liberal as possible, yields to you without reserve the right of ordering the supper, that you may have an opportunity of displaying your acknowledged taste and magnificence."

"How exceedingly considerate of her Grace!" "Oh! she is all kindness and condescension: but I had almost forgotten to mention one trifling condition in our little negotiation which, although the Duchess was too polite to mention it, she would, I am sure, wish to be observed. Were it any other individual I might hesitate in naming him, but as the objection is only to your husband, I have no scruple in saying that the Duchess would wish him not to appear.

"Indeed!" said Lady Middleton, colouring with indignation, and yet striving to assume a complacent smile. "Pleasant enough! pleasant enough! do you call this a trifle? I knew not that her Grace had ever seen Sir Matthew."

"O yes! once at church, when her brother, the Bishop, preached a charity sermon, Sir Matthew's rubicund face, voluminous nose, and aldermanic appearance, combined with what

she pleasantly called, his giant's laugh, as he waited for his carriage and saluted his passing friends, won her attention: she inquired his name, and you may infer the rest."

"This difficulty, my dear Lady Barbara, is insuperable, nor upon such humiliating terms do I

"What nonsense! there is neither difficulty nor humiliation. Sir Matthew need not know

anything of the matter. I have heard you

often declare that he has no taste for music, hates large parties, and detests late hours. You can either, therefore, send him to bed before your visitants arrive, or prevail upon him to avoid annoyance by dining and sleeping at the house of some friend. Nothing is so simple; and your son, whose acquaintance her Grace is really desirous of making, can do the honours of the house instead of his father."

"True; I thank you for the hint: in this way it might be accomplished. But is not the Duchess despotic in her own peculiar empire? and could she not command her subjects to receive Sir Matthew, as well as myself?"

"What! were the friends of Galatea obliged to invite Polyphemus? and was Vulcan always included in the cards addressed to his wife ?"

Lady Middleton bowed graciously, assumed her most becoming smile, and stole a glance at the mirror.

"Ridiculous!" continued Lady Barbara— "Besides, her Grace is not so omnipotent as you might suppose. Fearless of every thing else, she lives in perpetual dread of ridicule. Were she to be seen patronising Sir Matthew, that horrid Tom Rashleigh, who is a most unmerciful quiz, and the absolute terror of the beau monde, would persecute her with lampoon and epigram; the professional witlings and slanderers would presently catch the cue; and she would be shown up every Sunday in the scandalous newspapers, of which she has a particular horror. I will fix an early day with the Duchess, and then you may proceed forthwith to consult Gunter, or your own purveyor, respecting the supper, which is all that you will have to attend to. And so your tutelar

goddess must take her flight. I have twenty visits to pay to as many of my dearest friends, and if I do not make haste, they will half of them have returned from their morning drives, and I shall find them at home! Adieu, therefore, for the present."

"Adieu, my dear Lady Barbara! you have laid me under an obligation which I feel that I shall never adequately repay."

"Tush! tush! among friends there should be no such vulgar words as repayment." Smiling half-derisively as she spoke, her ladyship dropped the card-case into her reticule, nodded listlessly to her friend, took up her Italian greyhound, who had remained couched at her feet, and sauntered from the room, patting and fondling her four-footed favourite, and bestowing upon him a variety of endearing epithets in Italian, as if that language were more intelligible to him than any other.

No sooner had her visitant departed, than Lady Middleton, summoning Dupin, and apprising him that she was not at home to any one, walked up and down her splendid draw

ing-room, for her feelings would not allow her to sit still, revolving in her mind the particulars of the conference she had just held. Their friendship being uncongenial, and each party sufficiently clever to see through the designs and motives of the other, there was generally beneath the insidious smoothness of these interviews with Lady Barbara an under-current of mutual taunts and retorts, rather insinuated than expressed, and always kept within the bounds of good-breeding, but not the less keenly felt and resented on either side. Stung by the calm arrogance which had not very obliquely stigmatised herself as a vulgarian ; annoyed at the insulting proscription of her husband; and by no means pleased that the offending party should so cavalierly extort from her another hundred pounds, which she little expected to recover, the predominant feeling in the mind of Lady Middleton was, nevertheless, that of gratification and triumph-an apparent inconsistency which may require some expla

nation.

Although of civic origin, a misfortune which