Foker asked. "Walter Lorraine died of the measles, poor little
beggar, when we were at Gray Friars. I remember his mother coming up."

"You are not a literary man, Foker," Pen said, laughing, and hooking
his arm into his friend's. "You must know I have been writing a novel,
and some of the papers have spoken very well of it. Perhaps you don't
read the Sunday papers?"

"I read Bell's Life regular, old boy," Mr. Foker answered: at which
Pen laughed again, and the three gentlemen proceeded in great good-humor
to Lady Clavering's house.

The subject of the novel was resumed after luncheon by Miss Amory, who
indeed loved poets and men of letters if she loved any thing, and was
sincerely an artist in feeling. "Some of the passages in the book made
me cry, positively they did," she said.

Pen said, with some fatuity, "I am happy to think I have a part of
_vos larmes_, Miss Blanche"--And the major (who had not read more than
six pages of Pen's book) put on his sanctified look, saying, "Yes,
there are some passages quite affecting, mons'ous affecting:
and,"--"O, if it makes you cry,"--Lady Amory declared she would not
read it, "that she wouldn't."

"Don't, mamma," Blanche said, with a French shrug of her shoulders;
and then she fell into a rhapsody about the book, about the snatches
of poetry interspersed in it, about the two heroines, Leonora and
Neaera; about the two heroes, Walter Lorraine and his rival the young
duke--"and what good company you introduce us to," said the young
lady, archly, "_quel ton!_ How much of your life have you passed at