WYLDER'S HAJVD.
adds, it will then be ^uite understood that he has acted
neither from caprice, nor from any motive other than
self-preservation. I assure you, my Lord, that is the
identical phrase he employs — self-preservation. I all
along suspected, or, rather, I mean, supposed, that Mr.
Wylder had been placed in this matter under coercion —
a — threat."
"A little more wine?" asked Lord Chelford, after
another interval.
"No — no more, I thank you. Your lordship's very
good, and the wine, I may say, excellent — delicious
claret; indeed, quite so; but it grows late, I rather think,
and the trustees of our little Wesleyan chapel — we've got
a little into debt in that quarter, I am sorry to say — and
I promised to advise with them this evening at nine o'clock.
They have called me to counsel more than once, poor
fellows; and so, with your lordship's permission, I'll with-
draw."
Lord Chelford walked with him to the steps. It was a
beautiful night >— very little moon, but that and the stars
wonderfully clear and bright, and all things looking so soft
and airy.
"Try one of these," said the peer, presenting his cigar
case.
Larkin, with a glow of satisfaction, took one of these
noble cigars, and rolled it in his fingers, and smelt it.
"Fragrant—wonderfully fragrant!" he observed,
meekly, with a connoisseur's shake of the head.
The night was altogether so charming that Lord Chel-
ford was tempted. So he took his cap, and lighted his
cigar, too, and strolled a little way with the attorney.
He walked under the solemn trees — the same under
whose airy groyning Wylder and Lake had walked away
together on that noteworthy night on which Mark had last