noon
On a table before him were placed two or three decanters of wine , the fruits of the season , an enamelled snuff-box in which was set the portrait of a female -LRB- perhaps the Chloe or Phyllis of his early love-ditties -RRB- , a lighted taper , a small china jar containing tobacco , and three or four pipes of homely clay , -- for cherry-sticks and meerschaums were not then in fashion , and Sir Miles St. John , once a gay and sparkling beau , now a popular country gentleman , great at county meetings and sheep-shearing festivals , had taken to smoking , as in harmony with his bucolic transformation . An old setter lay dozing at his feet ; a small spaniel -- old , too -- was sauntering lazily in the immediate neighbourhood , looking gravely out for such stray bits of biscuit as had been thrown forth to provoke him to exercise , and which hitherto had escaped his attention . Half seated , half reclined on the balustrade , apart from the baronet , but within reach of his conversation , lolled a man in the prime of life , with an air of unmistakable and sovereign elegance and distinction . Mr. Vernon was a guest from London ; and the London man , -- the man of clubs and dinners and routs , of noon loungings through Bond Street , and nights spent with the Prince of Wales , -- seemed stamped not more upon the careful carelessness of his dress , and upon the worn expression of his delicate features , than upon the listless ennui , which , characterizing both his face and attitude , appeared to take pity on himself for having been entrapped into the country . Yet we should convey an erroneous impression of Mr. Vernon if we designed , by the words `` listless ennui , '' to depict the slumberous insipidity of more modern affectation ; it was not the ennui of a man to whom ennui is habitual , it was rather the indolent prostration that fills up the intervals of excitement . At that day the word blast was unknown ; men had not enough sentiment for satiety . There was a kind of Bacchanalian fury in the life led by those leaders of fashion , among whom Mr. Vernon was not the least distinguished ; it was a day of deep drinking , of high play , of jovial , reckless dissipation , of strong appetite for fun and riot , of four-in-hand coachmanship , of prize-fighting , of a strange sort of barbarous manliness that strained every nerve of the constitution , -- a race of life in which three fourths of the competitors died half-way in the hippodrome .