Yellowlily remembered his former supporter, and made personal application to the Queen in behalf of his widow. It thus happened that the pork-merchant’s daughter and the whiskey distiller’s widow, much to her own surprise, found herself in possession of a handsome set of apartments looking into the royal gardens at Hampton Court. Here at first her ladyship did certainly feel somewhat fish-out-of-waterish, but she was a “converted” woman, and she had two great consolations. The first of these was to keep continually declaiming against the Chaplain of the Palace, who was one of the simplest, gentlest, and most charitable of men. His sermons, declared Sir Peter’s relict--for, like most ultra-Protestant ladies, she considered herself to be infallible--were not “gospel.” Why, too, didn’t he publicly testify against the goings-on of those flaunting Jezebels, the Ladies Skandaliza and Coreopsis Corker, who were creditably reported to have left the Palace in broad daylight in pink bathing-dresses, and to have publicly bathed with Lieutenant Sprattles (in blue) in Hampton Lasher? Why did he continue to visit Lady Rathmullen, who was known to have fitted up an oratory in her own private apartments? Why didn’t he leave undone everything he had done, and why didn’t he do everything he had left undone? And above all, why didn’t he conduct the Services of the Church in a manner pleasing to herself, Lady M’Adam, who was not a Churchwoman at all? The widow’s other consolation was to sit and talk scandal with her dear Christian friends, Lady Lavinia Gathercole and Miss Helen Scheimes. This last-named lady was the sister of Somebody or Something diplomatic. The Somebody had held a high consular or semi-diplomatic post on the borders of the Caucasus, and, under threat of assassination, had signed a treaty in the directly contrary sense to the orders he had received from the Foreign Office. He was accordingly deemed signally worthy of promotion, and was instantly named a Companion of the Order of SS. Michael and George. Dying, however, at the seat of his jurisdiction of too great devotion to arraki and French cognac, apartments were obtained in the Palace for his sister Helen, who had acted as his secretary and factotum at Tomareyeh. While in that remote Oriental city, Miss Scheimes had written a work entitled _Harem Life of the Muslim Circassians of the Nether Caucasus_, and although it had a considerable run at the circulating libraries, a very nasty book it was. Therein, the authoress (who at the time was eight-and-thirty if she was eight) conclusively showed that it was only by the most heroic and heroine-like display of firmness and austerity that she had escaped being added to the already overgrown female establishment of H.H. the Emir. Lady M’Adam had still a share in the whiskey business; had a very substantial jointure, and owned a very snug Brougham; and Miss Scheimes--who, like Lady Lavinia, was