o that lounging ease which exacts no tribute of
respect or even attention, but suffers men to indulge their caprices to
any extent of selfishness; thus unfitting them for ladies' society,
or only such society as that of ladies condescending enough to unsex
themselves, and to talk upon themes and discuss subjects that usually
are reserved for other audiences.

Certain clever men liked this liberty, these receptions were a kind of
free port, where all could be admitted duty free. Nothing was forbidden
in this wide tariff, and so conversation, emancipated from the
restriction of better society, permitted a thousand occasions of
display, that gradually attracted people to these reunions, and made all
other society appear cold, formal, and hypocritical by contrast. This
new invention had not reached England when Lady Hester quitted it, but
she listened to a description of its merits with considerable interest.
There were many points, too, in which it chimed in with her notions. It
had novelty, liberty, and unbounded caprice amongst its recommendations;
and lastly, it was certain to outrage the "Onslows." It was a "part"
which admitted of any amount of interpolations. Under its sanction she
would be free to say anything, know any one, and go anywhere. Blessed
immunity that permitted all and denied nothing!

With all the vulgar requirements of "Lionism" she was already
sufficiently conversant. She could ride, drive, shoot, and fence; was
a very tolerable billiard-player, and could row a little. But with the
higher walks of the craft she had made no acquaintance; she had not
learned to swim, had never smoked, and was in dark ignorance of that
form of language which, half mystical and all-mischievous, is in vogue
with the members of this sect. That she could acquire all these
things rapidly and easily the colonel assured her, and, by way
of "matriculating," reminded her of her challenge respecting the
pistol-shooting, for which he had made every preparation in the garden
of the hotel.

True to his word, he had selected a very pretty alley, at the end of
which rose a wall sufficiently high to guard against accidents from
stray shots. On a table were displayed, in all the dandyism such
objects are capable of, a handsome case of pistols, with all the varied
appliances of kid leather for wadding, bullet-moulds, rammers, hammers,
screws, and rests, even to a russia-leather bound note-book, to record
the successes, nothing had been