“Ah! yes, of course you must be curious to know. Well, the _dramatis persono_ is somewhat limited. First and foremost, the General,--you comprehend him, you say?” Lewis made a sign in the affirmative, and Leicester continued: “Then we have an awful personage, who I expect will be a severe trial to you--Miss Livingstone; she is a relation, an aunt I think, of the General’s late wife, who lives with him and keeps his house, and was the terror of my boyhood whenever I was staying down at Broadhurst. She never was over young, I believe; at least I can’t imagine her anything but middle-aged, and she must now be sixty or thereabouts. For the rest, she looks as if she had swallowed a poker, and, by some mysterious process of assimilation, become imbued with its distinguishing characteristics; for she is very stiff, very cold, and as far as I know utterly impenetrable, but of a stirring disposition withal, which leads her to interfere with everybody and everything. Lastly, there is my cousin Annie, the General’s only daughter; she inherits her mother’s beauty, her father’s pride, her great-aunt’s determination to have her own way, and the devil’s own love of teasing. To set against all this, I believe her to be thoroughly good and amiable, and everything of that kind; at all events she is a most bewitching girl, and bids fair, under judicious management, to become a very charming woman! fancy her mission is to reform my brother Bellefield and render him a steady married man, and I wish her joy of it. She comes into her mother’s fortune when she is of age, and the respective governors have set their hearts upon the match.” “And what says Lord Bellefield?” inquired Lewis listlessly. “Oh, Bell reckons she won’t be of age, and that the match can’t come off these four years, by which time he expects to be so hard up that he must marry somebody; and as there will be plenty of the needful, she will suit his book as well as any other.” “The young lady, of course, approves?” continued Lewis dreamily, untying a knot in the thong of Leicester’s whip. “Catch a woman refusing a coronet,” returned Leicester, as he pulled up at a house in Park Crescent so suddenly as almost to throw the bay on his haunches. “General Grant begs you will walk upstairs, Mr. Leicester. He is engaged at present, but desired me to say he particularly wishes to see you,” was the reply made by a most aristocratic butler to Leicester’s inquiry whether his master was at home. “Keep the bay moving, Tim. Now, Arundel, turn to the right--that’s it,” and suiting the action to the word, Charley the indolent leisurely descended from the cab, and crossing the “marble hall,” lounged up a wide staircase followed by Lewis.