No longer the soldier adventurer, the leader of Grey Musketeers, compound of courtier and bravo—no longer the doubtful skipper of a suspicious craft, half-trader, half-pirate—Sir George Hamilton, with position, property, tenants, and influence, found himself a very different person from the Captain George who used to relieve guard at the Palais Royal, and lay ‘The Bashful Maid’ broadside on to a Spanish galleon deep in the water, with her colours down and her foresail aback, a rich prize and an easy prey. Ere the brigantine had dropped her anchor in the first English port she made, George received intelligence of his far-off kinsman’s death, and his own succession to a noble inheritance. It came at an opportune moment, and he was disposed to make the most of it. Therefore it was that Cerise (now Lady Hamilton) looked from the lofty terrace over many a mile of fair English scenery, much of which belonged, like herself, to the man she loved. They were fairly settled now, and had taken their established place—no lowly station—amongst their neighbours. Precedence had not, indeed, been yielded them without a struggle; for in the last as in the present century, detraction claimed a fair fling at all new-comers, and not what they were, but _who_ they were, was the important question amongst a provincial aristocracy, who made up by minute inquiry for the limited sphere of their research. At first people whispered that the husband was an adventurer and the wife an actress. Well, if not an actress, at least a dancing-girl, whom he had picked up in Spain, in Paris, in the West Indies, at Tangiers, Tripoli, or Japan! Lady Hamilton’s beauty, her refined manners, her exquisite dresses, warranted the meanest opinion of her in the minds of her own sex; and although, when they could no longer conceal from themselves that she was a Montmirail of the real Montmirails, they were obliged to own she had at least the advantage of a high birth, I doubt if they loved her any better than before. They pitied Sir George, they said, one and all—“He, if you like, was charming. He had been page to the great King; he had been adored by the ladies of the French Court; he had killed a Prince of the Blood in a duel; he had sacked a convent of Spanish nuns, and wore the rosary of the Lady Abbess under his waistcoat; he had been dreadfully wicked, but he was so polite! he had the _bel air_; he had the _tourneur Louis Quatorze_; he had the manners of the princes, and the electors, and the archdukes now passing away. Such men would be _impossible_ soon; and to think he could have been entrapped by that tawdry Frenchified Miss, with her airs and graces, her fans and furbelows, and yards of the best Mechlin lace on the dress she went gardening in! It was nothing to _them_, of course, that the man should have committed such an absurdity; but, in common humanity, they could not help being sorry for it, and, unless they were very much deceived, so was he!”