such another.)

"Think so? I didn't observe," said the miserable hypocrite by her side;
and when he had seen Rosa home, he went back, like an infamous fiend, to
order something else which he had forgotten, he said, at Fubsby's. Get
out of that Paradise, you cowardly, creeping, vile serpent you!

Until the day of the dinner, the infatuated fop was ALWAYS going
to Fubsby's. HE WAS REMARKED THERE. He used to go before he went to
chambers in the morning, and sometimes on his return from the Temple:
but the morning was the time which he preferred; and one day, when he
went on one of his eternal pretexts, and was chattering and flirting at
the counter, a lady who had been reading yesterday's paper and eating
a halfpenny bun for an hour in the back shop (if that paradise may be
called a shop)--a lady stepped forward, laid down the Morning Herald,
and confronted him.

That lady was Mrs. Gashleigh. From that day the miserable Fitzroy was in
her power; and she resumed a sway over his house, to shake off which had
been the object of his life, and the result of many battles. And for a
mere freak--(for, on going into Fubsby's a week afterwards he found the
Peris drinking tea out of blue cups, and eating stale bread and butter,
when his absurd passion instantly vanished)--I say, for a mere freak,
the most intolerable burden of his life was put on his shoulders
again--his mother-in-law.

On the day before the little dinner took place--and I promise you
we shall come to it in the very next chapter--a tall and elegant
middle-aged gentleman, who might have passed for an earl but that there
was a slight incompleteness about his hands and feet, the former being