"Yes; a solemn, dreary, dandified fellow, whom I met at Chillingham’s shootings in the north, and invited to spend the last weeks of his leave of absence here, as we were to have you with us; and he spared no pains to impress upon me that he was a particular chum of yours." "Is he Captain Travers—Vaughan Travers? He is on leave." "No; he is Lieutenant De Warr Berkeley." "Berkeley!" I repeated, with some disgust, and with an emotion of such inconceivable annoyance that I could scarcely conceal it; for decidedly he was the last man of ours whom I should have liked to find domesticated at Calderwood Glen. Berkeley was well enough to meet with in men’s society, at mess, on parade, on the turf, or in the hunting-field; but though handsome and perfectly well-bred, for his manners were generally unexceptionable, he was not a man for the drawing-room. He was master of a splendid fortune, which was left him by his father, a plain old Scotchman, who had begun life as a drayman, and whose patronymic was simply John Dewar Barclay. He became a wealthy brewer, and somehow his son like all such _parvenus_, despising his name, was gazetted to the lancers as De Warr Berkeley, and as such his name figured in the "Army List." The carefully-acquired fortune of the plodding old brewer he spent freely, and without being lavish, though as an Eton boy, and afterwards as a gentleman commoner of Christchurch, he had plunged into dissipation that made his name proverbial. He was one of those systematic _roués_ whom prudent mothers would carefully exclude from the society of their daughters, nathless his commission, his cavalry uniform, his fortune, his decidedly handsome person and bearing, which had all the "tone of society"—whatever that may mean. Hence I was rather provoked to find that the kind and well-meaning but blundering old baronet had, as a favour to me, installed him at Calderwood, as a friend for my pretty cousin Cora, and an admirer of Lady Louisa. As I thought over all this, her name must have escaped me, for my uncle roused me from a reverie by saying— "Yes; she is a charming, a splendid girl, really! A little too stately, perhaps; but I would rather have my little rosebud, Cora, with her peculiar winning ways. Lady Louisa may be all head—as I believe she is; but our Cora is all heart, Newton—all heart!" "And Lady Louisa is all head, you think, uncle?" "I could see that at a glance—yes, with half an eye; and yet there are times when I wish Cora had been a boy——" My uncle leaned on his stick, and sighed.