erities.

The guests are numerous; they might even he said to be miscellaneous,
were it not that they all belonged to the same set. There is Dick
Wootton, who believes himself destined to play in the last years of the
nineteenth century the part played by Charles Greville in the earlier.
There is Lord Vanstone, an agreeable, eccentric, unsatisfactory
valetudinarian, who ought to have done great things with his life, but
has always been too indolent and had too bad health to carry out his
friends' very large expectations of him. There is the young Duke of
Whitby, good-natured and foolish, with a simple pleasant face and a very
shy manner. "If I had that ass's opportunities I'd make the world spin,"
says Wriothesley Ormond, who is a very poor and very witty member of
Parliament, and also, which he values more, the most popular member of
the Marlborough. There is Lord Iona, very handsome, very silent, very
much sought after and spoilt by women. There is Hugo Mountjoy, a pretty
young fellow in the Guards, with a big fortune and vague ideas that he
ought to "do something;" he is not sure what. There is Lawrence
Hamilton, who, as far as is possible in an age when men are clothed, but
do not dress, gives the law to St. James Street in matters of male
toilet. There is Sir Adolphus Beaumanoir, an ex-diplomatist, admirably
preserved, charmingly loquacious, and an unconscionable flirt, though he
is seventy. Each of these happy or unhappy beings has the lady invited
to meet him in whom his affections are supposed to be centred, for the
time being, in those tacit but potent relations which form so large a
portion of men's and women's lives in these days. It is this condonance
on the part of his wife which George Usk so entirely denounces, although
he would be very much astonished and very much annoyed if she made any
kind of objections to inviting Dulcia Waverley. Happily, there is no Act
of Parliament to compel any of us to be consistent, or where would
anybody be?

Lady Dolgelly, much older than himself, and with a _taille de
couturiere_, as all her intimate friends delight to reveal, is supposed
to be indispensable to the existence of His Grace of Whitby; Lady
Leamington is not less necessary to the happiness of Wriothesley Ormond.
Mr. Wootton would be supposed incapable of cutting a single joke or
telling a single good story unless his spirits were sustained by the
presence of Mrs. Faversham, the prettiest brunette in the unive