eresses--were bidden.

Lady Miller's health was failing, though she tried to hide it; and even
now a cough, which was persistent, though not loud, prevented her from
reading the effusions which were taken haphazard from the vase, dressed
with its pink ribbons, and with crowns of myrtle hanging from it. Six
judges were generally chosen to decide on the best poems, and the
authors were only too proud to come forward and kneel to receive the
wreath from the hand of this patroness of _les belles lettres._

How old-world this all seems to us now! and how we think we can afford
to sneer at such folly and such deplorably bad taste as the poems then
thought worthy display! "Siren charms" and "bright-eyed enchantress,"
"soft zephyrs" and "gentle poesies," might be the stock expressions
always ready to lend themselves to rhymes, with a hundred others of the
like nature. But these reunions had their better side; for reading
verses was better than talking scandal, and apostrophes to bright eyes
and ladies' auburn locks better than the discussion of the last duel or
elopement, which, in the absence of "society papers," were too apt to
form the favourite topic of the _beau monde_.

Lady Miller may have won her myrtle crown for attempting to set the
minds and brains of her friends at work, even if only to produce
doubtful _bouts rimes_ where sense was sacrificed to rhyme, and sound
triumphed over subject.

We have our Lady Millers of to-day, although there are no pink-ribboned
vases in which contributors drop their poetical efforts.

CHAPTER VIII.

ON THE TRACK.

Griselda had been much surprised at the applause which followed the
reading of her verses. They were called for a second time, and elicited
great praise.

"They are vastly pretty, and full of feeling!" exclaimed Lady Betty the
next morning. "I declare, Griselda, you are without an atom of
sentiment; you sat listening to them with a face like a marble statue.
It is well for you that you are not a victim to sentiment as I am. I vow
I could weep at the notion of the sorrowful soul who wrote those
impassioned couplets which were read before the five stanzas, so much
admired. Ah!" Lady Betty continued, with a yawn--for it was her
yawning-time between her first and second visit to the Pump Room--"ah!
it is well for some folks that they are callous. I am all impatience to
get a copy of those rhymes for Lord Basingstoke; and--_entre nous, ma
chere, entre nous_--when