her. "I am
sure my Henry will always defend him."

"But there will be a peace before next year; we know it for certain,"
cries the Maid of Honor. "Lord Marlborough will be dismissed, and that
horrible duchess turned out of all her places. Her Majesty won't speak
to her now. Did you see her at Bushy, Harry? She is furious, and she
ranges about the park like a lioness, and tears people's eyes out."

"And the Princess Anne will send for somebody," says my Lady of Chelsey,
taking out her medal and kissing it.

"Did you see the King at Oudenarde, Harry?" his mistress asked. She was
a staunch Jacobite, and would no more have thought of denying her king
than her God.

"I saw the young Hanoverian only," Harry said. "The Chevalier de St.
George--"

"The King, sir, the King!" said the ladies and Miss Beatrix; and she
clapped her pretty hands, and cried, "Vive le Roy."

By this time there came a thundering knock, that drove in the doors of
the house almost. It was three o'clock, and the company were arriving;
and presently the servant announced Captain Steele and his lady.

Captain and Mrs. Steele, who were the first to arrive, had driven to
Kensington from their country-house, the Hovel at Hampton Wick. "Not
from our mansion in Bloomsbury Square," as Mrs. Steele took care to
inform the ladies. Indeed Harry had ridden away from Hampton that very
morning, leaving the couple by the ears; for from the chamber where
he lay, in a bed that was none of the cleanest, and kept awake by the
company which he had in his own bed, and the quarrel which was going
on in the next room, he could hear both night and morning the curtain
lecture which Mrs. Steele was in the habit of administering to poor
Dick.

At night it did not matter so much for the culprit; Dick was fuddled,
and when in that way no scolding could interrupt his benevolence. Mr.
Esmond could hear him coaxing and speaking in that maudlin manner, which
punch and claret produce, to his beloved Prue, and beseeching her to
remember that there was a distiwisht officer ithe rex roob, who would
overhear her. She went on, nevertheless, calling him a drunken wretch,
and was only interrupted in her harangues by the Captain's snoring.

In the morning, the unhappy victim awoke to a headache, and
consciousness, and the dialogue of the night was resumed. "Why do you
bring captains home to dinner when there's not a guinea in the house?
How am I to give dinners when you leave me without