Duke,' said Annesley, 'I think the
youngest one something like Miss Dacre.'

'Indeed! I cannot say the resemblance struck me.'

'I see old mother Dalmaine dresses her as much like the Doncaster belle
as she possibly can.'

'Yes, and spoils her,' said Lord Squib; 'but old mother Dalmaine, with
all her fuss, was ever a bad cook, and overdid everything.'

'Young Dalmaine, they say,' observed Lord Darrell, 'is in a sort of a
scrape.'

'Ah! what?'

'Oh! some confusion at head-quarters. A great tallow-chandler's son got
into the regiment, and committed some heresy at mess.'

'I do not know the brother,' said the Duke.

'You are fortunate, then. He is unendurable. To give you an idea of him,
suppose you met him here (which you never will), he would write to you
the next day, "My dear St. James."'

'My tailor presented me his best compliments, the other morning,' said
the Duke.

'The world is growing familiar,' said Mr. Annesley.

'There must be some remedy,' said Lord Darrell.

'Yes!' said Lord Squib, with indignation. 'Tradesmen now-a-days console
themselves for not getting their bills paid by asking their customers to
dinner.'

'It is shocking,' said Mr. Annesley, with a forlorn air. 'Do you know,
I never enter society now without taking as many preliminary precautions
as if the plague raged in all our chambers. In vain have I hitherto
prided myself on my existence being unknown to the million. I never now
stand still in a street, lest my portrait be caught for a lithograph;
I never venture to a strange dinner, lest I should stumble upon a
fashionable novelist; and even with all this vigilance, and all this
denial, I have an intimate friend whom I cannot cut, and who, they say,
writes for the Court Journal.'

'But why cannot you cut him?' asked Lord Darrell.

'He is my brother; and, you know, I pride myself upon my domestic
feelings.'

'Yes!' said Lord Squib, 'to judge from what the world says, one would
think, Annesley, you were a Brummel!'

'Squib, not even in jest couple my name with one whom I will not call a
savage, merely because he is unfortunate.'

'What did you think of little Eugenie, Annesley, last night?' asked the
Duke.

'Well, very well, indeed; something like Brocard's worst.'

'I was a little disappointed in her debut, and much interested in her
success. She was rather a favourite of mine in Paris, so I invited her
to the Alhambra yesterday, with Claudius Piggott and some more. I ha