e, could procure, such he possessed in abundance,
his greatest ambition being to outshine in splendour, and surpass in
magnificence, all the other dinner-givers of the day, filling his house
with the great and titled of the land, who ministered to his vanity with
singular good-nature, while they sipped his claret, and sat over his
Burgundy. His was indeed a pleasant house. The _bons vivants_ liked it
for its excellent fare, the perfection of its wines, the certainty of
finding the first rarity of the season before its existence was heard of
at other tables; the lounger liked it for its ease and informality; the
humorist, for the amusing features of its host and hostess; and not a
few were attracted by the gracefulness and surpassing loveliness of one
who, by some strange fatality of fortune, seemed to have been dropped
down into the midst of this singular _menage_.

Of Mr. Rooney, I have only further to say that, hospitable as a prince,
he was never so happy as at the head of his table; for, although his
natural sharpness could not but convince him of the footing which he
occupied among his high and distinguished guests, yet he knew well there
are few such levellers of rank as riches, and he had read in his youth
that even the lofty Jove himself was accessible by the odour of a
hecatomb.

Mrs. Rooney--or, as she wrote herself upon her card, Mrs. Paul Rooney
(there seemed something distinctive in the prenom.)--was a being of
a very different order. Perfectly unconscious of the ridicule that
attaches to vulgar profusion, she believed herself the great source of
attraction of her crowded staircase and besieged drawing-room. True
it was, she was a large and very handsome woman. Her deep, dark, brown
eyes, and brilliant complexion, would have been beautiful, had not her
mouth somewhat marred their effect, by that coarse expression which high
living and a voluptuous life is sure to impress upon those not born
to be great. There is no doubt of it, the mouth is your thorough-bred
feature. You will meet eyes as softly beaming, as brightly speaking,
among the lofty cliffs of the wild Tyrol, or in the deep valleys of
the far west; I have seen, too, a brow as fairly pencilled, a nose no
Grecian statue could surpass, a skin whose tint was fair and transparent
as the downy rose-leaf, amid the humble peasants of a poor and barren
land; but never have I seen the mouth whose clean-cut lip and chiselled
arch betokened birth. No; that fe