d Lady de Courcy,
shaking her head; "but for all that she'll never be Duchess of
Omnium."

"I wonder what your mamma will say of me when I go away to-morrow,"
said Lady Clandidlem to Margaretta, as they walked across the hall
together.

"She won't say that you are going to run away with any gentleman,"
said Margaretta.

"At any rate not with the earl," said Lady Clandidlem. "Ha, ha, ha!
Well, we are all very good-natured, are we not? The best is that it
means nothing."

Thus by degrees all the guests went, and the family of the de Courcys
was left to the bliss of their own domestic circle. This, we may
presume, was not without its charms, seeing that there were so many
feelings in common between the mother and her children. There were
drawbacks to it, no doubt, arising perhaps chiefly from the earl's
bodily infirmities. "When your father speaks to me," said Mrs George
to her husband, "he puts me in such a shiver that I cannot open my
mouth to answer him."

"You should stand up to him," said George. "He can't hurt you, you
know. Your money's your own; and if I'm ever to be the heir, it won't
be by his doing."

"But he gnashes his teeth at me."

"You shouldn't care for that, if he don't bite. He used to gnash them
at me; and when I had to ask him for money I didn't like it; but now
I don't mind him a bit. He threw the peerage at me one day, but it
didn't go within a yard of my head."

"If he throws anything at me, George, I shall drop upon the spot."

But the countess had a worse time with the earl than any of her
children. It was necessary that she should see him daily, and
necessary also that she should say much that he did not like to hear,
and make many petitions that caused him to gnash his teeth. The earl
was one of those men who could not endure to live otherwise than
expensively, and yet was made miserable by every recurring expense.
He ought to have known by this time that butchers, and bakers, and
corn-chandlers, and coal-merchants will not supply their goods for
nothing; and yet it always seemed as though he had expected that at
this special period they would do so. He was an embarrassed man, no
doubt, and had not been fortunate in his speculations at Newmarket
or Homburg; but, nevertheless, he had still the means of living
without daily torment; and it must be supposed that his self-imposed
sufferings, with regard to money, rose rather from his disposition
than his necessities. His wife never kne