The Young Duchess; or, Memoirs of a Lady of Quality — page 41: what you’re looking at

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THE YOUNG DUCHESS; OR, MEMOIRS OF A LADY OF QUALITY. thing that would be so vitally important for you to hear. Butso it is; and Selina Casey was to call this afternoon at Trentham House to be in- troduced for the first time to the parents of her intended husband.” “Ah!” ejaculated Imogen, as everything in respect to her own adventure was now cntirely cleared up. ‘* How strange the coincidence! how wondrous! It almost seems preternatural that I should have been led to keep, as it were, the very appointment which was made for my rival !” The two young women remained in discourse together for some while longer,—Imogen Hart- land narrating to her friend all that had happened at Trentham House, and Alice on the other hand detailing all the facts she had learnt from the lips of Sylvester Casey. PES CHAPTER VI. THE PARISH CLERK. THE scene again shifts to the picturesque little village of Addington, at no great distance from Tunbridge Wells. It was evening—the evening of the Monday following next upon the incidents of the two or three preceding chapters ; and the old clerk of the village church was seated on the stile leading into the church-yard, enjoying the fresh- ness of the breeze, and basking as it were in the slanting rays of the declining sun. Presently he beheld approaching towards him a young gentle- man whose appearance riveted the old man’s atten- tion more and more as its object drew nearer to him. He seemed to be one of those exquisites whose existence is as peculiar to the metropolis as that of a bee is to a hive, and who, if they ever make their appearances in the provinces at all, seem only to have gone thither for the express purpose of astonishing the rustic natives, The young gentleman to whom we are now alluding, was most elegantly dressed. Never was a white hat more admirable in its shape or more jauntily worn. It imparted an air of rakishness to a countenance whose features were somewhat feminine and delicate, despite the manly appur- tenances of the whiskers and moustache. And what whiskers!—how glossy! how artistically curled! Then, as for the moustache—it needs particular description. It was not a great coarse moustache such as might be worn by a cavalry soldier: but it was a slender line bowing the upper lip: it was glossy like the whiskers; and its pointed extremities were curled and twisted as if the last finishing touch of a twirl had been given by the most fashionable of hair-dressers or the most accomplished of valets, But though. this moustache was exceedingly becoming, truth nevertheless compels us to state that it looked uncommonly like one of those which decorate the upper lips of the waxen heads of gentlemen in hair-dressers’ windows. In all other respects the young gentleman to whom we are alluding, was equally well got up. His surtout-coat fitted without a wrinkle to the symmetry of his shape: but it seemed as if it were rather too much padded at the breast. The trowscrs were full and plaited after the French fashion,—not being cut straight, but bulging very much all round the hips, and 27 getting narrower and narrower towards the points where they terminated above the most élegant patent-leathe? boots that ever were worn. The shirt, with its three chased gold studs—the waist- coat, fitting as faultlessly as the coat—and the light brown kid gloves, completely defining the shape of the small well-modelled hands—were all in keeping with the rest of his most elegant, fashionable, and attractive toilet. The yowig gentleman carried 4 beautiful little riding-whip in his‘hand; and he had a slight swagger in his walk, as if he Were on uncom- monly good terms with himself, and as if the cruellest thing that could happen to him would be for any one to pass by without looking at him. By his gait one would fancy that he considered himself the very pink of dandyism. You would not call him a “swell:” he would strike you as being only a most fastidious gentleman. As he came along the path leading to the church-yard stile, he flourished his riding-whip in a nonchalant fashion, cutting off the tops of the long stalks of grass that were growing for hay, or the points of the young twigs sprouting from the hedge. Then, as if very short-sighted, he thrust a quizzing-giass into the socket of his eye,—though ftom this cir- cumstance it must not be supposed that we are giving another description of Sylvester Casey; for the subject_of our present remarks was a -very different being indeed from the vulgar parvenu who was introduced in the preceding chapier. The old Lee clerk stared through his great spectacles at this phenoménon who was approach- ing him; for a phenomenon such an individual really was in the quiet little village of Addington. If at first bewildered and astonished, thé old clerk at length felt himself to be overawed; and he was at first about to get off the stile in order to make room for the young gentleman to pass, when the exquisite stranger said in a voice that was of velvety softness, ‘Don’t move, my good man. Don’t move! I am going to stop here and converse with you for a few minutes.” — The old clerk took off his hat out of fespect to one who addressed him in such a friendly patron- ising style. The young gentleman told him to ‘put on his hat again; and then drawing out his purse, which was very tiny and very elegant, with a quantity of sovereigns in one end and a very few pieces of silver in the other, he extracted some two or three of the latter coins, saying, “ I ob- served a very excellent ale-housé in the village, and you will permit me to offer you the means of presently refreshing yourself there.” The old clerk was more and more enchanted with his new acquaintance; and he thought that he could not do otherwise than at once enter upon certain personal explanations to one who suddenly displayed so deep an interest in him. So he pro- ceeded to inform the young gentleman that “his name was Hogben—John Hogben at his sérvice —that he would be sixty-three years old come next Janivary—that he had been parish clerk thirty-nine years, ever since the death of his father (God rest his soul!) which lay under the yew tree on t’other side of the church—that he once used to be sexton as well as clerk, but that ever since he got the roomatiz in his limbs, he was obleeged to give up the digging of other peoples’ graves, or else he would have been soon brought down into his own.” Then, having been thus oO COMO Colin