"It is not for me to dictate to your lordship-I could never presume to do so but certainly it is not every one in Great Britain who could reconcile himself to relinquish one of the largest sources of wealth in the kingdom. Taking the lowest estimate of Carrick Nuish mine alone,-and when I say the lowest, I mean throwing the whole thing into a company of shareholders, and neither working nor risking a shilling yourself,-you may put from twenty to five-and-twenty thousand pounds into your pocket within a twelvemonth."

"Who will guarantee that, Cutbill?" said Lord Culduff, with a faint smile.

"I am ready myself to do so, provided my counsels be strictly followed. I will do so, with my whole professional reputation."

"I am charmed to hear you say so. It is a very gratifying piece of news for me. You feel, therefore, certain that we have struck coal ?"

"My lord, when a young man enters life from one of the universities, with a high reputation for ability, he can go a long way-if he only be prudent-living on his capital. It is the same thing in a great industrial enterprise; you must start at speed, and with a high pressure-get way on you, as the sailors say-and you will skim along for half a mile after the steam is off."

"I come back to my former question. Have we found coal?"

"I hope so. I trust we have. Indeed there is every reason to say we have found coal. What we need most at this moment is a man like that gentleman whose note is on the table-a large capitalist, a great City name. Let him associate himself in the project, and success is as certain as that we stand here."

"But you have just told me he has given up his business life-retired from affairs altogether."

"My lord, these men never give up. They buy estates, they go live at Rome or Paris, and take a château at Cannes, and try to forget Mincing Lane and the rest of it; but if you watch them, you'll see it's the money article in The Times they read before the leader. They have but one barometer for everything that happens in Europe-how are the exchanges? and they are just as greedy of a good thing as on any morning they hurried down to the City in a hansom to buy in or sell out. See if I'm not right. Just throw out a hint, no more, that you'd like a word of advice from Colonel Bramleigh about your project; say it's a large thing-too large for an individual to cope with-that you are yourself the least possible of a business man, being always engaged in very different occupations,—and ask what course he would counsel you to take."

66

I might show him these drawings-these coloured plans."

"Well, indeed, my lord," said Cutbill, brushing his mouth with his hand, to hide a smile of malicious drollery, "I'd say I'd not show him the plans. The pictorial rarely appeals to men of his stamp. It's the multiplication-table they like, and if all the world were like them one would never throw poetry into a project."

"You'll have to come with me, Cutbill; I see that," said his lordship, reflectingly.

"My lord, I am completely at your orders."

"Yes; this is a sort of negotiation you will conduct better than myself. I am not conversant with this kind of thing, nor the men who deal in them. A great treaty, a question of boundary, a royal marriage,—any of these would find me ready and prepared, but with the diplomacy of dividends, I own myself little acquainted. You must come with me." Cutbill bowed in acquiescence, and was silent.

CHAPTER VII.

AT LUNCHEON.

As the family at the Great House were gathered together at luncheon on the day after the events we have just recorded, Lord Culduff's answer to Temple Bramleigh's note was fully and freely discussed.

"Of course," said Jack, "I speak under correction; but how comes it that your high and mighty friend brings another man with him? Is Cutbill an attaché? Is he one of what you call 'the line?'"

"I am happy to contribute the correction you ask for," said Temple haughtily. "Mr. Cutbill is not a member of the diplomatic body, and though such a name might not impossibly be found in the Navy List, you'll scarcely chance upon it at F. O."

"My chief question is, however, still to be answered. On what pretext does he bring him here?" said Jack, with unbroken good-humour.

"As to that," broke in Augustus, "Lord Culduff's note is perfectly explanatory; he says his friend is travelling with him; they came here on a matter of business, and, in fact, there would be an awkwardness on his part in separating from him, and on ours, if we did not prevent such a contingency."

"Quite so," chimed in Temple. "Nothing could be more guarded or courteous than Lord Culduff's reply. It wasn't in the least like an Admiralty minute, Jack, or an order to Commander Spiggins, of the Snarler, to take in five hundred firkins of pork."

"I might say, now, that you'll not find that name in the Navy List, Temple," said the sailor, laughing.

"Do they arrive to-day?" asked Marion, not a little uncomfortable at this exchange of tart things.

"To dinner," said Temple.

"I suppose we have seen the last leg of mutton we are to meet with till he goes," cried Jack; "that precious French fellow will now give his genius full play, and we'll have to dine off'salmis' and 'suprêmes,' or make our dinner off bread and cheese."

"Perhaps you would initiate Bertond into the mystery of a sea-pie, Jack," said Temple, with a smile.

"And a precious mess the fellow would make of it! He'd fill it with cocks' combs and mushrooms, and stick two skewers in it, with a halfboiled truffle on each-lucky if there wouldn't be a British flag in spun sugar between them; and he'd call the abomination 'pâté à la gun-room,' or some such confounded name."

A low, quiet laugh was now heard from the end of the table, and the company remembered, apparently for the first time, that Mr. Harding, the agent, was there, and very busily engaged with a broiled chicken. "Ain't

I right, Mr. Harding?" cried Jack, as he heard the low chuckle of the small, meek, submissive-looking little man, at the other end of the table. "Ain't I right?"

"I have met with very good French versions of English cookery abroad, Captain Temple."

"Don't call me 'Captain,' or I'll suspect your accuracy about the cookery," interrupted Jack. "I fear I'm about as far off that rank as Bertond is from the sea-pie."

"Do you know Cutbill, Harding?" said Augustus, addressing the agent in the tone of an heir expectant.

"Yes. We were both examined in the same case before a committee of the House, and I made his acquaintance then."

"What sort of person is he?" asked Temple.

