Now Lizzy Davis could make Beecher laugh in his lowest and gravest moments; droll situations and comical conceits came in showers over her mind, and she gave them forth with all the tact of a consummate actress. Her mimicry, too, was admirable; and thus he who rarely reflected and never read, found in her ready talents resources against all weariness and ennui. What a girl she was!--how perfectly she would become any--the very highest--station! what natural dignity in her manner!--and--Then, after a pause, he murmured, “What a fortune she'd make on the stage! Why, there's nothing to compare with her,--she's as much beyond them all in beauty as in genius!” And so he set about thinking how, by marrying her, a man might make a “deuced good thing of it.” There's no saying what Webster wouldn't offer; and then there was America, always a “safe card;” not that it would do for himself to think of such a thing. Lackington would never speak to him again. All his family would cut him dead; he had n't an acquaintance would recognize him after such disgrace. “Old Grog is _so_ confoundedly well known,” muttered he,--“the scoundrel is _so_ notorious!” Still, there were fellows would n't mind that,--hard-up men, who had done everything, and found all failure. He knew--“Let us see,” said he to himself, beginning to count on his fingers all the possible candidates for her hand. “There's Cranshaw Craven at Caen, on two hundred a year; _he'd_ marry her, and never ask to see her if she 'd settle twenty thousand francs a year on him. Brownlow Gore would marry her, and for a mere five hundred too, for he wants to try that new martingale at Ems; he's certain he 'd break the bank with less. Foley would marry her; but, to be sure, he has a wife somewhere, and she might object to that! I'd lay an even fifty,” cried he, in ecstasy at the bright thought, “Tom Beresford would marry her just to get out of the Fleet!” “What does that wonderful calculation mean?” cried she, suddenly, as she saw him still reckoning on his fingers. “What deep process of reasoning is my learned guardian engaged in?” “I 'd give you a long time to guess,” said he, laughing. “Am I personally concerned in it?” asked she. “Yes, that you are!” “Well,” said she, after a pause, “you are counting over the days we have passed, or are still to pass here?” “No, not _that!_” “You are computing, perhaps, one by one, all your fashionable friends who would be shocked by my levity--that 's the phrase, I believe,--meaning those outspoken impertinences you encourage me to utter about everything and everybody!” “Far from it. I was--”