With the assistance of Mr. Stukely Culbrett, Mrs. Lespel prepared the house and those of the company who were in the secret of affairs for the arrival of Beauchamp.  The ladies were curious to see him.  The gentlemen, not anticipating extreme amusement, were calm:  for it is an axiom in the world of buckskins and billiard-cues, that one man is very like another; and so true is it with them, that they can in time teach it to the fair sex.  Friends of Cecil Baskelett predominated, and the absence of so sprightly a fellow was regretted seriously; but he was shooting with his uncle at Holdesbury, and they did not expect him before Thursday.

On Wednesday morning Lord Palmet presented himself at a remarkably well-attended breakfast-table at Itchincope.  He passed from Mrs. Lespel to Mrs. Wardour-Devsreux and Miss Halkett, bowed to other ladies, shook hands with two or three men, and nodded over the heads of half-a-dozen, accounting rather mysteriously for his delay in coming, it was thought, until he sat down before a plate of Yorkshire pie, and said: 

‘The fact is I’ve been canvassing hard.  With Beauchamp!’

Astonishment and laughter surrounded him, and Palmet looked from face to face, equally astonished, and desirous to laugh too.

‘Ernest! how could you do that?’ said Mrs. Lespel; and her husband cried in stupefaction, ‘With Beauchamp?’

‘Oh! it’s because of the Radicalism,’ Palmet murmured to himself.  ’I didn’t mind that.’

‘What sort of a day did you have?’ Mr. Culbrett asked him; and several gentlemen fell upon him for an account of the day.

Palmet grimaced over a mouthful of his pie.

‘Bad!’ quoth Mr. Lespel; ’I knew it.  I know Bevisham.  The only chance there is for five thousand pounds in a sack with a hole in it.’

‘Bad for Beauchamp?  Dear me, no’; Palmet corrected the error.  ’He is carrying all before him.  And he tells them,’ Palmet mimicked Beauchamp, ’they shall not have one penny:  not a farthing.  I gave a couple of young ones a shilling apiece, and he rowed me for bribery; somehow I did wrong.’

Lord Palmet described the various unearthly characters he had inspected in their dens:  Carpendike, Tripehallow, and the radicals Peter Molyneux and Samuel Killick, and the ex-member for the borough, Cougham, posing to suit sign-boards of Liberal inns, with a hand thrust in his waistcoat, and his head well up, the eyes running over the under-lids, after the traditional style of our aristocracy; but perhaps more closely resembling an urchin on tiptoe peering above park-palings.  Cougham’s remark to Beauchamp, heard and repeated by Palmet with the object of giving an example of the senior Liberal’s phraseology:  ’I was necessitated to vacate my town mansion, to my material discomfort and that of my wife, whose equipage I have been compelled to take, by your premature canvass of the borough, Captain Beauchamp:  and now, I hear, on undeniable authority, that no second opponent to us will be forthcoming’—–­this produced the greatest effect on the company.