To proceed, I refused to permit the Duke of Leinster to accompany me home, although he declared himself ready to mount the box, or to stand behind with my dapper little footman! I was out of sorts and out of spirits at the idea of having promised to meet Frederick Lamb at _The Cock_ at Sutton on the following morning. Oh, this tiresome Fred Lamb! I wonder if any woman alive was ever in love with him, with the exception of the once celebrated Charlotte Windham: who would have taken him into keeping, at least so I have heard, and found him in washing, tea, sugar, and raw eggs to the end of his natural life, had he not cut her dead, _pour mes propres beaux yeux_. Handsome, clever, young, a great plenipo, and the recorded son of the Earl of Melbourne! What would ladies be at? "_On ne connait pas toujours son père, c'est un malheur; on est sûr, cependant, d'en avoir eu un, cela console!_" as says Pigault Le Brun. Fred Lamb certainly had a father and, in my conscience, I believe him to have been a man of high rank, no matter whether he was a lord, a duke, or a prince, and, what is more, his mother was a married woman: and yet, notwithstanding these multifarious advantages of both, I looked forward with disgust to the idea of meeting him at _The Cock_ at Sutton. How could I be so deficient in good taste? I found two letters on my dressing-table; the first I took up was in my young nephew's well-known round text. I knew that he would not write, unless he wanted money or clothes, whips or cricket-bats, and, as I happened to be very poor, I did not venture to break the seal, till I had examined the other letter in search of consolation. It was addressed in an unknown, and I fancied, disguised hand. I hastily broke open the plain wafer seal, and found a two hundred pound bank-note, merely enclosed in a blank cover. "Charming correspondent," said I, "how eloquent is thy silence!" "It is very clear," continued I to myself, "that there is a providence, which is kind enough to take particular care of me; for I have only to spend my last shilling to ensure to myself a full purse, which comes to me nobody knows how." I was at loss to guess at the munificent being who could find pleasure in thus secretly disposing of so large a sum without even the chance of being thanked for it. "It must be Lord Ponsonby," thought I, and, strange to say, the idea gave me pain instead of pleasure. I would rather have been indebted to any man's goodness than his. It was a relief to my mind to believe him heartless and unworthy of my affection. To change the current of my thoughts I opened my young nephew's letter, which also contained an enclosure, in the shape of a little dirty note directed to William Halliday, my footman. The letter to me was as follows: