At last, matters were brought to their climax by an awkward love adventure of Ralph’s with one of our tenants’ daughters.  My father acted with his usual decision on the occasion.  He determined to apply a desperate remedy:  to let the refractory eldest son run through his career in freedom, abroad, until he had well wearied himself, and could return home a sobered man.  Accordingly, he procured for my brother an attache’s place in a foreign embassy, and insisted on his leaving England forthwith.  For once in a way, Ralph was docile.  He knew and cared nothing about diplomacy; but he liked the idea of living on the continent, so he took his leave of home with his best grace.  My father saw him depart, with ill-concealed agitation and apprehension; although he affected to feel satisfied that, flighty and idle as Ralph was, he was incapable of voluntarily dishonouring his family, even in his most reckless moods.

After this, we heard little from my brother.  His letters were few and short, and generally ended with petitions for money.  The only important news of him that reached us, reached us through public channels.

He was making quite a continental reputation—­a reputation, the bare mention of which made my father wince.  He had fought a duel; he had imported a new dance from Hungary; he had contrived to get the smallest groom that ever was seen behind a cabriolet; he had carried off the reigning beauty among the opera-dancers of the day from all competitors; a great French cook had composed a great French dish, and christened it by his name; he was understood to be the “unknown friend,” to whom a literary Polish countess had dedicated her “Letters against the restraint of the Marriage Tie;” a female German metaphysician, sixty years old, had fallen (Platonically) in love with him, and had taken to writing erotic romances in her old age.  Such were some of the rumours that reached my father’s ears on the subject of his son and heir!

After a long absence, he came home on a visit.  How well I remember the astonishment he produced in the whole household!  He had become a foreigner in manners and appearance.  His mustachios were magnificent; miniature toys in gold and jewellery hung in clusters from his watch-chain; his shirt-front was a perfect filigree of lace and cambric.  He brought with him his own boxes of choice liqueurs and perfumes; his own smart, impudent, French valet; his own travelling bookcase of French novels, which he opened with his own golden key.  He drank nothing but chocolate in the morning; he had long interviews with the cook, and revolutionized our dinner table.  All the French newspapers were sent to him by a London agent.  He altered the arrangements of his bed-room; no servant but his own valet was permitted to enter it.  Family portraits that hung there, were turned to the walls, and portraits of French actresses and Italian singers were stuck to the back of the canvasses.  Then he displaced a beautiful little ebony cabinet