did at about thirty years of age, his income was administered with sagacious economy, and by the time his two sons arrived at manhood Lord Castlecombe was a very rich man.

If he had a soft place in his heart, it was for his son Lucius, who resembled his dead mother in features, and also, unfortunately, in the delicacy of his constitution. George, his heir, was like himself—strong, tough, and hardy. Lord Castlecombe secretly admired Lucius's talents very much, and had been highly gratified when his second son took honours at his University. That this success had not been followed by any particularly brilliant results later, and that Lucius had, as it were, stuck fast in his career, had even decidedly failed in Parliament, and had finally been shelved in a Government post which, although lucrative, was inglorious, his lordship attributed to the increase of folly, incapacity, and roguery which he had observed in the world during the last twenty years or so. That a Cheffington of such abilities as Lucius should remain undistinguished was part of the general decadence. In politics Lord Castlecombe was a Whig of the old school; and though he continued to vote with his party, yet the only point on which he was thoroughly in sympathy with the Liberals—a word, by the way, which he had come greatly to dislike, as covering far too wide a field—was that they fought the Tories.

The person whom Lord Castlecombe most detested in all the world was his nephew Augustus. He disliked his extravagance, his poverty, and the biting insolence of his tongue. This antipathy had latterly added poignancy to the old man's desire that his son should marry, and transmit the Castlecombe title and estates in the direct line; for Augustus was the next heir after his two cousins. It was true that the contingency of Captain Cheffington succeeding seemed remote enough. George Cheffington was only his senior by a couple of years, and Lucius was his junior. But neither of them had married; and they were well on in middle life. Lucius, indeed, seemed to have settled down into incorrigible old bachelorhood. And although George, in answer to his father's exhortations on the subject, always replied that he really would think seriously of looking for a wife on his next visit to England (persons suitable for that dignity not being to be found, it appeared, in the particular portion of the globe where his official duties lay), yet the years went by, and still there came no daughter-in-law, no grandson to inherit the coronet and enjoy the broad