About this period there might have been—and indeed, by his intimates, there was—remarked an obvious change in the appearance, habits, and general demeanour of our friend. No longer dressed in the rough-and-ready style which had heretofore been at once his glory and his peculiarity, Mr. Sawyer now began to affect a strange refinement of costume, bordering on effeminacy. His boots were thinner and much tighter than of old; he turned his collars over his neckcloth, after the prevailing fashion, thereby imparting to his physiognomy an expression of romantic vacuity; anointed his head till it shone again; affected gloves on all occasions, and set up a ring. Altogether, his exterior was as symptomatic of his disorder as that of Benedict. Also he purchased, at a printseller’s over the way, a representation of a young person washing her feet in a stream, and purporting to be a “Highland Lassie,” but of a meretricious aspect which, it is only fair to state, is rarely to be observed amongst the Scottish mountaineers. It was one of those startling accidental likenesses to the lady of his affections, which a man must be as hard hit as Mr. Sawyer to detect. In the hunting-field, too, he adopted an ambitious style of riding, totally at variance with his previous quiet, straightforward form; and a considerable interval of bad-scenting weather enabled him to distinguish himself to his heart’s content. When hounds run best pace, horses have not wind for extraordinary exertions in the matter of fencing; and, moreover, such saltatory exploits as are out of the common way can be witnessed but by few, and those are completely engrossed in their own doings; but when the pack checks in every field, a man who chooses to single himself out by charging the ugliest bullfinches and the stiffest rails, either because he wants to attract attention or to sell his horse, has every opportunity of showing up the latter and calling down upon himself the animadversions of all true sportsmen. Our friend, with the two horses he bought from Mr. Varnish—both capital leapers—in addition to Hotspur and the grey, had no lack of material on which to flourish away in too close proximity to the chase. Charles Payne, though with a strong fellow-feeling for “keenness,” began to hate the sight of him, Mr. Tailby to dread his appearance as he would that of a black frost, and Lord Stamford to find that even his imperturbable good-humour might be exhausted at last.

What is to be expected, however, of a gentleman who has taken to repeating Montrose’s well-known lines—
“If doughty deeds my lady please,
Right soon I’ll mount my steed;
And keen his lance, and strong his arm,
That bears from me the meed;”

varied by the resolute sentiment—
“He either fears his fate too much,
Or his deserts are small,
Who dares not put it to the touch
To win or lose it all!”

One or other of these romantic stanzas was continually on Mr. Sawyer’s lips. After their enunciation, he was used to sigh deeply, shake his head, and light a cigar, which he would smoke vehemently for a quarter of an hour or so, in a brown study.

Our friend’s reflections, however, were not wholly dipped in the roseate hues of hope. Stern misgivings would come across him, as to the imprudence of the career on which he had embarked. He was spending a deal of money, that was the fact; and he had always, hitherto, been of a saving disposition, rather than otherwise. In the prosecution of his schemes against Miss Mexico, his outlay, indeed, had been principally in cheap jewellery and lavender-water—articles of fascination for the purchase of which he would have been handsomely reimbursed by that lady’s thirty thousand pounds, if he had got it. But in the present case, not only was his extravagance much greater, but it is mere justice to state, that he had never weighed Miss Dove’s fortune or the want of it in the balance with her attractions. The former flame had half a plum; the present might not have half-a-crown. Bah! what of that? Those eyelashes alone were worth all the money!

Nevertheless, a stud of horses, though consisting only of the modest number of four hunters and a hack, are not............