beautiful person, who carried an air of the most abundant affection
for him on the numerous occasions when she received her friends. Of
his father, who had, as far as possible, ignored his existence, he
remembered very little.

During these years there had been frequent difficulties, the nature
of which he had since learned entirely to comprehend; controversies
with white-waistcoated proprietors of hotels and voluble
tradespeople, generally followed by a severance of hastily-cemented
friendships, and a departure of apparently unpremeditated
abruptness.

When his mother died, he was sent to a fairly good school in
England, where his father occasionally visited him, and where he had
been terribly bullied at first, and had afterwards learned to bully
in turn. He spent his holidays in London, at the house of his
grandmother--an excellent old lady, who petted and scolded him
almost simultaneously, who talked mysteriously about his "poor dear
father," and took care that he went to church regularly, and had
dancing-lessons three times a week.

His father's death, which occurred at Monaco somewhat unexpectedly,
and on the subject of which his grandmother maintained a certain
reserve, affected the boy but little; in fact, the first real grief
which he could remember to have experienced was when the old lady
herself died--he was then nineteen years old--leaving him her
blessing and a sum of Consols sufficient to produce an income of
about £250 a year.

The boy's inclinations leaned in the direction of Oxford, and in