Notwithstanding this stern sneer, a practiced general like Mr. Brancepeth felt he had won the day. All his guests would disperse and tell the world that they had dined with him and met St. Aldegonde, and to-morrow there would be a blazoned paragraph in the journals commemorating the event, and written as if by a herald. What did a little disturb his hospitable mind was that St. Aldegonde literally tasted nothing. He did not care so much for his occasionally leaning on the table with both his elbows, but that he should pass by every dish was distressing. So Mr. Brancepeth whispered to his own valet—a fine gentleman, who stood by his master’s chair and attended on no one else, except, when requisite, his master’s immediate neighbor—and desired him to suggest to St. Aldegonde whether the side-table might not provide, under the difficulties, some sustenance. St. Aldegonde seemed quite gratified by the attention, and said he should like to have some cold meat. Now, that was the only thing the side-table, bounteous as was its disposition, could not provide. All the joints of the season were named in vain, and pies and preparations of many climes. But nothing would satisfy St. Aldegonde but cold meat. “Well, now I shall begin my dinner,” he said to Pinto, when he was at length served. “What surprises me most in you is your English. There is not a man who speaks such good English as you do.” “English is an expressive language,” said Mr. Pinto, “but not difficult to master. Its range is limited. It consists, as far as I can observe, of four words: ‘nice,’ ‘jolly,’ ‘charming,’ and ‘bore;’ and some grammarians add ‘fond.’” When the guests rose and returned to the saloon, St. Aldegonde was in high spirits, and talked to every one, even to the Duke of Brecon, whom he considerately reminded of his defeat in the morning, adding that from what he had seen of his grace’s guns he had no opinion of them, and that he did not believe that breech-loaders suited pigeon-shooting. Finally, when he bade farewell to his host, St. Aldegonde assured him that he “never in his life made so good a dinner, and that Pinto had never been so rich.” When the party broke up, the majority of the guests went, sooner or later, to a ball that was given this evening by Lady St. Jerome. Others, who never went to balls, looked forward with refined satisfaction to a night of unbroken tobacco. St. Aldegonde went to play whist at the house of a lady who lived out of town. “I like the drive home,” he said; “the morning air is so refreshing when one has lost one’s money.”