l such establishments. Roland Cashel was,
indeed, not the man to dislike this kind of democracy; it spared him
trouble; it inflicted no tiresome routine of attentions; he was free as
the others to follow the bent of his humor, and he asked for no more.

It was without one particle of vulgar pride of wealth that he delighted
in the pleasure he saw around him; it was the mere buoyancy of a
high-spirited nature. The cost no more entered into his calculations
in a personal than a pecuniary sense. A consciousness that he was
the source of all that splendid festivity,--that his will was the
motive-power of all that complex machinery of pleasure,--increased,
but did not constitute, his enjoyment. To see his guests happy, in the
various modes they preferred, was his great delight, and, for once, he
felt inclined to think that wealth had great privileges.

The display of all which gratified him most was that which usually took
place each day after luncheon; when the great space before the house was
thronged with equipages of various kinds and degrees, with saddle-horses
and mounted grooms, and amid all the bustle of discussing where to, and
with whom, the party issued forth to spend the hours before dinner.

A looker-on would have been amused to watch all the little devices
in request, to join this party, to avoid that, to secure a seat in a
certain carriage, or to escape from some other; Linton's chief amusement
being to thwart as many of these plans as he could, and while he packed
a sleepy Chief Justice into the same barouche with the gay Kennyfeck
girls, to commit Lady Janet to the care of some dashing dragoon, who did
not dare decline the wife of a "Commander of the Forces."

Cashel always joined the party on horseback, so long as Lady Kilgoff
kept the house, which she did for the first week of her stay; but when
she announced her intention of driving out, he offered his services to
accompany her. By the merest accident it chanced that the very day she
fixed on for her first excursion was that on which Cashel had determined
to try a new and most splendid equipage which had just arrived; it was a
phaeton, built in all the costly splendor of the "Regency of the Duke of
Orleans,"--one of those gorgeous toys which even a voluptuous age gazed
at with wonder. Two jet-black Arabians, of perfect symmetry, drew it,
the whole forming a most beautiful equipage.

Exclamations of astonishment and admiration broke from the whole party