," said Adrian. "Arrange that we
go. You haven't seen the cockney's Paradise. Abjure Blazes, and taste of
peace, my son."

After some persuasion, Richard yawned wearily, and got up, and threw
aside the care that was on him, saying, "Very well. Just as you like.
We'll take old Rip with us."

Adrian consulted Brayder's eye at this. The Hon. Peter briskly declared
he should be delighted to have Feverel's friend, and offered to take
them all down in his drag.

"If you don't get a match on to swim there with the tide--eh, Feverel,
my boy?"

Richard replied that he had given up that sort of thing, at which
Brayder communicated a queer glance to Adrian, and applauded the youth.

Richmond was under a still October sun. The pleasant landscape, bathed
in Autumn, stretched from the foot of the hill to a red horizon haze.
The day was like none that Richard vividly remembered. It touched no
link in the chain of his recollection. It was quiet, and belonged to the
spirit of the season.

Adrian had divined the character of the scrapings they were to meet.
Brayder introduced them to one or two of the men, hastily and in rather
an undervoice, as a thing to get over. They made their bow to the first
knot of ladies they encountered. Propriety was observed strictly, even
to severity. The general talk was of the weather. Here and there a lady
would seize a button-hole or any little bit of the habiliments, of the
man she was addressing; and if it came to her to chide him, she did it
with more than a forefinger. This, however, was only here and there, and
a privilege of intimacy.

Where ladies are gathered together, the Queen of the assemblage may be
known by her Court of males. The Queen of the present gathering leaned
against a corner of the open window, surrounded by a stalwart Court, in
whom a practised eye would have discerned guardsmen, and Ripton, with
a sinking of the heart, apprehended lords. They were fine men, offering
inanimate homage. The trim of their whiskerage, the cut of their coats,
the high-bred indolence in their aspect, eclipsed Ripton's sense of
self-esteem. But they kindly looked over him. Occasionally one committed
a momentary outrage on him with an eye-glass, seeming to cry out in a
voice of scathing scorn, "Who's this?" and Ripton got closer to his hero
to justify his humble pretensions to existence and an identity in the
shadow of him. Richard gazed about. Heroes do not always know what to
say or do; and the