He threw back his head like a swimmer tossing spray from his locks.

‘You have read the paper?’ he asked.

‘You have horsewhipped the writer?’ she rejoined.

‘Oh! the poor penster!’

‘Nay, we can’t pretend to pity him!’

‘Could we condescend to offer him satisfaction?’

‘Would he dare to demand it?’

‘We will lay the case before Lady Wilts to-night.’

‘You are there to-night?’

‘At Lady Denewdney’s to-morrow night—­if I may indulge a hope?’

’Both?  Oh! bravo, bravo!  Tell me nothing more just now.  How did you manage it?  I must have a gallop.  Yes, I shall be at both, be sure of that.’

My father introduced me.

’Let me present to your notice my son, Harry Lepel Richmond, Miss Penrhys.’

She touched my fingers, and nodded at me; speaking to him: 

‘He has a boy’s taste:  I hear he esteems me moderately well-favoured.’

‘An inherited error certain to increase with age!’

‘Now you have started me!’ she exclaimed, and lashed the flanks of her horse.

We had evidently been enacting a part deeply interesting to the population of Bath, for the heads of all the strolling groups were bent on us; and when Miss Penrhys cantered away, down dropped eyeglasses, and the promenade returned to activity.  I fancied I perceived that my father was greeted more cordially on his way back to the hotel.

‘You do well, Richie,’ he observed, ’in preserving your composure until you have something to say.  Wait for your opening; it will come, and the right word will come with it.  The main things are to be able to stand well, walk well, and look with an eye at home in its socket:  I put you my hand on any man or woman born of high blood.—­Not a brazen eye!—­of the two extremes, I prefer the beaten spaniel sort.—­Blindfold me, but I put you my hand on them.  As to repartee, you must have it.  Wait for that, too.  Do not,’ he groaned, ’do not force it!  Bless my soul, what is there in the world so bad?’ And rising to the upper notes of his groan:  ’Ignorance, density, total imbecility, is better; I would rather any day of my life sit and carve for guests—­the grossest of human trials—­ a detestable dinner, than be doomed to hear some wretched fellow—­and you hear the old as well as the young—­excruciate feelings which, where they exist, cannot but be exquisitely delicate.  Goodness gracious me! to see the man pumping up his wit!  For me, my visage is of an unalterable gravity whenever I am present at one of these exhibitions.  I care not if I offend.  Let them say I wish to revolutionize society—­I declare to you, Richie boy, delightful to my heart though I find your keen stroke of repartee, still your fellow who takes the thrust gracefully, knows when he’s traversed by a master-stroke, and yields sign of it, instead of plunging like a spitted buffalo and asking us to admire his agility—­you follow me?—­I say I hold that man—­and I delight vastly in ready wit; it is the wine of language!—­I regard that man as the superior being.  True, he is not so entertaining.’