e fellows who are
always making fun of me, you know." A man of his station who likes
flatterers need not shut himself up; he can get plenty of society.

As for women, it was his lordship's opinion that every daughter of Eve
was bent on marrying him. A Scotch marquis, an English earl, of the best
blood in the empire, with a handsome person, and a fortune of fifteen
thousand a year, how could the poor creatures do otherwise than long for
him? He blandly received their caresses; took their coaxing and cajolery
as matters of course; and surveyed the beauties of his time as the
Caliph the moonfaces of his harem. My lord intended to marry certainly.
He did not care for money, nor for rank; he expected consummate beauty
and talent, and some day would fling his handkerchief to the possessor
of these, and place her by his side upon the Farintosh throne.

At this time there were but two or three young ladies in society endowed
with the necessary qualifications, or who found favour in his eyes. His
lordship hesitated in his selection from these beauties. He was not in
a hurry, he was not angry at the notion that Lady Kew (and Miss Newcome
with her) hunted him. What else should they do but pursue an object so
charming? Everybody hunted him. The other young ladies, whom we need not
mention, languished after him still more longingly. He had little
notes from these; presents of purses worked by them, and cigar-cases
embroidered with his coronet. They sang to him in cosy boudoirs--mamma
went out of the room, and sister Ann forgot something in the
drawing-room. They ogled him as they sang. Trembling they gave him a
little foot to mount them, that they might ride on horseback with him.
They tripped along by his side from the Hall to the pretty country
church on Sundays. They warbled hymns: sweetly looking at him the while
mamma whispered confidentially to him, "What an angel Cecilia is!" And
so forth, and so forth--with which chaff our noble bird was by no means
to be caught. When he had made up his great mind, that the time was come
and the woman, he was ready to give a Marchioness of Farintosh to the
English nation.

Miss Newcome has been compared ere this to the statue of "Huntress
Diana" at the Louvre, whose haughty figure and beauty the young lady
indeed somewhat resembled. I was not present when Diana and Diana's
grandmother hunted the noble Scottish stag of whom we have just been
writing; nor care to know how many times Lord F