‘What a perfect family,’ exclaimed Hugo Bohun, as he extracted a couple of fat little birds from their bed of aspic jelly; ‘everything they do in such perfect taste. How safe you were here to have ortolans for supper!’ All the little round tables, though their number was infinite, were full. Male groups hung about; some in attendance on fair dames, some foraging for themselves, some thoughtful and more patient and awaiting a satisfactory future. Never was such an elegant clatter. ‘I wonder where Carisbrooke is,’ said Hugo Bohun. ‘They say he is wonderfully taken with the beauteous daughter of the house.’ ‘I will back the Duke of Brecon against him,’ said one of his companions. ‘He raved about her at White’s yesterday.’ ‘Hem!’ ‘The end is not so near as all that,’ said a third wassailer. ‘I do not know that,’ said Hugo Bohun. ‘It is a family that marries off quickly. If a fellow is obliged to marry, he always likes to marry one of them.’ ‘What of this new star?’ said his friend, and he mentioned Lothair. ‘Oh! he is too young; not launched. Besides he is going to turn Catholic, and I doubt whether that would do in that quarter.’ ‘But he has a greater fortune than any of them.’ ‘Immense! A man I know, who knows another man——’ and then he began a long statistical story about Lothair’s resources. ‘Have you got any room here, Hugo?’ drawled out Lord St. Aldegonde. ‘Plenty, and here is my chair.’ ‘On no account; half of it and some soup will satisfy me.’ ‘I should have thought you would have been with the swells,’ said Hugo Bohun. ‘That does not exactly suit me,’ said St. Aldegonde. ‘I was ticketed to the Duchess of Salop, but I got a first-rate substitute with the charm of novelty for her Grace, and sent her in with Lothair.’