So, although Frank sent his hack along as fast as our police-regulations permit, in order to catch a glimpse of his charmer while she left the Park at Albert Gate, he was rewarded only with a back view of Mrs. Lascelles's carriage, ornamented by a boy and a basket taking a free passage to their next destination. "Never mind," thought the rider. "I can't miss seeing her to-night at Battledore House. We'll put it all right in the tea-room. I _think_ she'll say, 'Yes.' Why shouldn't she? My darling, I'll make you as happy as ever I can." I wonder if the hack thought his master's caress at this moment was bestowed entirely for his own sake. He shook his dainty head as if he did, rolling his shoulders, and rising into one or two managed gambols, as he bore Frank homewards at a canter. To meet one's lady-love at an exceedingly smart ball with the desperate intention of proposing to her then and there, ought to be excitement enough, in all conscience, for any one day; but, during the London season, people cram a week's work into twenty-four hours, and Frank had yet a good deal to do before he could find himself in that tea-room at Battledore House, to which he looked forward so longingly, and with the recesses of which his previous experience, I fear, had rendered him unjustifiably familiar. A protracted mess-dinner to meet an illustrious personage must first be gone through. It would be impossible to leave the barracks till that personage gave the signal for breaking up; and although a London ball is the latest of all festive gatherings, Frank, I think, was the only individual present, at an early hour of the morning, who felt anything but regret when the guest, who had thus honoured them, taking a kind and cordial farewell of his entertainers, announced himself ready to depart. "If I can get there by two," thought the young officer, "I may catch her before she leaves. It's just my luck to have tumbled into this d----d thing, when I wanted to be elsewhere!" Thus, you see, does one man undervalue privileges which another perhaps esteems the height of human felicity. Of all Thackeray's keen touches, there are none keener than that in which Lord Steyne says, "Everybody wants what they haven't got. 'Gad, I dined with the King yesterday, and we'd boiled mutton and turnips!" "We're late, Frank," said young Lord Kilgarron. "Jump into my brougham. It will get us there quicker than a cab. Battledore House, Tom. Drive like blazes!" The last to a smart lad in livery, who obeyed this injunction to the letter, as Lord Kilgarron leaped lightly in after his friend, and banged to the door. "I _must_ go," added his lordship. "She's my aunt, you know. What's the _use_ of an aunt, Frank? I get very little good out of mine. Now a _grandmother's_ a decent kind of relationship. Mine gave me the very mare we're driving--half-sister to Termagant. She's a rum 'un, I can tell you!"