ip."

There was a moment's constrained silence; and then Elisabeth broke the
tension by saying lightly--

"Look! there's Lady Silverhampton coming back again. Isn't it a pity she
is so stout? I do hope I shall never be stout, for flesh is a most
difficult thing to live down."

"You are right; there are few things in the world worse than stoutness."

"I only know two: sin and boiled cabbage."

"And crochet-antimacassars," added Cecil; "you're forgetting
crochet-antimacassars. I speak feelingly, because my present lodgings
are white with them; and they stick to my coat like leeches, and follow
me whithersoever I go. I am never alone from them."

"If I were as stout as Lady Silverhampton," said Elisabeth thoughtfully,
"I should either cut myself up into building lots, or else let myself
out into market gardens: I should never go about whole; should you?"

"Certainly not; I would rather publish myself in sections, as
dictionaries and encyclopaedias do!"

"Lady Silverhampton presented me," remarked Elisabeth, "so I always feel
a sort of god-daughterly respect for her, which enhances the pleasure of
abusing her."

"What does it feel like to go to Court? Does it frighten you?"

"Oh, dear! no. It would do, I daresay, if you were in plain clothes; but
trains and feathers make fine birds--with all the manners and habits of
fine birds. Peacocks couldn't hop about in gutters, and London sparrows
couldn't strut across Kensington Gardens, however much they both desired
it. So when a woman, in addition to her ordinary best clothes, is
attended by twenty-four yards of good satin which ought to be feeding
the poor, nothing really abashes her."

"I suppose she feels like a queen."

"Well, to tell the truth, with her train over her arm and her tulle
lappets hanging down her back, she feels like a widow carrying a
waterproof; but she thinks she looks like a duchess, and that is a very
supporting thought."

"Tell me, who is that beautiful woman with the tall soldierly man,
coming in now?" said Farquhar.

"Oh! those are the Le Mesuriers of Greystone; isn't she divine? And she
has the two loveliest little boys you ever saw or imagined. I'm longing
to paint them."

"She is strikingly handsome."

"There is a very strange story about her and her twin sister, which I'll
tell you some day."

"You shall; but you must tell me all about yourself first, and how you
have come to know so much and learn so little."

Elisabeth look