On the contrary, he who was no dangler in drawing-rooms, and was wont to improve his time in town by going afresh over the libraries and museums, and by attending every gathering and discussion of scientific men, began to haunt Lady Sundon’s rooms, until even that hospitably-disposed kinswoman could not refrain from an uneasy private comment, “Something’s going to happen to Harry Fane; he is turning up for ever, like a new farthing. He used to make himself as scarce and hard to find as a gold guinea, but now he has become dirt-cheap, and is always lying about in everybody’s way. Lady Bell, Lady Bell, I hope you understand that I only bade you sort my cousin in jest. I hope that you have not to answer for a brave sailor’s undoing. He has enough of knocking about in the open sea, without being run down in the harbour; and I consider Harry like a son of my own, since his own folk are all dead and gone.” Lady Bell bore the unspoken charge as if she were perfectly innocent, save that even a more brilliant bloom than she had shown lately, glowed in her cheeks and was reflected in her eyes. Lady Bell was full of a gaiety of the season in which she was about to take a part, and which was novel to her. “I dare say I shall soon have had enough of the gay world—my fling, as you call it, Lady Sundon—but I have not yet been to a masquerade,” explained Lady Bell; “I confess that I am dying with curiosity to see what it is like. Only fancy one’s ordinary neighbours and friends as sultanas and chimney-sweeps, Queen Elizabeths and Richard the Thirds. Oh! I think it must be charmingly romantic and diverting—that fun of finding people out, and of baffling their curiosity, while you may be as witty as you please and can.” “All very fine, my dear; but Cornely’s masquerades were not exactly the place for seeing proper company”—Lady Sundon played the monitor for once—“and at the old Pantheon masquerades, Covent-Garden women and highwaymen used to mix with the regular guests. How could it be otherwise, when nobody could tell who was who?” “Yet you all went to these places, my dear Lady Sundon,” Lady Bell coaxed her friend, “and riots have gone out of fashion. Besides, this masquerade is to be given by the gentlemen of White’s. They are to have lady patronesses. At an hour fixed upon, each lady and gentleman is to unmask, so that one could not be safer in a private house. Indeed I am very glad that the gentlemen of White’s are to be prodigiously gallant, and give a masquerade ball this year, when I happen to be in town. Tickets must be procured for you and Nancy and Lyddy, Lady Sundon; of course they must. I’ll never rest till the deficiency is supplied; I’ll not stir a foot, or order a costume, without you.”