So off had gone John to the wars again. But he had not remained for long in the humble position of a volunteer. Colonel Clifton, commanding the 1st Regiment of Dragoons, no sooner heard that Crazy Jack was back than he enrolled him as an extra aide-de-camp. He emerged from the Waterloo Campaign much refreshed, and with no more serious injuries than a sabre-cut, and a graze from a spent ball. The Earl was very glad to see him safe home again, and began to think that it was time he settled down, and married an eligible female. He had inherited a small estate from his father; he was twenty-nine years of age; and he had no brothers.

His lordship, glancing round his table, remembered this, as his eyes alighted on his aunt-in-law, the Honourable Mrs. Staple. He wondered that she should not have provided her son with a suitable wife, and thought that perhaps he would broach the matter to her later in the evening. He was not quite two years older than John, but as the head of the family he believed himself to be responsible for his cousins. This helped him to overcome the feeling of inferiority which too often possessed him when he was confronted by these overpoweringly large persons. A big race, the Staples: he was himself a tall man, but narrow-shouldered, and inclined to stoop. John, of course, was a giant; and his sister, Lady Lichfield, who was talking with determined amiability to the Earl’s very dull brother-in-law, Mr. Tackenham, stood five foot nine inches in her bare feet. Lucius Staple, only child of the Fourth Earl’s third son, was a big man, too; and so was Arthur, the Archdeacon’s eldest-born, just now striving to entertain his cousin Lettice, who was making sheep’s eyes at John across the table. Even young Geoffrey Yatton, Lettice’s brother, though still slightly gangling, bade fair to tower above the Earl; and their mother, Lady Caroline, could only be described as massive.