common. That of the queen was passionate,
upon the lip; that of the countess shone coldly
from the eye. Pride was, indeed, the dominant
principle of her being—the pivot upon which
her every thought, word, and action turned. She
had been a great heiress. She was the daughter,
wife, and mother of an Earl. She was of the
ancient line of Holme-Pierpoint; and the blood
of the Holme-Pierpoints had mingled once with
that of the Plantagenets, and twice with that of
the Tudors. The Countess of Castletowers
never forgot these things for a moment. It is
doubtful if they were even absent from her
dreams. Her dignity, her grace, her suavity of
manner, were perfect; but they were all based
upon her pride, like that royal bower of which
the poet dreamed:

         A sunny pleasure-dome, with caves of ice.

Lady Castletowers had not loved her husband;
but she loved her son as much as it was in her
nature to love anything. The husband had
squandered her dower; insulted her by open
neglect; and died abroad overwhelmed with
debt and discredit, within the fifth year of their
marriage. The son had reverenced, admired,
idolised her from his cradle. He had never given
her cause for one moment's anxiety since the
day of his birth. As a little child, he thought
her the most noble and gracious of God's
creatures—as he grew in years, his faith in her
remained undiminished, and his love became that
beautiful love which mingles the chivalrous
respect of the man with the tender homage of the
son. It was not, therefore, surprising that whatever
waif of human weakness had fallen to her
ladyship's portion should have been garnered up
for this one object. While he was yet very
young, her affection for him was invested at
compound interest, and left to accumulate till
he should become of an age to deserve it;
but as he arrived at manhood, his life
became identified with her own. All her pride
and ambition centred in him. He must marry
well—that is to say, richly and nobly. He
must make a position in the Upper House. He
must some day be a cabinet minister; and he
must get that step in the peerage which the
Duke of York had once solicited for his father,
but which George the Fourth had refused to
ratify. Lady Castletowers had set her heart on
obtaining these things for her son, but above all
else had she set her heart upon the last. She
would have sold ten years of her own life to see
the marquis's coronet upon his carriage panels.
When the clergyman in church put up that
prayer towards the end of the morning service
which implores fulfilment for the desires and
petitions of the congregation, "as may be most
expedient for them," Lady Castletowers
invariably reverted in the silence of her thoughts
to the four pearls and the four strawberry-leaves;
and never asked herself if there could be
profanity in the prayer.

ln the mean while, the young Earl accepted
all this pride and ambition for the purest
maternal affection. He did not care in the least
about the marquisate; he was somewhat
indifferent to the attractions of the Upper House;
and he had almost made up his mind that he
would not, if he could, be burdened with the
toils and responsibilities of office. But he would
not have grieved his mother by a hint of these
heresies for the universe. He even blamed
himself for his own want of ambition, and soothed
his troubled conscience every now and then by
promising himself that he would very soon
"read up" one of the popular financial topics,
and make another speech in the House.

But that question of the wealthy marriage was
to him the least agreeable of all his mother's
projects. There was some romance in the young
man's disposition, and he could not relish the
thought of adding to his own scanty acres by
means of his wife's dower. He would have
preferred to marry a village maiden for love, like the
Lord of Burleigh; or, at least, to have felt that
he was free to love like the Lord of Burleigh, if
he chose.

It was in this same spirit of romance that
Lord Castletowers had associated himself with
the Italian cause. He had, or fancied that
he had, a democratic bias. He was fond of
quoting the examples of the classic republics;
he had read Rousseau's Contrat Social,
and Godwin's Political Justice; and he had a
genuine English hatred of oppression, whatever
its form or aspect. Surrounded as he had been
since the hour of his birth by a triple rampart
of conservatism, it is possible that democracy
possessed for this young nobleman the
stimulative charm of a forbidden luxury. He
certainly never confided the full extent of his
republican sympathies to his lady mother, and he
would have been far from grateful to any officious
friend who had presented her with a verbatim
report of certain of his most enthusiastic speeches.
Those speeches were delivered at meetings held
in obscure lecture-halls and institutes in
unaristocratic parts of London, and were remarkably
good speeches of their kind—vigorously
thought, and often felicitously expressed; but
their eloquence, nevertheless, was by no means
calculated to gratify the Countess of Castletowers.

On all questions of English polity, Lord Castletowers
was what is somewhat vaguely called a
"liberal conservative;" on all Italian subjects, a
thorough-going bonnet rouge. He would no
more have advocated universal suffrage in his
own country than he would have countenanced
slavery in Venetia; but he firmly believed in the
possible regeneration of the great Roman
republic, and avowed that belief with unhesitating
enthusiasm. Besides, his old college tastes and
associations were yet fresh upon him, and he
entertained all a young man's admiration for the Latin
heroes, poets, and historians. Nor were his
sympathies all so classical and remote. He was
keenly susceptible to those influences which