omise between
the habit of waking and sleeping. A short tunic, a kind of female
monkey-jacket, of faded yellow satin edged with swansdown, and a cap
of the same material, whose shape was borrowed from that worn by the
beef-eaters, formed the upper portion of a dress to which wide
fur boots, with gold tassels, and a great hanging pocket, like a
sabretasche, gave a false air of a military costume. "It was singular,"
she would remark, with a bland smile, "but very becoming!" Besides, it
suited every clime. She used to come down to breakfast in it at Windsor
Castle. "The Queen liked it;" the Bey of Tripoli loved it; and the
Hospodar of Wallachia had one made for himself exactly from the pattern.
Her guests were the same party we have already introduced to our reader
in the Villino Zoe,--Haggerstone, the Pole, and Foglass being the
privileged few admitted into her august presence, and who came to
make up her whist-table, and offer their respectful homage on her
convalescence.

The Carnival was just over, the dull season of Lent had begun, and the
Rickettses' tea-table was a resource when nothing else offered. Such was
the argument of Haggerstone as he took a cheap dinner with Foglass at
the Luna.

"She 's an infernal bore, sir,--that I know fully as well as you can
inform me; but please to tell me who is n't a bore." Then he added, in a
lower voice, "Certainly it ain't _you!_"

"Yes, yes,----I agree with you," said Foglass; "she has reason to be
sore about the Onslows' treatment."

"I said a bore, sir,--not sore," screamed out Haggerstone.

"Ha!" replied the other, not understanding the correction. "I remember
one day, when Townsend--"

"D----n Townsend!" said Haggerstone.

"No, not Dan,--Tom Townsend. That fellow who was always with Mathews."

"Walk a little quicker, and you may talk as much balderdash as you
please," said the other, buttoning up his coat, and resolving not to pay
the slightest attention to his companion's agreeability.

"Who is here?" asked Haggerstone, as he followed the servant up the
stairs.

"Nobody but Count Petrolaffsky, sir."

"Un Comte a bon compte," muttered Haggerstone to himself, always pleased
when he could be sarcastic, even in soliloquy. "They 'll find it no easy
matter to get a tenant for this house nowadays. Florence is going down,
sir, and will soon be little better than Boulogne-sur-Mer."

"Very pleasant, indeed, for a month in summer," responded Foglass, who
had only caug