ivil
young--young,--young,--I should say cub if I dared, to tell me that
you don't like dining with me any day of the week."

"Of course you know what I mean is, that I don't like troubling your
father."

"Leave that to me. I shall tell him you are coming, and Frank too. Of
course you can bring him. Then he can talk to me when papa goes down
to his club, and you can arrange your politics with Miss Cass." So
it was settled, and at eight o'clock Lord Silverbridge reappeared in
Belgrave Square with Frank Tregear.

Earl Grex was a nobleman of very ancient family, the Grexes having
held the parish of Grex, in Yorkshire, from some time long prior to
the Conquest. In saying all this, I am, I know, allowing the horse to
appear wholesale;--but I find that he cannot be kept out. I may as
well go on to say that the present Earl was better known at Newmarket
and the Beaufort,--where he spent a large part of his life in playing
whist,--than in the House of Lords. He was a grey-haired, handsome,
worn-out old man, who through a long life of pleasure had greatly
impaired a fortune which, for an earl, had never been magnificent,
and who now strove hard, but not always successfully, to remedy that
evil by gambling. As he could no longer eat and drink as he had used
to do, and as he cared no longer for the light that lies in a lady's
eye, there was not much left to him in the world but cards and
racing. Nevertheless he was a handsome old man, of polished manners,
when he chose to use them; a staunch Conservative and much regarded
by his party, for whom in his early life he had done some work in the
House of Commons.

"Silverbridge is all very well," he had said; "but I don't see why
that young Tregear is to dine here every night of his life."

"This is the second time since he has been up in town, papa."

"He was here last week, I know."

"Silverbridge wouldn't come without him."

"That's d---- nonsense," said the Earl. Miss Cassewary gave a
start,--not, we may presume, because she was shocked, for she could
not be much shocked, having heard the same word from the same lips
very often; but she thought it right always to enter a protest. Then
the two young men were announced.

Frank Tregear, having been known by the family as a boy, was Frank
to all of them,--as was Lady Mabel, Mabel to him, somewhat to the
disgust of the father and not altogether with the approbation of Miss
Cass. But Lady Mabel had declared that she would not