ility of two persons speaking at the same time. The guests were
his Grace, Lord Squib, and Lord Darrell. The repast, like everything
connected with Mr. Annesley, was refined and exquisite, rather slight
than solid, and more novel than various. There was no affectation of
_gourmandise_, the vice of male dinners. Your imagination and your sight
were not at the same time dazzled and confused by an agglomeration of
the peculiar luxuries of every clime and every season. As you mused over
a warm and sunny flavour of a brown soup, your host did not dilate upon
the milder and moonlight beauties of a white one. A gentle dallying with
a whiting, that chicken of the ocean, was not a signal for a panegyric
of the darker attraction of a _matelotte a la royale_. The disappearance
of the first course did not herald a catalogue of discordant dainties.
You were not recommended to neglect the _croquettes_ because the
_boudins_ might claim attention; and while you were crowning your
important labours with a quail you were not reminded that the _pate de
Troyes_, unlike the less reasonable human race, would feel offended if
it were not cut. Then the wines were few. Some sherry, with a pedigree
like an Arabian, heightened the flavour of the dish, not interfered with
it; as a toady keeps up the conversation which he does not distract. A
goblet of Graffenburg, with a bouquet like woman's breath, made you,
as you remembered some liquid which it had been your fate to fall
upon, suppose that German wines, like German barons, required some
discrimination, and that hock, like other titles, was not always the
sign of the high nobility of its owner. A glass of claret was the third
grace. But, if we had been there, we should have devoted ourselves
to one of the sparkling sisters; for one wine, like one woman, is
sufficient to interest one's feelings for four-and-twenty hours.
Fickleness we abhor.

'I observed you riding to-day with the gentle Leonora, St. James,' said
Mr. Annesley.

'No! her sister.'

'Indeed! Those girls are uncommonly alike. The fact is, now, that
neither face nor figure depends upon nature.'

'No,' said Lord Squib; 'all that the artists of the present day want is
a model. Let a family provide one handsome sister, and the hideousness
of the others will not prevent them, under good management, from being
mistaken, by the best judges, for the beauty, six times in the same
hour.'

'You are trying, I suppose, to account for your u