Maria Esmond, being an earl's daughter, and the person of
the highest rank present (with the exception of Lady Augusta Crutchley,
who was lame), Mr. Warrington danced the first minuet with his cousin,
acquitting himself to the satisfaction of the whole room, and performing
much more elegantly than Mr. Wolfe, who stood up with Miss Lowther.
Having completed the dance with Lady Maria, Mr. Warrington begged Miss
Theo to do him the honour of walking the next minuet, and accordingly
Miss Theo, blushing and looking very happy, went through her exercise to
the great delight of her parents and the rage of Miss Humpleby, Sir John
Humpleby's daughter, of Liphook, who expected, at least, to have stood
up next after my Lady Maria. Then, after the minuets, came country
dances, the music being performed by a harp, fiddle, and flageolet,
perched in a little balcony, and thrumming through the evening rather
feeble and melancholy tunes. Take up an old book of music, and play a
few of those tunes now, and one wonders how people at any time could
have found the airs otherwise than melancholy. And yet they loved and
frisked and laughed and courted to that sad accompaniment. There is
scarce one of the airs that has not an amari aliquid, a tang of sadness.
Perhaps it is because they are old and defunct, and their plaintive
echoes call out to us from the limbo of the past, whither they have been
consigned for this century. Perhaps they were gay when they were alive;
and our descendants when they hear--well, never mind names--when they
hear the works of certain maestri now popular, will say: Bon Dieu, is
this the music which amused our forefathers?

Mr. Warrington had the honour of a duchess's company at his
tea-drinking--Colonel Lambert's and Mr. Prior's heroine, the Duchess
of Queensberry. And though the duchess carefully turned her back upon a
countess who was present, laughed loudly, glanced at the latter over her
shoulder, and pointed at her with her fan, yet almost all the company
pushed, and bowed, and cringed, and smiled, and backed before this
countess, scarcely taking any notice of her Grace of Queensberry and her
jokes, and her fan, and her airs. Now this countess was no other than
the Countess of Yarmouth-Walmoden, the lady whom his Majesty George the
Second, of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, King, Defender of the
Faith, delighted to honour. She had met Harry Warrington in the walks
that morning, and had been mighty gracious to