Manner's brutal desertion at such a time must be hard to bear. I
continued my visits of inquiry, nearly always meeting some person of
consequence, or the footman of such, come on the same errand as myself.
And once I encountered the young man she had championed against his Grace
at Lady Tankerville's.

Rather than face the array of anxieties that beset me, I plunged
recklessly into the gayeties--nay, the excesses--of Mr. Charles Fox and
his associates. I paid, in truth, a very high price for my friendship
with Mr. Fox. But, since it did not quite ruin me, I look back upon it
as cheaply bought. To know the man well, to be the subject of his
regard, was to feel an infatuation in common with the little band of
worshippers which had come with him from Eton. They remained faithful to
him all his days, nor adversity nor change of opinion could shake their
attachment. They knew his faults, deplored them, and paid for them. And
this was not beyond my comprehension, tho' many have wondered at it. Did
he ask me for five hundred pounds,--which he did,--I gave it freely, and
would gladly have given more, tho' I saw it all wasted in a night when
the dice rolled against him. For those honoured few of whom I speak
likewise knew his virtues, which were quite as large as the faults,
albeit so mingled with them that all might not distinguish.

I attended some of the routs and parties, to all of which, as a young
colonial gentleman of wealth and family, I was made welcome. I went to
a ball at Lord Stanley's, a mixture of French horns and clarionets and
coloured glass lanthorns and candles in gilt vases, and young ladies
pouring tea in white, and musicians in red, and draperies and flowers ad
libitum. There I met Mr. Walpole, looking on very critically. He was
the essence of friendliness, asked after my equerry, and said I had done
well to ship him to America. At the opera, with Lord Ossory and Mr.