me," I say to my partner. "As if
I married you for your relations!" says Theo, her eyes beaming joy
and love into mine. Ah, how happy we were! how brisk and pleasant the
winter! How snug the kettle by the fire (where the abashed Sampson
sometimes came and made the punch); how delightful the night at the
theatre, for which our friends brought us tickets of admission, and
where we daily expected our new play of Pocahontas would rival the
successes of all former tragedies.

The fickle old aunt of Clarges Street, who received me, on my first
coming to London with my wife, with a burst of scorn, mollified
presently, and as soon as she came to know Theo (who she had pronounced
to be an insignificant little country-faced chit), fell utterly in love
with her, and would have her to tea and supper every day when there was
no other company. "As for company, my dears," she would say, "I don't
ask you. You are no longer du monde. Your marriage has put that entirely
out of the question." So she would have had us come to amuse her, and go
in and out by the back-stairs. My wife was fine lady enough to feel only
amused at this reception; and, I must do the Baroness's domestics the
justice to say that, had we been duke and duchess, we could not have
been received with more respect. Madame de Bernstein was very much
tickled and amused with my story of Lady Warrington and the chair. I
acted it for her, and gave her anecdotes of the pious Baronet's lady and
her daughters, which pleased the mischievous, lively old woman.

The Dowager Countess of Castlewood, now established in her house at
Kensington, gave us that kind of welcome which genteel ladies extend to
their poorer relatives. We went once or twice to her ladyship's drums at
Kensington; but, losing more money at cards, and spending more money
in coach-hire than I liked to afford, we speedily gave up those
entertainments, and, I dare say, were no more missed or regretted than
other people in the fashionable world, who are carried by death, debt,
or other accident out of the polite sphere. My Theo did not in the
least regret this exclusion. She had made her appearance at one of these
drums, attired in some little ornaments which her mother left behind
her, and by which the good lady set some store; but I thought her own
white neck was a great deal prettier than these poor twinkling stones;
and there were dowagers, whose wrinkled old bones blazed with rubies
and diamonds, which, I am su