THE numerous company which filled the Duchess’s two drawing-rooms, in point of fact overflowed into the corridor, which, decorated with beautiful flowers, and having deep window recesses at intervals, formed a pleasant place either for walking up and down or for sitting in confidential correspondence. All, or nearly all the Palace folks were there, but there were three ladies who remarked with satisfaction that Miss Manwaring was absent, and Lady M’Adam observed to Miss Scheimes that she thought that Lady Lavinia “had settled that minx’s hash nicely.” Mr. fforester, the Chaplain, kept running about from group to group, and astonished friends and enemies alike by occasionally bursting out into fits of laughter without any apparent cause, and he steadily refused to give any rational account of his unwonted tendency to risibility. The young Duke was everywhere, and had a pleasant word for everyone. Colonel Hawkins, of the Fortieth Dragoons, who had arrived early, kept strutting up and down with a mysterious expression upon his bronzed countenance, and looked like a kind of military Sphynx; while Captain Parkhurst and Lieutenant Grimwood, of the Hampton Court troop, wore the expression of men who were quite able to astonish the natives, if only they wished to do so. To the amazement of all, however, the Duchess, who was usually punctuality itself, delayed making her appearance. At length, just when Lady M’Adam, in plum-coloured velvet, was remarking to Lady Lavinia, in yellow silk and black lace, and to Miss Scheimes, in amber satin, what “a real satisfaction it was that no hussies were present,” an inner door was suddenly thrown open, and the Duchess, blazing in all the Ribblesdale Diamonds, and with the great Scarswicke Emerald hanging round her neck, entered the room, with one arm in that of Evelyn Manwaring, and with the other in that of a--Cavalry Soldier! Lady M’Adam gave a violent start at this unlooked-for apparition; Miss Scheimes turned the colour of her own dress, and Lady Lavinia’s shoulders almost went out of sight in the inmost recesses of her yellow silk. “The woman must be mad!” whispered the pork-merchant’s daughter. “Or bad?” said the diplomat’s sister, _sotto voce_. “I think she’s both,” hissed Lady Lavinia; “it really is _dreadful_!” and so saying, the terrible shoulders oscillated like the humps of a Bactrian camel on a mountain march.