What Will He Do With It, Book 6.

ear is a much finer work of art than a silk purse; and grand, indeed, the mechanician who could make a sow's ear

Carr Vipont, "what so

rel

one is more or less intimate according as they take after the Viponts or after the Crookes. Poor woman! she died just before Mr. Darrell entered Parliament and appeared in

s very accomplish

xceedingly young when he married, scarcely of

e been very much attached

ghter's face, which evinced an animation not usual to a young

ot a more useful,-but third-rate, my dear. All the Crookes are bad wives, because they are never satisfied with their own homes, but are always trying to get into great people's homes. Not very long before she died, Mrs. Darrell took her friend and relation, Mrs. Lyndsay, to live with her. I suspect it was not from affection, or any great consideration for Mrs. Lyndsay's circumstances (which were indeed those of actual destitution, till-thanks to Mr. Darrell-she won her lawsuit), but simply because she looked to Mrs. Lyndsay to get her into our set. Mrs. Lyndsay was a great favourite with all of us, charming manner

man-" Honoria stopped, c

to our set with open arms, and, in short, to be of the very best monde. Mr. Darrell came into Parliament immensely rich (a legacy from an old East Indian, besides his own professional savings); took the house he has now, close by us. Mrs. Lyndsay was obliged to retire to a cottage at Fulham. But as she professed to be a second mother to poor Matilda Darrell, she contrived to be very much at Carlton Gardens; her daughter Caroline was nearly always there, profiting by Matilda's masters; and I did

onel Morley entered the

will dine here to-day,

, young Haughton, and-a

sins); so lucky to fi

addressing Honoria in an under voice, "th

Darrell so fond

rriage and domestic life: more freshness of heart than in the young men one meets nowadays. It may be prejudice; but it seems to me that the young fellows of the present race, if more sob

h, "Honoria thinks much as you do: she finds the young me

added Honoria, moving away w

hers," whispered the C

ever marr

joked at each other whenever they met as they met now. Lionel, who remembered Vance's description of Lady Selina, and who had since heard her spoken of in society as a female despot who carried to perfection the arts by which despots flourish, with majesty to impose, and caresses to deceive-an Aurungzebe in petticoats-was sadly at a loss to reconcile such portraiture with the good-humoured, motherly woman who talked to him of her home, her husband, her children, with open fondness and becoming pride, and who, far from being so formidably clever as the world cruelly gave out, seemed to Lionel rather below par in her understanding; strike from her talk its kindliness, and the residue was very like twaddle. After dinner, various members of the Vipont family dropped in,-asked impromp

those vast crowds which seemed convened for a practical parody of Mr. Bentham'

"insipid." Doubtless she would henceforth do so. A few minutes after Darrell was listening again; this time to another young lady, generally called "fast." If his attentions to her were not marked, hers to him were. She rattled on to him volubly, laughed, pretty hoyden, at her own sallies, and seemed at last so to fascinate him by her gay spirits that he sat down by her side; and the playful smile on his lips-lips that had learned to be so gravely firm-showed that he could enter still into the mirth of childhood; for surely to the time-worn man the fast young lady must have seemed but a giddy child. Lionel was amused. Could this be the austere recluse whom he

of man, and she would not be caught by his money; does not want it. . . . I wonder she is not afraid of him. He is certainly quizzing her. . . . The men think her pretty; I don't. . . . They say he is to return to Parliament, and have a place in the Cabinet. . . . No! he has no children living: very nat

tronage, power, never perhaps to regain them. People don't turn their backs on him; their smiles are as gracious, their hands as flatteringly extended. But that man would be dull as a rhinoceros if he did not feel-as every one who accosts him feels-that he has descended in the ladder. So with all else. Lose even your fortune, it is not the next day in a London drawing-room that your friends look as if you were going to ask them for five pounds. Wait a year or so for that. But if they have just heard you are ruined, you will feel tha

him there fell that glamour by which the /amour propre/ is held captive in large assemblies, where the /amour propre/ is flattered. "Magnificent, intelligent audience," thinks the applauded actor. "Delightful party," murmurs the worshipped