His lordship was the only person who ever reproved her seriously, yet she loved him best of all her kindred or friends. “Aunt Angy is going to play hide-and-seek with us. Will you play, Sir Denzil?” “I shall think myself privileged if I may join in your amusements.” “What a courteous speech! You will be cutting off your pretty curly hair, and putting on a French perruque, like his”—pointing to De Malfort. “Please do not. You would be like everybody else in London—and now you are only like yourself—and vastly handsome.” “Hush, Henriette! you are much too pert,” remonstrated Fareham. “But ’tis the very truth, father. All the women who visit mother paint their faces, so that they are all alike; and all the men talk alike, so that I don’t know one from t’other, except Lord Rochester, who is impudenter and younger than the others, and gives me more sugar-plums and pays me prettier compliments than anybody else.” “Hold your tongue, mistress! A dinner-table is no place for pert children. Thy brother there has better manners,” said her father, pointing to the cherubic son and heir, whose ideas were concentrated upon a loaded plate of red-deer pasty. “You mean that he is greedier than I,” retorted Papillon. “He will eat till he won’t be able to run about with us after dinner; and then he will sprawl upon mother’s satin train by the fire, with Ganymede and Phosphor, and she will tell everybody how good and gentle he is, and how much better bred than his sister. And now, if people are _ever_ going to leave off eating, we may as well begin our games before it is quite dark. Perhaps _you_ are ready, auntie, if nobody else is.” Dinner may have ended a little quicker for this speech, although Papillon was sternly suppressed, and bade to keep silence or leave the table. She obeyed so far as to make no further remarks, but expressed her contempt for the gluttony of her elders by several loud yawns, and bounced up out of her seat, like a ball from a racket, directly the little gentleman in black sitting near his lordship had murmured a discreet thanksgiving. This gentleman was the Roman Catholic priest from Oxford, who had said Mass early that morning in the muniment room, and had been invited to his lordship’s table in honour of the festival. Papillon led all the games, and ordered everybody about. Mrs. Dorothy Lettsome, the young lady who was sorry she had not had the honour to be born in France, was of the party, with her brother, honest Dan Lettsome, an Oxfordshire squire, who had been in London only once in his life, to see the Coronation, and had nearly lost his life, as well as his purse and jewellery, in a tavern, after that august ceremonial. This bitter experience had given him a distaste for the pleasures of the town which his poor sister deplored exceedingly; since she was dependent upon his coffers, and subject to his authority, and had no hope of leaving Oxfordshire unless she were fortunate enough to find a town-bred husband.