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210 become his friend. Through his noble rival, that is—(to make our reader's 'surety doubly sure')—through Lord Mauleverer, he had acquired his first lucrative office, a certain patronage from government, and his seat in parliament. If he had persevered at the Bar, rather than given himself entirely to state intrigues, it was only because his talents were eminently more calculated to advance him in the former path to honour, than in the latter. So devoted was he become to public life, that he had only permitted himself to cherish one private source of enjoyment,—his son. As no one, not even his brother, knew he had been married,—(during the two years of his disguised name, he had been supposed abroad,)—the appearance of this son made the only piece of scandal whispered against the rigid morality of his fair fame; but he himself, waiting his own time for avowing a legitimate heir, gave out that it was the orphan child of a dear friend whom he had known abroad; and the puritan demureness not only of life, but manner, which he assumed, gained a pretty large belief to the statement. This son Brandon idolized. As we have represented himself to