r. But, as it
was a fair presumption that most colonial gentlemen made a visit home at
least once in their lives, I did not allow the dust to get into my eyes.
I was invited to dinners, and fairly showered with invitations to balls
and drums and garden parties. I was twitted about the Beauty, most often
with only a thin coating of amiability covering the spite of the remark.
In short, if my head had not been so heavily laden with other matters,
it might well have become light under the strain. Had I been ambitious
to enter the arena I should have had but little trouble, since
eligibility then might be reduced to guineas and another element not
moral. I was the only heir of one of the richest men in the colony,
vouched for by the Manners and taken up by Mr. Fox and my Lord Comyn.
Inquiries are not pushed farther. I could not help seeing the hardness
of it all, or refrain from contrasting my situation with that of the
penniless outcast I had been but a little time before. The gilded rooms,
the hundred yellow candles multiplied by the mirrors, the powder, the
perfume, the jewels,--all put me in mind of the poor devils I had left
wasting away their lives in Castle Yard. They, too, had had their times
of prosperity, their friends who had faded with the first waning of
fortune. Some of them had known what it was to be fawned over. And how
many of these careless, flitting men of fashion I looked upon could feel
the ground firm beneath their feet; or could say with certainty what
a change of ministers, or one wild night at White's or Almack's, would
bring forth? Verily, one must have seen the under side of life to know
the upper!

Presently I was sought out by Mr. Topham Beauclerk, who had heard of the
episode below and wished to hear more. He swore at the duke.

"He will be run through some day, and serve him jolly right," said he.
"Bet you twenty pounds Charles Fox does it! His Grace knows he has the
courage to fight him."

"The courage!" I repeated.

"Yes. Angelo says the duke has diabolical skill. And then he won't fight
fair. He killed young Atwater on a foul, you know. Slipped on the wet
grass, and Chartersea had him pinned before he caught his guard. But
there is Lady Di a-calling, a-calling."

"Do all the women cheat in America too?" asked Topham, as we approached.

I thought of my Aunt Caroline, and laughed.

"Some," I answered.

"They will game, d--n 'em," said Topham, as tho' he had never gamed in
his life.