sick-bed, and my heart fills with instinctive gratitude
towards the bountiful Heaven that has so blest me.

Since my accession to my uncle's title and estate my intercourse with
my good cousin Lord Castlewood had been very rare. I had always supposed
him to be a follower of the winning side in politics, and was not a
little astonished to hear of his sudden appearance in opposition. A
disappointment in respect to a place at court, of which he pretended to
have had some promise, was partly the occasion of his rupture with the
Ministry. It is said that the most August Person in the realm had flatly
refused to receive into the R-y-l Household a nobleman whose character
was so notoriously bad, and whose example (so the August Objector was
pleased to say) would ruin and corrupt any respectable family. I heard
of the Castlewoods during our travels in Europe, and that the mania for
play had again seized upon his lordship. His impaired fortunes having
been retrieved by the prudence of his wife and father-in-law, he had
again begun to dissipate his income at hombre and lansquenet. There
were tales of malpractices in which he had been discovered, and even of
chastisement inflicted upon him by the victims of his unscrupulous
arts. His wife's beauty and freshness faded early; we met but once at
Aix-la-Chapelle, where Lady Castlewood besought my wife to go and
see her, and afflicted Lady Warrington's kind heart by stories of the
neglect and outrage of which her unfortunate husband was guilty. We were
willing to receive these as some excuse and palliation for the unhappy
lady's own conduct. A notorious adventurer, gambler, and spadassin,
calling himself the Chevalier de Barry, and said to be a relative of
the mistress of the French King, but afterwards turning out to be an
Irishman of low extraction, was in constant attendance upon the Earl and
Countess at this time, and conspicuous for the audacity of his lies, the
extravagance of his play, and somewhat mercenary gallantry towards the
other sex, and a ferocious bravo courage, which, however, failed him
on one or two awkward occasions, if common report said true. He
subsequently married, and rendered miserable a lady of title and fortune
in England. The poor little American lady's interested union with Lord
Castlewood was scarcely more happy.

I remember our little Miles's infantile envy being excited by learning
that Lord Castlewood's second son, a child a few months younger than