promised to demonstrate on any thin
lady in the company.

The Chief Secretary's fortunate arrival, however, rescued the devoted
fair one from the Dean's scientific ardor; for Mr. Meek was a great
personage in the chief circles of Dublin. Any ordinary manner, in
comparison with Mr. Downie Meek's, would be as linsey-woolsey to
three-pile velvet! There was a yielding softness, a delicious compliance
about him, which won him the world's esteem, and pointed him out to
the Cabinet as the very man to be "Secretary for Ireland." Conciliation
would be a weak word to express the _suave_ but winning gentleness
of his official dealings. The most frank of men, he was unbounded in
professions, and if so elegant a person could have taken a hint from so
humble a source, we should say that he had made his zoological studies
available and imitated the cuttle-fish, since when close penned by
an enemy he could always escape by muddying the water. In this great
dialectic of the Castlereagh school he was perfect, and could become
totally unintelligible at the shortest notice.

After a few almost whispered words to his hostess, Mr. Meek humbly
requested to be presented to Mr. Cashel. Roland, who was then standing
beside Miss Kennyfeck, and listening to a rather amusing catalogue of
the guests, advanced to make the Secretary's acquaintance. Mr. Downie
Meek's approaches were perfect, and in the few words he spoke, most
favorably impressed Cashel with his unpretentious, unaffected demeanor.

"Are we waiting for any one, Mr. Kennyfeck?" said his spouse, with a
delicious simplicity of voice.

"Oh, certainly!" exclaimed her less accomplished husband; "Sir Andrew
and Lady Janet MacFarline and Lord Charles Frobisher have not arrived."

"It appears to me,"--a favorite expression of his Lordship, with a
strong emphasis on the pronoun,--"it appears to me," said Lord Kilgoff,
"that Sir Andrew MacFarline waits for the tattoo at the Royal Barrack to
dress for dinner;" and he added, somewhat lower, "I made a vow, which I
regret to have broken to-day, never to dine wherever he is invited."

"Here they come! here they come at last," cried out several voices
together, as the heavy tread of carriage-horses was heard advancing, and
the loud summons of the footman resounded through the square.

Sir Andrew and Lady Janet MacFarline were announced in Mr. Pearse's most
impressive manner; and then, after a slight pause, as if to enable the
company to recover t