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Rh any thing that was his. He would have felt none of his brother's sensitiveness in revealing the dearest and deepest secret of his heart; none of his remorseful fear of giving pain to his father.

Who has not observed in the daily intercourse of domestic life, that the very subject we have been striving to avoid, or planning to disclose, is sure to defeat our best-laid scheme, and start up before us when least expected? Thus it happened in the present case.

"I had hoped," said Sir Robert, turning suddenly from the window which commanded one of those wide panoramic views where hill and dale, dwelling, heath, and road, mingle together, "to have drawn our old alliance with yonder house yet closer; but individual hatreds are the legacies left by civil war—strange how public can be stronger than private feeling! The playmate of my boyhood, the companion of my first campaign in the Low Countries, he who wedded with my sister, is now worse than a stranger; we meet in the highway, and each passes on the other side. The present is embittered, not softened, by the memories of the past. Lord Maltravers has maintained an ostensibly neutral position; but all his predilections are in favour of the cavaliers. The consciousness that