The dowager lady Seymour, a weak woman, but indulgent parent, was easily prevailed on by her lovely daughter, to choose London for her place of residence; and when Sir Henry married, their visits to Deane Hall, which had never been frequent entirely ceased. Miss Seymour meantime took every advantage of the opportunities her new line of life afforded. She cultivated with assiduity and success every brilliant accomplishment, and was admired even more than her own vanity, and her mother's blind partiality, had taught her to expect. Her pretensions rose in proportion to her success; and at one time she fancied nothing less than a ducal coronet could render the chains of matrimony supportable. At last, however, after a thousand schemes and speculations, in a moment of pique, she accepted the title of viscountess, which was all Lord Eltondale had to offer, except a splendid temporary establishment; as nearly all his property was entailed on his son by a former marriage. Indeed, so dissimilar were their tastes, characters, and pursuits, that their union was a seven days' wonder; and would not, perhaps, ever have taken place, had not Miss Seymour, in the prosecution of a far different plan, at first unguardedly encouraged, or rather provoked, Lord Eltondale's addresses; and he, "good easy man," _had not time_ to develope the cause of the flattering selection. Lord Eltondale was one of those unoffending, undistinguished mortals, who would most probably have returned to his original clay unnoticed and unwept, had not fortune, in one of her most sportive moods, hung a coronet on his brow, and thus dragged the Cymon into observation. He possessed neither talents nor acquirements, and held "the harmless tenour of his way" in equal mean betwixt vice and virtue. By nature he was a gourmand, and by fashion a farmer; for, strange to say, amongst the other changes this century has produced, not the least remarkable is the insatiable ambition of our peers to rival--not their ancestors--but their coachmen and ploughmen. But, even in the only science Lord Eltondale affected to understand, his learning was only superficial: he delighted in going through the whole farming vocabulary; could talk for hours of threshing machines, and drilling machines, and Scotch ploughs, and bush harrows; particularly if he was so fortunate as to meet with an auditor, whose learning on those subjects did not transcend his own. He was also an inimitable judge of the peculiar merit of sheep and oxen, when they were transformed into beef and mutton: but of real useful agriculture, that art which is one of England's proudest boasts, he only knew enough to entitle him to imitate a clown in appearance, and to constitute him an honorary member of different farming societies; which, besides procuring him sundry good dinners, particularly suited the supineness of his disposition, by giving him an excuse, "_De ne rien faire, en toujours faisant des riens_[5]."