For two days after his arrival the Master strove to engross as much of Flora's time as she would yield, or as he could spare from the study of his betting-book, the pages of the "Sporting Magazine," playing billiards right hand against the left, quizzing the dominie, who paid him a ceremonious visit, and in relating to the quartermaster certain military "crammers" about the alterations and improvements in the service since his time, some of which were astounding enough to make the old fellow's pigtail stand on end, with wonder and dismay, lest the said service was going to the deuce, or further. Quentin he seldom favoured with more notice than a cool and insolent survey through his eyeglass. There were times when the Honourable Cosmo was moody, ennuyéed, and irritable, and none knew why or wherefore; but he had frequent recourse to Mr. Spillsby, the butler, for brandy and rare dry old sherry; and he smoked a great many cigars, which were a source of marvel to all who saw them, tobacco, in that form, being almost unknown in England, till the close of the Peninsular War. It was not ambition, or a desire to see active service that made the haughty and somewhat _blasé_ Master propose to leave the household troops and begin the sliding scale from the Guards to the line; nor was it any desire to settle in life that made him enter at once and so readily into his mother's old and favourite scheme of a marriage between him and their ward, the heiress of Ardgour. While he could not be insensible to the fresh budding beauty of Flora Warrender, the conviction that he had impaired his finances, anticipated his heritage, and had calculated to a nicety the value of all the oak, pine, and larch woods upon the estate--that each and all were numbered and known to certain hook-nosed, long-bearded, and dirty children of Judah in London--all, even to the venerable lines of sycamores in the long avenue, the pride of his father's heart--trees that for centuries had cast their shadows on his ancestors in youth, in prime, and age. While this conviction, we say, filled him with as much shame, sorrow, and repentance as he could feel, with it came the knowledge that Flora's fortune, which had accumulated during her minority, and, indeed, ever since her father's fall in Egypt, would afford him a most seasonable escape from shipwreck on several rocks which he saw ahead. "Hah!" said Cosmo, as he tossed away the end of his cigar, "some one says truly--don't know who the devil he is--that if we could look into each other's breasts, there would be no such thing as envy in the world. Egad! I'll enter for the country heiress." He roused himself and resolved to make the effort, all the more willingly, that to a half, or wholly _blasé_ guardsman like himself, long used to the glittering banquets, the late orgies, and startling scenes of Carlton House and the Pavilion at Brighton, the bloom, beauty, and country freshness of Flora Warrender, were indeed charming.