"By Jupiter!" swore Little Grand, obliged to give relief to his feelings--"by Jupiter, Simon! did you ever see such a glorious, enchanting, divine, delicious, adorable creature? Faugh! who could look at those Mitchell girls after her? Such eyes! such a smile! such a figure! Talk of a coronet! no imperial crown would be half good enough for her! And how pleasant those fellows are! I like that little chaffy chap, the Duke; what a slap-up story that was about the bal de l'Opéra. And Fitzhervey, too; there's something uncommonly thorough-bred about him, ain't there? And Guatamara's an immensely jolly fellow. Ah, myboy! that's something like society; all the ease and freedom of real rank; no nonsense about them, as there is about snobs. I say, what wouldn't the other fellows give to be in our luck? I think even Conran would warm up about her. But, Simon, she's deucedly taken with me--she is, upon my word; and she knows how to show it you, too! By George! one could die for a woman like that--eh?" "Die!" I echoed, while my horse stumbled along up the hilly road, and I swayed forward, pretty nearly over his head, while poetry rushed to my lips, and electric sparks danced before my eyes: "To die for those we love! oh, there is power In the true heart, and pride, and joy, for this It is to live without the vanished light That strength is needed!" "But I'll be shot if it shall be vanished light," returned Little Grand; "it don't look much like it yet. The light's only just lit, 'tisn't likely it's going out again directly; but she is a stunner! and----" "A stunner!" I shouted; "she's much more than that--she's an angel, and I'll be much obliged to you to call her by her right name, sir. She's a beautiful, noble, loving woman; the most perfect of all Nature's masterworks. She is divine, sir, and you and I are not worthy merely to kiss the hem of her garment." "Ain't we, though? I don't care much about kissing her dress; it's silk, and I don't know that I should derive much pleasure from pressing my lips on its texture; but her cheek----" "Her cheek is like the Catherine pear, The side that's next the sun!" I shouted, as my horse went down in a rut. "She's like Venus rising from the sea-shell; she's like Aurora, when she came down on the first ray of the dawn to Tithonus; she's like Briseis----" "Bother classics! she's like herself, and beats 'em all hollow. She's the finest creature ever seen on earth, and I should like to see the man who'd dare to say she wasn't. And--I say, Simon--_how much did you lose to-night_?" From sublimest heights I tumbled straight to bathos. The cold water of Grand's query quenched my poetry, extinguished my electric lights, and sobered me like a douche bath. "I don't know," I answered, with a sense of awe and horror stealing over me; "but I had a pony in my waistcoat-pocket that the governor had just sent me; Guatamara changed it for me, and--_I've only sixpence left_!"