onfidential and most
excellent adviser in all matters of the heart. 'I've been wasting the
treasures of my affections upon that flirt of a countess, and here's
her husband restored to health and likely to live I don't know how many
years!' And, as if to add to my mortification, there came just at this
period to Spa an English tallow-chandler's heiress, with a plum to
her fortune; and Madame Cornu, the widow of a Norman cattle-dealer and
farmer-general, with a dropsy and two hundred thousand livres a year.

'What's the use of my following the Lyndons to England,' says I, 'if the
knight won't die?'

'Don't follow them, my dear simple child,' replied my uncle. 'Stop here
and pay court to the new arrivals.'

'Yes, and lose Calista for ever, and the greatest estate in all
England.'

'Pooh, pooh! youths like you easily fire and easily despond. Keep up a
correspondence with Lady Lyndon. You know there's nothing she likes
so much. There's the Irish abbe, who will write you the most charming
letters for a crown apiece. Let her go; write to her, and meanwhile look
out for anything else which may turn up. Who knows? you might marry the
Norman widow, bury her, take her money, and be ready for the Countess
against the knight's death.'

And so, with vows of the most profound respectful attachment, and having
given twenty louis to Lady Lyndon's waiting-woman for a lock of her
hair (of which fact, of course, the woman informed her mistress), I took
leave of the Countess, when it became necessary for her return to her
estates in England; swearing I would follow her as soon as an affair of
honour I had on my hands could be brought to an end.

I shall pass over the events of the year that ensued before I again
saw her. She wrote to me according to promise; with much regularity at
first, with somewhat less frequency afterwards. My affairs, meanwhile,
at the play-table went on not unprosperously, and I was just on the
point of marrying the widow Cornu (we were at Brussels by this time, and
the poor soul was madly in love with me,) when the London Gazette was
put into my hands, and I read the following announcement:--

'Died at Castle-Lyndon, in the kingdom of Ireland, the Right Honourable
Sir Charles Lyndon, Knight of the Bath, member of Parliament for Lyndon
in Devonshire, and many years His Majesty's representative at various
European Courts. He hath left behind him a name which is endeared to all
his friends for his manifold virt