wn for it in
vain. Outside, all Nature seems asleep; inside, the very curtains are
motionless.

In a low rocking-chair, clad in the very lightest of garments permitted
by civilization, sits Sir Mark Gore. He arrived at the Court only
yesterday, in a perfect torrent of passionate rain, and was accused on
all sides of having brought ill weather in his train. But to-day having
asserted itself, and dawned fairly, and later on having burst into
matchless beauty, and heat of the most intense, he is enabled to turn
the tables upon his accusers, who look small and rather crushed.

"Have they had such a day this season?"

"Never! Oh, never!"

"Have they ever seen so lovely a one?"

"Never--at least, _hardly_ ever!"

They are vanquished. Whereupon he tells them they were distinctly
ungrateful yesterday, and that he will never put in a good word for them
with the clerk of the weather again. _Never!_

Just now he is nodding drowsily over his _Times_, and is vainly trying
to remember whether the last passage read was about Midhat Pasha, or
that horrid railway murder, or the Irish Land League.

In the next window sits Portia, clad in a snowy gown that suits her to
perfection. She has been here now for a fortnight, and feels as if she
had been here forever, and almost wonders if in reality she ever knew
another home. She is lounging in the very easiest of cushioned chairs,
and is making a base attempt at reading, which attempt is held up to
public scorn every other minute by Dicky Browne, who is sitting at her
feet.

He is half in and half out of the room. His feet being on the verandah,
his head and shoulders in the room. He is talking a little, and
fidgeting a little, and laughing a little, and, in fact, doing
everything in the world except thinking a little. Thought and Dicky
Browne are two.

The room in which they are all sitting is long and very handsome, with
three windows and two fire-places. It is always called the blue room at
the Court, for no earthly reason that any one can see, except that it is
painted green--the very most impossible green, calculated to create
rapture in the breasts of Oscar and his fellows; a charming color, too,
soothing, and calm, and fashionable, which, of course, is everything.
There are tiny cabinets everywhere, gay with majolica ware and many a
Palissy dish; while Wedgewood, and Derby, and priceless Worcester shine
out from every corner. There are Eastern rugs, and Japanese screens,