olives, making all manner of horrid faces, and silly protestations
that they will never touch an olive again as long as they live; but,
after a little time, these very folk grow so desperately fond of
olives, that there is no dessert without them. Isabel, child, you are
in the sweet line--but sweets cloy. You never heard of any body living
on marmalade, did ye?"

Lady Isabel answered by a sweet smile.

"To do you justice, you play Lydia Languish vastly well," pursued the
mother; "but Lydia, by herself, would soon tire; somebody must keep up
the spirit and bustle, and carry on the plot of the piece, and I am
that somebody--as you shall see. Is not that our hero's voice which I
hear on the stairs?"

It was Lord Colambre. His lordship had by this time become a constant
visitor at Lady Dashfort's. Not that he had forgotten, or that he
meant to disregard his friend Sir James Brooke's parting words. He
promised himself faithfully, that if any thing should occur to give
him reason to suspect designs, such as those to which the warning
pointed, he would be on his guard, and would prove his generalship by
an able retreat. But to imagine attacks where none were attempted,
to suspect ambuscades in the open country, would be ridiculous and
cowardly.

"No," thought our hero; "Heaven forefend I should be such a coxcomb
as to fancy every woman who speaks to me has designs upon my precious
heart, or on my more precious estate!" As he walked from his hotel to
Lady Dashfort's house, ingeniously wrong, he came to this conclusion,
just as he ascended the stairs, and just as her ladyship had settled