ne of his dinners; he sent them
a sovereign; their humble, hearty thanks were returned to him in the
name of Die Grafin von Fleetwood.

The Ladies Endor, Eldritch, and Cowry sifted their best. They let
pass incredible stories: among others, that she had sent cards to the
nobility and gentry of the West End of London, offering to deliver
sacks of potatoes by newly-established donkey-cart at the doors of their
residences, at so much per sack, bills quarterly; with the postscript,
Vive L'aristocratie! Their informant had seen a card, and the stamp of
the Fleetwood dragoncrest was on it.

He has enemies, was variously said of the persecuted nobleman. But it
was nothing worse than the parasite that he had. This was the parasite's
gentle treason. He found it an easy road to humour; it pricked the slug
fancy in him to stir and curl; gave him occasion to bundle and bustle
his patron kindly. Abrane, Potts, Mallard, and Sir Meeson Corby were
personages during the town's excitement, besought for having something
to say. Petrels of the sea of tattle, they were buoyed by the hubbub
they created, and felt the tipsy happiness of being certain to rouse the
laugh wherever they alighted. Sir Meeson Corby, important to himself in
an eminent degree, enjoyed the novel sense of his importance with his
fellows. They crowded round the bore who had scattered them.

He traced the miserable catastrophe in the earl's fortunes to the
cunning of the rascal now sponging on Fleetwood and trying to dress like
a gentleman: a convicted tramp, elevated by the caprice of the young
nobleman he was plotting to ruin. Sir Meeson quoted Captain Abrane's
latest effort to hit the dirty object's name, by calling him
'Fleetwood's Mr. Woodlouse.' And was the rascal a sorcerer? Sir Meeson
spoke of him in the hearing of the Countess Livia, and she, previously
echoing his disgust, corrected him sharply, and said: 'I begin to be of
Russett's opinion, that his fault is his honesty.' The rascal had won or
partly won the empress of her sex! This Lady Livia, haughtiest and most
fastidious of our younger great dames, had become the indulgent
critic of the tramp's borrowed plumes! Nay, she would not listen to a
depreciatory word on him from her cousin Henrietta Kirby-Levellier.

Perhaps, after all, of all places for an encounter between the Earl of
Fleetwood and the countess, those vulgar Gardens across the water, long
since abandoned by the Fashion, were the most suitable