distinction, though he would not tell her name. After he had exercised his
wit for some time, without obtaining from the tragic muse one single
syllable, he whispered, "Lady Delacour, why this unnatural reserve? Do you
imagine that, through this tragical disguise, I have not found you out?"

The tragic muse, apparently absorbed in meditation, vouchsafed no reply.

"The devil a word can you get for your pains, Hervey," said a gentleman of
his acquaintance, who joined the party at this instant. "Why didn't you
stick to t'other muse, who, to do her justice, is as arrant a flirt as
your heart could wish for?"

"There's danger in flirting," said Clarence, "with an arrant flirt of Mrs.
Stanhope's training. There's a kind of electricity about that girl. I have
a sort of cobweb feeling, an imaginary net coming all over me."

"Fore-warned is fore-armed," replied his companion: "a man must be a
novice indeed that could be taken in at this time of day by a niece of
Mrs. Stanhope's."

"That Mrs. Stanhope must be a good clever dame, faith," said a third
gentleman: "there's no less than six of her nieces whom she has got off
within these four winters--not one of 'em now that has not made a
catch-match.--There's the eldest of the set, Mrs. Tollemache, what had
she, in the devil's name, to set up with in the world but a pair of good
eyes?--her aunt, to be sure, taught her the use of them early enough: they
might have rolled to all eternity before they would have rolled me out of
my senses; but you see they did Tollemache's business. However, they are
going to part now, I hear: Tollemache was tired of her before the
honey-moon was over, as I foretold. Then there's the musical girl.