was all the apology
he made. Lady Clonbrony was particularly vexed that the appearance of
the statira, canopy should be spoiled before the effect had been seen by
Lady Pococke, and Lady Chatterton, and Lady G--, Lady P--, and the Duke
of V--, and a party of superlative fashionables, who had promised TO LOOK
IN UPON HER, but who, late as it was, had not yet arrived. They came in
at last. But Lady Clonbrony had no reason to regret for their sake the
statira couch. It would have been lost upon them, as was everything
else which she had prepared with so much pains and cost to excite their
admiration, They came resolute not to admire. Skilled in the art of
making others unhappy, they just looked round with an air of apathy.
'Ah! you've had Soho!--Soho has done wonders for you here! Vastly
well!--Vastly well!--Soho's very clever in his way!'

Others of great importance came in, full of some slight accident that
had happened to themselves, or their horses, or their carriages; and,
with privileged selfishness, engrossed the attention of all within their
sphere of conversation. Well, Lady Clonbrony got over all this, and got
over the history of a letter about a chimney that was on fire, a week
ago, at the Duke of V's old house, in Brecknockshire. In gratitude
for the smiling patience with which she listened to him, his Grace of
V--fixed his glass to look at the Alhambra, and had just pronounced
it to be 'Well!--very well!' when the Dowager Lady Chatterton made
a terrible discovery--a discovery that filled Lady Clonbrony with
astonishment and indignation--Mr. Soho had played her false! What was
her mortification when the dowager assured her that these identical
Alhambra hangings had not only been shown by Mr. Soho to the Duchess
of Torcaster, but that her grace had had the refusal of them, and had
actually rejected them, in consequence of Sir Horace Grant the great
traveller's objecting to some of the proportions of the pillars.
Soho had engaged to make a new set, vastly improved, by Sir Horace's
suggestions, for her Grace of Torcaster.

Now Lady Chatterton was the greatest talker extant; and she went shout
the rooms telling everybody of her acquaintance--and she was acquainted
with everybody--how shamefully Soho had imposed upon poor Lady
Clonbrony, protesting she could not forgive the man. 'For,' said
she,'though the Duchess of Torcaster has been his constant customer for
ages, and his patroness, and all that, yet this does no