CHAPTER IX.
TACTICS.
The second week of Vivian's visit had come round, and the flag waved proudly on the proud tower of Château Desir, indicating to the admiring county, that the most noble Sydney, Marquess of Carabas, held public days twice a week at his grand Castle. And now came the neighbouring peer, full of grace and gravity, and the mellow baronet, with his hearty laugh, and the jolly country squire, and the middling gentry, and the jobbing country attorney, and the flourishing country surveyor. Some honouring by their presence, some who felt the obligation equal, and others bending before the noble host, as if paying him adoration, was almost an equal pleasure with that of guzzling his venison pasties, and quaffing his bright wines.
Independent of all these periodical visitors, the house was full of permanent ones. There was the Viscount and Viscountess Courtown, and their three daughters, and Lord and Lady Beaconsfield, and their three sons, and Sir Berdmore and Lady Scrope, and Colonel Delmington of the Guards, and Lady Louisa Manvers, and her daughter Julia. Lady Louisa was the only sister of the Marquess—a widow, proud and pennyless.
To all these distinguished personages, Vivian was introduced by the Marquess as "a monstrous clever young man, and his Lordship's most particular friend"—and then the noble Carabas left the game in his young friend's hands.
And right well Vivian did his duty. In a week's time it would have been hard to decide with whom of the family of the Courtowns Vivian was the greatest favourite. He rode with the Viscount, who was a good horseman, and was driven by his Lady, who was a good whip; and when he had sufficiently admired the tout ensemble of her Ladyship's pony phaeton, he entrusted her, "in confidence," with some ideas of his own about Martingales, a subject which he assured her Ladyship "had been the object of his mature consideration." The three honourable Misses were the most difficult part of the business; but he talked sentiment with the first, sketched with the second, and romped with the third.
Ere the Beaconsfields could be jealous of the influence of the Courtowns, Mr. Vivian Grey had promised his Lordship, who was a collector of medals, an unique, which had never yet been heard of; and her Ladyship, who was a collector of autographs, the private letters of every man of genius who ever had been heard of. In this division of the Carabas guests, he was not bored with a family; for sons, he always made it a rule to cut dead; they are the members of a family who, on an average, are generally very uninfluential, for, on an average, they are fools enough to think it very knowing, to be very disagreeable. So the wise man but little loves them, but woe to the fool who neglects the daughters!
Sir Berdmore Scrope, Vivian found a more unmanageable personage; for the baronet was confoundedly shrewd, and without a particle of sentiment in his composition. It was a great thing, however, to gain him; for Sir Berdmore was a leading country gentleman, and having quarrelled with Ministers about the corn laws, had been accounted disaffected ever since. The baronet, however, although a bold man to the world, was luckily henpecked; so Vivan made love to the wife, and secured the husband.