d in her suit,
and she is now as free--as free----"

"As I am not!" broke in Lady Grace, with a sad effort at a smile.

"To be sure, there is a little scandal in the matter, too. They say that
old Lord Brookdale was very 'soft' himself in that quarter."

"The Chancellor!" exclaimed Lady Grace.

"And why not, dear? You remember the old refrain, 'No age, no
station'--what is it?--and the next line goes--'To sovereign beauty
mankind bends the knee.' Julia is rather proud of the triumph herself;
she says it is like a victory in China, where the danger is very little
and the spoils considerable!"

"Mr. Spicer, my Lady," said a servant, entering, "wishes to know if your
Ladyship will receive him."

"Not this morning; say I'm engaged at present Tell him--But perhaps you
have no objection--shall we have him in?"

"Just as you please. I don't know him."

Lady Lackington whispered a word or two, and then added aloud, "And one
always finds them 'useful,' my dear!"

Mr. Spicer, when denuded of top-coat, cap, and woollen wrapper, as we
saw him last, was a slightly made man, middle-sized, and middle-aged,
with an air sufficiently gentlemanlike to pass muster in any ordinary
assemblage. To borrow an illustration from the pursuits he was versed
in, he bore the same relation to a man of fashion that a "weed" does
to a "winner of the Derby"--that is to say, to an uneducated eye, there
would have seemed some resemblance; and just as the "weed" counterfeits
the racer in a certain loose awkwardness of stride and an ungainly show
of power, so did he appear to have certain characteristics of a class
that he merely mixed with on sufferance, and imitated in some easy
"externals." The language of any profession is, however, a great
leveller; and whether the cant be of the "House," Westminster Hall, the
College of Physicians, the Mess Table, or the "Turf," it is exceedingly
difficult at first blush to distinguish the real practitioner from the
mere pretender. Now, Spicer was what is called a Gentleman Rider, and he
had all the slang of his craft, which is, more or less, the slang of men
who move in a very different sphere.

As great landed proprietors of ambitious tendencies will bestow a
qualification to sit in Parliament upon some man of towering abilities
and small fortune, so did certain celebrities of the Turf confer
a similar social qualification on Spicer; and by enabling him to
"associate with the world," empower themselves to