ners, his junketings to Richmond or Greenwich, his short
Sunday excursions to the country, generally to some great artiste's
villa near Fulham or Chiswick, and declares to you that it is England
alone offers all these in perfection. Is it any explanation, does
it give any clew to this gentleman's nature, if I say that a certain
aquiline character in his nose, and a peculiar dull lustre in the eye,
recall that race who, with all the odds of a great majority against
them, enjoy a marvellous share of this world's prosperity? Opposite to
him sits one not unworthy--even from externals--of his companionship.
He is a very good-looking fellow, with light brown hair, his beard and
moustaches being matchless in tint and arrangement: he has got large,
full blue eyes, a wide capacious forehead, and that style of head, both
in shape and the way in which it is set on, which indicate a frank,
open, and courageous nature. Were it not for a little over-attention to
dress, there is no "snobbery" about him; but there is a little too much
velvet on his paletot, and his watch trinkets are somewhat in excess,
not to say that the gold head of his cane is ostentatiously large and
striking. This is Captain Ludlow Paten, a man about town, known to and
by everybody, very much asked about in men's circles, but never by any
accident met in ladies' society. By very young men he is eagerly sought
after. It is one of the best things coming of age has in its gift is to
know Paten and be able to ask him to dine. Older ones relish him full as
much; but his great popularity is with a generation beyond that again:
the mediaevals, who walk massively and ride not at all; the florid,
full-cheeked, slightly bald generation, who grace club windows of
a morning and the coulisses at night. These are his "set," _par
excellence_, and he knows them thoroughly. As for himself or his family,
no one knows, nor, indeed, wants to know anything. The men he associates
with chiefly in life are all "cognate numbers," and these are the very
people who never trouble their heads about a chance intruder amongst
them; and although some rumor ran that his father was a porter at the
Home Office, or a tailor at Blackwall, none care a jot on the matter:
they want him; and he could n't be a whit more useful if his veins ran
with all the blood of all the Howards.

There is a story of him, however, which, though I reveal to you, is
not generally known. He was once tried for a murder. It