Beloved reader, however sceptical thou mayest be, thou wilt infallibly admire with me the inscrutable workings of Nemesis, when thou learnest that the aforesaid great lady was no other than the Duchess of Dickinson, and (what is still more wonderful) that it was she who had insidiously presented him with such a fearful gift of the Danaides as an obstreperous and unwieldy steed! Truly, as poet Shakespeare sagaciously observes, there is a divinity that rough-hews our ends, however we may endeavour to preserve their shapeliness! CHAPTER VIII A RIGHTABOUT FACER FOR MR BHOSH Halloo! at a sudden your love warfare is changed! Your dress is changed! Your address is changed! Your express is changed! Your mistress is changed! Halloo! at a sudden your funny fair is changed! _A song sung by Messengeress Binda before Krishnagee_ _Dr. Ram Kinoo Dutt (of Chittagong)._ Those who are _au faits_ in the tortoise involutions of the feminine disposition will hear without astonishment that Duchess Dickinson--so far from being chastened and softened by the circumstance that the curse she had launched at Mr Bhosh's head had returned, like an illominous raven, to roost upon her own nose and irreparably destroy its contour--was only the more bitterly incensed against him. Instead of interring the hatchet that had flown back, as if it were that fabulous volatile the boomerang, she was in a greater stew than ever, and resolved to leave no stone unturned to trip him up. But what trick to play, seeing that all the honours were in Mr Bhosh's hands? She could not officiate as Marplot to discredit him in the affections of his lady-love, since the Princess was too severely enamoured to give the loan of her ear to any sibillations from a snake in grass. How else, then, to hinder his match? At this she was seized with an idea worthy of Maccaroni himself. She paid a complimentary visit to the Princess, arrayed in the sheepish garb of a friend, and contrived to lure the conversation on to the vexed question of prying into futurity. Surely, she artfully suggested, the Princess at such a momentous epoch of her existence had, of course, not neglected the sensible precaution of consulting some competent soothsayer respecting the most propitious day for her nuptials with the accomplished Mr Bhosh?... What, had she omitted to pop so important a question? How incredibly harebrained! Fortunately, there was yet time to do the needful, and she herself would gladly volunteer to accompany the Princess on such an errand. Princess Petunia fell a ready victim into the jaws of this diabolical booby-trap and inquired the address and name of the cleverest necromancer, for it is matter of notoriety that London ladies are quite as superstitious and addicted to working the oracle as their native Indian sisters.