‘Ah!’ she sighed, walking on, with the step of majesty in exile.

‘What the deuce is the matter with everybody to-day?’ cried Harry.  ’I ’m hanged if I can make it out.  There’s the Carrington, as you call her, I met her with such a pair of eyes, and old George looking as if he’d been licked, at her heels; and there’s Drummond and his lady fair moping about the lawn, and my mother positively getting excited—­there’s a miracle! and Juley ’s sharpening her nails for somebody, and if Ferdinand don’t look out, your brother ’ll be walking off with Rosey—­that ’s my opinion.’

‘Indeed,’ said the Countess.  ‘You really think so?’

‘Well, they come it pretty strong together.’

‘And what constitutes the “come it strong,” Mr. Harry?’

‘Hold of hands; you know,’ the young gentleman indicated.

‘Alas, then! must not we be more discreet?’

‘Oh! but it’s different.  With young people one knows what that means.’

‘Deus!’ exclaimed the Countess, tossing her head weariedly, and Harry perceived his slip, and down he went again.

What wonder that a youth in such training should consent to fetch and carry, to listen and relate, to play the spy and know no more of his office than that it gave him astonishing thrills of satisfaction, and now and then a secret sweet reward?

The Countess had sealed Miss Carrington’s mouth by one of her most dexterous strokes.  On leaving the dinner-table over-night, and seeing that Caroline’s attack would preclude their instant retreat, the gallant Countess turned at bay.  A word aside to Mr. George Uplift, and then the Countess took a chair by Miss Carrington.  She did all the conversation, and supplied all the smiles to it, and when a lady has to do that she is justified in striking, and striking hard, for to abandon the pretence of sweetness is a gross insult from one woman to another.

The Countess then led circuitously, but with all the ease in the world, to the story of a Portuguese lady, of a marvellous beauty, and who was deeply enamoured of the Chevalier Miguel de Rasadio, and engaged to be married to him:  but, alas for her! in the insolence of her happiness she wantonly made an enemy in the person of a most unoffending lady, and she repented it.  While sketching the admirable Chevalier, the Countess drew a telling portrait of Mr. George Uplift, and gratified her humour and her wrath at once by strong truth to nature in the description and animated encomiums on the individual.  The Portuguese lady, too, a little resembled Miss Carrington, in spite of her marvellous beauty.  And it was odd that Miss Carrington should give a sudden start and a horrified glance at the Countess just when the Countess was pathetically relating the proceeding taken by the revengeful lady on the beautiful betrothed of the Chevalier Miguel de Rasadio:  which proceeding was nothing other than to bring to the Chevalier’s knowledge that his beauty had a defect concealed by her apparel, and that the specks in his fruit were not one, or two, but, Oh!  And the dreadful sequel to the story the Countess could not tell:  preferring ingeniously to throw a tragic veil over it.  Miss Carrington went early to bed that night.