OR WHICH WILL HE WED ? 403 



and springing into his phaeton, rattled off for the high road to London. 

 *' Adieu ! Sir Captain !" apostrophised Mrs. Atherstone, as she stood at 

 the drawing-room window, and beheld him raising clouds of dust in his 

 rapid flight — *' Adieu ! we shall meet anon, and then" — " What then ?" 

 Reader ! continue. 



Arrived in London, the Captain hailed with rapture his accustomed 

 haunts ; again he promenaded St. James's-street, lounged at Brooks's, 

 and made one in the family circles of the Dowager Marchionesses. Lady- 

 Eleanor was not, however, to be met with ; *' her name was never heard," 

 and the Captain frequently sighed with disappointment as he vainly 

 sought for her resemblance in the ** glittering halls" of fashion. " Had 

 she but a soul !" he would mentally exclaim — but she had none — actually 

 like the woman of Mahomet, had none. * « * 



June had nearly waned away when the demise of sovereignty threw 

 the fair into sables and melancholy. There was a cessation of parties, 

 routs, and private theatricals; the opera was closed by ** particular 

 desire," and Taglioni, with 2000 consolations, fled from London to Paris, 

 to the infinite discomfiture of Laporte :* smiles were as contraband as a 

 smuggled case of Farina's, and ** silent tears," as the rhymers say, 

 reposing (like " crystals" or ** diamonds," of course) upon downcast 

 lashes, became the mode. The ruder sex cultivated looks of manly 

 grief and resignation, while the better part of the creation studied, not 

 unbecomingly, the air of a Madonna. There was novelty — the elixir vitce 

 of fashion — in the thing, and it was, accordingly, pursued with alacrity ; 

 Court mourning, with its consequences, its "bombazines/' "crape 

 hoods," and " shamoy shoes," was submitted to with good grace, and 

 "the Lord Chamberlain" had no cause to complain of a want of 

 reverence for " our late most gracious Sovereign of blessed memory " 

 In fact the population of the beau-monde appeared like a troop of black 

 beetles in the sun ;f and the " artistes^' who supply the embellishments 

 for the numerous "feuilletors" that, generally, aid the fancies of the 

 pretty milliners of London, imparted to the heads of their figures an air 

 triste et touchant to an extreme. 



But the new King was proclaimed, and felicitations, kissing of hands, 

 the discharge of artillery, and the cheerings of the multitude, contrasted 

 curiously,^ and perhaps violently, with the condolences, the public weeds, 

 and the passing bells that almost simultaneously gave token of the recent 

 decease. Henry found much to occupy his time in these alternate 

 events ; his brother and/air sister had,. as in duty bound, hastened, most 

 loyally, to pay their respective homage to their new Majesties of the 

 realm, and the myrtle vales of Devon were consigned to an oblivion 

 interrupted only by the associations arising from the frequent "memo- 

 ries" of the Lady Eleanor, in which the Captain, somewhat suspiciously, 

 indulged. From the "ill-favoured and elderly," who had, as Henry 

 thought, " most unaccountably" gained ground in his "endurance," 

 our military inamorato contrived to ascertain that the object of his 

 paradoxical idolatry had joined the Countess in Ireland, and that an 

 indefinite period of time would probably elapse before the Dowager (one 

 of the old Hibernian noblesse) would consent to an exchange of her 

 ancient baronial castle, her, almost feudal, grandeur — the wild, romantic 



* It is recorded in the fashionable annals that this enchanting ^* danseuse,''^ 

 immortalized not only by her " poetry of motion," as the critics termed her per- 

 formance, but by Chalon's exquisite sketches, received two thousand pounds for 

 her engagement. 



t This quaint simile is borrowed from one of Banim's tales of the O'Hara 

 Family— we forget which. 



