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"One of those Mitchell girls of the Twenty-first? You waltzed with 'em all night; but they're too tall for you, Grand." "Great

"The Mitchell girls!" ejaculated he, with supreme scorn. maypoles! they go about with the Fusiliers like a pair of colours. On every ball-room battle-field one's safe to see them flaunting away, and as everybody has a shot at 'em, their hearts must be pretty well riddled into holes by this time. No, mine's rather higher game than that. My mother's brother-in-law's aunt's sister's cousin's cousin once removed was Viscount Twaddle, and I don't go anything lower than the peerage." "What, is it somebody you've met at his Excellency's ?",

"Wrong again, beloved Simon. It's nobody I've met at old Stars and Garters', though his lady-wife could no more do without me than without her sal volatile and flirtations. No, she don't go there; she's too high for that sort of thing-sick of it. After all the European courts, Malta must be rather small and slow. I was introduced to her yesterday, and," continued Little Grand, more solemnly than was his wont, "I do assure you she's superb, divine; and I'm not very easy to please." "What's her name ?" I asked, rather impressed with this view of a lady too high for old Stars and Garters, as we irreverently termed her Majesty's representative in her island of Malta.

Little Grand took his pipe out of his lips to correct me with more dignity.

"Her title, my dear Simon, is the Marchioness St. Julian." "Is that an English peerage, Grand?" "Hum! What! Oh yes, of course! owl ?"

What else should it be, you

Not being in a condition to decide this point, I was silent, and he went on, growing more impressive at each phrase:

"She is splendid, really! And I'm a very difficile fellow, you know; but such hair, such eyes, as one doesn't see every day in those sun-dried Mitchells or those little pink Bovilliers. (By the way, the champagne those girls drank at luncheon yesterday was enough for a mess-table; but girls always do go into champagne, especially those delicate ones who take a quantity of ham-sandwiches at home that abroad they may not be able to manage the wing of a partridge.) However, I'm digressing, as that old boy James says when he keeps his two cavaliers waiting on the high road while he describes the shoe-buckles of the coming heroine. Well, yesterday, after that confounded luncheon (how I hate all those complimentary affairs!-one can't enjoy the truffles for talking to the ladies, nor enjoy the ladies for discussing the truffles), I went for a ride with Conran out to Villa Neponte (Mrs. Maberly's, you know). I left him there, sitting in the verandah with Lucy and Adela, and went down to see the overland steamers come in; I half thought my brother Tom might come by 'em, but he didn't. While I was waiting, I got into talk, somehow or other, with a very agreeable, gentleman-like fellow, who asked me if I'd only just come to Malta, and all that sort of thingyou know the introductory style of action-till we got quite good friends, and he told me he was living outside this wretched little hole at the Casa di Fiori, and said-wasn't it civil of him?-said he should be very happy to see me if I'd call any time. He gave me his cardLord Adolphus Fitzhervey-and a man with him called him 'Dolph'

Baron Guatamara, I think he said he was. As good luck had it, my weed went out just while we were talking, and Fitzhervey was monstrously pleasant, searched all over him for a fusee, couldn't find one, and asked me to go up with him to the Casa di Fiori and get a light. Of course I did, and he and I and Guatamara had some sherbet and a smoke together, and then he introduced me to the Marchioness St. Julian, his sister-by Jove! such a magnificent woman, Simon, you never saw one like her, I'll wager. She was uncommonly agreeable, too, and such a smile, my boy! She seemed to like me wonderfully-not rare that, though, you'll say and asked me to go and take coffee there to-night after mess, and take one of my chums with me; and as I like to show you life, young one, and your taste wants improving after Aunt Minerva, you may come with me, if you like. Hallo! there's Conran. I say, don't tell him. He's such a deuced fellow for the beaux yeux, all the girls in Calcutta were mad about him, though he didn't care a button for any one of 'em, and I don't want any poaching on my manor."

Conran came in at that minute; he was then a Captain in Ours, and one of the older men who spoilt Little Grand in one way, as much as the women did in another. He was a fine, powerful fellow, with eyes like an eagle's, and pluck like a lion's; he had a grave, stern, haughty look, and had been of late more silent and self-reticent than the other roystering, débonnaire, light-hearted Five Hundredth; but though, perhaps, tired, on the principle of toujours perdrix, of the wild escapades, which reputation attributed to him, was always the most lenient to the boy's monkey tricks, and always the one to whom he went if his larks had cost him too dear, or if he was in a scrape from which he saw no exit. Conran had plenty of tin of his own, and there were few bright eyes in Malta that would not have smiled kindly on him; but he did not care much for any of them. There was some talk of a love affair before he went to Scinde, that was the cause of his hard-heartedness, though I must say, to me he did not look much like a victim to the grande passion, with his iron muscle, and cœur de bronze, and cordial attachment to his rifle, and his horses, Loo, Burgundy, and other ingredients that "donnent la pointe" to the otherwise remarkably flavourless "sauce" of life. I was a green bird then; my ideas of the "god invincible" were drawn from valentines and odes in the "Woman, thou fond and fair deceiver" style; in love that turned its collars down and let its hair go uncut and refused to eat, and recovered with a rapidity proportionate to its ostentation; and I did not know that, if a man has lost his treasure, he may mourn it so deeply that he may refuse to run about like Harpagon, crying for his cassette to an audience that only laughs at his miseries.

