lady retorted.'

'When poor Madame de Jacquieres was dying,' said Wilmers, 'her confessor
sat by her bedside, prepared for his ministrations. "Pour commencer, mon
ami, jamais je n'ai fait rien hors nature."'

Lord Wadaster had uttered something tolerably similar: 'I am a sinner,
and in good society.' Sir Abraham Hartiston, a minor satellite of the
Regent, diversified this: 'I am a sinner, and go to good society.'
Madame la Comtesse de la Roche-Aigle, the cause of many deaths, declared
it unwomanly to fear anything save 'les revenants.' Yet the countess
could say the pretty thing: 'Foot on a flower, then think of me!'

'Sentimentality puts up infant hands for absolution,' said Diana.

'But tell me,' Lady Dunstane inquired generally, 'why men are so much
happier than women in laughing at their spouses?'

They are humaner, was one dictum; they are more frivolous, ironically
another.

'It warrants them for blowing the bugle-horn of masculine superiority
night and morning from the castle-walls,' Diana said.

'I should imagine it is for joy of heart that they still have cause to
laugh!' said Westlake.

On the other hand, are women really pained by having to laugh at their
lords? Curious little speeches flying about the great world, affirmed
the contrary. But the fair speakers were chartered libertines, and their
laugh admittedly had a biting acid. The parasite is concerned in the
majesty of the tree.

'We have entered Botany Bay,' Diana said to Emma; who answered: 'A
metaphor is the Deus ex machine, of an argument'; and Whitmonby, to
lighten a shadow of heaviness, related allusively an anecdote of the Law
Courts. Sullivan Smith begged permission to 'black cap' it with Judge
FitzGerald's sentence upon a convicted criminal: 'Your plot was perfect
but for One above.' Dacier cited an execrable impromptu line of the
Chief of the Opposition in Parliament. The Premier, it was remarked,
played him like an angler his fish on the hook; or say, Mr. Serjeant
Rufus his witness in the box.

'Or a French journalist an English missionary,' said Westlake; and as
the instance was recent it was relished.

The talk of Premiers offered Whitmonby occasion for a flight to the
Court of Vienna and Kaunitz. Wilmers told a droll story of Lord Busby's
missing the Embassy there. Westlake furnished a sample of the tranquil
sententiousness of Busby's brother Robert during a stormy debate in the
House of Commons.

'I remember,' Dacier was re