e scandal-mongers
pricked up their ears, in hopes of a victim, I watched Castleton with
as much interest as if I had been looking over Deschappelles playing at
chess. You never saw anything so masterly; he pitted himself against
his highness with the cool confidence, not of a blind spouse, but a
fortunate rival. He surpassed him in the delicacy of his attentions,
he outshone him by his careless magnificence. Leibenfels had the
impertinence to send Lady Castleton a bouquet of some rare flowers just
in fashion. Castleton, an hour before, had filled her whole balcony with
the same costly exotics, as if they were too common for nosegays, and
only just worthy to bloom for her a day. Young and really accomplished
as Leibenfels is, Castleton eclipsed him by his grace, and fooled him
with his wit; he laid little plots to turn his mustache and guitar
into ridicule; he seduced him into a hunt with the buckhounds (though
Castleton himself had not hunted before since he was thirty), and drew
him, spluttering German oaths, out of the slough of a ditch; he made him
the laughter of the clubs; he put him fairly out of fashion,--and all
with such suavity, and politeness, and bland sense of superiority, that
it was the finest piece of high comedy you ever beheld. The poor prince,
who had been coxcomb enough to lay a bet with a Frenchman as to his
success with the English in general, and Lady Castleton in particular,
went away with a face as long as Don Quixote's. If you had but seen
him at S--House, the night before he took leave of the island, and his
comical grimace when Castleton offered him a pinch of the Beaudesert
mixture! No; the fact is that Castleton made it the object of his
existence, the masterpiece of his art, to secure to himself a happy home
and the entire possession of his wife's heart. The first two or three
years, I fear, cost him more trouble than any other man ever took,--with
his own wife, at least; but he may now rest in peace,--Lady Castleton is
won, and forever."

As my gentleman ceased, Lord Castleton's noble head rose above the
group standing round him; and I saw Lady Castleton turn with a look of
well-bred fatigue from a handsome young fop who had affected to lower
his voice while he spoke to her, and, encountering the eyes of her
husband, the look changed at once into one of such sweet, smiling
affection, such frank, unmistakable wife-like pride, that it seemed a
response to the assertion,--"Lady Castleton is