"My cards," said Randal to himself, as with a deep-drawn sigh he resumed
his soliloquy, "are become difficult to play. On the one hand, to
entangle Frank into marriage with this foreigner, the squire could never
forgive him. On the other hand, if she will not marry him without the
dowry--and that depends on her brother's wedding this countrywoman--and
that countrywoman be, as I surmise, Violante, and Violante be this
heiress, and to be won by me! Tush, tush. Such delicate scruples in a
woman so placed and so constituted as Beatrice di Negra must be easily
talked away. Nay, the loss itself of this alliance to her brother, the
loss of her own dowry, the very pressure of poverty and debt, would
compel her into the sole escape left to her option. I will then follow
up the old plan; I will go down to Hazeldean, and see if there be any
substance in the new one; and then to reconcile both. Aha--the House of
Leslie shall rise yet from its ruin--and--"

Here he was startled from his revery by a friendly slap on the shoulder,
and an exclamation, "Why, Randal, you are more absent than when you used
to steal away from the cricket-ground, muttering Greek verses, at Eton."

"My dear Frank," said Randal, "you--you are so brusque, and I was just
thinking of you."

"Were you? And kindly, then, I am sure," said Frank Hazeldean, his
honest handsome face lighted up with the unsuspecting genial trust of
friendship; "and Heaven knows," he added, with a sadder voice, and a
graver expression on his eye and lip,--"Heaven knows I want all the
kindness you can give me!"

"I thought," said Randal, "that your father's last supply, of which I was
fortunate enough to be the bearer, would clear off your more pressing