Far from it, every incident, every influence was different. _Dramatis personæ_ had entered on the scene who were as new as they were distasteful to Harry Fane; but they were not new to Lady Bell, and they and their fellows were possessed of long established claims on her regard. True, some weeks had passed, during which Captain Fane had been before his chiefs of the Admiralty, and kept hard at work on his professional business; but a few weeks were nothing, in Harry Fane’s estimation, to warrant this transformation. When Captain Fane employed his next disengaged morning, in repairing to his cousin’s house in Cleveland Court, he found a gay company marshalled there, about to take advantage of an unusually fine February day to have a party on the water. “Well come, Harry!” cried hearty Lady Sundon; “we only lacked a naval man to sit in the end of our barge.” “We shall be glad to avail ourselves of your experience, sir,” Lady Bell, whose party it was specially, was polite enough to say; but it was said carelessly, and she did not wait for an answer, as both her ears were monopolized. The one ear was filled with the whispers of an affected, lisping woman, into whose affectation and lisp there could yet be infused such a judiciously-mixed spice of wit and scandal as very often rendered her whispers irresistible to their hearers. Lady Bell’s remaining ear was kept fixed by the honeyed sharpness of tongue of a long, lazy, handsome man, in the lingering exquisiteness of costume of a purple-velvet coat and breeches and white silk stockings, double vest—one white, the other jonquil colour—two watch guards, a solitaire, diamond buckles, and a little hat. Beside this full-fledged, fine-hued gentleman, Captain Fane, in his plain blue and white uniform, looked a very sober, and, in his present humour, a somewhat gruff bird; but Harry took up his gold-laced hat on the amount of encouragement he received, and went with the company. He was the more induced to join the party because he was all at once seized with a burning wish and necessity to ascertain the precise terms on which Lady Bell Trevor stood with two of her companions. Partial and superficial as Captain Fane’s acquaintance with the fashionable world was, the pair were too marked for him not to have a chance of being familiar with their antecedents. Sir George Waring and Mrs. Lascelles were connected by more than an accidental association, though they had escaped the ignominy of a miserable bond of union. The owners of the names were continually to be seen together at the same gay parties, some of which were of a debatable character. It was well understood that the couple were fast allies, though the nature of the alliance remained a mystery. Was it friendship among the heartless, as there is honour among thieves? Lady Bell honestly believed so.