George and his wife returned, after a brief absence, to England, and made frequent efforts to overcome, by entreaty and submission, the old squire’s obduracy; but it was all in vain: neither were they more successful in propitiating the young squire, an eccentric youth, who lived among dogs and horses, and who had imbibed from his father an hereditary taste for old port, and an antipathy to Jacobites. His reply to a letter which George wrote, entreating his good offices in effecting a reconciliation between Lucy and her father, will serve better than an elaborate description to illustrate his character; it ran as follows:— “Sir, “When my sister married a Jacobite, against Father’s consent, she carried her eggs to a fool’s market, and she must make the best of her own bargain. Father isn’t such a flat as to be gulled with your fine words now: and tho’ they say I’m not over forw’rd in my schoolin’, you must put some better bait on your trap before you catch “MARMADUKE SHIRLEY, Jun.” It may well be imagined, that after the receipt of this epistle George Brandon did not seek to renew his intercourse with Lucy’s brother: but as she had now presented him with a little boy, he began to meditate seriously on the means which he should adopt to better his fortunes. One of his most intimate and esteemed friends, Digby Ethelston, being, like himself, a portionless member of an ancient family, had gone out early in life to America, and had, by dint of persevering industry, gained a respectable competence: while in the southern colonies he had married the daughter of an old French planter, who had left the marquisate to which he was entitled in his own country, in order to live in peace and quiet among the sugar–canes and cotton–fields of Louisiana. Ethelston had received with his wife a considerable accession of fortune, and they were on the eve of returning across the Atlantic, her husband having settled all the affairs which had brought him to England. His representations of the New World made a strong impression on the sanguine mind of George Brandon, and he proposed to his wife to emigrate with their little one to America. Poor Lucy, cut off from her own family, and devoted to her husband, made no difficulty whatever, and it was soon settled that they should accompany the Ethelstons. George now called upon Mr. Shirley’s solicitor, a dry, matter–of–fact, parchment man, to inform him of their intention, and of their wish that the principal of Lucy’s fortune might be paid up. The lawyer took down a dusty box of black tin whereon was engraved “Marmaduke Shirley, Esq., Shirley Hall, No. 7.”; and after carefully perusing a paper of instructions, he said, “Mrs. Brandon’s legacy shall be paid up, sir, on the 1st of July, to any party whom she may empower to receive it on her behalf, and to give a legal discharge for the same.”