"So quick, my lord, that he should be discharged very quickly," said Lady Mary Parker, taking Chandos's arm unoffered, and walking with him to the side of her carriage. The young ladies followed; a question was asked of the footman, who said he was a little hurt, but not much; and the door was shut. Before the vehicle drove on, however, the ladies within had the satisfaction, if it was one, of seeing Chandos Winslow lead Lord Overton towards his carriage by the nose. CHAPTER XVI. Let us write an essay upon noses. Each organ of the human body, but more especially an organ of sensation, has a sort of existence apart--a separate sphere of being from the great commonwealth of which it is a member, just as every individual has his own peculiar ties and relationships distinct from the body of society, though affecting it sympathetically and remotely. Each organ has its affections and its pleasures; its misfortunes and its pains; its peculiarities, generic and individual; its own appropriate history, and its unchangeable destiny and fate. As the eye is supposed (wrongly) to be the most expressive of organs, so is the nose of man the most impressible. Tender in its affections, enlarged in its sympathies, soft in its character, it is in this foul and corrupt world more frequently subject to unpleasant than to pleasant influences. During one season of the year alone does nature provide it with enjoyments; and during the long cold winter it is pinched and maltreated by meteoric vicissitudes. It is a summer-bird; a butterfly; a flower, blossoming on the waste of man's countenance, but inhaling (not exhaling) odours during the bright period when other flowers are in bloom. During the whole of the rest of the year its joys are factitious, and whether they proceed from Eau de Portugal, bouquet à la Reine, or Jean Marie Farina, it is but a sort of hot-house life the nose obtains, produced by stoves and pipes, till summer comes round again.