"Hasn't a shilling, ma'am, but one of the most popular men in London. His poetry book was subscribed for by the Prince Regent and half the notables of the kingdom. Capital company at a dinner-table--stutters, begad, like a What-you-may-call-'em, and keeps everybody in a roar--and when he's had his whack of claret, he sings his own songs to the piano, you know, and all that sort of thing, and has quite put Tommy Moore's nose out of joint. Nobody knows much about him, but that don't matter with these literary chaps, does it now? Goes everywhere, ma'am--quite a favorite at Carlton House--a highly agreeable, well-informed man, I can assure you--and probably hasn't a shilling to pay the cabman. Deuced odd, ain't it? But Lord Lansdowne is trying to get him a place--spoke to me about a tutorship, ma'am, in fact, just to keep Vanderhoffen going, until some registrarship or other falls vacant. Now, I ain't clever and that sort of thing, but I quite agree with Lansdowne that we practical men ought to look out for these clever fellows--see that they don't starve in a garret, like poor What's-his-name, don't you know?" Lady Claridge sweetly agreed with her future son-in-law. So it befell that shortly after this conversation Paul Vanderhoffen came to Leamington Manor, and through an entire summer goaded young Percival Claridge, then on the point of entering Cambridge, but pedagogically branded as "deficient in mathematics," through many elaborate combinations of x and y and cosines and hyperbolas. Lady John Claridge, mother to the pupil, approved of the new tutor. True, he talked much and wildishly; but literary men had a name for eccentricity, and, besides, Lady Claridge always dealt with the opinions of other people as matters of illimitable unimportance. This baronet's lady, in short, was in these days vouchsafing to the universe at large a fine and new benevolence, now that her daughter was safely engaged to Lord Brudenel, who, whatever his other virtues, was certainly a peer of England and very rich. It seems irrelevant, and yet for the tale's sake is noteworthy, that any room which harbored Lady John Claridge was through this fact converted into an absolute monarchy. And so, by the favor of Lady Claridge and destiny, the tutor stayed at Leamington Manor all summer. There was nothing in either the appearance or demeanor of the fiancee of Lord Brudenel's title and superabundant wealth which any honest gentleman could, hand upon his heart, describe as blatantly repulsive.