ight. At Lady Anne's ball I saw my
acquaintance, young Mumford, who was going to Oxford next October, and
about to leave Rugby, where he was at the head of the school, looking
very dismal as Miss Alice whirled round the room dancing in Viscount
Bustington's arms;--Miss Alice, with whose mamma he used to take tea at
Rugby, and for whose pretty sake Mumford did Alfred Newcome's verses for
him and let him off his thrashings. Poor Mumford! he dismally went about
under the protection of young Alfred, a fourth-form boy--not one soul
did he know in that rattling London ballroom; his young face--as white
as the large white tie, donned two hours since at the Tavistock with
such nervousness and beating of heart!

With these lads, and decorated with a tie equally splendid, moved about
young Sam Newcome, who was shirking from his sister and his mamma. Mrs.
Hobson had actually assumed clean gloves for this festive occasion.
Sam stared at all the "Nobs:" and insisted upon being introduced to
"Farintosh," and congratulated his lordship with much graceful ease: and
then pushed about the rooms perseveringly hanging on to Alfred's jacket.
"I say, I wish you wouldn't call me Al'," I heard Mr. Alfred say to his
cousin. Seeing my face, Mr. Samuel ran up to claim acquaintance. He was
good enough to say he thought Farintosh seemed devilish haughty. Even my
wife could not help saying, that Mr. Sam was an odious little creature.

So it was for young Alfred, and his brothers and sisters, who would want
help and protection in the world, that Ethel was about to give up her
independence, her inclination perhaps, and to bestow her life on yonder
young nobleman. Looking at her as a girl devoting herself to her family,
her sacrifice gave her a melancholy interest in our eyes. My wife and
I watched her, grave and beautiful, moving through the rooms, receiving
and returning a hundred greetings, bending to compliments, talking with
this friend and that, with my lord's lordly relations, with himself,
to whom she listened deferentially; faintly smiling as he spoke now and
again; doing the honours of her mother's house. Lady after lady of
his lordship's clan and kinsfolk complimented the girl and her pleased
mother. Old Lady Kew was radiant (if one can call radiance the glances
of those darkling old eyes). She sate in a little room apart, and
thither people went to pay their court to her. Unwillingly I came in
on this levee with my wife on my arm: Lady Kew