re a la ville,_ was ostensibly listening to him, whilst she was
really attending to her son, who was making visible efforts on the heart
of the heiress, Miss Gwynne.

The Rice Rices were people of family and fortune, living in the
neighbouring town. Mr Rice Rice was in the law, and was at that moment
engaged in discussing the affairs of the deceased Mr. Griffith Jenkins
and his quondam articled pupil, Howel, with Rowland Prothero across Miss
Nugent. He was a portly well-to-do-looking man, with a bald head and
good-humoured countenance. His wife was even more portly than himself,
and sat, in black velvet and marabout feathers, as stately as a princess
at a drawing-room. The task of keeping up the family reputation of the
ancient house of Rice Rice devolved in a great measure on this lady,
assisted by her daughter; and, it must be said, that if any one could
have doubted the antiquity of this honourable race after an hour's
conversation with this enthusiastic pair he must have been a sceptic
indeed! Family pride is a common weakness, but one could almost call it
the stronghold of Mrs. Rice Rice, just as the various archaeological and
historical glories of Wales and the Welsh was the fortress of Mr.
Jonathan Prothero.

It was into these towers of strength that these worthies retreated on
all occasions. One saw the bulwark in Mrs. Rice Rice's ample, immoveable
figure, and in the glance of the eyes that looked over the somewhat
mountainous cheek; one saw it in a certain extension of the chin, turn
of the mouth, and slightly _retrousse_ nose. One saw it, above all, in
her manner to the Protheros.

But Mrs. Jonathan Prothero was quite as capable of sustaining the
dignity of the Philip Payne Perrys as the Welsh lady that of the Rice
Rices, and a satirist might have made a clever caricature of these
patriotic dames--the one thin and stiff, the other stout and stiff--as
they compared their family honours.

But the lady of undoubted rank and pretension of the party is Lady Mary
Nugent, who can afford to patronise or throw over-board whomsoever she
will. She is seated next to Mr Gwynne, and is lavishing a considerable
share of good looks and eloquence on that gentleman. Still in the prime
of life, elegant, refined, pretty, and a skilful tactician, she is a
dangerous rival of the young ladies, and is not wholly innocent of a
desire to eclipse them. She and her daughter are dressed very nearly
alike, in some white and light mater