All the minor appointments, too, of this elegant costume, were singularly perfect and appropriate; the ruffs, the lace-trimmed gloves, the ruffles to the boots, the points, the gilded spurs, and last of all the "favours,” which the gallant wore about him, were in excellent style and keeping, and it would have been impossible for any dress to have been set off to greater advantage by the wearer, than was this trim and costly apparel by our friend Peregrine Pultuney. His bright eyes, sunny face, and most glowing mouth, looked handsomer than ever beneath his costly head-gear, and the rich long curls appended to it, whilst his fringed mantle hung gracefully down from his broad shoulders, and his most unexceptionable silk hose were drawn tightly over as well-moulded a pair of lower limbs as ever were seen between the trunks and the low ruffled boots of a sixteenth century Paul's-walk gallant. Casting an eye around him with a well-assumed affectation of coxcombical curiosity, he entered the ball-room with a mincing step and an air of sovereign importance; but one glance of counterfeit coxcombry was enough to show him where sat Augusta Sweetenham, one glance enough to cause him to hasten his pace and step briskly down the room, for he could not cross it on account of the dancers, who were between him and the lady. Most anxious was he to reach her side; he saw that he was late, thought he saw that she was angry, and was in a greater hurry than he ought to have been to exculpate himself,

and once again bask in the sunshine of the fascinating Augusta's smiles. Properly was he punished, therefore, when halfway down the room, he was arrested by a female voice, which he heard saying, close behind him: "It is Mr. Pultuney-that it is; Mr. Pultuney, I want to speak to you, do sit down."

The lady was no other than Mrs. Drawlincourt, though Peregrine scarcely recognised her at first. She was much altered, paler and thinner, and far less pretty than she had been, and seemed neither in good health nor good spirits. We do not undertake to say that she loved her lord, though she was decidedly as ladies like to be, who do so; and somehow or other Peregrine thought that she had discovered the bad choice of a husband she had made, when it was too late to remedy the evil. She tried to be lively and facetious as ever, but it did not sit naturally upon her; she evidently spoke languidly and with an effort, though she was cordial enough in her manner towards Peregrine, and there was something hollow in her voice, and still more hollow in her laugh, which touched our hero, provoked as he was to be intercepted on his way to Augusta.

"You seem in a great hurry," she said, in reply to Peregrine, who pleaded that he was on his way to fulfil an engagement, when Mrs. Drawlincourt asked him to sit down beside her. "I cannot think whom you are in such a hurry to get to, now that Julia Poggleton has gone home."

Peregrine did not say, but he almost thought, "confound Julia Poggleton."

"Now, I remember though," continued Mrs. Drawlincourt," I heard something, as I was coming down the country, on board the steamer, about you going to be married to Augusta Sweetenham. I cannot make you out, Mr. Pultuney; I am sure you were once desperately in love with Miss Poggleton, and I always thought that you were going to be married to her.”

"The people of Calcutta are very scandalous," observed Peregrine, "very scandalous, indeed. I once heard, amongst other precious reports, that I had proposed to you and been juwabed.”

"Indeed!" said Mrs. Drawlincourt, blushing, "well they are scandalous, I admit—I did not say -not I-I did not indeed, Mr. Pultuney."

"To be sure not," said Peregrine politely. "But tell me," continued the lady, in evident anxiety to turn the subject from herself, "is there any truth in the report about your going to marry Miss Sweetenham-you may tell me, you know, as a very old friend."

"As a very old friend then," said Peregrine, "none whatever-but the quadrille is over, and I shall get into a terrible scrape, if I do not go and claim my partner instantly."

Saying this, Peregrine Pultuney made a bow and began threading his way through the motley crowd,

towards the couch on which Miss Sweetenham was

sitting. He had purposed to have addressed every one he spoke to, in the style and language of the character he had assumed, but there was something in the unexpected presence of Mrs. Drawlincourt, her altered appearance, and her forced manner, which really touched the not altogether heartless, though erring subject of this history, and he could not help speaking to her in his natural voice, instead of the mocking tones he had been practising. When, however, he was greeted by his indifferent acquaintances, as he passed along the room, one stopping him much to his annoyance, and another only giving him a word en passant, he answered them in the higher-flown language of Euphuism, which, most unfortunately for him, not one in the number understood, or appreciated in the least. There is little use in acting the character one assumes, for there is scarcely ever any body who understands it, and the chances are very much in favour of one's being thought an utter fool, whilst one is really a very clever fellow and proving oneself to be so by one's acting.

But Augusta Sweetenham was not one of these dense dullards. She knew what character our hero intended to represent, and moreover entered fully into its spirit. She had half a mind, it is true, to be angry with him, for being so tardy in keeping his engagement; but when she saw him advancing towards her with a bright smile and courtly pace, she smiled too, and extended her hand in her own cordial manner.

"And what sad accident, may I ask," she said, "has retarded the advent of Sir Piercie Shafton?"

"Fairest damsel of Ind," returned Peregrine; 66 no accident to this vile tenement hath befallen your adoring slave, who liveth like the violet of Humility, cherished only by the sun of your condescension. You shall be my Condescension, and I your Humility, fairest of all the damsels of Ind."

"But what rude blast of adversity," asked Augusta, "hath blown upon my poor Humility, that he hath thus kept his anxious Condescension, during at least half a circle of the horologe, in all the torments of protracted suspense?"

"Sweetest lady, what bliss most exquisite were any suffering to this vile clay, or even to the etherial anima or spirit of your Humility, which eliciteth from my adored Condescension such tender expressions of sympathetic benignity. Believe me, most bountiful damsel, that I would hither have flown on wings Eolian, had it been permitted to this sordid corporeal substance, now only valuable as regarded by thee, to take any such aërial excursion. The culpability of another grovelling hath cast these chains upon the eager limbs of my activity. A gross earth-born varlet of an apparelmaker, or habiliment-designer, called by the uncourtly a tailor, hath done unto me this injury, by driving the insignificant gadfly sting of his annoyance into the noble animal back of my patience, and at the hora undecima, or eleventh hour of my love