sorption; this nursing and misering of care tokens ill." 66 My care is idleness," pronounced Beresford; "my study how to obtain employment. Dear sir, this inactivity, this useless waste of youth and strength, is worse than all the scourges which war can let loose." "We cannot make war for the employment of the idle," said the admiral, dryly. 66 No, my dear sir," quick returned Sydney; "but dint of perseverance may procure employment for the idle: here, the possibility cannot reach. I have been thinking, whether close application at the War-Office-whether diligent attendance at the levees of the commander-inchief-whether" "Pshaw! pshaw! you have been thinking, how, with the best possible grace, to steer away from this dull harbour. Well, Sydney, at your age I should have thought the like: now I love smooth waE 6 ter: ter: then, I cared not for squall or breaker. You shall go to London, my boy; you shall ply them at the War-Office, and stick close to the levees of the commander-in-chief; and if a few hundreds can buckle the sabre on your thigh, and plant the plume in your bonnet, you shall have them, and use them, and God bless you with them!" Beresford tried to speak his thanks, but the admiral was beyond hearing. 'Twas his way, to load with favour, and then to fly the reach of gratitude. In less than a week Beresford was in London; with his friend D'Arcy, was in lodgings in Clarges-street. In the first introduction at sir Charles Elrington's, he was struck with the extreme beauty of Clara; but soon did admiration change to doubt and disapproval. She was not the woman he would have selected for his friend; not the woman fitted to make after-life happy. Living for fashion, toiling for notoriety, all her better feelings if if better feelings she possessed-were lost in empty profitless display. She admitted no check-rein upon fancy; she lived the slave of her own capricious will. Beresford saw much to condemn, yet much he feared to give words to his feelings. D'Arcy was under the infatuation of passion, and how could he rend away the haze which muffled his clear reason?— how could he enumerate errors, multiplied errors, in the siren who held his heart in thrall-who reigned paramount over his feelings and over his actionswho had mischievously sprung up in the path of life, as though, in the person of his friend, to give the lie to his own oftpronounced hypothesis, that Love, like every other earthly passion, in the well regulated mind, might be trammelled and held down by principle and reason: now, alas! he felt that time and circumstances, and bitter dear-bought experience, could alone break the bonds, and rouse the captived spirit into power. Such was the outward outward state of things, when seated beside their own fire, at their own breakfastboard, the advertisement in the Times newspaper, first met the eye, and awakened fresh springs and fresh speculations in the mind of Sydney Beresford. CHAP. CHAP. IV. RESISTING all the splendour and luxuries. of Portman-square, backed by the witching smiles of the beautiful Miss Elrington, Beresford, bent upon a punctual fulfilment of the rendezvous to which he was so inexplicably summoned, walked from his. lodging at five o'clock, and soon turned into a well-known chop-house, or, to borrow a French term, restaurateur, where many of our exquisites of the very first grade, have been known to seek the vulgar accommodation of a dinner-then quiz the practice. At any other season his mind had been amused by the motley throng he encountered: some living by their wits; some without wit to live by heroes of the desk-profession, and commercial dandies, threadbare curates, and half-pay officers, all-like the gather ing |