"I was not aware that you knew the earl." "Losing my gillies—I think you call them in Scotland—one evening in the dark, I lost my way, and luckily stumbled on his lordship’s shooting quarters, in a wild and savage place, with one of your infernally unpronounceable Scotch names." "Oh, you think changes more euphonious at times; but I suppose your father, honest man, could have pronounced it with ease," said I, quietly, for Berkeley’s, or Barclay’s affectation of being an Englishman was to me always a source of amusement. "You have to learn Russ yet, and it will prove, doubtless, more unpalatable than the tongue your father spoke. In the north, did you appear _en montagnad_?" "Hey—haw, the devil! no; as the Irish Gil Blas says, ’Every one’s legs can’t afford publicity,’ and mine are among the number. Leather breeches, when I don the pink, must be all the length. I don’t care about going, though Lady Louisa pressed me hard to join the Mac Quaig, the Laird of Mac Gooligan, and other natives in tartan at a gathering. I had a letter from Wilford yesterday. He writes of a famous match between Jack Studhome and Craven, on which the whole mess had a heavy book, that great stakes were pending, and that Craven won, scoring forty-two running off the red ball; and considering that the pockets of the table were not bigger than an egg-cup, I think Craven a trump." "I heard something of this match at morning parade on the day I left; but being a bad stroke, you know, I seldom play billiards." "Why was Howard’s bay mare scratched at the last regimental race?" "Don’t know," said I, so dryly that he bit his nether lip. "Some nice people visiting here," said he, staring at me steadily, so that his eyeglass glared in the light of the lustre, which was now lit; "and some very odd ones too. Lady Loftus is here, you see, in all her glory, and with her usual come-kiss-me-if-you-dare kind of look." "Berkeley, how can you speak thus of one in her position?" "Well, you-don’t-dare-to-do-so-again sort of expression." "She is my uncle’s guest; not a girl in a cigar-shop or a casino!" said I, with growing _hauteur_. "Sir Nigel’s guest—haw—so am I, and I mean to make the best use of my time as such. Nice girl, Miss Wilford, from York—cousin of Wilford of ours—a doocid good style of girl; but have no intentions in that quarter—can’t afford to chuck myself away, as I once heard my groom observe." "You must learn to quote another style of people to make yourself understood here. You don’t mean to infer that you have any intentions concerning Lady Louisa!" said I, with an air which was really impertinent. "Why not?" he asked, failing completely to see it. "I have often such attacks, or affections of the heart, as she has given me." "How?" "Just as I had the measles or the chicken-pox in childhood—a little increase of the pulse, a little restlessness at night, and then one gets over it."