Wilton sat down and proceeded as usual; but he had scarcely ended the first letter and begun a second, when the door of the apartment was thrown unceremoniously open, and a young gentleman entered the room, slightly, but very gracefully made, extremely handsome in features, but pale in complexion, and with a quick, wandering, and yet marking eye, which seemed to bespeak much of intelligence, but no great steadiness of character.  He was dressed strangely enough, in a silk dressing-gown of the richest-flowered embroidery, slippers of crimson velvet embroidered with gold upon his feet, and a crimson velvet nightcap with gold tassels on his head.

“Why, my dear sir, this is really cruel,” cried he, advancing towards the Earl, and speaking in a tone of light reproach, “to go away and leave me, when I come back from twelve or fourteen hundred miles’ distance, without even waiting to see my most beautiful dressing-gown.  Really you fathers are becoming excessively undutiful towards your children!  You have wanted some one so long to keep you in order, my lord, that I see evidently, I shall be obliged to hold a tight hand over you.  But tell me, in pity tell me, did you ever see anything so exquisite as this dressing-gown?  Its beauty would be nothing without its superbness, and its splendour nothing without its delicacy.  The richness of the silk would be lost without the radiant colours of the flowers, and the miraculous taste of the embroidery would be entirely thrown away upon any other stuff than that.  In short, one might write a catechism upon it, my lord.  There is nothing on all the earth equal to it.  No man has, or has had, or will have, anything that can compete with it.  Gold could not buy it.  I was obliged to seduce the girl that worked it; and then, like Ulysses with Circe, I bound her to perform what task I liked.  ‘Produce me,’ I exclaimed, ‘a dressing-gown!’ and, lo! it stands before you.”

Wilton Brown turned his eyes for an instant to the countenance of the Earl of Byerdale, when, to his surprise, he beheld there, for the first time, something that might be called a good-humoured smile.  The change of Wilton’s position, slight as it was, seemed to call the attention of the young gentleman, who instantly approached the table where he sat, exclaiming, “Who is this?  I don’t know him.  What do you mean, sir,” he continued, in the same light tone—­“what do you mean, by suffering my father to run riot in this way, while I am gone?  Why, sir, I find he has addicted himself to courtierism, and to cringing, and to sitting in cabinets, and to making long speeches in the House of Lords; and to all sorts of vices of the same kind, so as nearly to have fallen into prime ministerism.  All this is very bad—­very bad, indeed—­”

“My dear boy,” said the Earl, “you will gain the character of a madman without deserving it.”

“Pray, papa, let me alone,” replied the young man, affecting a boyish tone; “you only interrupt me:  may I ask, sir, what is your name?” he continued, still addressing Wilton.