Foljambe must have been, of a thing of such importance, when he promoted so urgently the suit of his friends.

This puzzled me more than ever. I walked up and down the coffee-room, unmindful of the gaze of strangers. My dinner had long been on the table, cold and untouched. I read the paper again and again, but with no other result than the same credibility attached to it, and the same wishes not to believe it.

At length I called for pen, ink, and paper; I copied the paragraph, and inclosed it in a letter to Granville, imploring him, as he valued my recovery, to tell me if the news was true; assuring him, if it was, that it would be far better to know it than the excitement of uncertainty.

I began a letter also to Lady Hungerford upon the same subject; but exclusive of the freedom of that intrusion, my pride forbade my going on, and my chaise being announced, I threw myself into it, paying for a dinner I had not eaten, and scarcely recovered my clearness of thought till I got to North Allerton.

CHAPTER XVI.

I PARTIALLY RECOVER FROM MY ALARM, AND AM DIVERTED FROM IT BY MEETING AN OLD SCHOOLFELLOW, WHO GIVES ME INFORMATION RESPECTING THE MARQUESS.

My good lord, have great care

I be not found a talker.

SHAKSPEARE.-Henry VIII.

THIRTY miles is a long way for a man, who never had a hope, to continue to resist proofs that he is hopeless. What was there, after all, to make my case different from what it was when I left London? Strange that I had not asked myself this question before! But the surprise; the suddenness; the encounter with the very man himself; his handsome face; his title; his mustachios !-All this threw me off my guard.

"Who could be wise, amazed, temperate and furious,

Loyal and neutral in a moment? No man.

The expedition of my violent love

Outran the power of reason."

By degrees, however, reason resumed the upper hand (that is, as much as ever it had had it), and grew stronger and stronger as I progressed farther and farther from the scene of my late encounter, and the neighbourhood which it always maddened me to think of. I became cooler for my thirty miles' reflection; and, by the time I got to Newcastle, the thousand ships I saw in the Tyne, and the thousand coal-carts on the roads, all so incompatible with romance (for who ever heard of love in a coal-pit ?), dissipated most of my doubts and anxieties, and brought all the realities of the world once more before me.

I again began to think of Lord Rochfort, and his disappointments, so different from my own; and felicitated myself that I had not yet the mortifications of ambition to add to those of

love.

At Newcastle I found that I had still fifty miles to Belford Tower, and had therefore still more time to recover myself, and forget the horrors inspired by Prince Adolphus and his mustachios. In effect, I made such good use of the opportunity, that by the time I got to Alnwick, I was in a very fair frame of mind to execute my political commission.

The princely Alnwick, too, brought very different scenes before me-Hotspur and the Douglases—

and I felt very different from a modern lover and a little secretary.

This was farther confirmed by the sight of Warkworth Castle, though in ruins, which elevated me into my ancestor, Lord Bardolfe himself. For it was here (and I endeavoured to trace out the identical spot) that old Northumberland had walked forth into his orchard, when Bardolfe's sanguine soul communicated to him the news of a Shrewsbury victory, afterwards so fearfully contradicted.

"Who keeps the gate? ho! Where is the earl?" said I, as I approached the venerable remains; and as no porter was there to answer me, I answered myself with,

"His lordship has walked forth into the orchard.

Please it, your honour, knock but at the gate,

And he himself will answer."

It is certain I never felt the Bardolfe and Clifford blood tingle in my veins so powerfully as it did in the recollection of the interesting scene which followed with Northumberland, in the very place where it was supposed to have happened. Nor was I a little proud of my ancestor for his devotion to the cause, for which he declared himself ready, having failed once, to peril his life again, and actually lost it.

"I inherit with his blood," said I to myself, "all

Lord Bardolfe's sanguine temper: pray heaven, I inherit not his misfortunes! "

As I had, however, twenty miles farther to get to my journey's end, and meant to take a hasty dinner at Alnwick, to which I was obliged to return to resume the road, I was forced to bid adieu to all these honouring reminiscences, and hurry away.

What was my surprise, on re-entering the town, to be accosted by an old Sedbergh schoolfellow, and fellow-collegian at Queen's, of the name of Parrot, who had left us to join partnership with his father, an attorney, and was now settled at Belford, only three miles from the castle.

Though I had had no intimacy with him, and he had a sort of fluent pertness about him, not over agreeable, yet as it was not ill-natured, and he seemed sincerely glad to see me, I could not refuse his proposal (being at the same inn too) to dine together, which produced much conversation.

Having heard of my public situation, when he learned my destination, "Hah!" said he. "Indeed! going to the marquess's. Political business, I suppose. But you will be out there, I can tell you, whatever it be, for the marquess has done with politics can't abide 'em; hates 'em like poison; nay, says all politicians are rogues, and that there