HIS POLISHED MANNERS. 119 



mentioned^ a lady present, looking at him askance, remarked 

 to me, " Why didn't you shoot him ? " In an instant the 

 squire raised his head, the lightning flashed in his eye, and 

 he exclaimed, pointing to me, " It he had, he would not 

 have been there." It was at this time he took his daily ex- 

 ercise for an hour in the conservatory, as has been already 

 related. Hitherto Carter, his huntsman — as good a one as 

 ever crossed a country — had been in the habit of seeing his 

 master every evening in the dining-room at nine o'clock, to 

 talk over the sport of that day, and to settle what hounds 

 were to run on the morrow, and what horses were to go 

 out. Now a short occasional interview in the morning suf- 

 ficed, when Mr. Smith had taken his usual basin of soup 

 with brandy in it, and when the pack was not out. Never- 

 theless, his intellect was unimpaired, and his head for figures 

 as good as ever. He was investing largely at this period in 

 Consols, as the Welsh property was rapidly increasing in 

 value, and within the last few years he had paid ofi^ every 

 incumbrance on his estates.* What I was particularly struck 

 with was the extreme neatness of his personal appearance, 

 so unusual in an invalid, and the care he took never to come 

 among the ladies, except en grande toilette, at those times 

 even when almost without company, for when he was most 

 suflfering, he could never be prevailed upon to enter the 

 drawing-room in his rohe de chamhre. 



His gallantry and the respect he showed to the fair sex 

 were always remarkable. To them the loud and often 

 boisterous sportsman was gentleness itself. When dressed for 

 the evening, in his white silk stockings and well-fitting pumps 

 (for he was not a little jDroud of his foot), he looked the pat- 

 tern of an old English gentleman. He studiously avoided 

 giving trouble, and seemed annoyed at being obliged to ask 

 any on(^ to perform any little service for him. In this way 



* His father had left a large fortune to each of his sisters, chargeable 

 on the property in Hants and 0««rnarvon.shire, which he had entirely 

 paid off. 



