rom her little brothers, and used them on occasions
skilfully). "Hit Captain Belsize, he has no friends."

As Jack Belsize from his height and strength was fitted to be not only
an officer but actually a private in his former gallant regiment, and
brother Barnes was but a puny young gentleman, the idea of a personal
conflict between them was rather ridiculous. Some notion of this sort
may have passed through Sir Brian's mind, for the Baronet said with
his usual solemnity, "It is the cause, Ethel, it is the cause, my dear,
which gives strength; in such a cause as Barnes's, with a beautiful
young creature to protect from a villain, any man would be strong, any
man would be strong." "Since his last attack," Barnes used to say, "my
poor old governor is exceedingly shaky, very groggy about the head;"
which was the fact. Barnes was already master at Newcome and the bank,
and awaiting with perfect composure the event which was to place the
blood-red hand of the Newcome baronetcy on his own brougham.

Casting his eyes about the room, a heap of drawings, the work of a
well-known hand which he hated, met his eye. There were a half-dozen
sketches of Baden; Ethel on horseback again; the children and the dogs
just in the old way. "D---- him, is he here?" screams out Barnes. "Is
that young pothouse villain here? and hasn't Kew knocked his head off?
Is Clive Newcome here, sir," he cries out to his father. "The Colonel's
son. I have no doubt they met by----"

"By what, Barnes?" says Ethel.

"Clive is here, is he?" says the Baronet; "making caricatures, hey? You
did not mention him in your letters, Lady Anne."

Sir Brian was evidently very much touched by his last attack.

Ethel blushed; it was a curious fact, but there had been no mention of
Clive in the ladies' letters to Sir Brian.

"My dear, we met him by the merest chance, at Bonn, travelling with a
friend of his; and he speaks a little German, and was very useful to us,
and took one of the boys in his britzska the whole way."

"Boys always crowd in a carriage," says Sir Brian. "Kick your shins;
always in the way. I remember, when we used to come in the carriage from
Clapham, when we were boys, I used to kick my brother Tom's shins. Poor
Tom, he was a devilish wild fellow in those days. You don't recollect
Tom, my Lady Anne?"

Further anecdotes from Sir Brian are interrupted by Lord Kew's arrival.
"How dydo, Kew!" cries Barnes. "How's Clara?" and Lord Kew walking up
with