
well-regulated body politic, this natural desire on the part of a spirited young
gentleman so highly connected, would be speedily recognised; but somehow William
Buffy found when he came in, that these were not times in which he could manage
that little matter, either; and this was the second indication Sir Leicester
Dedlock had conveyed to him, that the country was going to pieces.
    The rest of the cousins are ladies and gentlemen of various ages and
capacities; the major part, amiable and sensible, and likely to have done well
enough in life if they could have overcome their cousinship; as it is, they are
almost all a little worsted by it, and lounge in purposeless and listless paths,
and seem to be quite as much at a loss how to dispose of themselves, as anybody
else can be how to dispose of them.
    In this society, and where not, my Lady Dedlock reigns supreme. Beautiful,
elegant, accomplished, and powerful in her little world (for the world of
fashion does not stretch all the way from pole to pole), her influence in Sir
Leicester's house, however haughty and indifferent her manner, is greatly to
improve it and refine it. The cousins, even those older cousins who were
paralysed when Sir Leicester married her, do her feudal homage; and the
Honourable Bob Stables daily repeats to some chosen person, between breakfast
and lunch, his favourite original remark, that she is the best-groomed woman in
the whole stud.
    Such the guests in the long drawing-room at Chesney Wold this dismal night,
when the step on the Ghost's Walk (inaudible here, however), might be the step
of a deceased cousin shut out in the cold. It is near bed-time. Bedroom fires
blaze brightly all over the house, raising ghosts of grim furniture on wall and
ceiling. Bedroom candlesticks bristle on the distant table by the door, and
cousins yawn on ottomans. Cousins at the piano, cousins at the soda-water tray,
cousins rising from the card-table, cousins gathered round the fire. Standing on
one side of his own peculiar fire (for there are two), Sir Leicester. On the
opposite side of the broad hearth, my Lady at her table. Volumnia, as one of the
more privileged cousins, in a luxurious chair between them. Sir Leicester
glancing, with magnificent displeasure, at the rouge and the pearl necklace.
    »I occasionally meet on my staircase here,« drawls Volumnia, whose thoughts
perhaps are already hopping up it to bed, after a long evening of
