and permitted poor Peggy to throw her arms round his neck and press him to her heart, for the first and last time in her life, he flung open the door, and calling up the officers, delivered himself into their hands.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

"Though some make light of libels, yet you may see by them how the wind sits: as, take a straw and throw it up into the air, you shall see by that which way the wind is, which you shall not do by casting up a stone. More solid things do not shew the complexion of the times so well as ballads and libels."-SELDEN.

In the meantime, whilst these things were acting in London, the new tenants of Eastlake Castle had been making acquaintance with their neighbours, and had themselves become to these same neighbours a source of infinite curiosity, wonder, perplexity, admiration, approbation, disapprobation, condemnation,— and, in one word, gossip.

"What do you think of them, Lady Dalton?" inquired Mrs. Grenville.

"Why, it would take a long time to tell

what I think, in detail," replied Lady Dalton, "but if you will accept my opinion en gros, I like them very well."

"I think he's so handsome!" said Miss Dalton.

"Has been, you mean," rejoined Lionel Lorton, who was young, and thought himself very good looking.

"Oh, no, I don't," replied Miss Dalton. "I think he never can have been handsomer than he is now; perhaps never so handsome.'

"Young ladies have certainly an extraordinary taste in beauty," said Augustus Dalton, her brother. 66 They appear to find a particular charm in wrinkles and grey hair." "No, we don't," replied Miss Dalton; "but we find a particular charm in expression, which, in men especially, is extremely apt to improve with age; and grey hairs and wrinkles cannot

spoil it."

"But Mr. Rivers must have been handsome at every period of his life," observed Lady Dalton; "and although he looks prematurely old, and bears in his countenance the marks of much suffering, the noble features and the lofty expression still remain."

"It is very singular that the latter should

remain in a man who has passed his life at the gaming table," remarked Sir James Dalton.

"Why," said Lord Lorton, "Rivers differed at play from almost any man I have ever seen. He encountered both good and ill fortune with extraordinary equanimity. He never lost his temper, and never seemed much depressed or much elated."

"It is very singular that a man should have risked all he had, and reduced himself and his family to beggary, for what afforded him so little excitement," said Lady Dalton.

"I don't say that play did not afford him excitement," returned Lord Lorton, "but only that that excitement never amounted to intoxication or despair. He seemed generally absorbed in calculations; and I have heard it suggested that his love of play arose less from the desire of gain, or the need of excitement, than from the curiosity of a speculative mind that delighted in the doctrine of chances; in which case the results, though equally pernicious as regarded his fortune and the prospects of his family, would be less injurious to his own character."

"His wife and daughters seemed extremely attached to him," said Lady Dalton.

"I don't wonder at it; he's so graceful and so elegant," said Miss Dalton.

"Well, I should care very little for the graces and elegances of a man who had reduced me to beggary, nor for his beauty either," said Miss Grieves, a maiden lady of large fortune and small mind.

"I don't agree with you," said Lady Dalton. "It would be no consolation to be reduced to beggary by a brute, but a great aggravation, I think."

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"Assuredly," said Lady Lorton; every virtue and grace and elegance are minor virtues must be taken into the account, and subtracted from the amount of ill."

"Besides, we can bear so much for the sake of those we love," rejoined Miss Dalton; “and Mr. Rivers is so lovable."

"Yes," replied Lady Dalton, "think how much resentment must have been subdued, and how much forbearance and forgiveness engendered by his amenities."

"In fine, ladies," said Mr. Grenville, "we are to understand that, provided a gentleman be handsome, graceful, and elegant, he may reduce his family to the workhouse, without