ir place of
observation. There was a small illumination at Mrs. Brown's tart-
and tea-shop, by which our friends could see one lady getting Mr.
Richardson's hat and stick, and another tying a shawl round his neck,
after which he walked home.

"Oh dear me! he does not look like Grandison!" cries Theo.

"I rather think I wish we had not seen him, my dear," says mamma, who
has been described as a most sentimental woman and eager novel-reader;
and here again they were interrupted by Miss Hetty, who cried:

"Never mind that little fat man, but look yonder, mamma."

And they looked yonder. And they saw, in the first place, Mr. Warrington
undergoing the honour of a presentation to the Countess of Yarmouth, who
was still followed by the obsequious peer and prelate with blue ribands.
And now the Countess graciously sate down to a card-table, the Bishop
and the Earl and a fourth person being her partners. And now Mr.
Warrington came into the embrasure of the window with a lady whom they
recognised as the lady whom they had seen for a few minutes at Oakhurst.

"How much finer he is!" remarks mamma.

"How he is improved in his looks! What has he done to himself?" asks
Theo.

"Look at his grand lace frills and rules! My dear, he has not got on our
shirts any more," cries the matron.

"What are you talking about, girls?" asks papa, reclining on his sofa,
where, perhaps, he was dozing after the fashion of honest house-fathers.

The girls said how Harry Warrington was in the window, talking with his
cousin Lady Maria Esmond.

"Come away!" cries papa. "You have no right to be spying the young
fellow. Down with the curtains, I say!"

And down the curtains went, so that the girls saw no more of Madame
Bernstein's guests or doings for that night.

I pray you be not angry at my remarking, if only by way of contrast
between these two opposite houses, that while Madame Bernstein and her
guests--bishop, dignitaries, noblemen, and what not--were gambling or
talking scandal, or devouring champagne and chickens (which I hold to be
venial sin), or doing honour to her ladyship the king's favourite, the
Countess of Yarmouth-Walmoden, our country friends in their lodgings
knelt round their table, whither Mr. Brian the coachman came as silently
as his creaking shoes would let him, whilst Mr. Lambert, standing up,
read in a low voice, a prayer that Heaven would lighten their darkness
and defend them from the perils of that night, and a su