“It is not actually bought, my dear,” said his lordship; “but if it suits your fancy, I hope you will do me the honour to wear it for my sake.” “I will wear it for your sake, my lord,” said Lady Delacour, “if you desire it; and as a mark of your regard it is agreeable: but as to the rest-- ‘My taste for diamonds now is o’er, The sparkling baubles please no more.’ If you wish to do me a kindness, I will tell you what I should like much better than diamonds, though I know it is rather ungracious to dictate the form and fashion of a favour. But as my dictatorship in all human probability cannot last much longer--” “Oh, my dear Lady Delacour! I must not hear you talk in this manner: your dictatorship, as you call it, will I hope last many, many happy years. But to the point--what should you like better, my dear, than this foolish ring?” Her ladyship then expressed her wish that a small annuity might be settled upon a poor old man, whom she said she had unwittingly injured. She told the story of the rival galas and the aloe, and concluded by observing, that her lord was in some measure called upon to remedy part of the unnumbered ills which had sprung from her hatred of Mrs. Luttridge, as he had originally been the cause of her unextinguishable ire. Lord Delacour was flattered by this hint, and the annuity was immediately promised to the old gardener. In talking to this old man afterward, Lady Delacour found, that the family in whose service he lately lived had a house at Twickenham that would just answer her purpose. Lord Delacour’s inquiries had hitherto been unsuccessful; he was rejoiced to find what he wanted just as he was giving up the search. The house was taken, and the old man hired as gardener--a circumstance which seemed to give him almost as much pleasure as the annuity; for there was a morello cherry-tree in the garden which had succeeded the aloe in his affection: “it would have grieved him sorely,” he said, “to leave his favourite tree to strangers, after all the pains he had been at _in netting_ it to keep off the birds.” As the period approached when her fate was to be decided, Lady Delacour’s courage seemed to rise; and at the same time her anxiety, that her secret should not be discovered, appeared to increase.