a young thorough-bred, he had charged a brook, and that his horse, refusing it, had pitched him head foremost into its rapid waters. A month soon elapsed--the London season was at its height. Everybody had been everywhere, and was going again; Grisi and Mario had arrived, recovered from sea-sickness and British catarrh, and “surpassed themselves” in their favourite characters. A mob of costly equipages jostled each other round Hyde Park every afternoon; carriage-horses, deprived of their sleep o’nights, began to grieve coachmen’s hearts by revealing the position of their ribs; young ladies from the Country danced away their roses and their _embonpoint_; men whose book for the Derby was at all “shy” trembled in their patent-leather boots; the glory of the lilacs in the squares had departed; water-carts made unpleasant canals of the principal thoroughfares; the Honourable Mrs. Windsor Soape had presented her youngest daughter at the last drawing-room, and tried without success to stuff her down the throats of several eligible eldest sons; Lady Close Shaver had inveigled an hundred and seventy unfortunates into her hot drawing-rooms, bored them with Signor Violini’s scientific rendering of Beethoven’s sonata in A B C minor, poisoned them with bad ice and worse Champagne, and turned them out to grass upon lobster salads, of which the principal feature was the unaccountable absence of lobster: these, and many other miseries, attendant on the “joys of our dancing days,” had been gladly suffered by the fanatical votaries of the Juggernaut of Fashion, and still the Coverdales lingered within the precincts of the modern Babylon. Lord Alfred Courtland having received a summons to join his family at Leghorn, had refused to obey it on the plea of ill health, backed by a physician’s opinion, which cost one guinea, and was worth----! Well, really, in this case it _was_ worth something, for it saved Lord Alfred a lecture, and he disliked being lectured, even for his good--silly young man! so he stayed in town, doing as other folks did, and hoping thereby to become a man of fashion; but, as he only acted like other people, and did nothing very clever, or very foolish, or very wrong, he by no means succeeded in obtaining the reputation he coveted. With this consciousness of failure before his eyes, he one night lounged dismally out of his stall at the Opera, and was proceeding with dejected steps along the lobby, when he suddenly encountered Horace D’Almayne, better dressed and better pleased with himself than ever. “Well met, my lord; I was just wishing for an agreeable companion,” was his complimentary salutation. “I am naturally a sociable animal; if you have no better employment, will you take pity on me for an hour or so?”