t a look from that haggard and painted old harpy, compared to
which the gaze of Ugolino is quite cheerful); after withdrawing your
elbow out of poor gasping Bob Guttleton's white waistcoat, from which
cushion it was impossible to remove it, though you knew you were
squeezing poor Bob into an apoplexy--you find yourself at last in
the reception-room, and try to catch the eye of Mrs. Botibol, the
CONVERSAZIONE-giver. When you catch her eye, you are expected to grin,
and she smiles too, for the four hundredth time that night; and, if
she's very glad to see you, waggles her little hand before her face as
if to blow you a kiss, as the phrase is.

Why the deuce should Mrs. Botibol blow me a kiss? I wouldn't kiss her
for the world. Why do I grin when I see her, as if I was delighted? Am
I? I don't care a straw for Mrs. Botibol. I know what she thinks about
me. I know what she said about my last volume of poems (I had it from
a dear mutual friend). Why, I say in a word, are we going on ogling
and telegraphing each other in this insane way?--Because we are both
performing the ceremonies demanded by the Great Snob Society; whose
dictates we all of us obey.

Well; the recognition is over--my jaws have returned to their usual
English expression of subdued agony and intense gloom, and the Botibol
is grinning and kissing her fingers to somebody else, who is squeezing
through the aperture by which we have just entered. It is Lady Ann
Clutterbuck, who has her Friday evenings, as Botibol (Botty, we call
her,) has Wednesdays. That is Miss Clementina Clutterbuck the cadaverous
young woman in green, with florid auburn hair, who has published her
volume of poems ('The Death-Shriek;' 'Damiens;' 'The Faggot of Joan
of Arc;' and 'Translations from the German' of course). The
conversazione-women salute each other calling each other 'My dear Lady
Ann' and 'My dear good Eliza,' and hating each other, as women hate who
give parties on Wednesdays and Fridays. With inexpressible pain dear
good Eliza sees Ann go up and coax and wheedle Abou Gosh, who has just
arrived from Syria, and beg him to patronize her Fridays.

All this while, amidst the crowd and the scuffle, and a perpetual buzz
and chatter, and the flare of the wax-candles, and an intolerable smell
of musk--what the poor Snobs who write fashionable romances call 'the
gleam of gems, the odour of perfumes, the blaze of countless lamps'--a
scrubby-looking, yellow-faced foreigner, with cleaned