ntil he
did, he felt there was no occasion for him to inconvenience himself by
living. So he had the house put away in brown holland, the carpets rolled
up, the pictures covered, the statues shrouded in muslin, the cabinets of
curiosities locked, the plate secured, the china closeted, and everything
arranged with the greatest care against the time, which he put before him
in the distance like a target, when he should marry and begin to live.

At first he gave two or three great dinners a year, about the height of the
fruit season, and when it was getting too ripe for carriage to London by
the old coaches--when a grand airing of the state-rooms used to take place,
and ladies from all parts of the county used to sit shivering with their
bare shoulders, all anxious for the honours of the head of the table. His
lordship always held out that he was a marrying man; but even if he hadn't
they would have come all the same, an unmarried man being always clearly on
the cards; and though he was stumpy, and clumsy, and ugly, with as little
to say for himself as could well be conceived, they all agreed that he was
a most engaging, attractive man--quite a pattern of a man. Even on
horseback, and in his hunting clothes, in which he looked far the best, he
was only a coarse, square, bull-headed looking man, with hard, dry, round,
matter-of-fact features, that never looked young, and yet somehow never get
old. Indeed, barring the change from brown to grey of his short stubbly
whiskers, which he trained with great care into a curve almost on to his
cheek-bone, he looked very little older at the period of which we are
writing than he did a dozen years before, when he was Lord Hardup. These
dozen years, however, had brought him down in his doings.

The dinners had gradually dwindled away altogether, and he had had all the
large tablecloths and napkins rough dried and locked away against he got
married; an event that he seemed more anxious to provide for the more
unlikely it became. He had also abdicated the main body of the mansion, and
taken up his quarters in what used to be the steward's room; into which he
could creep quietly by a side door opening from the outer entrance, and so
save frequent exposure to the cold and damp of the large cathedral-like
hall beyond. Through the steward's room was what used to be the muniment
room, which he converted into a bedroom for himself; and a little farther
along the passage was another small chambe