"Well, young ones," said Conran, as he came in and threw down his cap and whip, "here you are, spending your hours in pipes and bad wine. What a blessing it is to have a palate that isn't blasé, and that will swallow all wine just because it is wine! That South African goes down with better relish, Little Grand, than you'll find in Château Margaux ten years hence. As soon as one begins to want touching up with olives, one's real gusto is gone."

"Hang olives! they're beastly," said Little Grand; "and I don't care who pretends they're not. Olives are like sermons and wives,

everybody makes a wry face, and would rather be excused 'em; but it's the custom to call 'em good things, and so men bolt 'em in complaisance, and while they hate the salt-water flavour, descant on the delicious rose taste!"

Conran smiled. "Quite true, Little Grand! but one takes olives to enhance the wine; and so, perhaps, other men's sermons make one enjoy one's racier roman, and other men's wives make one appreciate one's liberty still better. Don't abuse olives; you'll want 'em figuratively and literally before you've done either drinking or living. You're a young colt at present, fresh to the road, and impatient to be off, but when you come to be an old stager

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"Swathed in flannel, and propped up on a gout-stool, Anacreon condemned to water-gruel instead of Falernian, and nightcaps instead of myrtle wreaths, sitting still to see other people go in and win! Oh! confound it, Conran," cried Little Grand, "I do hope and trust a spent ball may have the kindness to double me up and finish me off before then."

"You're not philosophic, my boy."

"Thank Heaven, no!" ejaculated Little Grand, piously. "I've an uncle, a very great philosopher, beats all the sages hollow, from Bion to Buckle, and writes in the Metaphysical Quarterly, but I'll be shot if he don't spend so much time in trying to puzzle out what life is, that all his has slipped away without his having lived one bit. When I was staying with him one Christmas, he began boring me with a frightful theory on the non-existence of matter. I couldn't stand that, so I cut him short, and set him down to the dinner-table; and while he was full swing with a Strasbourg pâté and Comet hock, I stopped him and asked him if, with them in his mouth, he believed in matter or not? He was shut up, of course; bless your soul, those theorists always are, if you're down upon 'em with a little fact!"

"Such as a Strasbourg pâté, that is an unanswerable argument with most men, I believe," said Conran, who liked to hear the boy chatter. "What are you going to do with yourself to-night, Grand?"

"I am going to-ar-hum-to a friend of mine," said Little Grand, less glibly than usual.

Conran smiled." Very well; I only asked, because I would have taken you to Mrs. Fortescue's with me; they're having some acting proverbs (horrible exertion in this oven of a place, with the thermometer at a hundred and twenty degrees); but if you've better sport it's no matter. Take care what friends you make, though, Grand; you'll find some Maltese acquaintances very costly."

"Thank you. I should say I can take care of myself," replied Little Grand, with immeasurable scorn and dignity.

Conran laughed, struck him across the shoulders with his whip, stroked his own moustaches, and went out again, whistling one of Verdi's airs. "I don't want him bothering, you know," explained Little Grand; "she's such a deuced magnificent creature!"

She was a magnificent creature, Eudoxia Adelaida, Marchioness St. Julian; and proud enough Little Grand and I felt when we had that soft, jewelled hand held out to us, and that bewitching smile beamed upon us, and that joyous presence dazzling in our eyes, as we sat in the May-VOL. CXIX. NO. CCCCLXXIII.

C

drawing-room of that Casa di Fiori. She was about thirty, I should say (boys always worship those who might have been schoolfellows of their mothers), tall and stately, and imposing, with the most beautiful pink and white skin, with as fine a set of teeth as any at Richard's, raven hair, and eyes tinted most exquisitely. Oh! she was magnificent, our Marchioness St. Julian! Into what unutterable insignificance, what miserable, washed-out shadows sank Stars and Garters' lady, and the Mitchell girls, and Lucy and Emmy Maberly, and all the belles of La Valetta, whom we hadn't thought so very bad-looking before.

