"Eh, now! really didn't recollect I was in black," was all the apology
he made. Lady Clonbrony was particularly vexed that the appearance of
the Statira canopy should be spoiled before the effect had been seen
by Lady Pococke, and Lady Chatterton, and Lady G----, Lady P----, and
the Duke of V----, and a party of superlative fashionables, who had
promised _to look in upon her_, but who, late as it was, had not yet
arrived. They came in at last. But Lady Clonbrony had no reason to
regret for their sake the Statira couch. It would have been lost upon
them, as was every thing else which she had prepared with so much
pains and cost to excite their admiration. They came resolute not to
admire. Skilled in the art of making others unhappy, they just looked
round with an air of apathy.--"Ah! you've had Soho!--Soho has done
wonders for you here!--Vastly well!--Vastly well!--Soho's very clever
in his way!"

Others of great importance came in, full of some slight accident that
had happened to themselves, or their horses, or their carriages; and,
with privileged selfishness, engrossed the attention of all within
their sphere of conversation. Well, Lady Clonbrony got over all this;
and got over the history of a letter about a chimney that was on fire,
a week ago, at the Duke of V----'s old house, in Brecknockshire. In
gratitude for the smiling patience with which she listened to him,
his Grace of V---- fixed his glass to look at the Alhambra, and had
just pronounced it to be "Well!--very well!" when the Dowager Lady
Chatterton made a terrible discovery--a discovery that filled Lady
Clonbrony with astonishment and indignation--Mr. Soho had played her
false! What was her mortification, when the dowager assured her that
these identical Alhambra hangings had not only been shown by Mr. Soho
to the Duchess of Torcaster, but that her grace had had the refusal of