ats and dogs, and making love to his Sabina, who has not lost
her beauty in the least, though she is on the wrong side of
five-and-thirty. He deludes himself, too, into the belief that he is
doing something, because he is writing a treatise on the "Principles
of Beauty;" which will be published, probably, about the time the
Thames is purified, in the season of Latter Lammas and the Greek
Kalends; and the more certainly so, because he has wandered into the
abyss of conic sections and curves of double curvature, of which, if
the truth must be spoken, he knows no more than his friends of the
Life Guards Green.

To this charming little nest has Lord Scoutbush procured an evening's
admission after abject supplication to Sabina, who pets him because he
is musical, and solemn promises neither to talk or look any manner of
foolishness.

"My dearest Mrs. Mellot," says the poor wretch, "I will be good,
indeed I will; I will not even speak to her. Only let me sit and
look,--and--and--why, I thought you understood all about such things,
and could pity a poor fellow who was spoony."

And Sabina, who prides herself much on understanding such things,
and on having, indeed, reduced them to a science in which she
gives gratuitous lessons to all young gentlemen and ladies of her
acquaintance, receives him pityingly, in that delicious little back
drawing-room, whither whosoever enters is in no hurry to go out again.

Claude's house is arranged with his usual defiance of all
conventionalities. Dining or drawing-room proper there is none; the
large front room is the studio, where he and Sabina eat and drink, as
well as work and paint but out of it opens a little room, the walls of
which are so covered with gems of art (where the rogue finds money to
buy them is a puzzle), that the eye can turn nowhere without taking
in some new beauty, and wandering on from picture to statue, from
portrait to landscape, dreaming and learning afresh after every
glance. At the back, a glass bay has been thrown out, and forms a
little conservatory, for ever fresh and gay with tropic ferns and
flowers; gaudy orchids dangle from the roof, creepers hide the
framework, and you hardly see where the room ends, and the
winter-garden begins; and in the centre an ottoman invites you
to lounge. It costs Claude money, doubtless; but he has his
excuse,--"Having once seen the tropics, I cannot live without some
love-tokens from their lost paradises; and which is the w