Of course our young man commenced as an historical painter, deeming that the highest branch of art.  He painted a prodigious battle-piece of Assaye, and will it be believed that the Royal Academicians rejected this masterpiece?  Clive himself, after a month’s trip to Paris with his father, declared the thing was rubbish.

It was during this time, when Clive and his father were in Paris, that Mr. Binnie, laid up with a wrenched ankle, was consoled by a visit from his sister, Mrs. Mackenzie, a brisk, plump little widow, and her daughter, Miss Rosey, a blue-eyed, fair-haired lass, with a very sweet voice.

Of course the most hospitable and polite of colonels would not hear of Mrs. Mackenzie and her daughter quitting his house when he returned to it, after the pleasant sojourn in Paris; nor indeed, did his fair guest show the least anxiety or intention to go away.  Certainly, the house was a great deal more cheerful for the presence of the two pleasant ladies.  Everybody liked them.  Binnie received their caresses very good-humouredly.  The Colonel liked every woman under the sun.  Clive laughed and joked and waltzed alternately with Rosey and her mamma.  None of us could avoid seeing that Mrs. Mackenzie was, as the phrase is, “setting her cap” openly at Clive; and Clive laughed at her simple manoeuvres as merrily as the rest.

Some months after the arrival of Mr. Binnie’s niece and sister in Fitzroy Square, Mrs. Newcome, wife of Hobson Newcome, banker, the Colonel’s brother, gave a dinner party at her house in Bryanstone Square.  “It is quite a family party,” whispered the happy Mrs. Newcome, when we recognised Lady Ann Newcome’s carriage, and saw her ladyship, her mother—­old Lady Kew, her daughter, Ethel, and her husband, Sir Brian, (Hobson’s twin brother and partner in the banking firm of Hobson Brothers and Newcome), descend from the vehicle.  The whole party from St. Pancras were already assembled—­Mr. Binnie, the Colonel and his son, Mrs. Mackenzie and Miss Rosey.

Everybody was bent upon being happy and gracious.  Miss Newcome ran up to the Colonel with both hands out, and with no eyes for anyone else, until Clive advancing, those bright eyes become brighter still with surprise and pleasure as she beholds him.  And, as she looks, Miss Ethel sees a very handsome fellow, while the blushing youth casts down his eyes before hers.

“Upon my word, my dear Colonel,” says old Lady Kew, nodding her head shrewdly, “I think we were right.”

“No doubt right in everything your ladyship does, but in what particularly?” asks the Colonel.

“Right to keep him out of the way.  Ethel has been disposed of these ten years.  Did not Ann tell you?  How foolish of her!  But all mothers like to have young men dying for their daughters.  Your son is really the handsomest boy in London.  Ethel, my dear!  Colonel Newcome must present us to Mrs. Mackenzie and Miss Mackenzie;” and Ethel, giving a nod to Clive, with whom she had talked for a minute or two, again puts her hand into her uncle’s and walks towards Mrs. Mackenzie.