_keeping it close_--and he was commissioned to do every thing in his power in the business. In a short time Mr. Falconer was acting on all these points as an agent and partizan of Lord Oldborough’s. But there was one thing which made him uneasy; he was acting here, as in many former instances, merely upon vague hopes of future reward. Whilst his mind was full of these thoughts, a new prospect of advantage opened to him in another direction. Colonel Hauton, Lord Oldborough’s nephew, stayed, during his uncle’s absence, at Clermont-park, to be in readiness for the races, which, this year, were expected to be uncommonly fine. Buckhurst Falconer had been at school and at the university with the colonel, and had frequently helped him in his Latin exercises. The colonel having been always deficient in scholarship, he had early contracted an aversion to literature, which at last amounted to an antipathy even to the very sight of books, in consequence, perhaps, of his uncle’s ardent and precipitate desire to make him apply to them whilst his head was full of tops and balls, kites and ponies. Be this as it may, Commissioner Falconer thought his son Buckhurst might benefit by his school friendship, and might now renew and improve the connexion. Accordingly, Buckhurst waited upon the colonel,--was immediately recognized, and received with promising demonstrations of joy. It would be difficult, indeed impossible, to describe Colonel Hauton, so as to distinguish him from a thousand other young men of the same class, except, perhaps, that he might be characterized by having more exclusive and inveterate selfishness. Yet this was so far from appearing or being suspected on a first acquaintance, that he was generally thought a sociable, good-natured fellow. It was his absolute dependence upon others for daily amusement and ideas, or, rather, for knowing what to do with himself, that gave him this semblance of being sociable; the total want of proper pride and dignity in his whole deportment, a certain _slang_ and familiarity of tone, gave superficial observers the notion that he was good-natured. It was Colonel Hauton’s great ambition to look like his own coachman; he succeeded only so far as to look like his groom: but though he kept company with jockeys and coachmen, grooms and stable-boys, yet not the stiffest, haughtiest, flat-backed Don of Spain, in Spain’s proudest days, could be more completely aristocratic in his principles, or more despotic in his habits. This could not break out to his equals, and his equals cared little how he treated his inferiors. His present pleasure, or rather his present business, for no man made more a business of pleasure than Colonel Hauton, was _the turf_. Buckhurst Falconer could not here assist him as much as in making Latin verses--but he could admire and sympathize; and the colonel, proud of being now the superior, proud of his _knowing style_ and his _capital_