own son, he is to vote against the Blues-against you; I mean, of course, Nora's father, John Avenel. His vote and his son-in-law's gained your majority at your first election."

EGERTON. "Call on John Avenel! Have you called ?"

HARLEY (calmly.)-"Yes. Poor old man, his mind has been affected ever since Nora's death. But your name, as the candidate for the borough at that time-the successful candidate for whose triumph the joy-bells chimed with her funeral knell-your name brings up her memory; and he talks in a breath of her and of you. Come, let us walk together to his house; it is close by the Park Lodge."

The drops stood on Audley's brow. He fixed his dark handsome eyes, in mournful amaze, upon Harley's tranquil face.

"Harley, at last, then, you have forgotten the

Violante paused a moment, shivered, looked Past." * "Quando 'l villano è divenuto ricco

Non ha (i. e., riconosce) parente nè amico."

Italian Proverb,

"No; but the present is more imperious. Al my efforts are needed to requite your friendship. You stand against her brother-yet her father

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