"My dear Philip, you are right. I see it--I don't dispute it; but when a thing becomes personal, you know philosophy becomes difficult. I have such letters from poor dear Adeliza--such letters! Of course she thinks it is all my fault, and I believe she will break entirely with me. It is so very shocking. You see all Belgravia coupled their names, and the very day that he went off to Cowes in that heartless, abominable manner, if an announcement of the alliance as arranged did not positively appear in the _Court Circular_! It did indeed! I am sure Anne Hautton was at the bottom of it; it would be just like her. Perhaps poor Valencia cannot be pitied after her treatment of Cardonnel, but it is very hard on _me_." Lady Marabout is right: when a thing becomes personal, philosophy becomes difficult. When your gun misses fire, and a fine cock bird whirrs up from the covert and takes wing unharmed, never to swell the number of your triumphs and the size of your game-bag, could you by any chance find it in your soul to sympathize with the bird's gratification at your mortification and its own good luck? I fancy not. LADY MARABOUT'S TROUBLES; OR THE WORRIES OF A CHAPERONE. IN THREE SEASONS. SEASON THE SECOND--THE OGRE. "If there be one class I dislike more than another, it is that class; and if there be one person in town I utterly detest, it is that man!" said our friend Lady Marabout, with much unction, one morning, to an audience consisting of Bijou, Bonbon, and Pandore, a cockatoo, an Angora cat, and a young lady sitting in a rocking-chair, reading the magazines of the month. The dogs barked, the cockatoo screamed, the cat purred a vehement affirmative, the human auditor looked up, and laughed: "What is the class, Lady Marabout, may I ask?" "Those clever, detestable, idle, good-for-nothing, fashionable, worthless men about town, who have not a penny to their fortune, and spend a thousand a year on gloves and scented tobacco--who are seen at everybody's house, and never at their own--who drive horses fit for a Duke's stud, and haven't money enough to keep a donkey on thistles--who have handsome faces and brazen consciences--who are positively leaders of ton, and yet are glad to write feuilletons before the world is up to pay their stall at the Opera--who give a guinea for a bouquet, and can't pay a shilling of their just debts,--I detest the class, my dear!" "So it seems, Lady Marabout. I never heard you so vehement. And who is the particular scapegoat of this type of sinners?" "Chandos Cheveley." "Chandos Cheveley? Isn't he that magnificent man Sir Philip introduced to me at the Amandines' breakfast yesterday? Why, Lady Marabout, his figure alone might outbalance a multitude of sins!"