the
flowers;--eh, Bagnigge?"

"And flung them to Alboni," the Peer replied, with a haughty sneer. And
poor little Franklin Fox was compelled to own that she had.

The maitre d'hotel here announced that supper was served. It was
remarked that even the coulis de dindonneau made no impression on
Bagnigge that night.

II.

The sensation produced by the debut of Amethyst Pimlico at the court
of the sovereign, and in the salons of the beau-monde, was such as has
seldom been created by the appearance of any other beauty. The men were
raving with love, and the women with jealousy. Her eyes, her beauty, her
wit, her grace, her ton, caused a perfect fureur of admiration or envy.

Introduced by the Duchess of Fitzbattleaxe, along with her Grace's
daughters, the Ladies Gwendoline and Gwinever Portcullis, the heiress's
regal beauty quite flung her cousins' simple charms into the shade,
and blazed with a splendor which caused all "minor lights" to twinkle
faintly. Before a day the beau-monde, before a week even the vulgarians
of the rest of the town, rang with the fame of her charms; and while the
dandies and the beauties were raving about her, or tearing her to pieces
in May Fair, even Mrs. Dobbs (who had been to the pit of the "Hoperer"
in a green turban and a crumpled yellow satin) talked about the great
HAIRESS to her D. in Bloomsbury Square.

Crowds went to Squab and Lynch's, in Long Acre, to examine the carriages
building for her, so faultless, so splendid, so quiet, so odiously
unostentatious and provokingly simple! Besides the ancestral services of
argenterie and vaisselle plate, contained in a hundred and seventy-six
plate-chests at Messrs. Childs', Rumble and Briggs prepared a gold
service, and Garraway, of the Haymarket, a service of the Benvenuto
Cellini pattern, which were the admiration of all London. Before a month
it is a fact that the wretched haberdashers in the city exhibited the
blue stocks, called "Heiress-killers, very chaste, two-and-six:"
long before that, the monde had rushed to Madame Crinoline's, or sent
couriers to Madame Marabou, at Paris, so as to have copies of
her dresses; but, as the Mantuan bard observes, "Non cuivis
contigit,"--every foot cannot accommodate itself to the chaussure of
Cinderella.

With all this splendor, this worship, this beauty; with these cheers
following her, and these crowds at her feet, was Amethyst happy? Ah, no!
It is not under the necklace the most brilliant tha