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The next day Sir Miles did not appear at breakfast,—not that he wasunwell, but that he meditated holding certain audiences, and on suchoccasions the good old gentleman liked to prepare himself. He belongedto a school in which, amidst much that was hearty and convivial, therewas much also that nowadays would seem stiff and formal, contrasting theother school immediately succeeding him, which Mr. Vernon represented,and of which the Charles Surface of Sheridan is a faithful and admirabletype. The room that Sir Miles appropriated to himself was, properlyspeaking, the state apartment, called, in the old inventories, "KingJames's chamber;" it was on the first floor, communicating with thepicture-gallery, which at the farther end opened upon a corridoradmitting to the principal bedrooms. As Sir Miles cared nothing forholiday state, he had unscrupulously taken his cubiculum in this chamber,which was really the handsomest in the house, except the banquet-hall,placed his bed in one angle with a huge screen before it, filled up thespace with his Italian antiquities and curiosities; and fixed hisfavourite pictures on the faded gilt leather panelled on the walls. Hismain motive in this was the communication with the adjoining gallery,which, when the weather was unfavourable, furnished ample room for hishabitual walk. He knew how many strides by the help of his crutch made amile, and this was convenient. Moreover, he liked to look, when alone,on those old portraits of his ancestors, which he had religiouslyconserved in their places, preferring to thrust his Florentine andVenetian masterpieces into bedrooms and parlours, rather than to dislodgefrom the gallery the stiff ruffs, doublets, and farthingales of hispredecessors. It was whispered in the house that the baronet, wheneverhe had to reprove a tenant or lecture a dependant, took care to have himbrought to his sanctum, through the full length of this gallery, so thatthe victim might be duly prepared and awed by the imposing effect of sostately a journey, and the grave faces of all the generations of St.John, which could not fail to impress him with the dignity of the family,and alarm him at the prospect of the injured frown of its representative.Across this gallery now, following the steps of the powdered valet,strode young Ardworth, staring now and then at some portrait more thanusually grim, more often wondering why his boots, that never creakedbefore, should creak on those particular boards, and feeling a quietcuriosity, without the least mixture of fear or awe as to what oldSquaretoes intended to say to him. But all feeling of irreverence ceasedwhen, shown into the baronet's room, and the door closed, Sir Miles rosewith a smile, and cordially shaking his hand, said, dropping thepunctilious courtesy of Mister: "Ardworth, sir, if I had a littleprejudice against you before you came, you have conquered it. You are afine, manly, spirited fellow, sir; and you have an old man's goodwishes,—which are no bad beginning to a young man's good fortune."
The colour rushed over Ardworth's forehead, and a tear sprang to hiseyes. He felt a rising at his throat as he stammered out some not veryaudible reply.
"I wished to see you, young gentleman, that I might judge myself what youwould like best, and what would best fit you. Your father is in thearmy: what say you to a pair of colours?"
"Oh, Sir Miles, that is my utmost ambition! Anything but law, except the
Church; anything but the Church, except the desk and a counter!"
The baronet, much pleased, gave h