Although previously unknown to the host, he had come down "special" under the protection of his friend Lord Deepdene, hoping to secure his grace's interest in the borough of Collyton, at that time vacant. He was a man of very high attainments, had been an _optime_ at Cambridge, was a distinguished essayist, and his party had conceived the very greatest expectations of his success in Parliament. Of the world, or at least that portion of it that moves upon Tournay carpets, amid Vandykes and Velasquez, with sideboards of gold and lamps of silver, he had not seen much, and learned still less; and it was plain to see that, in the confidence of his own strong head, he was proof against either the seductions of fashion or the sneers of those who might attempt to criticise his breeding.
Before he was twenty-four hours in the house he had corrected his grace in an historical statement, caught up the B---- of D---- in a blunder of prosody, detected a sapphire in Lady Dollington's suite of yellow diamonds, and exposed an error of Lord Sloperton's in his pedigree of Brown Menelaus. It is needless to say he was almost universally detested, for of those he had suffered to pass free, none knew how soon his own time might arrive. His patron was miserable; he saw nothing but failure where he looked for triumph. The very acquirements he had built upon for success were become a terror to every one, and "the odious Mr. Kitely" became a proverb. His political opponents chuckled over the "bad tone" of such men in general; the stupid ones gloried over the fall of a clever man; and the malignant part of the household threw out broad hints that he was a mere adventurer, and they should not wonder if actually---- an Irishman! Indeed, he had been heard to say "entirely" twice upon the same evening in conversation, and suspicion had almost become a certainty.
It was towards the end of my first week, as I was one day dressing for dinner, Lord Collyton came hastily into my room, exclaiming, "By Jove, Templeton! Mr. Kitely has done the thing at last, as he would say himself, entirely."
"How do you mean? what has he done?" "You know my father is excessively vain of his landscape-gardening, and the prodigious improvements which he has made in this same demesne around us. Well, compassionating some one whom Kitely was mangling, 'more suo' in an argument, he took that gentleman out for a walk, and, with a conscious pride in his own achievements, led him towards the Swiss cottage beside the waterfall.