Mrs Sternhold now had her great wish gratified to some extent. She was the observed of all observers. They tell you tales now in Stirmingham of her extravagance, and the lengths she went. Her carriages, her horses, her servants, her dinners, parties, and what not, were the one topic of conversation. Even old-fashioned, straitlaced people found their objections overcome by curiosity, and accepted her invitations. Old Sternhold was never visible at these gatherings; but he rejoiced in them. He was proud of his wife. He looked upon her as a prodigy. He gave her the reins. But personally he practically returned to his old habits. He still retained his old apartments at Dodd’s; and there he might be found, at almost all hours, sitting at his desk, and eagerly, joyously receiving every visitor who came to tell him of some fresh extravagance, some fresh frolic of his wife’s! How was all this expenditure supported, since his actual income was so small? By a series of loans, which there were always men ready to offer, and whose terms Sternhold always signed. Once or twice he did remonstrate, but darling Lucia went into tears, and her brother Aurelian assured him that, in her state of health, any vexation was dangerous, etc. Aurelian, through the Sternhold connexion, was now a fashionable physician. At last the event happened, and a son was born. The memory of the week succeeding that day will not soon pass away in Stirmingham. Old Sternhold, himself a most temperate man, declared that he would make every one in the city tipsy; and he practically succeeded. He had barrels of ale and gallons of spirits and wine offered free to all comers at every public-house and tavern. He had booths erected in an open field just outside the town, for dancing and other amusements, and here refreshments of all kinds were served out gratis. The police were in despair. The cells overflowed, and would hold no more, and the streets reeled with drunken men, and still more drunken women. This saturnalia reigned for four days, and would soon have culminated—at least, so the police declared—in a general sack of the city by the congregated ruffians. A detachment of dragoons was actually sent for, and encamped in Saint George’s Square, with their horses and arms ready at a moment’s notice. But it all passed off quietly; and from that hour Sternhold, and more particularly the infant son, became the idol of the populace. They still look back with regret to those four days of unlimited licence, and swear by the son of Sternhold. This boy was named John Marese Baskette, but was always called Marese. Singularly enough, the birth of this child, which one would have prophesied would have completed the hold Lucia had over the father, was the beginning of the difficulties between them. It began in his very nursery. Proud of her handsome figure, and still looking forward to popular triumphs, Lucia flatly refused to nurse the infant herself.