adding, by way of
compensation for her eulogy, "and worthy of better company."

Mrs. White was in ecstasies with everything, even to the cherubs in pink
gauze wings, who handed round sherbet, and whom she pronounced quite
"classical." The Kenny-fecks were in the seventh heaven of delight,
affecting little airs of authority to the servants, and showing the
strangers, by a hundred little devices, that all the magnificence around
was no new thing to _them_. Miss Kennyfeck, as the Queen of Madagascar,
was a most beautiful savage; while Olivia appeared as the fair
"Gabrielle,"--a sly intimation to Sir Harvey, whose dress, as Henry IV.,
won universal admiration. Then there were the ordinary number of
Turks, Jews, Sailors, Circassians, Greeks, Highland Chiefs, and Indian
Jugglers,--"Jim" figuring as a Newmarket "Jock," to the unbounded
delight and wonderment of every "sub" in the room.

If in many quarters the question ran, "Where is Mr. Cashel?" or, "Which
is he?" Lady Janet had despatched Sir Andrew, attired as a "Moonshee,"
to find out Linton for her. "He is certain to know every one here; tell
him to come to me at once," said she, sitting down near a doorway to
watch the company.

While Lady Janet is waiting for him who, better than any other, could
explain the mysterious meaning of many a veiled figure, unravel the
hidden wickedness of every chance allusion, or expound the secret malice
of each calembourg or jest, let us track his wanderings, and follow him
as he goes.

Throwing a large cloak over his brilliant dress, Linton made his way by
many a by-stair and obscure passage to the back of the theatre, by which
the secret approach led to Cashel's dressing-room. Often as he had
trod that way before, never had he done so in the same state of intense
excitement. With the loss of the papers, he saw before him not alone
the defeat of every hope he nurtured, but discovery, shame, and ruin! He
whose whole game in life was to wield power over others, now saw himself
in the grasp of some one, to whom he had not the slightest clew. At one
moment his suspicions pointed to Cashel himself, then to Tiernay, and
lastly to Phillis. Possibly rage has no bitterer moment than that in
which an habitual deceiver of others first finds himself in the toils of
treachery. There was over his mind, besides, that superstitious terror
that to unbelieving intellects stands in place of religion, which told
him that luck had turned with him; that