Under the Red Dragon

mother. About eighteen persons were present, mostly gentlemen, and I instinctively made my way to where she I sought was seated, idling ov

ere is a fair friend to wh

ends--the friends of a season, at least," said Lady Estelle, presenting her hand to me with

ou again," said I in a low voice, th

delighted--you were quit

ment of which I was extremely doubtful, a

ferred your escor

some more eligible parti--old Lord Pottersleig

of you, ere you depart for the East; whence, I h

m Winifred Lloyd; but, though observing us, she was apparently busy with Caradoc; luckily for me, perhaps, as there was something of awkwardness in my position with her. I had flirted rather too much at one time with Winny--been

ed; but the more stately and statuesque beauty, the infinitely greater personal attractions of Lady Estelle dazzled me, and rendered me blind to Winny's genuine goodness of soul The latter was every way a most attractive girl Dora was quite as much so, in her own droll and jolly way; but Lady Estelle possessed that higher style of loveliness and bearing so difficult to define; and though less natural perhaps t

m her white shoulders like that of some perfect Greek model; her smile, when real, was very captivating; her eyes were dark and deep, and softly lidded with long lashes; they had neither the inquiring nor soft pleading expression of Winifred's, nor the saucy drollery of Dora's, yet at times they seemed to have the power of both; for they were eloquent eyes, and, as a writer has it, "could light up her whole personnel as if her whole body thought." Her colour was pale, almost creamy; her features clearly cut and delicate. She had a well-curved mouth, a short upper lip and chin, that indicated what she did not quite possess--

conversation was, of course, general, and of that enforced and heavy nature which usually precedes a dinner-party; b

c and I, as officers whose regiment had already departed--more than all, as two of the

ht and less than middle age, his well-saved hair carefully parted in the centre, a glass in his eye, and an easy insouciance that bordered on insolence in his tone and bearing, as he came bluntly forward, and interrupted me while paying the

d with whom I felt nettled for presuming to place himself on such a footing of apparent familiarity wi

annot help thinking that some of you many idlers here could not

gentlemen of England, who live at home at ease. I shall be quite sa

d I felt moreover, instinctively and intuitively, by some magnetic influence, that this man was my enemy, and yet I had done him no wrong. The aversion was

be so with impunity. He had that narrowness of mind which made him counterfeit regret for the disaster of his best friend, while secretly exulting in it, if that friend could serve his purposes no more; the praise or success of another never failed to excite either his envy or his malice; and doating on himself, he thought that all who knew him should quarrel with those against whom he conceived either spleen or enmity.

ble person in the service of the country?" said

ole in a trench. Ha, ha! Moreover, what the deuce do I want with glory or honour?" said he, in a lowe

u thin

y Jove!

d idea,

as they are often called, are t

who overheard us; "I don'

it, was offensive, and made Phil's eyes sparkle. "But whether in pursuit of vice or virt

aid I, thinking of the

luntarily towards Lady Estelle; "but at all times there is nothing like taking preciou

id I, almost amused by this a

o present me with this ring," he began, playing the while wi

file we proceeded through the corridor and hall to the dining-room, duly marshalled between two rows of tall liverymen in powder and plush, Sir Madoc lead

od ton or not. But while listening to the lively prattle of Dora Lloyd, I could not refrain from glancing ever and anon to where Estelle Cressingham, looking so radiant, yet withal "so delicately white" in her complexion, her slender throat and dazzling shoulders, her thick dark hair and tiny ears, at which the diamond pendants sparkled, sat listening to her elderly bore, smiling assents from time to time out of pure complaisance, and toying with her fruit knife when the dessert came, her hands and arms seeming so perfect in form and colour, and on more than one occasion--when her mamma was engrossed by courteous old Sir Madoc, who could "talk peerage," and knew the quartering of arms better than the Garter King or Rouge Dragon--giving

en, if it didn't run on the county pack, would be about horses and cattle, sheep, horned and South Down;

