but recklect, my dear sir, that
they were fresh from Injar,--that they'd not sean many lords,--that
they adoared the peeridge, as every honest woman does in England who has
proper feelinx, and has read the fashnabble novvles,--and that here at
Paris was their fust step into fashnabble sosiaty.

Well, after dinner, while Miss Matilda was singing "Die tantie," or "Dip
your chair," or some of them sellabrated Italyian hairs (when she began
this squall, hang me if she'd ever stop), my lord gets hold of Lady
Griffin again, and gradgaly begins to talk to her in a very different
strane.

"What a blessing it is for us all," says he, "that Algernon has found a
friend so respectable as your ladyship."

"Indeed, my lord; and why? I suppose I am not the only respectable
friend that Mr. Deuceace has?"

"No, surely; not the only one he HAS HAD: his birth, and, permit me to
say, his relationship to myself, have procured him many. But--" (here my
lord heaved a very affecting and large sigh).

"But what?" says my lady, laffing at the igspression of his dismal face.
"You don't mean that Mr. Deuceace has lost them or is unworthy of them?"

"I trust not, my dear madam, I trust not; but he is wild, thoughtless,
extravagant, and embarrassed: and you know a man under these
circumstances is not very particular as to his associates."

"Embarrassed? Good heavens! He says he has two thousand a year left him
by a god-mother; and he does not seem even to spend his income--a very
handsome independence, too, for a bachelor."

My lord nodded his head sadly, and said,--"Will your ladyship give me
your word of honor to be secret? My son has but a thousand a year, which
I allow him, and is heavily in debt. He has played, madam, I fear;
and for this reason I am so glad to hear that he is in a respectable
domestic circle, where he may learn, in the presence of far greater and
purer attractions, to forget the dice-box, and the low company which has
been his bane."

My Lady Griffin looked very grave indeed. Was it true? Was Deuceace
sincere in his professions of love, or was he only a sharper wooing her
for her money? Could she doubt her informer? his own father, and, what's
more, a real flesh and blood pear of parlyment? She determined she would
try him. Praps she did not know she had liked Deuceace so much, until
she kem to feel how much she should HATE him if she found he'd been
playing her false.

The evening was over, and back they came, as