‘My dear fellow, I am infinitely sorry; but I was obliged to go down to Windsor, and I missed the return train. A good dinner? Who had you?’
‘A capital party, only you were wanted. We had Beaumanoir and Vere, and Jack Tufton and Spraggs.’
‘Was Spraggs rich?’
‘Wasn’t he! I have not done laughing yet. He told us a story about the little Biron who was over here last year; I knew her at Paris; and an Indian screen. Killing! Get him to tell it you. The richest thing you ever heard!’
‘Who’s your friend?’ inquired Mr. Melton’s companion, as the young man moved away.
‘Sir Charles Buckhurst.’
‘A—h! That is Sir Charles Buckhurst. Glad to have seen him. They say he is going it.’
‘He knows what he is about.’
‘Egad! so they all do. A young fellow now of two or three and twenty knows the world as men used to do after as many years of scrapes. I wonder where there is such a thing as a greenhorn. Effie Crabbs says the reason he gives up his house is, that he has cleaned out the old generation, and that the new generation would clean him.’
‘Buckhurst is not in that sort of way: he swears by Henry Sydney, a younger son of the Duke, whom you don’t know; and young Coningsby; a sort of new set; new ideas and all that sort of thing. Beau tells me a good deal about it; and when I was staying with the Everinghams, at Easter, they were full of it. Coningsby had just returned from his travels, and they were quite on the qui vive. Lady Everingham is one of their set. I don’t know what it is exactly; but I think we shall hear more of it.’