He was no longer quite so
cordial with Leonard, nor did he take the same interest in his progress.
About the same period he was frequently caught by the London butler
before the looking-glass. He had always been a smart man in his dress,
but he was now more particular. He would spoil three white cravats when
he went out of an evening, before he could satisfy himself as to a tie.
He also bought a Peerage, and it became his favorite study at odd
quarters of an hour. All these symptoms proceeded from a cause, and that
cause was--Woman.

CHAPTER VIII.

The first people at Screwstown were indisputably the Pompleys. Colonel
Pompley was grand, but Mrs. Pompley was grander. The colonel was stately
in right of his military rank and his services in India; Mrs. Pompley
was majestic in right of her connections. Indeed, Colonel Pompley
himself would have been crushed under the weight of the dignities which
his lady heaped upon him, if he had not been enabled to prop his
position with "a connection" of his own. He would never have held his
own, nor been permitted to have an independent opinion on matters
aristocratic, but for the well-sounding name of his relations, "the
Digbies." Perhaps on the principle that obscurity increases the natural
size of objects, and is an element of the sublime, the Colonel did not
too accurately define his relations "the Digbies;" he let it be casually
understood that they were the Digbies to be found in Debrett. But if
some indiscreet _Vulgarian_ (a favorite word with both the Pompleys)
asked point-blank if he meant "my Lord Digby," the Colonel, with a lofty
air, answered--"The elder branch, sir." No one at Screwstown had ever
seen these Digbies: they lay amidst the Far--the Recondite--even to the
wife of Colonel Pompley's bosom. Now and then, when the Colonel referred
to the lapse of years, and the uncertainty of human affections, he would
say--"When young Digby and I were boys together," and then add with a
sigh, "but we shall never meet again in this world. His family interest
secured him a valuable appointment in a distant part of the British
dominions." Mrs. Pompley was always rather cowed by the Digbies. She
could not be skeptical as to this connection, for the Colonel's mother
was certainly a Digby, and the Colonel impaled the Digby arms. _En
revanche_, as the French say, for these marital connections, Mrs.
Pompley had her own favorite affinity, which she specially selected from
all others w