“I was the belle of the season. I assure you it is perfectly true!” “Come, come, Lizzy--” “Well, ask Mr. Beecher. Be honest now, and confess frankly, were you not sulky at driving out with me the way the people stared? Didn't you complain that you never expected to come home from the play without a duel or something of the kind on your hands? Did you not induce me to ruin my toilette just to escape what you so delicately called 'our notoriety'? Oh, wretched man! what triumphs did I not relinquish out of compliance to your taste for obscurity!” “By Jove! we divided public attention with Ferouk Khan and his wives. I don't see that my taste for obscurity obtained any brilliant success.” “I never heard of such black ingratitude!” cried she, in mock indignation. “I assure you, pa, I was a martyr to his English notions, which, to me, seem to have had their origin in Constantinople.” “Poor Beecher!” said Davis, laughingly. “Poor Beecher, no, but happy Beecher, envied by thousands. Not indeed,” added she, with a smile, “that his appearance at this moment suggests any triumphant satisfaction. Oh, papa, you should have seen him when the Russian Prince Ezerboffsky asked me to dance, or when the Archduke Albrecht offered me his horses; or, better still, the evening the Margrave lighted up his conservatory just to let me see it.” “Your guardianship had its anxieties, I perceive,” said Davis, dryly. “I think it had,” said Beecher, sighing. “There were times I 'd have given five thousand, if I had it, that she had been safe under your own charge.” “My dear fellow, I'd have given fifty,” said Davis, “if I did n't know she was just in as good hands as my own.” There was a racy heartiness in this speech that thrilled through Beecher's heart, and he could scarcely credit his ears that it was Grog spoke it. “Ay, Beecher,” added he, as he drew the other's arm closer to his side, “there was just one man--one single man in Europe--I 'd have trusted with the charge.” “Really, gentlemen,” said Lizzy, with a malicious sparkle of the eye, “I am lost in my conjectures whether I am to regard myself as a sort of human Koh-i-noor--a priceless treasure--or something so very difficult to guard, so perilous to protect, as can scarcely be accounted a flattery. Say, I entreat of you, to which category do I belong?” “A little to each, I should say,--eh, Beecher?” cried Grog, laughingly. “Oh, don't appeal to _him_, papa. _He_ only wants to vaunt his heroism the higher, because the fortress he guarded was so easy of assault!” Beecher was ill-fitted to engage in such an encounter, and stammered out some commonplace apology for his own seeming want of gallantry. “She's too much for us, Beecher,--too much for us. It's a pace we can't keep up,” muttered Grog in the other's ear. And Beecher nodded a ready assent to the speech.