The Levison subject now being evidently exhausted, and the conversation becoming hopelessly-idiotic, Captain Lyster strikes in at a tangent, and asks Mrs. Schröder whether she has seen any thing recently of her friend, Mrs. Churchill,--Miss Lexden that was. Mrs. Schröder replies in the negative, adding that she had called upon Barbara "in, oh, such a strange street!" but had not found her at home: the Churchills had been asked to dine there that day, but had declined on account of Mr. Churchill's engagements. It was, however, probable that they might come in the evening. Hearing the name of Churchill mentioned, Mr. Beresford chimes in. "Ah, by the way, the Churchills! friends of yours, Mrs. Schröder? How are they getting on? Love-match, and all that kind of thing, hey? Clever man, Churchill; but should have kept to his own set; married the daughter of his printer or publisher, or some fellow of that sort; not taken away one of our stars." "What do you mean by his own set, Mr. Beresford?" said Lyster, rousing himself. "Mr. Churchill, I take it, is a gentleman in every sense of the word. I don't know whom you have been accustomed to associate with, but I never saw a better-bred man." Mr. Beresford pauses for a moment, startled at the attack; then a smile passes over his face as he says, "I didn't impugn your friend's breeding, Captain Lyster; but I suppose even such a Corydon as you would allow the folly of a love-match with no money on either side?" It is probable that Captain Lyster might have replied, even seeing, clearly as he did, that the tendency of the conversation was towards an argument in which he would have to exert himself; but the cinnamon-whiskered man, who had been waiting for an opportunity of speaking, now saw his chance, and burst forth--"Love-match!" said he; "no money on either side! What then? Do you imagine that two people, young, attached to each other, who risk a--a--what d'ye call um?--fight in the great battle of life"--looking round and repeating "in the great battle of life--are not much happier than those who make, what you may call, sordid matches? Thus, for the sake of argument, an elderly man marries a young girl; nothing in common between them; she simply married for position, or to oblige her parents; and he--well, I think we know the contemptible figure he cuts; a case of buying and selling, as you would say in the City, eh, Schröder?" and the cinnamon-coloured man, who was great at a debating-society, looked in triumph at his host.