`Are they both yours to renounce? France may be, but is the property? It is scarcely worth mentioning; but, is it yet?'

`I had no intention, in the words I used, to claim it yet. If it passed to me from you, to-morrow---

`Which I have the vanity to hope is not probable.'

`--or twenty years hence---'

`You do me too much honour,' said the Marquis; `still, I prefer that supposition.'

`--I would abandon it, and live otherwise and elsewhere. It is little to relinquish. What is it but a wilderness of misery and ruin?'

`Hah!' said the Marquis, glancing round the luxurious room. `To the eye it is fair enough, here; but seen in its integrity, under the sky, and by the daylight, it is a crumbling tower of waste, mismanagement, extortion, debt, mortgage, oppression, hunger, nakedness, and suffering.'

`Hah!' said the Marquis again, in a well-satisfied manner.

`If it ever becomes mine, it shall be put into some hands better qualified to free it slowly (if such a thing is possible) from the weight that drags it down, so that the miserable people Who cannot leave it and who have been long wrung to the last point of endurance, may, in another generation, suffer less; bat it is not for me. There is a curse on it, and on all this land.'

`And you?' said the uncle. `Forgive my curiosity; do you, under your new philosophy, graciously intend to live?'

`I must do, to live, what others of my countrymen, even with nobility at their backs, may have to do some day--work.'

`In England, for example?'

`Yes. The family honour, sir, is safe from me in this country. The family name can suffer from me in no other, for I bear it in no other.'

The ringing of the bell had caused the adjoining bedchamber to be lighted. It now shone brightly, through the door of communication. The Marquis looked that way, and listened for the retreating step of his valet.

`England is very attractive to you, seeing how indifferently you have prospered there,' he observed then, turning his calm face to his nephew with a smile.

`I have already said, that for my prospering there, I am sensible I may be indebted to you, sir. For the rest, it is my Refuge.'

`They say, those boastful English, that it is the Refuge of many. You know a compatriot who has found a Refuge there? A Doctor?'

`Yes.'

`With, a daughter?'

`Yes,' said the Marquis. `You are fatigued. Good-night!'

As he bent his head in his most courtly manner, there was a secrecy in his smiling face, and he conveyed an air of mystery to those words, which struck the eyes and ears of his nephew forcibly. At the same