Near him stood an old and venerable gentleman, whose years were verging fast to three-score-and-ten, but whose small, restless, sparkling eyes beamed with the fires of genius, and whose compressed lips showed that although he had consented to become a spectator of the gay scene about to take place, his thoughts frequently wandered to subjects of a more serious kind and more congenial to his nature. This was Sir John Lascelles--the most eminent physician of the age, and who had received the honour of knighthood in recompense for the great services which he had rendered to the art of medicine. The third gentleman was about twenty-five years of age. Tall, handsome, well-formed, and genteel in appearance, he seemed a fit and suitable companion for the lovely girl who leant upon his arm, and of whom we shall speak more fully anon. The fine young man at present alluded to, was called by the name of Charles Hatfield: but in the former portion of this work he was known, when a little boy, to the reader as Charley Watts. The first of the three ladies was about thirty-seven years of age; and her beauty, in the finest, chastest, and most elevated Hebrew style, was admirably preserved. The lapse of years had only matured her charms, and not impaired them: time had touched not the pearly whiteness of her teeth, nor dimmed the brilliant lustre of her large dark eyes. Her hair was still of the deepest and glossiest jet,--silken and luxuriant, as when we first described it in the fourth chapter of our narrative:--for she of whom we are speaking now, was Esther, Countess of Ellingham. Conversing with the noble Jewess--for she clung to the faith of her forefathers--was a lady whose style of beauty was of that magnificent and voluptuous kind which sets the beholder at naught in his calculations and conjectures relative to the age of the object of his admiration;--for though forty-four years had passed over the head of Lady Hatfield, she was still endowed with a loveliness that, though matured, seemed to have known only the lapse of summers and never to have passed through the snowy storms of as many winters.