“Yes!” interrupts Mrs. Swiggs, nervously—­“I know how they do it.  It’s a pardonable weakness.”  And she reaches out her hand and takes to her lap her inseparable Milton.

“And the many marked attentions-offers, in fact-they have received at the hands of Counts and Earls, with names so unpronounceable that they have outlived memory—­”

“Perhaps I have them in my book of autographs!” interrupts the credulous old woman, making an effort to rise and proceed to an antique sideboard covered with grotesque-looking papers.

Mr. Soloman urbanely touches her on the arm-begs she will keep her seat.  The names only apply to things of the past.  He proceeds, “Well-being a dashing fellow, as I have said-he played his game charmingly.  Now he flirted with this one, and then with that one, and finally with the whole society, not excepting the very flirtable married ladies;—­that is, I mean those whose husbands were simple enough to let him.  Mothers were in a great flutter generally, and not a day passed but there was a dispute as to which of their daughters he would link his fortunes with and raise to that state so desirable in the eyes of our very republican first families-the State-Militant of nobility—­”

“I think none the worse of ’em for that,” says the old woman, twitching her wizard-like head in confirmation of her assertion.  “My word for it, Mr. Soloman, to get up in the world, and to be above the common herd, is the grand ambition of our people; and our State has got the grand position it now holds before the world through the influence of this ambition.”

“True!—­you are right there, my dear friend.  You may remember, I have always said you had the penetration of a statesman, (Mrs. Swiggs makes a curt bow, as a great gray cat springs into her lap and curls himself down on her Milton;) and, as I was going on to say of this dashing Baronet, he played our damsels about in agony, as an old sportsman does a covey of ducks, wounding more in the head than in the heart, and finally creating no end of a demand for matrimony.  To-day, all the town was positive, he would marry the beautiful Miss Boggs; to-morrow it was not so certain that he would not marry the brilliant and all-accomplished Miss Noggs; and the next day he was certain of marrying the talented and very wealthy heiress, Miss Robbs.  Mrs. Stepfast, highly esteemed in fashionable society, and the very best gossipmonger in the city, had confidentially spread it all over the neighborhood that Mr. Stepfast told her the young Baronet told him (and he verily believed he was head and ears in love with her!) Miss Robbs was the most lovely creature he had seen since he left Belgravia.  And then he went into a perfect rhapsody of excitement while praising the poetry of her motion, the grace with which she performed the smallest offices of the drawing-room, her queenly figure, her round, alabaster arms, her smooth, tapering hands, (so chastely set off with two small diamonds,