little consequential, but the reverse of haughty,--unctuously
overbearing. The other gentleman, to whom he is listening, is our old
acquaintance Colonel Alban Vipont Morley, Darrell's friend, George's
uncle,--a man of importance, not inferior, indeed, to that of his kinsman
Carr; an authority in clubrooms, an oracle in drawing-rooms, a first-rate
man of the beau monde. Alban Morley, a younger brother, had entered the
Guards young; retired young also from the Guards with the rank of
Colonel, and on receipt of a legacy from an old aunt, which, with the
interest derived from the sum at which he sold his commission, allowed
him a clear income of L1,000 a year. This modest income sufficed for all
his wants, fine gentleman though he was. He had refused to go into
Parliament,--refused a high place in a public department. Single
himself, he showed his respect for wedlock by the interest he took in the
marriages of other people; just as Earl Warwick, too wise to set up for a
king, gratified his passion for royalty by becoming the king-maker. The
Colonel was exceedingly accomplished, a very fair scholar, knew most
modern languages. In painting an amateur, in music a connoisseur; witty
at times, and with wit of a high quality, but thrifty in the expenditure
of it; too wise to be known as a wit. Manly too, a daring rider, who had
won many a fox's brush; a famous deer-stalker, and one of the few English
gentlemen who still keep up the noble art of fencing,--twice a week to be
seen, foil in hand, against all comers in Angelo's rooms. Thin, well-
shaped,--not handsome, my dear young lady, far from it, but with an air
so thoroughbred that, had you seen him in the day when the opera-house
had a crushroom and a fops' alley,--seen him in either of those resorts,
surrounded by elaborate dandies and showy beauty-men, dandies and beauty-
men would have seemed to you secondrate and vulgar; and the eye,
fascinated by that quiet form,--plain in manner, plain in dress, plain in
feature,--you would have said, "How very distinguished it is to be so
plain!" Knowing the great world from the core to the cuticle, and on