with which we are concerned develops itself. Now, it comes to include, this business, in the process of its unfolding, a certain illustrious figure, with whose name we have dealt hitherto but in parenthesis. His Royal Highness the Duke of York was at this date a young man of twenty-seven, and somewhat notable, in a reckless community, for the comparative propriety of his conduct. At least, he kept his lapses within reasonable, if infrequent, bounds, and, in erring, showed some occasional capacity for shamefacedness. He had virtues--courage, truth to his word, fidelity, and application; vices--parsimony, excessive hauteur, and an implacable enmity for his foes. Yet, commonly master of himself, he possessed one cardinal weakness, and that showed itself in a remarkable susceptibility to feminine allurements--showed itself, I say, for he seemed unable to conceal it; he was, according to Grammont, the most completely unguarded ogler of his time. Fresh, unspoiled, and possessed of the double recommendation of having a husband, and notoriously an indifferent one, the little Countess with the rose-leaf face was not long, you may be sure, in attracting the rather prominent inquisition of those wandering orbs, and not altogether, be it said, without some flattered consciousness, on her part, of their interested scrutiny. The Duke, though austere to severity, was not an uncomely Stuart; he was tall, well formed, and the sallow melancholy of his look, when tempered to a soft occasion, could be sufficiently moving. Satisfied as to first impressions, he began to consider his further policy; and in the meantime he ogled. His ogling, it seemed, was not, in spite of its temerity, suspected by Hamilton. Perhaps Cousin George’s confidence in his own most-favoured position was too absolute to cherish a thought of any rival influence outside it. But, whatever the case, it is certain that, even if he observed, he gave himself no concern whatever about an ocular blandishment which was generally at the service of any _beaux yeux_ of a pattern finer than the common.