My immediate resolve was to set out for Paris; my second was to visit my uncle, Sir Guy Lorrequer, first, and having explained to him the nature of my position, and the advantageous prospects before me, endeavour to induce him to make some settlement on Lady Jane, in the event of my obtaining her family’s consent to our marriage.  This, from his liking great people much, and laying great stress upon the advantages of connexion, I looked upon as a matter of no great difficulty; so that, although my hopes of happiness were delayed in their fulfilment, I believed they were only about to be the more securely realized.  The same day I set out for Elton, and by ten o’clock at night reached my uncle’s house.  I found the old gentleman looking just as I had left him three years before, complaining a little of gout in the left foot—­praising his old specific, port-wine—­abusing his servants for robbing him—­and drinking the Duke of Wellington’s health every night after supper; which meal I had much pleasure in surprising him at on my arrival—­not having eaten since my departure from London.

“Well, Harry,” said my uncle, when the servants had left the room, and we drew over the spider table to the fire to discuss our wine with comfort, “what good wind has blown you down to me, my boy? for it’s odd enough, five minutes before I heard the wheels on the gravel I was just wishing some good fellow would join me at the grouse—­and you see I have had my wish!  The old story, I suppose, ‘out of cash.’  Would not come down here for nothing—­eh?  Come, lad, tell truth; is it not so?”

“Why, not exactly, sir; but I really had rather at present talk about you, than about my own matters, which we can chat over tomorrow.  How do you get on, sir, with the Scotch steward?”

“He’s a rogue, sir—­a cheat—­a scoundrel; but it is the same with them all; and your cousin, Harry—­your cousin, that I have reared from his infancy to be my heir, (pleasant topic for me!) he cares no more for me than the rest of them, and would never come near me, if it were not that, like yourself, he was hard run for money, and wanted to wheedle me out of a hundred or two.”

“But you forget, sir—­I told you I have not come with such an object.”

“We’ll see that—­we’ll see that in the morning,” replied he, with an incredulous shake of the head.

“But Guy, sir—­what has Guy done?”

“What has he not done?  No sooner did he join that popinjay set of fellows, the __th hussars, than he turned out, what he calls a four-in-hand drag, which dragged nine hundred pounds out of my pocket —­then he has got a yacht at Cowes—­a grouse mountain in Scotland—­and has actually given Tattersall an unlimited order to purchase the Wreckinton pack of harriers, which he intends to keep for the use of the corps.  In a word, there is not an amusement of that villanous regiment, not a flask of champagne drank at their mess, I don’t bear my share in the cost of; all through the kind offices of your worthy cousin, Guy Lorrequer.”