The Young Duke | Page 3

son,
not to his natural and devoted friends, but to a harsh and repulsive
stranger. Long before the young Duke had completed his sixteenth year
all memory of the early kindness of his guardian, if it had ever been
imprinted on his mind, was carefully obliterated from it. It was
constantly impressed upon him that nothing but the exertions of his
aunt and uncle had saved him from a life of stern privation and
irrational restraint: and the man who had been the chosen and cherished
confidant of the father was looked upon by the son as a grim tyrant,
from whose clutches he had escaped, and in which he determined never
again to find himself. 'Old Dacre,' as Lord Fitz-pompey described him,
was a phantom enough at any time to frighten his youthful ward. The
great object of the uncle was to teaze and mortify the guardian into
resigning his trust, and infinite were the contrivances to bring about this
desirable result; but Mr. Dacre was obstinate, and, although absent,
contrived to carry on and complete the system for the management of
the Hauteville property which he had so beneficially established and so
long pursued.
In quitting England, although he had appointed a fixed allowance for
his noble ward, Mr. Dacre had thought proper to delegate a
discretionary authority to Lord Fitz-pompey to furnish him with what
might be called extraordinary necessaries. His Lordship availed himself
with such dexterity of this power that his nephew appeared to be
indebted for every indulgence to his uncle, who invariably

accompanied every act of this description with an insinuation that he
might thank Mrs. Dacre's illness for the boon.
'Well, George,' he would say to the young Etonian, 'you shall have the
boat, though I hardly know how I shall pass the account at
head-quarters; and make yourself easy about Flash's bill, though I
really cannot approve of such proceedings. Thank your stars you have
not got to present that account to old Dacre. Well, I am one of those
who are always indulgent to young blood. Mr. Dacre and I differ. He is
your guardian, though. Everything is in his power; but you shall never
want while your uncle can help you; and so run off to Caroline, for I
see you want to be with her.'
The Lady Isabella and the Lady Augusta, who had so charmed Mrs.
and Miss Coronet, were no longer in existence. Each had knocked
down her earl. Brought up by a mother exquisitely adroit in female
education, the Ladies St. Maurice had run but a brief, though a brilliant,
career. Beautiful, and possessing every accomplishment which renders
beauty valuable, under the unrivalled chaperonage of the Countess they
had played their popular parts without a single blunder. Always in the
best set, never flirting with the wrong man, and never speaking to the
wrong woman, all agreed that the Ladies St. Maurice had fairly won
their coronets. Their sister Caroline was much younger; and although
she did not promise to develop so unblemished a character as
themselves, she was, in default of another sister, to be the Duchess of
St. James.
Lady Caroline St. Maurice was nearly of the same age as her cousin,
the young Duke. They had been play-fellows since his emancipation
from the dungeons of Castle Dacre, and every means had been adopted
by her judicious parents to foster and to confirm the kind feelings
which had been first engendered by being partners in the same toys and
sharing the same sports. At eight years old the little Duke was taught to
call Caroline his 'wife;' and as his Grace grew in years, and could better
appreciate the qualities of his sweet and gentle cousin, he was not
disposed to retract the title. When George rejoined the courtly Coronet,
Caroline invariably mingled her tears with those of her sorrowing

spouse; and when the time at length arrived for his departure for Eton,
Caroline knitted him a purse and presented him with a watch-ribbon. At
the last moment she besought her brother, who was two years older, to
watch over him, and soothed the moment of final agony by a promise
to correspond. Had the innocent and soft-hearted girl been acquainted
with, or been able to comprehend, the purposes of her crafty parents,
she could not have adopted means more calculated to accomplish them.
The young Duke kissed her a thousand times, and loved her better than
all the world.
In spite of his private house and his private tutor, his Grace did not
make all the progress in his classical studies which means so calculated
to promote abstraction and to assist acquirement would seem to
promise. The fact is, that as his mind began to unfold itself he found a
perpetual and a more pleasing