"Is he jolly, Mr. Harding ?—that's the question," cried Jack. “I suspect we shall be overborne by greatness, and a jolly fellow would be a boon from heaven."

"I believe he is what might be called jolly," said Harding cautiously. "Jolly sounds like a familiar word for vulgar," said Marion. "I hope Mr. Harding does not mean that."

"Mr. Harding means nothing of the kind, I'll be sworn," broke in Jack. "He means an easy-tempered fellow, amusing and amusable. Well, Nelly, if it's not English, I can't help it-it ought to be; but when one wants ammunition, one takes the first heavy thing at hand. Egad! I'd ram down a minister plenipotentiary, rather than fire blankcartridge."

"Is Lord Culduff also jolly, Mr. Harding?" asked Eleanor, now looking up with a sparkle in her eye.

"I scarcely know, I have the least possible acquaintance with his lordship; I doubt, indeed, if he will recollect me," said Harding, with diffidence.

"What are we to do with this heavy swell when he comes, is the puzzle to me," said Augustus, gravely. "How is he to be entertained,— how amused? Here's a county with nothing to see-nothing to interest -without a neighbourhood. What are we to do with him ? "

"The more one is a man of the world, in the best sense of that phrase, the more easily he finds how to shape his life to any and every circumstance," said Temple, with a sententious tone and manner.

"Which means, I suppose, that he'll make the best of a bad case,

"Let us

and bear our tiresomeness with bland urbanity?" said Jack. only hope, for all our sakes, that his trial may not be a long one."

"Just to think of such a country!" exclaimed Marion; "there is absolutely no one we could have to meet him."

"What's the name of that half-pay captain who called here t'other morning?—the fellow who sat from luncheon till nigh dusk?" asked

Jack.

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Captain Craufurd," replied Marion. "I hope nobody thinks of inviting him; he is insufferably vulgar, and presuming besides."

"Wasn't that the man, Marion, who told you that as my father and Lady Augusta didn't live together the county gentry couldn't be expected to call on us?" asked Augustus, laughing.

"He did more: he entered into an explanation of the peculiar tenets of the neighbourhood, and told me if we had had the good luck to have settled in the south or west of Ireland they'd not have minded it, but here,' he added, we are great sticklers for morality.''

6

"And what reply did you make him, Marion ?" asked Jack.

"I was so choked with passion that I couldn't speak, or if I did say anything I have forgotten it. At all events he set me off laughing immediately after, as he said,- As for myself, I don't care a rush. I'm a bachelor, and a bachelor can go anywhere.'

She gave these words with such a close mimicry of his voice and manner, that a general burst of laughter followed them.

"That's the man

"There's the very fellow we want," cried Jack. to meet our distinguished guest; he'll not let him escape without a wholesome hint or two."

"I'd as soon see a gentleman exposed to the assault of a mastiff as to the insulting coarseness of such a fellow as that," said Temple, passionately.

"The mischief's done already; I heard the governor say, as he took leave, Captain Craufurd, are you too straitlaced to dine out on a Sunday? if not, will you honour us with your company at eight o'clock?' And though he repeated the words 'eight o'clock' with a groan like a protest, he muttered something about being happy, a phrase that evidently cost him dearly, for he went shuffling down the avenue afterwards with his hat over his eyes, and gesticulating with his hands as if some new immorality had suddenly broke in upon his mind."

"You mean to say that he is coming to dinner here next Sunday?" asked Temple, horrified.

"A little tact and good management are always sufficient to keep these sort of men down," said Augustus.

"I hope we don't ask a man to dinner with the intention to 'keep him down,'" said Jack, sturdily.

"At all events," cried Temple, "he need not be presented to Lord Culduff."

"I suspect you will see very little of him after dinner," observed Harding, in his meek fashion. "That wonderful '32 port will prove a

detainer impossible to get away from."

"I'll keep him company then. I rather like to meet one of these cross-grained dogs occasionally."

"Not impossibly you'll learn something more of that same public opinion' of our neighbours regarding us," said Marion, haughtily.

"With all my heart," cried the sailor, gaily; "they'll not ruffle my temper, even if they won't flatter my vanity."

"Have you asked the L'Estranges, Marion?" said Augustus.

"We always ask them after church; they are sure to be disengaged," said she. "I wish, Nelly, that you, who are such a dear friend of Julia's, would try and persuade her to wear something else than that eternal black silk. She is so intently bent on being an Andalusian. Some one unluckily said she looked so Spanish, that she has got up the dress, and the little fan coquetry, and the rest of it, in the most absurd fashion."

"Her grandmother was a Spaniard," broke in Nelly, warmly.

"So they say," said the other, with a shrug of the shoulders. "There's a good deal of style about her," said Temple, with the tone of one who was criticizing what he understood. "She sings prettily."

"Prettily?" groaned Jack. "Why where, except amongst professionals, did you ever hear her equal?"

"She sings divinely," said Ellen; "and it is, after all, one of her least attractions."

"No heroics, for heaven's sake; leave that to your brothers, Nelly, who are fully equal to it. I really meant my remark about her gown for good nature."

"She's a nice girl," said Augustus, "though she is certainly a bit of a coquette."

"True; but it's very good coquetry," drawled out Temple. "It's not that jerking, uncertain, unpurpose-like style of affectation your English coquette displays. It is not the eternal demand for attention or admiration. It is simply a desire to please thrown into a thousand little graceful ways, each too slight, and too faint, to be singled out for notice, but making up a whole of wonderful captivation."

"Well done, diplomacy; egad, I didn't know there was that much blood in the Foreign Office," cried Jack, laughing; "and now I'm off to look after my night lines. I quite forgot all about them till this minute."

"Take me with you, Jack," said Nelly, and hastened after him, hat in hand.