unembarrassed, while her fluttering memory feasted on the sweet thought
that, at any rate, another had not captured this unrivalled prize.
Perhaps she might be the Anson to fall upon this galleon. It was worth a
long cruise, and even a chance of shipwreck.

He danced with Lady Aphrodite, because, since the affair of the Signora,
he was most punctilious in his attentions to her, particularly in
public. That affair, of course, she passed over in silence, though it
was bitter. She, however, had had sufficient experience of man to feel
that remonstrance is a last resource, and usually an ineffectual one. It
was something that her rival--not that her ladyship dignified the Bird
by that title--it was something that she was not her equal, that she was
not one with whom she could be put in painful and constant collision.
She tried to consider it a freak, to believe only half she heard, and
to indulge the fancy that it was a toy which would soon tire. As for
Sir Lucius, he saw nothing in this adventure, or indeed in the Alhambra
system at all, which militated against his ulterior views. No one more
constantly officiated at the ducal orgies than himself, both because he
was devoted to self-gratification, and because he liked ever to have
his protege in sight. He studiously prevented any other individual from
becoming the Petronius of the circle. His deep experience also taught
him that, with a person of the young Duke's temper, the mode of life
which he was now leading was exactly the one which not only would
insure, but even hurry, the catastrophe his faithful friend so eagerly
desired. His pleasures, as Sir Lucius knew, would soon pall; for he
easily perceived that the Duke was not heartless enough for a roue. When
thorough satiety is felt, young men are in the cue for desperate deeds.
Looking upon happiness as a dream, or a prize which, in life's lottery,
they have missed; worn, hipped, dissatisfied, and desperate, they often
hurry on a result which they disapprove, merely to close a miserable
career, or to brave the society with which they cannot sympathise.

The Duke, however, was not yet sated. As after a feast, when we have
despatched a quantity of wine, there sometimes, as it were, arises a
second appetite, unnatural to be sure, but very keen; so, in a career of
dissipation, when our passion for pleasure appears to be exhausted, the
fatal fancy of man, like a wearied hare, will take a new turn, throw off
the hell-hounds