kept up their own fun till a very late hour of the night, where there was always an overhanging smell of tobacco, and whence, in the early mornings, there came such a roaring and clanging of shower-baths, and such a sound of hissing and sluicing and splashing, that you might have fancied yourself in the vicinity of an army of Tritons. Two o'clock on a hot afternoon at the end of September; and, with the exception of a few sportsmen, who are now reclining under a high hedge and lighting pipes, after a succulent repast of game-pie, cold partridge, and bitter beer, all the party at the Grange is assembled round the luncheon-table in the dining-room. That is Marmaduke Wentworth, the tall old man standing on the hearthrug, with his back towards the empty fire-grate. His head is perfectly bald and shining, and has but a fringe of crisp white hair; his features are what is called "aristocratic," well-shaped, and comely; his eyes are cold, clear, gray; his lips slightly full, and his teeth sound and regular. He is in his invariable morning dress,--a blue coat with brass buttons, a buff waistcoat, and gray trousers with gaping dog's-eared pockets, into which his hands are always plunged. Looking at him now, you would scarcely recognise the _roué_ of George the Fourth's time, the Poins to the wild Prince, the hero of a hundred intrigues and escapades. In heat and turmoil, in drinking, dicing, and dancing, Marmaduke Wentworth passed his early youth; and from this debauchery he was rescued by the single passion of his life. The object of that passion--his cousin, a lovely girl, whose innocence won the dissipated roisterer from his evil ways, and gave him new notions and new hopes--died within three months of their engagement; and from that day Wentworth became another man. He went abroad, and for ten years led a solitary studious life; returning to England, he brought with him his bookworm tastes; and it was long before he emerged from the seclusion of Bissett Grange, which he had inherited, and returned once more to London life. Even then, he sought his society in a very different set to that in which he had previously shone. George the Great was dead; sailor King William had followed him to the grave; and the new men fluttering round the court of the new Queen, setting fashions and issuing social ordinances, had been cradled children when Marmaduke Wentworth had copied Brummel's cravats, or listened to Alvanley's _bons mots_. Even had he continued a "dandy," he would have been displeased with the "swells" to whom the dandies had given place; and now, changed as he was into a disappointed elderly gentleman, with a bitter tongue and an intolerant spirit, his unsocial cynicism bored the new men, while their slangy flippancy disgusted him. So, in the phrase of the day, he "went in for a new excitement;" and, though his name and his appearance were as well known in London as those of the Duke of Wellington, there were but few people of his own status or