for, in her conversation, there was much of the raciness of Irish wit, and the oddity of Irish humour. The singularity that struck me most about her ladyship was her indifference to flattery. She certainly preferred frolic. Miss Bland was her humble companion; Miss Tracey her _butt_. Her ladyship appeared to consider Miss Bland as a necessary appendage to her rank and person, like her dress or her shadow; and she seemed to think no more of the one than of the other. She suffered Miss Bland to follow her; but she would go in quest of n Miss Tracey. Miss Bland was allowed to speak; but her ladyship listened to Miss Tracey. Miss Bland seldom obtained an answer; but Miss Tracey never opened her lips without a repartee. In describing Miss Tracey, Lady Geraldine said, “Poor simpleton! she cannot help imitating all she sees us do; yet, would you believe it, she really has starts of common sense, and some tolerable ideas of her own. Spoiled by bad company! In the language of the bird-fanciers, she has a few notes nightingale, and all the rest rubbish.” It was one of Lady Geraldine’s delights to humour Miss Tracey’s rage for imitating the fashions of fine people. “Now you shall see Miss Tracey appear at the ball to-morrow, in every thing that I have sworn to her is fashionable. Nor have I cheated her in a single article: but the _tout ensemble_ I leave to her better judgment; and you shall see her, I trust, a perfect monster, formed of every creature’s best: Lady Kilrush’s feathers, Mrs. Moore’s wig, Mrs. O’Connor’s gown, Mrs. Lighton’s sleeves, and all the necklaces of all the Miss Ormsbys. She has no taste, no judgment; none at all, poor thing! but she can imitate as well as those Chinese painters, who, in their drawings, give you the flower of one plant stuck on the stalk of another, and garnished with the leaves of a third.” Miss Tracey’s appearance the ensuing night justified all Lady Geraldine’s predictions, and surpassed her ladyship’s most sanguine hopes. Even I, albeit unused to the laughing mood, could not forbear smiling at the humour and ease with which her ladyship played off this girl’s credulous vanity. At breakfast the next morning, Lord Kilrush, in his grave manner (always too solemn by half for the occasion), declared, “that no man was more willing than himself to enter into a jest in proper time, and season, and measure, and so forth; but that it was really, positively, morally unjustifiable, in _his_ apprehension, _the making_ this poor girl so publicly ridiculous.”