oo glad because of her excessive beauty, is very slow to
answer her. In truth, she is "like the snow-drop fair, and like the
primrose sweet."

At the castle she creates rather a sensation. Many, as yet, have not
seen her; and these stare at her placidly, indifferent to the fact
that breeding would have it otherwise.

"What a peculiarly pretty young woman," says the duke, half an hour
after her arrival, staring at her through his glasses. He had been
absent when she came, and so is only just now awakened to a sense of
her charms.

"Who?--what?" says the duchess, vaguely, she being the person he has
rashly addressed. She is very fat, very unimpressionable, and very
fond of argument. "Oh! over there. I quite forget who she is. But I do
see that Alfred is making himself, as usual, supremely ridiculous with
her. With all his affected devotion to Helen, he runs after every
fresh face he sees."

"'There's nothing like a plenty,'" quotes the duke, with a dry chuckle
at his own wit; indeed he prides himself upon having been rather a
"card" in his day, and anything but a "k'rect" one, either.

"Yes, there is,--there is propriety," responds the duchess, in an
awful tone.

"That wouldn't be a bit like it," says the duke, still openly amused
at his own humor; after which--thinking it, perhaps, safer to withdraw
while there is yet time--he saunters off to the left, and, as he has a
trick of looking over his shoulder while walking, nearly falls into
Dorian's arms at the next turn.

"Ho, hah!" says his Grace, pulling himself up very shortly, and
glancing at his stumbling-block to see if he can identify him.

"Why, it is you, Branscombe," he says, in his usual cheerful, if
rather fussy, fashion. "So glad to see you!--so glad." He has made
exactly this remark to Dorian every time he has come in contact with
him during the past twenty years and more. "By the by, I dare say you
can tell me,--who is that pretty child over there, with the white
frock and the blue eyes?"

"That pretty child in the frock is my wife," says Branscombe,
laughing.

"Indeed! Dear me! dear me! I beg your pardon. My dear boy, I
congratulate you. Such a face,--like a Greuze; or a--h'm--yes." Here
he grows slightly mixed. "You must introduce me, you know. One likes
to do homage to beauty. Why, where could you have met her in this
exceedingly deficient county, eh? But you were always a sly dog, eh?"

The old gentleman gives him a playful slap on his shoul