"Let the best man win!" she answered. "He may find to-night that the 'latter end of a feast' is not at all unlike 'the beginning of a fray!'" CHAPTER V. À OUTRANCE. No Amazon, I imagine, in the experience of Herodotus, Sir Walter Raleigh, or our own, was ever known to be careless of her weapons, suffering them to grow blunt from neglect or rusty from disuse. The boar whets his tusks, the stag sharpens his antlers; the nobler beasts of chase are not dependent for safety on flight alone; and shall not woman study how she can best bring to perfection that armour with which Nature provides her for attack, defence, and eventual capture of her prey? Brighter or more accomplished warriors never entered lists, than the two now sitting in the drawing-room at No. 40; cool, fragrant, diaphanous; redoubtable in that style of beauty which is so enhanced and set off by art. To these, enter a young gentleman, hot, shy, bewildered; who has followed into the room a name not the least like his own, with considerable trepidation; hardly clear if he is on his head or his heels; and, although worshipping the very pattern of the carpet on which one of these divinities treads, yet conscious, in his heart of hearts, that it would be unspeakable relief to wake up and find himself three-quarters of a mile off at his club. Mr. Goldthred, whose announcement by a pompous butler as "Mr. Gotobed" had not served to increase his confidence, was by no means a bold person in general society, and possessed, indeed, as little of that native dignity they call "cheek," as any of the rising generation with whom it was his habit to associate; but on the present occasion he felt nervous to an unusual degree, because, alas! he had fallen in love with a woman older, cleverer, more experienced, and altogether of higher calibre than himself. He had come early, half hoping to find her alone, yet was it a relief to be spared the ordeal of a _tête-à-tête_ that seemed so delightful in fancy. Of course, being her utter bond-slave, he paid his homage to Mrs. Lascelles with ludicrous stiffness, and blundered at once into an inconsequent conversation with Miss Ross. That syren took pity on his embarrassment--the pity a cat takes on a mouse. It amused her to mark the poor youth's efforts to seem at ease, his uncomfortable contortions, his wandering replies, and the timid glances he cast on the hem of his conqueror's garment, who would willingly have met him half-way, had he only gone up and flirted with her in good earnest. "We haven't seen you for ages, Mr. Goldthred. What have you been doing? Where have you been hiding? Rose and I were talking about you this very afternoon." How he wished he, too, might call his goddess "Rose;" but she had been talking about him, blessed thought! that very day. His heart was in his throat, and he murmured something about "French play."