“The pomps and vanities and sinful lusts of the flesh” being put a stop to by poor little Baby’s untimely death, Lady Beranger has elected to mourn in sackcloth and ashes among the sylvan shades of Sandilands. It would be dreadful to assert that this worldly mother does not lament to a certain degree the gap in the domestic circle, or that now and again the memory of Baby’s sweet pretty face and winsome, kittenish ways does not bring a mist into her fine eyes, but this much is true, that she leaves Belgravia with regret, especially as the season is not quite dead. And now that three months have nearly gone by since “MIRABELLE BERANGER, Aged 17,” went away to the angels, Lady Beranger, knowing that mitigated affliction in the shape of jet and bugles are always becoming, has “just one or two intimate friends” come down to share the quiet of the country and to sympathise with the family woe. It need not be said that, with that worldly wisdom that looks sharp after its own interests, these intimate friends are Lord Delaval and Mr. Stubbs. Of course such glittering fish must not be lost sight of before they are safely landed. It is not unusual in the Upper Ten, as has recently been proved, for the _noblesse_ to rise from the funeral baked-meats to sit down to wedding-cake. Anyway, as the _convenances_ are not rigid on this score, it is on the cards that before Trixy’s crape grows rusty she will don the orange and myrtle. And now that Sandilands offers no flirting material with which she can keep her hand in and show off her power, save “poor Mr. Stubbs,” she goes with less reluctant feet towards the altar of Moloch than she did in Town, where her “future” cut such a comical appearance among the golden youths that she really hated the very sight of him. “It’s rather a bore that one can’t go and get married respectably at St. Peter’s,” she remarks pettishly to Zai. “I might as well be a housemaid, to walk across the garden path to that paltry little church, and hear old Boresome gabble a few words by which Stubbs and I shall be made--_one_! Ugh! Do you know, Zai, I expect we shall be very much _two_! We haven’t a single idea in common, and only one pleasure--contradicting one another.” “Don’t marry him, then, for goodness sake, Trixy! You’ll be a wretched girl if you do. If you _can’t love_ a man, you must at any rate respect him, or look up to him as having a superior intellect to your own,” Zai replies, thinking of Lord Delaval; then she frowns and chases away the thought of him as fast as she can.