--concern looks hazardous,--ha, ha, ha!--don't you
think so?" But as nobody joined in his laughter, he resumed, in a lower
voice, "There, Upton 's very spooney indeed about one of them."

"It's the aunt," said Linton,--"a very fine woman, too; what the French
call _beaute severe_; but classical, quite classical."

"Confounded old harridan!" muttered Upton, between his teeth; "I 'd not
take her with Rothschild's bank at her disposal."

All this little chit-chat was a thing got up by Linton, while stationing
himself in a position to watch Cashel and Lady Kilgoff, who sat, at a
chess-table, in an adjoining room. It needed not Linton's eagle glance
to perceive that neither was attentive to the game, but that they
were engaged in deep and earnest conversation. Lady Kilgoff's back was
towards him, but Roland's face he could see clearly, and watch the signs
of anger and impatience it displayed.

"A little more noise and confusion here," thought Linton, "and they 'll
forget that they 're not a hundred miles away;" and, acting on this, he
set about arranging the company in various groups; and while he disposed
a circle of very fast-talking old ladies, to discuss rank and privileges
in one corner, he employed some others in devising a character
quadrille, over which Mrs. White was to preside; and then, seating a
young lady at the piano,--one of those determined performers who run
a steeple-chase through waltz, polka, and mazurka, for hours
uninterruptedly,--he saw that he had manufactured a very pretty chaos
"off-hand."

While hurrying hither and thither, directing, instructing, and advising
every one, he contrived also, as it were by mere accident, to draw
across the doorway of the boudoir the heavy velvet curtain that
performed the function of a door. The company were far too busied in
their various occupations to remark this; far less was it perceived by
Lady Kilgoff or Roland. Nobody knew better than Linton how to perform
the part of fly-wheel to that complicated engine called society; he
could regulate its pace to whatever speed he pleased; and upon this
occasion he pushed the velocity to the utmost; and, by dint of that
miraculous magnetism by which men of warm imagination and quick fancy
inspire their less susceptible neighbors, he spread the contagion of his
own merry humor, and converted the drawing-room into a scene of almost
riotous gayety.

"They want no more leadership now," said he, and slipped from the room