"P.S.--Do pray, keep yourself warm: particularly your chest. Dr. Bain says your little cough is chiefly nervous; but I am anxious to hear how the air of Portsmouth agrees with you; therefore write soon all about it." CHAPTER XVII Viscount Berwick was a nervous, selfish, odd man, and afraid to drive his own horses. Lord William Somerset was an excellent whip; but he had no horses to whip. Lord Berwick, like Lord Barrymore, wanted a tiger; while Somerset required a man whose curricle he could drive and whose money he could borrow. The bargain was struck; and Tiger-Somerset had driven Lord Berwick some years, when his lordship, after having, for more than a fortnight, been looking at my sister Sophia at her window, one day addressed the tiger as follows. "I have at last found a woman I should like to marry, Somerset, and you know I have been more than twenty years upon the look-out." "Who is she?" said Somerset, in some alarm. Berwick told him all he knew and all he had seen of Sophia. "I think I know whom you mean," said Tiger, "since you mention the house; because it belongs to Miss Storer, Lord Carysfort's niece, who has, I know, a fine young girl staying with her, whom Lord Deerhurst seduced." "Seduced already! you do not say so?" "Most true, my lord," said Tiger-Somerset; "besides, I've often seen her, when Deerhurst used to take her out last year. She has no eyebrows, and----" "I don't care for that, I love the girl, and will have her," was his lordship's knock-down argument; and Lord William Somerset, having obtained permission from Julia, presented Lord Berwick to Sophia on the following morning, Sophia would not hear of such a very nasty, poking, old, dry man, on his first visit; but the second day she was induced to drive out in his barouche. On the third she declared his lordship's equipage the easiest she ever rode in; but then, he wore such a large hat! In short, she could not endure him even to shake hands with her. I never knew Sophia evince so much decided character since she was born, as in her dislike of Lord Berwick; though she condescended to enter his barouche and dine with him, accompanied by Julia or myself, yet no persuasion of Lord Berwick, no prayers that his lordship had wit to make, could prevail on her to trust herself for an instant in his society. Things went on this way for several weeks, Berwick made very pleasant parties to Richmond, and did everything with princely magnificence. Worcester's good uncle, Lord Berwick's tiger, wanted Worcester to join their parties, and Worcester would not go anywhere without me. My time being so gaily taken up, I had to reproach myself with neglect towards my sister Fanny. "Give me my writing-desk," said I to my maid, Thérèse, at past four in the morning, "for I have made a vow not to sleep till I have fully answered Fanny's last two letters," which I did as follows;