at respected baronet. The son of an outlaw, living
in a dismal old chateau near Bruges, this gentleman had made a feeble
attempt to start in life with a commission in a dragoon regiment, and
had broken down almost at the outset. Transactions at the gambling-table
had speedily effected his ruin; after a couple of years in the army
he had been forced to sell out, had passed some time in Her Majesty's
prison of the Fleet, and had then shipped over to Ostend to join the
gouty exile, his father. And in Belgium, France and Germany, for some
years, this decayed and abortive prodigal might be seen lurking about
billiard-rooms and watering-places, punting at gambling-houses, dancing
at boarding-house balls, and riding steeple-chases on other folks'
horses.

It was at a boarding-house at Lausanne that Francis Clavering made
what he called the lucky coup of marrying the widow Amory, very lately
returned from Calcutta. His father died soon after, by consequence of
whose demise his wife became Lady Clavering. The title so delighted Mr.
Snell of Calcutta, that he doubled his daughter's allowance; and dying
himself soon after, left a fortune to her and her children the amount of
which was, if not magnified by rumour, something very splendid indeed.

Before this time there had been, not rumours unfavourable to Lady
Clavering's reputation, but unpleasant impressions regarding her
ladyship. The best English people abroad were shy of making her
acquaintance; her manners were not the most refined; her origin was
lamentably low and doubtful. The retired East Indians, who are to be
found in considerable force in most of the continental towns frequented
by English, spoke with much scorn of the disreputable old lawyer and
indigo-smuggler her father, and of Amory, her first husband, who had
been mate of the Indiaman in which Miss Snell came out to join her
father at Calcutta. Neither father nor daughter were in society at
Calcutta, or had ever been heard of at Government House. Old Sir Jasper
Rogers, who had been Chief Justice of Calcutta, had once said to his
wife, that he could tell a queer story about Lady Clavering's first
husband; but greatly to Lady Rogers's disappointment, and that of the
young ladies his daughters, the old Judge could never be got to reveal
that mystery.

They were all, however, glad enough to go to Lady Clavering's parties,
when her ladyship took the Hotel Bouilli in the Rue Grenelle at Paris,
and blazed out in the