story,
which I could not know from actual experience or hearsay. Clive, let us
say, is Romanus, and we must add Senatus Populusque to his inscription.
After Mrs. Mackenzie and her pretty daughter had been for a few months
in London, which they did not think of quitting, although Mr. Binnie's
wounded little leg was now as well and as brisk as ever it had been, a
redintegration of love began to take place between the Colonel and his
relatives in Park Lane. How should we know that there had ever been a
quarrel, or at any rate a coolness? Thomas Newcome was not a man to talk
at length of any such matter; though a word or two occasionally dropped
in conversation by the simple gentleman might lead persons who chose to
interest themselves about his family affairs to form their own opinions
concerning them. After that visit of the Colonel and his son to Newcome,
Ethel was constantly away with her grandmother. The Colonel went to see
his pretty little favourite at Brighton, and once, twice, thrice, Lady
Kew's door was denied to him. The knocker of that door could not be
more fierce than the old lady's countenance, when Newcome met her in her
chariot driving on the cliff. Once, forming the loveliest of a charming
Amazonian squadron, led by Mr. Whiskin, the riding-master, when the
Colonel encountered his pretty Ethel, she greeted him affectionately, it
is true; there was still the sweet look of candour and love in her eyes;
but when he rode up to her she looked so constrained, when he talked
about Clive, so reserved, when he left her, so sad, that he could not
but feel pain and commiseration. Back he went to London, having in a
week only caught this single glance of his darling.

This event occurred while Clive was painting his picture of the "Battle
of Assaye" before mentioned, during the struggles incident on which
composition he was not thinking much about Miss Ethel, or his papa,
or any other subject but his great work. Whilst Assaye was still
in progress, Thomas Newcome must have had an explanation with his
sister-in-law, Lady Anne, to whom he frankly owned the hopes which he
had entertained for Clive, and who must as frankly have told the Colonel
that Ethel's family had very different views for that young lady to
those which the simple Colonel had formed. A generous early attachment,
the Colonel thought, is the safeguard of a young man. To love a noble
girl; to wait a while and struggle, and haply do some little achievement