Such, then, was the beautiful HERMIONE, who for some years rode rough-shod over the hearts of all the males in Archester.  Space fails me to enumerate all her engagements.  She broke them one after another without a thought, and cast her admirers away as if they had been dresses of last year’s fashion.  Most of them, it must be said, recovered quickly enough, but the miserable Cope became a hopeless hypochondriac, and never smiled again.  He died the other day, and HERMIONE’s sketch of Hankinson was found, frayed and soiled, in an ancient pocket-book which he always carried about with him.  HANKINSON’S fate seemed at first to be worse.  He took to poetry, morbid, passionate, yearning, unhealthy poetry, of the skimmed Swinburne variety, and for a time was gloomy enough.  Having, however, engaged in a paper conflict with one of his critics, he forgot his sorrows, and though he still declares an overwhelming desire for death and oblivion about six times a year, in various magazines, he seemed, when I last saw him, fairly comfortable and happy.  But, of course, he has never secured a vicarage.

To return to HERMIONE.  She at last married a certain Mr. Pardoe, a barrister practising on the Archester Circuit, and established herself in town.  Shortly afterwards she became the rage.  Her beauty, her wit, her music, her dinners, her diamonds, were spoken of with enthusiasm.  All the elderly roues, whose leathery hearts had been offered up at hundreds of shrines, became her temporary slaves.  She coaxed them, cajoled them, and fooled them, did this innocent daughter of a simple-minded Dean, to the top of their various bents.  She schemed successfully against countless rivals, in order to maintain her pre-eminence in the admiration of her circle.  Her ambition knew no bounds.  She changed her so-called friends every week; she cultivated grand passions for actors, authors, musicians, and even for professors.  Sometimes she played to select audiences with all her old ravishing skill, but this happened more and more rarely, until at last she utterly declined, and even went so far as to flout H.S.H. the Duke of KALBSKOPF, who had been specially invited to meet her.

Then suddenly came the crash.  She left her husband, in company with Charlie FITZHUBERT, the heir presumptive to the wealthy earldom of Battersea.  On the following day Mr. Pardoe blew out his brains, leaving ten thousand pounds of debt and three young children.  Six months afterwards the venerable Dean died, and sentimental people spoke of a broken heart.  Then the Earl of Battersea, in a fit of indignation, married, and was blessed with a son, the present Earl.  Charlie FITZHUBERT married HERMIONE, but they are as poor as curates, and he hates her.  I saw her two days ago in a shabby hired carriage.  She is getting prematurely old, and grey, and wrinkled, and everybody avoids her, except her sister Sophy, who still visits her, and suffers her ill-humour.