I felt pleased and flattered by the whole events of the day; especially by the beauty, the charming frankness of Aurora, and the decided preference she showed for me; the more so that she was an object of no little attraction to the powdered beaux who crowded the court of the young king. And to think that my poor red coat eclipsed all their finery. Betimes next day I had my hair dressed by a fashionable perruquier; I took a promenade in Pall Mall, and left a card for a friend at White's Chocolate House. He was a brother of Douglas of ours, and belonged to the Scots Foot Guards, but was absent recruiting in Edinburgh. About mid-day, I presented myself at my cousin's mansion, old Sir Basil Gauntlet's town residence, in Piccadilly. It was one of the largest and best style of houses in that fashionable quarter. Master John Trot appeared at the door in answer to my summons, and opened it wide enough and with a sufficiently low bow, as I had exchanged my old, weather-beaten and bloodstained fighting-jacket, for a fashionable suit of French grey velvet, laced with silver. I found Aurora in the drawing-room, with her companion, a pleasing old gentlewoman in a towering _toupée_, high red-heeled shoes and black lace mittens--Madam Blythe (as she was named in the old Scoto-French fashion) a widow of the captain-lieutenant of Lord Ancrum's dragoons, who had been killed in action, so the poor woman's heart warmed towards me as a gentleman of the cloth. After a few of the ordinary remarks about the weather, followed by a few more about the ceremony of yesterday, luncheon was announced by John Trot, and we descended by a splendid staircase, hung with effigies of departed Gauntlets, depicted by Lely and Kneller, in wigs and corslets, to the dining-room, past a line of servants in livery, aiguiletted and covered with braid, like state trumpeters. Over the carved marble mantelpiece hung a portrait of an old gentleman, in a square-skirted coat, corded with gold, a voluminous wig and wide riding-boots, in the act of grasping the reins of a roan charger. "'Tis dear old grandpapa's portrait, painted by Mr. Joshua Reynolds." (He had not been knighted yet.) "One of the most rising artists in London," added Madame Blythe, in an explanatory tone. "'Tis very like you, Basil," said Aurora, laying kindly on my shoulders a plump white hand that glittered with turquoise and diamond rings. I did not feel flattered, as "dear old grandpapa's" Bardolph's snout was somewhat like an over-ripe peach; but altogether, in his jolly obesity he in no way resembled the old _ursa-major_ I had pictured him--perhaps Mr. Reynolds flattered. However, I could scarcely refrain from frowning at it when Aurora did not observe me, and when I thought of the will which he and old Nathan Wylie had concocted between them; and then of the handsome legacy--one shilling sterling coin of this realm--bequeathed to me when quartered at Portsmouth.