Sir Jasper did not kneel to Selina. He behaved, Kitty thought, with a better dignity than she could have expected and also more intelligence. He promised perfect confidence in the future and a rope of pearls; the most tender forbearance in all difficulties and emerald earrings; the unswerving devotion of a manly heart and six Catalonian horses to the finest coach woman ever drove in. He furthermore volunteered to double his wife’s pin-money, and altogether, as Lady Kilcroney informed her Denis afterwards, made a more graceful leg out of the business than could have been imagined from the gross fashion in which he had cantered in. Lady Selina at length allowed an inert hand to lie in his clasp, and even permitted him to touch an averted cheek in token of her pardon; and it was an extremely chastened buck that wended his way out of St. James’s Palace in the direction of Bond Street, and it was a tremendous sigh of relief that my Lady Kilcroney heaved. “Now child,” quoth she, “as Mr. Shakespeare hath it, ‘All’s well that ends well.’ But do not make the mistake of keeping up your frigid airs too long. The real way to treat the wretches is to grant a little from time to time, and demand a great deal.” “I’m much obliged to you, I’m sure, ma’am, for your kind interest,” said Lady Selina, and dropped her white eyelids over her audacious cold eyes. “_There has been another elopement_,” wrote Miss Burney, the Queen’s reader, to her sister, “_and you would never believe, my dearest Susan, who and in what circumstances. Lady Selina Vereker was, you know, to wed Sir Joseph Standish, that handsome widower (scarce indeed a year widowed of his poor Julia; men are strange things! I met her once, she was a very elegant woman). Lady Selina was, as I say, dear Susan, to wed Sir Jasper this actual next Monday, and my Lady Kilcroney who, as you know, hath the kind of good nature that is for ever interfering in other people’s affairs, was to give the breakfast at her own mansion in Hertford Street. ’Twas said she made the match. ’Tis quite certain she recommended the young lady at Court. She must be vastly sorry on both these accounts now. Princess Augusta was to go to the wedding (the bride being her own Maid-of-Honour); and altogether it is an odd, unpleasant business, as you will hear. Last night, then, Lady Selina attended the Royals to the Opera House. ’Twas to be her last duty of the kind, and she was ablaze, my dear, they tell me, with Sir Jasper’s jewels. The poor man was infatuated. I cannot but pity him. She stood behind the Princess Augusta in the box as usual, and no one knows the exact moment of her disappearance. ’Tis positive she was present at the beginning of the third act. Then all attention was turned to the stage, and at the end of it she was nowhere to be found! Conceive it, my dearest Susan, to choose such a manner and such company, for such a proceeding! To me