I bowed and left the room, passed through the ante-chamber and passage into the apartment where the rest of the candidates were waiting, and thence made my exit with some words of Mr Maxey's dancing and humming in my ears,--"_so we're plucked again, old boy!_" Between this scene and the next passage of my life, which I shall sketch or the reader's benefit, there was an interval of several years. I had been abroad most of the time, and had very nearly managed to forget my university misfortune. There was no occasion to revert to the bishop, for my elder brother died, and I stepped into his place--the family living being duly put out to nurse for my brother Tom. From the proximate parson, I had become the bachelor heir, with rooms in Piccadilly, a groom, and a brougham. One day--it was in the course of my first season in town--I was dining with Jobson in Hamilton Place. Why I went so frequently to Jobson's, any body who remembers Emily Jobson, and what an angel she looked in that lilac silk, will easily guess. I had flattered myself I was not prospering badly with her. But I knew there was a rival in the field--no other person than my old friend Swetter, then a rising junior of five-and-thirty at the chancery bar. We were running on a _tie_, as I fancied--Swetter and I. The dear girl was, I am sure, very much puzzled to decide between us; and I often thought I could see, by the expression of her face, that she was balancing Swetter, his advantages and disadvantages, his possible peerage, and the necessity entailed on his wife of staying in London through the winter, against me and my little place in Surrey. And all the time, I had an uneasy consciousness that my rival could get the start, if he pleased, by confiding to Emily certain awkward antecedents of mine, known to the reader. But, to do him justice, he was too much of a gentleman to head me by such means. This I knew, and though at this very dinner-party he was sitting opposite Emily and myself, and looking exquisitely uncomfortable every time I whispered in her ear between the spoonfuls of _bisque d'écrivisses_, I felt certain that even greater provocation would not tempt him to peach. So all went smoothly--as smoothly as things ought to go at one of Jobson's admirable dinners. But towards the middle of the second course, Jobson's voice, which had been growing gradually louder since we sat down, became so overpowering as to beat down and absorb all other conversation. He was talking about Cambridge and his son Plantagenet. Jobson is a _nouveau riche_ (some of his friends call him Tyburn Jobson, because he made his money in hemp), and rather unnecessarily fond of introducing the now well-known facts that Plantagenet is at the university, and Tudor in the Guards. So, Jobson giving the cue, Cambridge became the text of the general conversation. Glauber, who stammers horridly, and, like most stammering men, takes every opportunity of telling long and