ved from London the same day as the
letter of the Lord Lieutenant, as he had learnt that his brother's
regiment, in which he commanded a troop, as well as the other yeomanry
corps in the North of England, must immediately take the field.

Five years had elapsed since the commencement of our history, and they
had brought apparently much change to the character of the brother of
Lord Marney. He had become, especially during the last two or three
years, silent and reserved; he rarely entered society; even the company
of those who were once his intimates had ceased to attract him; he was
really a melancholy man. The change in his demeanour was observed
by all; his mother and his sister-in-law were the only persons who
endeavoured to penetrate its cause, and sighed over the failure of their
sagacity. Quit the world and the world forgets you; and Egremont would
have soon been a name no longer mentioned in those brilliant saloons
which he once adorned, had not occasionally a sensation, produced by an
effective speech in the House of Commons, recalled his name to his old
associates, who then remembered the pleasant hours passed in his society
and wondered why he never went anywhere now.

"I suppose he finds society a bore," said Lord Eugene de Vere; "I am
sure I do; but then what is a fellow to do? I am not in Parliament
like Egremont. I believe, after all, that's the thing; for I have tried
everything else and everything else is a bore."

"I think one should marry like Alfred Mountchesney," said Lord Milford.

"But what is the use of marrying if you do not marry a rich woman--and
the heiresses of the present age will not marry. What can be more
unnatural! It alone ought to produce a revolution. Why, Alfred is the
only fellow who has made a coup; and then he has not got it down."

"She behaved in a most unprincipled manner to me--that Fitz-Warene,"
said Lord Milford, "always took my bouquets and once made me write some
verses."

"By Jove!" said Lord Eugene, "I should like to see them. What a bore it
must have been to write verses."

"I only copied them out of Mina Blake's album: but I sent them in my own
handwriting."

Baffled sympathy was the cause of Egremont's gloom. It is the secret
spring of most melancholy. He loved and loved in vain. The conviction
that his passion, though hopeless, was not looked upon with disfavour,
only made him the more wretched, for the disappointment is more acute
in proportion as the chan