county; a pompous gentleman, the picture of a father-in-law for Willoughby.  The father of Miss Dale was a battered army surgeon from India, tenant of one of Sir Willoughby’s cottages bordering Patterne Park.  His girl was portionless and a poetess.  Her writing of the song in celebration of the young baronet’s birthday was thought a clever venture, bold as only your timid creatures can be bold.  She let the cat out of her bag of verse before the multitude; she almost proposed to her hero in her rhymes.  She was pretty; her eyelashes were long and dark, her eyes dark-blue, and her soul was ready to shoot like a rocket out of them at a look from Willoughby.  And he looked, he certainly looked, though he did not dance with her once that night, and danced repeatedly with Miss Durham.  He gave Laetitia to Vernon Whitford for the final dance of the night, and he may have looked at her so much in pity of an elegant girl allied to such a partner.  The “Phoebus Apollo turned fasting friar” had entirely forgotten his musical gifts in motion.  He crossed himself and crossed his bewildered lady, and crossed everybody in the figure, extorting shouts of cordial laughter from his cousin Willoughby.  Be it said that the hour was four in the morning, when dancers must laugh at somebody, if only to refresh their feet, and the wit of the hour administers to the wildest laughter.  Vernon was likened to Theseus in the maze, entirely dependent upon his Ariadne; to a fly released from a jam-pot; to a “salvage”, or green, man caught in a web of nymphs and made to go the paces.  Willoughby was inexhaustible in the happy similes he poured out to Miss Durham across the lines of Sir Roger de Coverley, and they were not forgotten, they procured him a reputation as a convivial sparkler.  Rumour went the round that he intended to give Laetitia to Vernon for good, when he could decide to take Miss Durham to himself; his generosity was famous; but that decision, though the rope was in the form of a knot, seemed reluctant for the conclusive close haul; it preferred the state of slackness; and if he courted Laetitia on behalf of his cousin, his cousinly love must have been greater than his passion, one had to suppose.  He was generous enough for it, or for marrying the portionless girl himself.

There was a story of a brilliant young widow of our aristocracy who had very nearly snared him.  Why should he object to marry into our aristocracy?  Mrs. Mountstuart asked him, and he replied that the girls of that class have no money, and he doubted the quality of their blood.  He had his eyes awake.  His duty to his House was a foremost thought with him, and for such a reason he may have been more anxious to give the slim and not robust Laetitia to Vernon than accede to his personal inclination.  The mention of the widow singularly offended him, notwithstanding the high rank of the lady named.  “A widow?” he said.  “I!” He spoke to a widow; an oldish one truly; but his wrath at the suggestion