prominence, showed that she was gaining part of what she played for.  Wise youths who buy their loves, are not unwilling, when opportunity offers, to try and obtain the commodity for nothing.  Examinations of her hand, as for some occult purpose, and unctuous pattings of the same, were not infrequent.  Adrian waxed now and then Anacreontic in his compliments.  Lucy would say:  “That’s worse than Lord Mountfalcon.”

“Better English than the noble lord deigns to employ—­allow that?” quoth Adrian.

“He is very kind,” said Lucy.

“To all, save to our noble vernacular,” added Adrian.  “He seems to scent a rival to his dignity there.”

It may be that Adrian scented a rival to his lymphatic emotions.

“We are at our ease here in excellent society,” he wrote to Lady Blandish.  “I am bound to confess that the Huron has a happy fortune, or a superlative instinct.  Blindfold he has seized upon a suitable mate.  She can look at a lord, and cook for an epicure.  Besides Dr. Kitchener, she reads and comments on The Pilgrim’s Scrip.  The `Love’ chapter, of course, takes her fancy.  That picture of Woman, `Drawn by Reverence and coloured by Love,’ she thinks beautiful, and repeats it, tossing up pretty eyes.  Also the lover’s petition:  ’Give me purity to be worthy the good in her, and grant her patience to reach the good in me.’  ’Tis quite taking to hear her lisp it.  Be sure that I am repeating the petition!  I make her read me her choice passages.  She has not a bad voice.

“The Lady Judith I spoke of is Austin’s Miss Menteith, married to the incapable old Lord Felle, or Fellow, as the wits here call him.  Lord Mountfalcon is his cousin, and her—­what?  She has been trying to find out, but they have both got over their perplexity, and act respectively the bad man reproved and the chaste counsellor; a position in which our young couple found them, and haply diverted its perils.  They had quite taken them in hand.  Lady Judith undertakes to cure the fair Papist of a pretty, modest trick of frowning and blushing when addressed, and his lordship directs the exuberant energies of the original man.  ’Tis thus we fulfil our destinies, and are content.  Sometimes they change pupils; my lord educates the little dame, and my lady the hope of Raynham.  Joy and blessings unto all! as the German poet sings.  Lady Judith accepted the hand of her decrepit lord that she might be of potent service to her fellow-creatures.  Austin, you know, had great hopes of her.

“I have for the first time in my career a field of lords to study.  I think it is not without meaning that I am introduced to it by a yeoman’s niece.  The language of the two social extremes is similar.  I find it to consist in an instinctively lavish use of vowels and adjectives.  My lord and Farmer Blaize speak the same tongue, only my lord’s has lost its backbone, and is limp, though fluent.  Their pursuits are identical; but that one has money, or, as the Pilgrim terms it, vantage, and the other has not.  Their ideas seem to have a special relationship in the peculiarity of stopping where they have begun.  Young Tom Blaize with vantage would be Lord Mountfalcon.  Even in the character of their parasites I see a resemblance, though I am bound to confess that the Hon. Peter Brayder, who is my lord’s parasite, is by no means noxious.