‘The Bonbonnière! My dear friend, this is really dreadful. The lamentable state of ignorance which results from the cultivation of polite learning is, to a plain man, something astounding. Learn, my benighted recluse, that the Bonbonnière Theatre will be opened for the performance of the legitimate drama early next month by the great Mackenzie, who inaugurates his season with the thrilling tragedy of _Coriolanus_, so interesting to the youthful mind from its association with the pleasing studies of boyhood. Madame Carlitz has sold her lease of the pretty little theatre; and on very advantageous terms, I assure you.’ ‘She has sold her lease! Does she intend to leave the stage, or to take a larger theatre?’ ‘She intends to do neither the one nor the other. She appears on a grander stage, and in an entirely new character. She is going to marry Lord V.’ ‘Impossible!’ ‘An established fact, my dear boy. The noble earl, as the fashionable journalists call him, has been nibbling at the enchantress’s bait for the last twelve months--rather a difficult customer to land, you know--turned sulky when he felt the hook in his jaw, and got away among the rushes; but Carlitz used her gaff, and brought him to land. And now the talk of the town is their impending union. The great ladies _de par le monde_ intend to cut her, I believe; but Carlitz has announced her intention of taking the initiative, and cutting _them_. “I shall cultivate the foreign legations,” she told little J. C. of the F. O., “and make myself independent of our home nobility.” And, egad, she is capable of doing it! She is like Robespierre,--_elle ira loin_,--because she believes in herself.’ ‘But Carlitz!’ I gasped; ‘has she got a divorce?’ ‘My benighted friend, the decease of M. Carlitz, or Don Estephan Carlitz, of the Spanish wine-trade, is an event as notorious in modern history as the demise of that respectable sovereign, Queen Anne. He died three months ago at the Cape, whence it was his habit to import that choice Amontillado in which he dealt. Madame was prompt to improve the occasion offered by her widowhood; but I have heard it whispered that the noble earl made it a condition that she should clear herself of debt before--to continue the fashionable journalist’s phrase--he led her to the hymeneal altar. Of course you are aware that the noble earl is amongst the meanest of mankind.’ “Yes, I knew V., a little middle-aged man, suspected of wearing a wig, and renowned for harmless eccentricities in the way of amateur coach-building. Alas, what perfidy! Those bright, sympathetic glances, those tender smiles, those low tremulous tones, had been all a part of one coldly-calculated design--the ladylike extortion of so much ready money from the pockets of weak, adoring youth. The divine Estelle had been all this time the plighted wife of Lord V., and had traded upon my admiration in order to secure the means of purchasing a coronet.