It did not require so much sagacity and penetration as Barrington at the time certainly possessed, to penetrate into the character of this young gentleman, and to predict the good consequences that might follow an intimacy with a young man of his rank, disposition, and family. Actuated by a sordid sense of the utility of such a connection to one in his circumstances, the adventurer employed all those base arts of flattery and insinuation of which he had been long a perfect master, to ingratiate himself with this gentleman; and in this design he succeeded to the utmost extent of his wishes. Barrington formed an artful tale, which he told as his own story, the purport of which was, that his father was a man of a noble family in Ireland, and illustrious in England, to which country he himself now came to study law in one of the inns of court, more, however, to avoid the ill-natured severity of a harsh, unrelenting step-mother, which rendered his paternal mansion in a great measure intolerable to him, than from any predilection for the profession to which he intended to apply himself, but the exercise of which the ample fortune that he was heir to would render unnecessary. The story took as well as could be desired by the inventor of it, and it was settled between him and his new friend that he should, on his arrival in town, enter himself of the Middle Temple, where Mr. H----n had some relations and a numerous acquaintance, to whom, he said, he should be happy to introduce a gentleman so eminently distinguished by his talents and his accomplishments, as well as by his fortune and birth, as Mr. Barrington was. It was also further agreed on between them, that they should travel together to London; and they accordingly the next day took a post-chaise at Parkgate, and continuing their journey by easy stages through Chester, Nantwich, and Coventry, where they stopped two or three days, arrived by the end of the week at the Bath coffee-house in Piccadilly, which, on the recommendation of the captain, who had been several times before in the metropolis, was fixed upon as their head-quarters for the remaining part of the summer.