g girl beside me, with her waggish eyes and pretty ways, and the longing and hope to have more of the society of Lady Estelle, I could have wished myself back at the mess of the dep?t battalion in Winchester. Yet

tting to cover. Opposite, of course, was his lady--it might almost have passed for a likeness of Winifred--done several years ago, her dress of puce velvet cut low to show her beautiful outline, but otherwise very full indeed, as she leaned in the approved fashion against a vase full of impossible flowers beside a column and draped curtain, in what seemed a windy and

hat lady in the very low dress with the somewhat dishevelled hair was, I had for answer, "A great favourite of Charles II., Mr. Hardinge--an ancestress of ours. Papa knows her name. There was some lively scandal about her, of

love must have been very earnest

. "It is said the lady's name was engraved

be the heroine of a duel!"

o a brisk-looking dame in a long stomacher. She was well rouged, rather décolletée, ha

sipping Mr. Sylvanus Urban, as that of 'Mistress Betty Temple, an agreeable and modest young lady with 50,000l. fortune, from the eastward of Temple Bar.' I don't think people were such tuft-hunters in those days as they are now

d when it might have fallen on me. So while we lingered over the dessert (the pineapples, pe

with those odious Russians--in a real battle, perhaps. It is something terrible to think of! Ah

is very much danger of that

should lose a leg-

ly lose more," s

owering her voice. "You will look so funny! O, I c

ould see anything so very amusing in this sup

is Winny, papa thinks--or is it

y face suffused with scarlet; but luckily all now rose from the table, as the ladies, led by Winifred, filed back alone to the drawing-room; and I fe

he chances of the coming war--where our troops were to land, whether at Eupatoria or Perecop, or were to await an attack where they were literally rotting in the camp upon the Bulgarian shore; their prospects of success, the proposed bombardment of Cronstadt, the bewildering orders issued to our admirals, the inane weakness and pitiful vacillation, if not worse, of Lord Aberdeen's government, our total want of all preparation in the ambulance and commissariat services, even to the lack of suffi

and coolly fed among the sheep, in the yard of the Count's home farm, where, by the use of his antlers, he severely wounded and disabled all who attempted to dislodge him. At last four of the Count's farmers or foresters--some of those Croatian boors who are liable to receive twenty-five blows of a cudgel yearly if they fail to engraft at least twenty-five fruit-trees--undertook to slay or capture the intruder. But though they were powerful, hardy, and brave men, this devil of a rehbock, by successive blows of its antlers, fractured the skulls of two and the thigh-bones of the others, smashing them like tobacco-pipes, and made an escape to the mountains. A combined hunt was now ordered by my friend Mosvina, and all the gentlemen and officers in the generalat or district commanded by him set off, mounted and in pursuit. There were nearly a thousand horsemen; but the cavalry there are small and weak. I was perhaps the best-mounted man in the field. We pursued it for twenty-five miles, by rocky hills and almost pathless woods, by ravines and rivers. Many of our people fell. Some got staked, were pulled from their saddles by trees, or tumbled off by running foul of wild swine. Many missed their way, grew weary, got imbogged in the half-frozen marshes, and so forth, till at last only the Count and I with four dogs were on his track, and when o

pomposity and perfect coolness, he twirled round his finger this rema

It says little for their manhood," said an old fox-hunter, as he filled his glass

anything of Croatia? He might as well talk to old Gwyllim the butler, or any chance medley Englishman, of the land of Memnon and t

her," said I, in a tone of tolerably-affected carel

tone, and luckily looking at his glass, and not at me, "a splendid

e scarce. I reckon beauty among these, and no woman holds it cheap," said I, not know

auty too, but a gentle and retiring one--a girl th

farms in the midl

we are apt to decline admiration where it is loftily courted or seemingly expected--as I

s, and yet they piqued me so that I rather turned

ot higher, than that her father bore," I heard Sir Madoc say to a neighbour who had been talkin

Guilfoyle, as, after coffee and cura?oa, we all rose