To “come back” with tastes like these was a mistake, but to attempt to justify them was infinitely worse. Sir Within began to lecture his country neighbours on their hard-heartedness and ungenerosity. He enumerated scores of people who had taken little scampers into vice, and come back to live more gorgeously on virtue. What anecdotes he had of ministers who had cheated at cards! Great men, excellent men in all other respects, unimpeachable in all their public acts, and pillars of the State they pertained to.. He told of a society whose very laxity saved all friction, and which went on smoothly--for it always went downwards. The consequence may be anticipated. His neighbours--at least their wives--voted him an old monster of vice, corrupted by half a century of foreign iniquities. They refused his invitations, and neglected his advances. His presents of fruit--such fruit too!--were declined, and his society strictly avoided. The Vyners, who only came to the neighbourhood for a few weeks in the year, scarcely knew anything of local feelings, and only heard that he never went out, and saw little company at home--facts which, when they came to be acquainted with him, struck them as strange, for he was eminently one made for society, and seemed to feel the raciest enjoyment in it. He had all that peculiar go and eagerness in him which pertains to men who talk well, and feel that they have this power. Perhaps my reader may have met such a character--not that they exist as a class--but if he has done so, he will acknowledge that it is a very charming form of selfishness, and gifted with marvellous powers of pleasing. At all events, Lady Vyner and her sister delighted in him--most ungrateful had they been if they had not--for never was courtesy more polished, never homage more devoted or more respectful. Royalty could not have been received by him with a greater deference, and now, as they drove up to the massive entrance of the castle, and the sharp clatter of the ponies’ feet awoke the echoes of the solemn court-yard, Sir Within was promptly at his post to help them to descend; and as the wind blew his long white hair backwards, he stooped to kiss their hands with all the reverence of a courtier. “Do you know, dear ladies,” said he, “that I had a vision of this visit? It was revealed to me--I cannot say how--that you would come over here to-day, and I told Bernais to prepare the orangery; for,” said I, “Bernais, I will offer _ces dames_ no luncheon, but will insist on their taking an early dinner.” “What a tempting proposal!” said Lady Vyner, looking at Georgina, whose fiat was always needed to every project. “I vote for being tempted,” said Georgina, gaily; “but what do I see there--something new?”