life and enjoyment to our friends in Warwick
Street. Waldershare had not taken his seat in the autumn session. After
the general election, he had gone abroad with Lord Beaumaris, the young
nobleman who had taken them to the Derby, and they had seen and
done many strange things. During all their peregrinations, however,
Waldershare maintained a constant correspondence with Imogene,
occasionally sending her a choice volume, which she was not only to
read, but to prove her perusal of it by forwarding to him a criticism of
its contents.

Endymion was too much pleased to meet Waldershare again, and told him of
the kind of intimacy he had formed with Colonel Albert and all about
the baron. Waldershare was much interested in these details, and it was
arranged that an opportunity should be taken to make the colonel and
Waldershare acquainted.

This, however, was not an easy result to bring about, for Waldershare
insisted on its not occurring formally, and as the colonel maintained
the utmost reserve with the household, and Endymion had no room of
reception, weeks passed over without Waldershare knowing more of Colonel
Albert personally than sometimes occasionally seeing him mount his
horse.

In the meantime life in Warwick Street, so far as the Rodney family were
concerned, appeared to have re-assumed its pleasant, and what perhaps
we are authorised in styling its normal condition. They went to the
play two or three times a week, and there Waldershare or Lord Beaumaris,
frequently both, always joined them; and then they came home to supper,
and then they smoked; and sometimes there was a little singing, and
sometimes a little whist. Occasionally there was only conversation, that
is to say, Waldershare held forth, dilating on some wondrous theme,
full of historical anecdote, and dazzling paradox, and happy phrase. All
listened with interest, even those who did not understand him. Much of
his talk was addressed really to Beaumaris, whose mind he was forming,
as well as that of Imogene. Beaumaris was an hereditary Whig, but had
not personally committed himself, and the ambition of Waldershare was
to transform him not only into a Tory, but one of the old rock, a
real Jacobite. "Is not the Tory party," Waldershare would exclaim, "a
succession of heroic spirits, 'beautiful and swift,' ever in the van,
and foremost of their age?--Hobbes and Bolingbroke, Hume and Adam Smith,
Wyndham and Cobham, Pitt and Grenville, Canning and Huskis