re were, at that dull season,
listless and unemployed, who could, were he only able to summon them,
stand sponsors to his rank and condition. Measuring Corrigan by what he
had witnessed in other men of small fortune and retired lives, he deemed
"a lord" was all-essential. Linton had seen a great deal of life, and a
great deal of that submissive homage so readily conceded to nobility.
A lord, at a wedding, is like a captain in a duel; they are the great
ingredients which warrant that these events "come off" properly; they
place beyond all cavil or question whatever may occur; and they are the
recognizances one enters into with the world that he is "spliced" or
shot like a gentleman. It is quite true Linton was above this vulgarity;
but he was not above the vulgarity of attributing it to another.

The more he reflected on this, the more did he believe it to be the
solution of the whole difficulty. "My kingdom for a lord!" exclaimed he,
laughing aloud at the easy gullibility of that world which he had duped
so often.

The reader is aware that of the pleasant company of Tub-bermore, Lord
Kilgoff was the only representative of the peerage; and to him Linton's
thoughts at once resorted as the last hope in his emergency. Of late his
Lordship had been gradually mending: clear intervals broke through the
mist of his clouded faculties, and displayed him, for the time, in all
his wonted self-importance, irritability, and pertinacity. To catch him
in one of these fortunate moments was the object, and so induce him to
pay a visit to the cottage.

Could he but succeed in this, none better than the old peer to play the
part assigned to him. The very qualities to make his society intolerable
would be, here, the earnest of success; the imperturbable conceit, the
pompous distance of his manner, would repel inquiry, and Linton saw that
his oracle would not utter one word more than he ought.

"He will not,--I dare not ask him to call me his relative," said he;
"but I can easily throw a hazy indistinctness over our intimacy. He can
be a friend of 'my poor father,'"--Tom laughed at the conceit,--"one who
knew me from the cradle. With him for a foreground figure, I 'll soon
paint an imaginary group around him, not one of whom shall be less than
a marquis.

"With Mary this will not succeed. Laura, indeed, might do me good
service in that quarter, but I cannot trust her. Were she more skilled
in this world's ways, she would gladly aid me--