The new-comer was a fashionably-dressed young man, with a certain air about him as if he were somebody, and knew it--he was good-looking, had dark hair, most desirably curling whiskers; and, though he was in a morning costume, was evidently “got up” regardless of expense. He opened his large eyes and stared with a look of languid wonder at Lewis, then, turning to Frere, he said, “Ah! I did not know you were engaged, Richard, or I would have allowed your old lady to announce me in due form; as it was, I thought, in my philanthropy, to save her a journey upstairs was a good deed, for she is getting a little touched in the wind. May I ask,” he continued, glancing at Lewis’s bare arm, “were you literally, and not figuratively, bleeding your friend?” “Not exactly,” replied Frere, laughing. “But you must know each other: this is my particular friend, Lewis Arundel, whom I was telling you of,--Lewis, my cousin Charles Leicester, Lord Ashford’s youngest son.” “Worse luck,” replied the gentleman thus introduced; “younger sons being one of those unaccountable mistakes of Nature which it requires an immense amount of faith to acquiesce in with proper orthodoxy: the popular definition of a younger son’s portion, ‘A good set of teeth, and nothing to eat,’ shows the absurdity of the thing. Where do you find any other animal in such a situation? Where----But perhaps we have scarcely time to do the subject proper justice at present; I have some faint recollection of your having asked me to dine at half-past six, on the strength of which I cut short my canter in the park, and lost a chance of inspecting a prize widow, whom Sullivan had marked down for me!” “Why, you don’t mean to say it is as late as that?” exclaimed Frere. “Thomas Aquinas has taken longer to splice than I was aware of; to be sure, his back was dreadfully shattered. Excuse me half a minute; I’ll just wash the paste off my hands, make myself decent, and be with you in no time.” As he spoke he left the room. “What a life for a reasonable being to lead!” observed Leicester, flinging himself back in Frere’s reading-chair. “Now that fellow was as happy with his paste-pot as I should be if some benevolent individual in the Fairy Tale and Good Genius line were to pay my debts and marry me to an heiress with £10,000 a year. An inordinate affection for books will be that man’s destruction. You have known him some years, I think, Mr. Arundel?” Lewis replied in the affirmative, and Leicester continued--