Now with Captain Lord Algernon Fitznit it is different. It was different, we remember, with Mr. Mudison. He came into our lives as Mrs. Radigan was growing smart, and naturally she found the _premiere danseur_ of the cotillons, the member of seven clubs, the polo player with nine handicap a more congenial companion than John, who hopped when he danced and was just learning to take a fence and handle a mallet. Poor John! At the risk of life and limb, he became a thorough sport to please his wife, and then found that, having established herself as smart, she was looking on life with a cynical eye and becoming clever. Lord Algernon is clever, she says. He has been spending a week with us at the Westbury place, and will be here until after the wedding. Mrs. Radigan laid hands on him at the Bumpschus breakfast and simply would not let him go back to England until he had given us some of his valuable time, so down he came, with all his six feet four, his sad, drooping mustache, his monocle, and his "Aw." He is to sail in a few weeks with the Duke and Duchess of Nocastle, and the bull pups, who are now South on their wedding-trip. Pearl Veal said that we shall be having the Colossus of Rhodes down next, but I cannot see that Lord Algernon bothers her very much, as her sister hardly lets him out of her sight, though at various times she has had a lot of people to meet him. One of the first was Carrie de Bowler, the actress, who goes everywhere now. Pearl argues that she is really not an actress, but is simply a star, and is received because she is beautiful and has good manners. Mrs. Radigan has been very kind to Miss de Bowler this winter, and when she found out that Lord Algernon had once married a dancer, but that it had been broken off by the family, she immediately concluded that he liked clever people, and asked the lovely Carrie for a week-end, with Hetherington Hopper, who writes nonsense novels. I cannot understand where she conceived the idea that the English giant was intellectual. Of course his predilection for the stage is well known, in London it is a common scandal, but on my fishing expeditions into his brains I have hooked up only a few facts relating to dogs and horses, and two anecdotes from the _Sporting Times_. But he is as good-natured as he is big. He listens well on any subject. Give him a comfortable chair, a cigar, a Scotch-and-soda, and he seems to enjoy Mrs. Radigan's views on the futility of life and the saving power of art just as well as Radigan's discourses on gasoline cars and stocks. Now when Mrs. Radigan reads scenes from her novel to her husband he dozes off to sleep and dreams of stocks and horses, so that when she pauses at the end of a thrilling climax, to hear him snoring gently, she is rightly indignant. But Lord Algernon seems to sleep with his eyes open, and every now and then he says "Aw" or "Jolly" or "Clever--very clever," and sips his Scotch. So Mrs. Radigan feels that their tastes are the same.