"'Faith you should have seen his fury (the young one's, I mean) when
he found me in the duchess's room this evening, tete-a-tete with the
heiress, who deigned to receive a bouquet from this hand."

"It cost me three guineas," poor Frank said, with a shrug and a sigh,
"and that Covent Garden scoundrel gives no credit: but she took the
flowers;--eh, Bagnigge?"

"And flung them to Alboni," the Peer replied, with a haughty sneer. And
poor little Franklin Fox was compelled to own that she had.

The maitre d'hotel here announced that supper was served. It was
remarked that even the coulis de dindonneau made no impression on
Bagnigge that night.


II.


The sensation produced by the debut of Amethyst Pimlico at the court
of the sovereign, and in the salons of the beau-monde, was such as has
seldom been created by the appearance of any other beauty. The men were
raving with love, and the women with jealousy. Her eyes, her beauty, her
wit, her grace, her ton, caused a perfect fureur of admiration or envy.

Introduced by the Duchess of Fitzbattleaxe, along with her Grace's
daughters, the Ladies Gwendoline and Gwinever Portcullis, the heiress's
regal beauty quite flung her cousins' simple charms into the shade,
and blazed with a splendor which caused all "minor lights" to twinkle
faintly. Before a day the beau-monde, before a week even the vulgarians