"When Master Clinton was about the age I mentioned, namely, fourteen, a gentleman of the name of Sir Clinton Manners became a constant visitor at the house. Report said that he was always about my lady in London at Ranelagh, and the ball-rooms and routs, and all the fine places; and certainly he was scarcely ever from her side in the pleasure parties at the Park. But my lady said that he was a cousin of hers, and an old playmate in childhood, and so he was; and unhappily for her, something more too. My lord, however, shut up in his library, did not pay any attention to my lady's intimacy with Sir Clinton; on the contrary, as he was a cousin and friend of hers, his lordship seemed always happy to see him, and was the only person in the neighbourhood who had no suspicion of what was going on." "Oh, sir, it is a melancholy story, and I can scarcely persuade myself to tell it. (It is really delicious wine this-six-and-twenty years old last birthday--to say nothing of its age before I bought it.) Ah! well, sir, the blow came at last like a thunderclap: my lady, finding disguise was in vain, went off with Sir Clinton. Letters were discovered which showed that they had corresponded for years; that he was her lover before marriage; that she, in a momentary passion with him, had accepted my lord's offer; that she had always repented her precipitation; and that she had called her son after his name: all this, and much more, sir, did my lord learn, as it were, at a single blow." "He obtained a divorce, and Sir Clinton and my lady went abroad. But from that time my lord was never the same man. Always proud and gloomy, he now became intolerably violent and morose. He shut himself up, saw no company of any description, rarely left the house, and never the park; and, from being one of the gayest places in the country, sir, the mansion became as dreary and deserted as if it had been haunted. (It is for you to begin the second bottle, sir.)"