That gentleman is considerably brightened up by his dinner and his potations. He has besides got his favourite boots on, and feels equal to almost any social emergency, so he is making the agreeable to the heiress with that degree of originality so peculiarly his own, and getting on, as he thinks, “like a house on fire.” “Very _wawm_, Miss Kettering,” observes the dandy, holding steadily by his starboard moustache. “Guyville people always make it so hot. Charming _bouquet_!” “Your _vis-à-vis_ is dancing alone,” says Blanche, cutting short her partner’s interesting remarks, and sending him sprawling and swaggering across the room, only to hasten back again and proceed with his conversation. “You know the man opposite--man with red whiskers? That’s Mount Helicon. Good fellow--aw--if he could but dye his whiskers. Asked to be introduced to _you_ to-day on the course. Told him--aw--I couldn’t take such a liberty.” Lacquers wishes to say he would like to keep her society all to himself, but, as usual, he cannot express clearly what he means, so he twirls his moustaches instead, and is presently lost in the intricacies of “La Poule.” We need hardly observe that manœuvring is not our friend’s forte. Blanche’s eyes meanwhile are turned steadily towards the lower end of the room, and her partner’s following their direction, he discovers, as he thinks, a fresh topic of conversation. “Ah! there’s Hardingstone just come in--aw. Why don’t he bring his wife with him, I wonder!” “His wife!” repeated Blanche, with a start that sent the blood from her heart; “why, he’s not married, is he?” she added, with more animation than she had hitherto exhibited. “Don’t know, I’m sure,” replied the dandy, glancing down at his own faultless _chaussure_; “thought he was--aw--looks like a married man--aw.” “Why should you think so?” inquired Blanche, half amused in spite of herself. “Why--aw,” replied the observant reasoner, “got the married _look_, you know. Wears wide family boots--aw. Do to ride the children on, you know.” Blanche could not repress a laugh; and the quadrille being concluded, off she went with Cousin Charlie, to stagger through a breathless polka, just at the moment the “family boots” bore their owner to the upper end of the room in search of her.