“Confound you, sir!” he cried.

For the ducal temper was no respecter of presences.  Then a title was a title to those born lower, and the young man plainly had a vast honour for a coronet.

“I beg your Grace’s pardon,” said he.

“Who the deuce is he?” demanded the duke petulantly of Mr. Manners, thereby setting the poor little man all a-tremble.

“Why, why,—­” he replied, searching for his spyglass.

For an instant Dolly’s eyes shot scorn.  Chartersea had clearly seen and heeded that signal before.

“The gentleman is a friend of mine,” she said.

Tho’ I were put out of the Garden of Eden as a consequence, I itched to have it out with his Grace then and there.  I knew that I was bound to come into collision with him sooner or later.  Such, indeed, was my mission in London.  But Dorothy led the way upstairs, a spot of colour burning each of her cheeks.  The stream of guests had been arrested until the hall was packed, and the curious were peering over the rail above.

“Lord, wasn’t she superb!” exclaimed Comyn, exultingly, as we followed.  In the drawing-room the buzzing about the card tables was hushed a moment as she went in.  But I soon lost sight of her, thanks to Comyn.  He drew me on from group to group, and I was duly presented to a score of Lady So-and-sos and honourable misses, most of whom had titles, but little else.  Mammas searched their memories, and suddenly discovered that they had heard their parents speak of my grandfather.  But, as it was a fair presumption that most colonial gentlemen made a visit home at least once in their lives, I did not allow the dust to get into my eyes.  I was invited to dinners, and fairly showered with invitations to balls and drums and garden parties.  I was twitted about the Beauty, most often with only a thin coating of amiability covering the spite of the remark.  In short, if my head had not been so heavily laden with other matters, it might well have become light under the strain.  Had I been ambitious to enter the arena I should have had but little trouble, since eligibility then might be reduced to guineas and another element not moral.  I was the only heir of one of the richest men in the colony, vouched for by the Manners and taken up by Mr. Fox and my Lord Comyn.  Inquiries are not pushed farther.  I could not help seeing the hardness of it all, or refrain from contrasting my situation with that of the penniless outcast I had been but a little time before.  The gilded rooms, the hundred yellow candles multiplied by the mirrors, the powder, the perfume, the jewels,—­all put me in mind of the poor devils I had left wasting away their lives in Castle Yard.  They, too, had had their times of prosperity, their friends who had faded with the first waning of fortune.  Some of them had known what it was to be fawned over.  And how many of these careless, flitting men of fashion I looked upon could feel the ground firm beneath their feet; or could say with certainty what a change of ministers, or one wild night at White’s or Almack’s, would bring forth?  Verily, one must have seen the under side of life to know the upper!