of an exclusive. In moments of connubial confidence,
when owning his past errors, and tracing to his sympathising Jessie the
causes of his decline, he would say: "'Tis not a man's birth, nor his
fortune, that gives him his place in society--it depends on his conduct,
Jessie. He must not be seen bowing to snobs, nor should his enemies
track him to the haunts of vulgarians. I date my fall in life to dining
with a horrid man who lent me L100, and lived in Upper Baker Street. His
wife took my arm from a place they called a drawing-room (the Captain as
he spoke was on a fourth floor), to share some unknown food which
they called a dinner (the Captain at that moment would have welcomed
a rasher). The woman went about blabbing--the thing got wind--for
the first time my character received a soil. What is a man without
character! and character once sullied, Jessie, man becomes reckless.
Teach my boy to beware of the first false step--no association
with parvenus. Don't cry, Jessie--I don't mean that he is to cut
your--relations are quite different from other people--nothing so low
as cutting relations. I continued, for instance, to visit Guy Darrell,
though he lived at the back of Holborn, and I actually saw him once in
brown beaver gloves. But he was a relation. I have even dined at his
house, and met odd people there--people who lived also at the back of
Holborn. But he did not ask me to go to their houses, and if he had, I
must have cut him." By reminiscences of this kind of talk, Lionel was
saved from any design of Mrs. Haughton's to attract his orbit into the
circle within which she herself moved. He must come to the parties she
gave--illumine or awe odd people there. That was a proper tribute to
maternal pride. But had they asked him to their parties, she would have
been the first to resent such a liberty.

Lionel found Mrs. Haughton in great bustle. A gardener's cart was before
the street door. Men were bringing in a grove of evergreens, intended to
border the staircase, and make its exiguous ascent still more difficult.
The refreshments were already laid out in the dining-room. Mrs.
Haughton, with scissors in hand, was cutting flowers to fill the
eperyne, but darting to and fro, like a dragonfly, from the dining-room
to the hall, from the flowers to the evergreens.

"Dear me, Lionel, is that you? Just tell me, you who go to all
those grandees, whether the ratafia-cakes should be opposite to
the sponge-cakes, or whether