s real, real love, and it looks so
like it; and, if you stoop to examine it, you hear it pressed upon
you by such elegant oaths--By all that's lovely!--By all my hopes of
happiness!--By your own charming self! Why, what can one do but look
like a fool, and believe; for these men, at the time, all look so like
gentlemen, that one cannot bring oneself flatly to tell them that they
are cheats and swindlers, that they are perjuring their precious souls.
Besides, to call a lover a perjured creature is to encourage him. He
would have a right to complain if you went back after that.'

'Oh dear! what a move was there!' cried Lady Catharine. 'Miss Broadhurst
is so entertaining to-night, notwithstanding her sore throat, that one
can positively attend to nothing else. And she talks of love and lovers
too with such CONNAISSANCE DE FAIT--counts her lovers by dozens, tied up
in true-lovers' knots!'

'Lovers!--no, no! Did I say lovers?--suitors I should have said. There's
nothing less like a lover, a true lover, than a suitor, as all the world
knows, ever since the days of Penelope. Dozens!--never had a lover in my
life! And fear, with much reason, I never shall have one to my mind.'

'My lord, you've given up the game,' cried Lady Catharine; 'but you make
no battle.'

'It would be so vain to combat against your ladyship,' said Lord
Colambre, rising, and bowing politely to Lady Catharine, but turning the
next instant to converse with Miss Broadhurst.

But when I talked of liking to be an heiress,' said Lady Anne, 'I was
not thinking of lovers.'

'Certainly. One is not always thinking of lovers, you know,' added Lady
Catharine.

'Not always,' replied Miss Broadhurst. 'Well, lovers out of the question
on all sides, what would your ladyship buy with the thousands upon
thousands?'

'Oh, everything, if I were you,' said Lady Anne.

'Rank, to begin with,' said Lady Catharine.

'Still my old objection--bought rank is but a shabby thing.'

'But there is so little difference made between bought and hereditary
rank in these days,' said Lady Catharine.

'I see a great deal still,' said Miss Broadhurst; 'so much, that I would
never buy a title.'

'A title without birth, to be sure,' said Lady Anne, 'would not be so
well worth buying; and as birth certainly is not to be bought--'

'And even birth, were it to be bought, I would not buy,' said Miss
Broadhurst, 'unless I could be sure to have with it all the politeness,
all the nobl