the
establishment would follow in other vehicles.

Also must be mentioned the carriage in which rode her Ladyship's
chaplain, Mr. Runt, who acted in capacity of governor to her son, the
little Viscount Bullingdon,--a melancholy deserted little boy, about
whom his father was more than indifferent, and whom his mother never
saw, except for two minutes at her levee, when she would put to him a
few questions of history or Latin grammar; after which he was consigned
to his own amusements, or the care of his governor, for the rest of the
day.

The notion of such a Minerva as this, whom I saw in the public places
now and then, surrounded by swarms of needy abbes and schoolmasters,
who flattered her, frightened me for some time, and I had not the
least desire to make her acquaintance. I had no desire to be one of the
beggarly adorers in the great lady's train,--fellows, half friend, half
lacquey, who made verses, and wrote letters, and ran errands, content to
be paid by a seat in her Ladyship's box at the comedy, or a cover at her
dinner-table at noon. 'Don't be afraid,' Sir Charles Lyndon would
say, whose great subject of conversation and abuse was his lady: 'my
Lindonira will have nothing to do with you. She likes the Tuscan brogue,
not that of Kerry. She says you smell too much of the stable to be
admitted to ladies' society; and last Sunday fortnight, when she did me
the honour to speak to me last, said, "I wonder, Sir Charles Lyndon,
a gentleman who has been the King's ambassador can demean himself by
gambling and boozing with low Irish blacklegs!" Don't fly in a fury! I'm
a cripple, and it was Lindonira said it, not I.'

This piqued me, and I resolved to become acquainted with Lady Lyndon;
if it were but to show her Ladyship that the descendant of those Barrys,
whose property she unjustly held, was not an unworthy companion for any
lady, were she ever so high. Besides, my friend the knight was dying:
his widow would be the richest prize in the three kingdoms. Why should I
not win her, and, with her, the means of making in the world that figure
which my genius and inclination desired? I felt I was equal in blood
and breeding to any Lyndon in Christendom, and determined to bend this
haughty lady. When I determine, I look upon the thing as done.

My uncle and I talked the matter over, and speedily settled upon a
method for making our approaches upon this stately lady of Castle
Lyndon. Mr. Runt, young Lord Bullingdon's g