“My brother’s holidays were over, and he was now to go to Eton. My father’s London solicitor was charged with the duty of making all the arrangements for his entrance into college.
“On the fifteenth of September he left me, with the promise to return and spend the Christmas holidays with me, for I was to winter at Brighton.
“Angus Anglesea remained at Brighton. Friends and neighbors of his father’s, in Lancashire—the Earl and Countess of Middlemoor, with their only daughter—had arrived at their seaside home on Brunswick Terrace, and Anglesea had remained to see them. Even then he was reported to be engaged to the Lady Mary.
“Soon I heard that young Anglesea had left his lodgings and accepted the invitation of the earl and countess to make their house his home during his sojourn at the seaside.
“After this we did not see so much of young Anglesea.
“He came but seldom to our lodgings, and never joined us in our walks on the seaside. Whenever we chanced to meet him, he was in the company of the Middlemoors, either driving or walking with them.
“If Brighton had seemed to me the paradise of life and light, splendor and gayety, in the summer months, when the season was at its lowest ebb, what was it, if you please, in the early autumn, when the tide of wealth and fashion set in?
“No words of mine can describe my impression of it, my delight in it.
“The bijou of a theater and the elegant assembly rooms were opened for the season. The ‘paradise’ was one panorama of brilliant crowds. It was like nothing real to my simplicity.”