h had belonged to
his mother, and which had been painted by Boucher for Marie Antoinette.
It was matchless, and almost unique.

Not long after this, Lord Beaumaris, with many servants and many guns,
took Waldershare and Endymion down with him to Scotland.

CHAPTER XLVI

The end of the season is a pang to society. More hopes have been baffled
than realised. There is something melancholy in the last ball, though
the music ever seems louder, and the lights more glaring than usual. Or
it may be, the last entertainment is that hecatomb they call a wedding
breakfast, which celebrates the triumph of a rival. That is pleasant.
Society, to do it justice, struggles hard to revive in other scenes the
excitement that has expired. It sails to Cowes, it scuds to bubbling
waters in the pine forests of the continent, it stalks even into
Scotland; but it is difficult to restore the romance that has been
rudely disturbed, and to gather again together the threads of the
intrigue that have been lost in the wild flight of society from that
metropolis, which is now described as "a perfect desert"--that is to
say, a park or so, two or three squares, and a dozen streets where
society lives; where it dines, and dances, and blackballs, and bets, and
spouts.

But to the world in general, the mighty million, to the professional
classes, to all men of business whatever, the end of the season is the
beginning of carnival. It is the fulfilment of the dream over which they
have been brooding for ten months, which has sustained them in toil,
lightened anxiety, and softened even loss. It is air, it is health,
it is movement, it is liberty, it is nature--earth, sea, lake, moor,
forest, mountain, and river. From the heights of the Engadine to
Margate Pier, there is equal rapture, for there is an equal cessation of
routine.

Few enjoy a holiday more than a young clerk in a public office, who has
been bred in a gentle home, and enjoyed in his boyhood all the pastimes
of gentlemen. Now he is ever toiling, with an uncertain prospect of
annual relaxation, and living hardly. Once on a time, at the paternal
hall, he could shoot, or fish, or ride, every day of his life, as a
matter of course; and now, what would he not give for a good day's
sport? Such thoughts had frequently crossed the mind of Endymion when
drudging in London during the autumn, and when all his few acquaintances
were away. It was, therefore, with no ordinary zest that he looked
forwa