he is quite the fashion, all the ladies running after him he is remarked as the faithful swain of Lady Lydia; he must be a bold man, however, who takes her, ha! I say, what do you say to the matter? would you like her for a daughter-in-law? But is it true that your son has spent ten thousand pounds in these few last weeks?"

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Very likely," replied Lady Gertrude, " for he has it to spend. As for the match in question, it requires a second thought."

"Oh! yes, second thoughts are best. And how does your quiet good man like all this expense and bustle? I dare say he would rather have stayed at home. Never were two people more unlike than he and you; but marriages, they say, are made in Heaven, or (archly) somewhere else."

Here was a good-natured preface to a morning's scandal: her friend arrives, and she wants to inform her of her son's extravagance, to

mar a reported match, and to excite the wife to look down on her husband!

In the first and second instance she failed: the son's extravagance was warranted and sanctioned: without it, Lady Gertrude imagined that he could not reach the pinnacle of fashionable renown: the reported marriage was already disposed of, merely on the score of succession; and as Lady Gertrude ascended the staircase of Lady Claver's house, she just bethought herself of a Baroness in her own right, whose title went in the female line. It is true, that she looked as if she had been made by one of Nature's journeymen, and not made well; for there was a trifling error on one side (not kindly corresponding with the other), which seemed to announce a partial independence of the right, at variance with the sinister views of the left; so that what the right side did, the left side scarcely knew: nevertheless, youth was in favour of the Baroness. But just as Lady Ger

trude was calculating the pour et contre, she found herself at Lady Claver's room-door.

The third attempt was not null and void, but neutral. Lady Gertrude had long considered her husband as a bon homme, and that speaks volumes; the Squire's fortune captivated her. He was the best of husbands; they had three children, two of them died, and left a fils unique. The father saw nothing beyond being a good husband and father, a good neighbour and easy landlord, and a capital shot; in London he was like a fish out of water. He might have been in Parliament if he chose, but the attendance on the House would have been the greatest restraint to him: hundreds of times had he received curtain lectures for this absence of ambition, and as often he had been upbraided for his supineness, yet he still calmly pursued the noiseless tenor of his way, until the heir came to years of maturity, and then the dream of ambition was awakened again.

These attempts having failed, Lady Ger

trude drew from her oracle all the general scandal of the day, and was about to go, when Mrs. Blight (not Mrs. Bligh,—no connexion with the house over the way) was announced by Lady Claver's groom of the chambers.

(Mrs. Blight.) "Your servant, Lady Gertrude; happy to see you in town; you have brought your healthful looks from the country with you, and I declare you have grown quite young. The Hermit Abroad (a sly mischievous fellow, by the way, whom I hate and fear) says, 'O! que les miroirs sont changés !' but your Ladyship has no such thing to fear" (to Lady Claver.) "How do, my dear friend!!!" (What misnomer! the coterie was any thing but a society of friends.) “How like that picture

is!"

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(Lady Claver.) Ay, poor dear man

he is in his gown."

! there

(Mrs. Blight.) "Preaching, no doubt, against calumny."

(Lady C.) "Humph!" (in continuation)

"He ought to have been a Bishop, if he had had his deserts. I thought it would have been so when I married him, but kissing goes by favour." (Mrs. Blight.) "For which reason some people (ironically) can expect none.

Lady Gertrude smiled, Lady Claver bit her lip.

(Mrs. B. to the former.) "You see our dear friend goes on in the old way,-pointed in her remarks, but incoherent in her arrangement of them. I should like to know what connexion there can be betwixt kissing and a mitre? They say that women will talk of what runs in their head; but surely my old friend,—no, that cannot be-à votre age and”—she added no more, but wished the hiatus to be filled up by "et avec votre visage"-" ha, ha, ha! too bad." (Exit Lady Gertrude.)

It is strange, but not less true, that as thieves cannot always be true to each other, so robbers of reputation can scarcely refrain from pulling each other to pieces: this was the only pot-luck

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