ance with your highly picturesque and mediæval abode; a landscape-painter would be in raptures over it, if you might wish it a trifle more waterproof!"
There was a certain dash of condescension and the suspicion of a sneer in the light careless words; if they were intended to wound, however, they missed their mark.
"'Starving on the moors' would not be so very terrific to you if you had been six days in the saddle on a handful of maize, as has chanced to me in the Pampas and the Cordilleras," said Erceldoune, curtly:there is nothing your "mighty hunter before the Lord," who is known from the Libyan desert to La Plata, holds in more profound contempt than "small miseries."
"Eh! What? Were you talking about your father's dinners?" broke in his Grace, who, lost in his reveries as his eyes travelled over the familiar chamber, was not very clear what was said. "They were the best in Europe! I have seen Yarmouth, and Alvanley, and Talleyrand, and Charles Dix, and the best epicures we ever had, round that table; I was a very young fellow then, and the dinners were splendid, Erceldoune! He liked to outdo the king, you know, and the king liked to be outdone by him.
