“She’s a real good girl, and pretty, and rich, though she is my cousin, Bowdoin.  So why don’t you?”

Mr. Beacon, a member of the upper sex, replied, gravely, “Well, perhaps!”

They were speaking of Hope Wayne.

At the same instant also, in Mrs. Kingfisher’s swarming drawing-rooms, looking on at the dancers and listening to the music, stood Hope Wayne, Lawrence Newt, Amy Waring, and Arthur Merlin.  They were chatting together pleasantly, Lawrence Newt usually leading, and Hope Wayne bending her beautiful head, and listening and looking at him in a way to make any man eloquent.  The painter had been watching for Mr. Abel Newt’s entrance, and, after he saw him, turned to study the effect produced upon Miss Wayne by seeing him.

But Abel, who saw as much in his way as Mrs. Dagon in hers, although without the glasses, had carefully kept in the other part of the rooms.  He had planted his batteries before Mrs. Bleecker Van Kraut, having resolved to taste her, as Herbert Octoyne had advised, notwithstanding that she had no flavor, as Abel himself had averred.

But who eats merely for the flavor of the food?

That lady clicked smoothly as Abel, metaphorically speaking, touched her.  Louis Wilkottle, her cavalier, slipped away from her he could not tell how:  he merely knew that Abel Newt was in attendance, vice Wilkottle, disappeared.  So Wilkottle floated about the rooms upon limp pinions for sometime, wondering where to settle, and brushed Fanny Newt in flying.

“Oh!  Mr. Wilkottle, you are just the man.  Mr. Whitloe, Laura Magot, and I were just talking about Batrachian reptiles.  Which are the best toads, the fattest?”

“Or does it depend upon the dressing?” asked Mr. Whitloe.

“Or the quantity of jewelry in the head?” said Laura Magot.

Mr. Wilkottle smiled, bowed, and passed on.

If they had called him an ass—­as they were ladies of the best position—­he would have bowed, smiled, and passed on.

“An amiable fellow,” said Fanny, as he disappeared; “but quite a remarkable fool.”

Mr. Zephyr Wetherley, still struggling with the hand problem, approached Miss Fanny, and remarked that it was very warm.

“You’re cool enough in all conscience, Mr. Wetherley,” said she.

“My dear Miss Newt, ’pon honor,” replied Zephyr, beginning to be very red, and wiping his moist brow.

“I call any man cool who would have told St. Lawrence upon the gridiron that he was frying,” interrupted Fanny.

“Oh!—­ah!—­yes!—­on the gridiron!  Yes, very good!  Ha! ha!  Quite on the gridiron—­very much so!  ’Tis very hot here.  Don’t you think so?  It’s quite confusing, like—­sort of bewildering.  Don’t you think so, Miss Newt?”

Fanny was leveling her black eyes at him for a reply, but Mr. Wetherley, trying to regulate his hands, said, hastily,

“Yes, quite on the gridiron—­very!” and rapidly moved off it by moving on.