More than ever this morning was she disposed to view her surroundings with a disapproving and dissatisfied eye. When should she have a boudoir like Lady Vereker's, and a gilded coach, a footman with a plumed hat, a great nobleman for her husband, subject to her caprices, sighing at her feet, and breathing soft nothings in the pretty, affected language, mingled with French, which the heroes in the fashionable plays made use of? Like Lord Mowbray, she deceived herself on the score of love, but after a different fashion. He saw in it but the satisfaction of the senses; she, the triumph of vanity. To be forever and a day the personage she appeared to be three evenings out of the week, from seven o'clock until ten; to be in reality ingenuous, anxious, coquettish, and impassioned; to play the comedy, and play it to the life, amidst men who were by no means acting; to heave real sighs, shed genuine tears, commit actual follies,--such was her idea of happiness, which would have been perverse had it not been childish. Scarcely was she dressed ere she received a tender missive from Lady Vereker which informed her of the result of their evening's frolic. One of her ladyship's cousins, an officer in the Guards, had rescued her from her dilemma. For hours she had sought her companion; then she had gone home, "heaping reproaches upon herself and calling herself every manner of barbarous name." For she felt in her heart that "she should never taste of perfect bliss if separated from her incomparable friend, and that it would be inhuman long to deprive her of her presence." This jargon, which passed in the fashionable world of that day, was new to Esther, and she replied in a similar vein, assuring her noble protectress that, had she listened to the dictates of her heart, she would have flown to her: but circumstances obliged her to defer the joy for which she sighed so ardently; the circumstances being a guitar lesson, a new _rôle_ to study, and a second sitting with Sir Joshua. In fact, the guitar master, Mr. O'Flannigan, shortly made his appearance upon horseback, the animal being as lean and lanky as himself. He was an Irish gentleman, descended from the kings of his native land. He was wont to prate of vast domains which had fallen two centuries before his birth into the hands of the English. Thanks to the revolt of the American colonies, which Ireland was preparing to imitate, Mr. O'Flannigan had hopes of regaining his family rights and possessions. Meanwhile he rambled about London, darned his own stockings, and gave music lessons. Moreover, he occasionally relieved old Hopkins, the prompter at Drury Lane Theatre; but whatever he did, he did with innate nobility and elegance. He could bow with a grace almost equal to that of any Frenchman, having passed one week of his youth in Paris, "the capital of elegance and good taste."