beau[45]tiful, wayward, freedom-loving daughter mixing in the giddy whirl of London life, learning its ways and following its fashions, and he utterly failed to do so. She seemed indissolubly connected with the wild sea-coast, with the gloomy pine-woods, with the rugged independence of her sea-girt home. Monica a fashionable young countess, leading a gay life of social distraction! The thing seemed impossible.

[45]

But he had no time to indulge his imaginings farther. The door opened, and his guest was ushered in. The old earl rose and bade him welcome with his customary simple, stately courtesy. It was growing somewhat dark in that oak-panelled room, and for a minute or two he hardly distinguished the features of the stranger, but the voice and the words [46]in which the young man answered his greeting pleased his fastidious taste, and a haunting dread of which he had scarcely been fully aware faded from his mind at once and for ever in the first moment of introduction.

[46]

Lord Trevlyn heaved an unconscious sigh of relief when he resumed his seat, and was able to give a closer scrutiny to his guest. One glance at his face, figure, and dress, together with the pleasant sound of his voice, convinced Lord Trevlyn that this young man was a gentleman in the rather restricted sense in which he employed that elastic term.

He was a handsome, broad-shouldered, powerful man, with a fine figure, dark hair and moustache, dark blue eyes, frank and well-opened, a quiet, commanding air [47]and carriage, and that cast of countenance which plainly showed that the blood of the Trevlyns ran in his veins.

[47]

Lord Trevlyn eyed him with quiet satisfaction, and from the conversation that ensued he had no reason to rescind his favourable impression. Randolph Trevlyn was evidently a man of culture and refinement, with a mental capacity distinctly above the average. He was, moreover, emphatically a man of the world in its truest and widest sense—a man who has lived in the world, and studied it closely, learning thereby from its silent teaching the good and the evil thereof.

The two men talked for a time of the family to which they belonged, and the deaths that had lately taken place, bringing this young man so near to the title.

[48]

[48]

“The 

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