s in so
complicated and extraordinary a manner that he had been a ruined man for
years, and yet lived well on an income allowed him by his creditors to
manage his estate for their benefit. The joke was, he really managed
it well. It was his hobby, and he prided himself especially upon his
character as a man of business.

The banquet is certainly the best preparative for the ball, if its
blessings be not abused, for then you get heavy. Your true votary of
Terpsichore, and of him we only speak, requires, particularly in a land
of easterly winds, which cut into his cab-head at every turn of every
street, some previous process to make his blood set him an example in
dancing. It is strong Burgundy and his sparkling sister champagne that
make a race-ball always so amusing a _divertissement_. One enters the
room with a gay elation which defies rule without violating etiquette,
and in these county meetings there is a variety of character, and
classes, and manners, which is interesting, and affords an agreeable
contrast to those more brilliant and refined assemblies the members of
which, being educated by exactly the same system and with exactly the
same ideas, think, look, move, talk, dress, and even eat, alike; the
only remarkable personage being a woman somewhat more beautiful than
the beauties who surround her, and a man rather more original in his
affectations than the puppies that surround him. The proof of the
general dulness of polite circles is the great sensation that is always
produced by a new face. The season always commences briskly, because
there are so many. Ball, and dinner, and concert collect then plentiful
votaries; but as we move on the dulness will develop itself, and
then come the morning breakfast, and the water party, and the _fete
champetre_, all desperate attempts to produce variety with old
materials, and to occasion a second effect by a cause which is already
exhausted.

These philosophical remarks precede another introduction to the public
ball-room at Doncaster. Mrs. Dallington Vere and Miss Dacre are walking
arm in arm at the upper end of the room.

'You are disappointed, love, about Arundel?' said Mrs. Dallington.

'Bitterly; I never counted on any event more certainly than on his
return this summer.'

'And why tarrieth the wanderer? unwillingly of course?'

'Lord Darrell, who was to have gone over as _Charge d'affaires_, has
announced to his father the impossibility of his becoming a dipl