' Sedley Beaudesert
might follow his whims, and all that would be said against him was
'good-natured, simple fellow!' But if Lord Castleton follow his whims,
you would think he was a second Catiline,--unsettling the peace and
undermining the prosperity of the entire nation!" Here the wretched man
paused, and sighed heavily; then, as his thoughts wandered into a new
channel of woe, he resumed: "Ah! if you could but see the forlorn great
house I am expected to inhabit, cooped up between dead walls instead of
my pretty rooms with the windows full on the park; and the balls I am
expected to give; and the parliamentary interest I am to keep up;
and the villanous proposal made to me to become a lord-steward or
lord-chamberlain, because it suits my rank to be a sort of a servant.
Oh, Pisistratus, you lucky dog,--not twenty-one, and with, I dare say,
not two hundred pounds a-year in the world!"

Thus bemoaning and bewailing his sad fortunes, the poor marquis ran on,
till at last he exclaimed, in a tone of yet deeper despair,--

"And everybody says I must marry too;--that the Castleton line must not
be extinct! The Beaudeserts are a good old family ono,'--as old, for
what I know, as the Castletons; but the British empire would suffer no
loss if they sank into the tomb of the Capulets. But that the Castleton
peerage should expire is a thought of crime and woe at which all the
mothers of England rise in a phalanx! And so, instead of visiting
the sins of the fathers on the sons, it is the father that is to be
sacrificed for the benefit of the third and fourth generation!"

Despite my causes for seriousness, I could not help laughing; my
companion turned on me a look of reproach.

"At least," said I, composing my countenance, "Lord Castleton has one
comfort in his afflictions,--if he must marry, he may choose as he
pleases."

"That is precisely what Sedley Beaudesert could, and Lord Castleton
cannot do," said the marquis, gravely. "The rank of Sir Sedley
Beaudesert was a quiet and comfortable rank, he might marry a curate's
daughter, or a duke's, and please his eye or grieve his heart as the
caprice took him. But Lord Castleton must marry, not for a wife, but for
a marchioness,--marry some one who will wear his rank for him; take the
trouble of splendor oft his hands, and allow him to retire into a
corner and dream that he is Sedley Beaudesert once more! Yes, it must be
so,--the crowning sacrifice must be completed at the altar