ous
players.

The lady rejoined that she hoped so, she was sure; and forthwith
(because she suddenly seemed to possess him more than his son), launched
upon Mel's incomparable personal attractions. This caused the Countess
to enlarge upon Evan's vast personal prospects. They talked across each
other a little, till the Countess remembered her breeding, allowed Mrs.
Wishaw to run to an end in hollow exclamations, and put a finish to the
undeclared controversy, by a traverse of speech, as if she were taking
up the most important subject of their late colloquy. 'But Evan is not
in his own hands--he is in the hands of a lovely young woman, I must
tell you. He belongs to her, and not to us. You have heard of Rose
Jocelyn, the celebrated heiress?'

'Engaged?' Mrs. Wishaw whispered aloud.

The Countess, an adept in the lie implied--practised by her, that she
might not subject herself to future punishment (in which she was so
devout a believer, that she condemned whole hosts to it)--deeply smiled.

'Really!' said Mrs. Wishaw, and was about to inquire why Evan, with
these brilliant expectations, could think of trade and tailoring, when
the young man, whose forehead had been growing black, jumped up,
and quitted them; thus breaking the harmony of the table; and as the
Countess had said enough, she turned the conversation to the always
welcome theme of low society. She broached death and corpses; and became
extremely interesting, and very sympathetic: the only difference between
the ghostly anecdotes she related, and those of the other ladies, being
that her ghosts were all of them titled, and walked mostly under the
burden of a coronet. For instance, there was the Portuguese Marquis
de Col. He had married a Spanish wife, whose end was mysterious.
Undressing, on the night of the anniversary of her death, and on the
point of getting into bed, he beheld the dead woman lying on her back
before him. All night long he had to sleep with this freezing phantom!
Regularly, every fresh anniversary, he had to endure the same penance,
no matter where he might be, or in what strange bed. On one occasion,
when he took the live for the dead, a curious thing occurred, which the
Countess scrupled less to relate than would men to hint at. Ghosts were
the one childish enjoyment Mrs. Mel allowed herself, and she listened
to her daughter intently, ready to cap any narrative; but Mrs. Fiske
stopped the flood.

'You have improved on Peter Smithers,