There was a pretty girl sitting a little out of the radiance of light, reading; but we had no eyes for anybody except the Marchioness St. Julian. We were in such high society, too; there was her brother, Lord Adolphus, and his bosom Pylades, the Baron Guatamara; and there was a big fellow, with hooked nose and very curly hair, who was introduced to us as the Prince of Orangia Magnolia; and a little wiry creature, with bits of red and blue ribbon, and a star or two in his button-hole, who was M. le Duc de Saint-Jeu. We were quite dazzled with the coruscations of so much aristocracy, especially when they talked across to each other-so -so familiarly, too-of Johnnie (that was Lord John Russell), and Pam, and "old Buck" (my godfather Buckingham, Lord Adolphus explained to us), and Montpensier and old Joinville; and chatted of when they dined at the Tuileries, and stayed at Chambord, and hunted at Belvoir, and spent Christmas at Holcombe or Longleat. We were in such high society! How contemptible appeared Mrs. Maberly's and the Fortescue soirée; how infinitesimally small grew Charlie Ruthven, and Harry Villiers, and Grey and Albany, and all the other young fellows who thought it such great guns to be au mieux with little Graziella, or invited to Sir George Dashaway's. We were a cut above those things nowrather!

That splendid Marchioness! There was a head for a coronet, if you like! And how benign she was! Grand sat on the couch beside her, and I on an ottoman on her left, and she leaned back in her magnificent toilette, flirting her fan like a Castilian, and flashing upon us her superb eyes from behind it; not speaking very much, but showing her white teeth in scores of heavenly smiles, till Little Grand, the blasé man of seventeen, and I the raw Moses of private tutelage, both felt that we had never come across anything like this; never, in fact, seen a woman worth a glance before. She listened to us-or rather to him, I was too awestruck to advance much beyond monosyllables-and laughed at him, and smiled encouragingly on my gaucherie (and when a boy is gauche, how ready he is to worship such a helping hand!), and beamed upon us both with an effulgence compared with which the radiance of Helen, Galatea, Enone, Messalina, Laïs, and all the legendary beauties one reads about, must have been what the railway night-lamps that never burn are to the prismatic luminaries of Cremorne. They were all uncommonly pleasant, all except the girl who was reading, whom they introduced as the Signorina da Guari, a Tuscan, and daughter to Orangia Magnolia, with fair hair, and soft, liquid, dark eyes, who never lifted her head scarcely, though Guatamara and Saint-Jeu did their best to make her. But all the others were wonderfully agreeable, and quite fêted Little Grand and

me, at which, they being more than double our age, and seemingly bien reçus alike in Belgravia and Newmarket, the Faubourg and the Pytchley, we seemed to grow at least a foot each in the aroma of this Casa di Fiori.

"This is rather stupid, Doxie," began Lord Adolphus, addressing his sister; "not much entertainment for our guests. What do you say to a game of vingt-et-un, eh, Mr. Grandison ?"

Little Grand fixed his blue eyes on the Marchioness, and said he should be very happy, but, as for entertainment-he wanted no other. "No compliments, petit ami," laughed the Marchioness, with a dainty blow of her fan. "Yes, Dolph, have vingt-et-un, or music, or anything you like. Sing us something, Lucrezia."

The Italian girl thus addressed looked up with a passionate, haughty flush of her soft eyes, and answered, with wonderfully little courtesy I considered, “I shall not sing to-night.”

"Etes-vous enrhumée, ma belle ?" asked the Duc de Saint-Jeu, bending his little wiry figure over her.

She shrank away from him, and drew back, a hot colour in her cheeks.

"Monsieur, je ne vous parlais pas."

The Marchioness looked angry, if those divine eyes could look anything so mortal. However, she shrugged her shoulders.

"Well, my dear Lucrezia, we can't make you sing, of course, if you won't. I, for my part, always do any little thing I can to amuse anybody; if I fail, I fail; I have done my best, and my friends will appreciate the effort, if not the result. No, my dear Prince, do not teaze her," said the Marchioness to Orangia Magnolia, who was arguing, I thought somewhat imperatively for such a well-bred and courtly man, with Lucrezia; "we will have vingt-et-un, and Lucrezia will give us the delight of her voice some other evening, I dare say."

We had vingt-et-un; the Marchioness would not play, but she sat on her rose velvet fauteuil, just behind Little Grand, putting in pretty little speeches, and questions, and bagatelles, and calling attention to the gambols of her darling greyhound Cupidon, and tapping Little Grand with her fan, till, I believe, he neither knew how the game went, nor what money he lost; and I, gazing at her, and cursing him for his facile tongue, never noticed my naturels, couldn't have said what the maximum was if you had paid me for it, and might, for anything I knew to the contrary, have been seeing my life slip away with each card as with the Peau de Chagrin. Then we had sherbet, and wine, and cognac for those who preferred it; and the Marchioness gave us permission to smoke, and took a dainty hookah with an amber mouthpiece for her own use (divine she did look, too, leaning in her rose fauteuil, with that hookah between her ruby lips!); and the smoke, and the cognac, and the smiles, unloosed our tongues, and we spake like very great donkeys, I dare say, but I'm sure with not a tenth part the wisdom that Balaam's ass developed in his brief and pithy conversation. However great the bosh we talked, though, we found very lenient auditors. Fitzhervey and Guatamara laughed at all our witticisms; the Prince of Orangia Magnolia joined in with a "Per Baccho!" and a "Bravo!" and little Saint-Jeu wheezed, and gave

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