almness with which she
exhausted her own waiter, and pillaged her neighbours.

'Why not?' said a little French actress, highly finished like a
miniature, who scarcely ate anything, but drank champagne and chatted
with equal rapidity and composure, and who was always ready to fight
anybody's battle, provided she could get an opportunity to talk. 'Why
not, Mr. Annesley? You never will let anybody eat. I never eat myself,
because every night, having to talk so much, I am dry, dry, dry; so
I drink, drink, drink. It is an extraordinary thing that there is no
language which makes you so thirsty as French.'

'What can be the reason?' asked a sister of Mrs. Montfort, a tall fair
girl, who looked sentimental, but was only silly.

'Because there is so much salt in it,' said Lord Squib.

'Delia,' drawled Mr. Annesley, 'you look very pretty to-night!'

'I am charmed to charm you, Mr. Annesley. Shall I tell you what Lord Bon
Mot said of you?'

'No, _ma mignonne!_ I never wish to hear my own good things.'

'Spoiled, you should add,' said the fair rival of Lord Squib, 'if Bon
Mot be in the case.'

'Lord Bon Mot is a most gentlemanlike man,' said Delia, indignant at
an admirer being attacked. 'He always wants to be amusing. Whenever he
dines out, he comes and sits with me for half an hour to catch the air
of the Parisian badinage.'

'And you tell him a variety of little things?' asked Lord Squib,
insidiously drawing out the secret tactics of Bon Mot.

'_Beaucoup, beaucoup_,' said Delia, extending two little white hands
sparkling with gems. 'If he come in ever so, how do you call it? heavy,
not that: in the domps. Ah! it is that. If ever he come in the domps, he
goes out always like a _soufflee_.'

'As empty, I have no doubt,' said the witty lady.

'And as sweet, I have no doubt,' said Lord Squib; 'for Delcroix
complains sadly of your excesses, Delia.'

'Mr. Delcroix complain of me! That, indeed, is too bad. Just because I
recommend Montmorency de Versailles to him for an excellent customer,
ever since he abuses me, merely because Montmorency has forgot, in the
hurry of going off, to pay his little account.'

'But he says you have got all the things,' said Lord Squib, whose great
amusement was to put Delia in a passion.

'What of that?' screamed the little lady. 'Montmorency gave them me.'

'Don't make such a noise,' said the Bird of Paradise. 'I never can eat
when there is a noise. Duke,' continued she in a fretful t