ords cannot make tremble.'

'This chain, Lady Jemima, for my glass! It will teach me where to direct
it.'

'Ah! Mrs. Fitzroy!' and he covered his face with affected fear. 'Can you
forgive me? Your beautiful note has been half an hour unanswered. The
box is yours for Tuesday.'

He tried to pass the next stall with a smiling bow, but he could not
escape. It was Lady de Courcy, a dowager, but not old. Once beautiful,
her charms had not yet disappeared. She had a pair of glittering eyes,
a skilfully-carmined cheek, and locks yet raven. Her eloquence made
her now as conspicuous as once did her beauty. The young Duke was her
constant object and her occasional victim. He hated above all things a
talking woman; he dreaded above all others Lady de Courcy.

He could not shirk. She summoned him by name so loud that crowds of
barbarians stared, and a man called to a woman, and said, 'My dear! make
haste; here's a Duke!'

Lady de Courcy was prime confidant of the Irish Marchioness. She
affected enthusiasm about the poor sufferers. She had learnt Otaheitan,
she lectured about the bread-fruit, and she played upon a barbarous
thrum-thrum, the only musical instrument in those savage wastes,
ironically called the Society Islands, because there is no society. She
was dreadful. The Duke in despair took out his purse, poured forth from
the pink and silver delicacy, worked by the slender fingers of Lady
Aphrodite, a shower of sovereigns, and fairly scampered off. At length
he reached the lady of his heart.

'I fear,' said the young Duke with a smile, and in a soft sweet voice,
'that you will never speak to me again, for I am a ruined man.'

A beam of gentle affection reprimanded him even for badinage on such a
subject.

'I really came here to buy up all your stock, but that gorgon, Lady de
Courcy, captured me, and my ransom has sent me here free, but a beggar.
I do not know a more ill-fated fellow than myself. Now, if you had only
condescended to take me prisoner, I might have saved my money; for I
should have kissed my chain.'

'My chains, I fear, are neither very alluring nor very strong.' She
spoke with a thoughtful air, and he answered her only with his eye.

'I must bear off something from your stall,' he resumed in a more rapid
and gayer tone, 'and, as I cannot purchase you must present. Now for a
gift!'

'Choose!'

'Yourself.'

'Your Grace is really spoiling my sale. See! poor Lord Bagshot. What a
valuable purchaser.