Mr. Barclay read remarkably well, and soon fixed the attention of all the company, except that of Lady Angelica and her knight, Sir James Harcourt, whom she detained in her service. She could not be so flagrantly rude as to interrupt the reader by audible exclamations, but by dumb-show, by a variety of gestures and pretty looks of delight at every fresh story added to her card edifice, and at every motion of terror lest her tower should fall, her ladyship showed Mr. Barclay that she was not listening to that which she knew he was particularly desirous that she should hear. The moment the reader’s voice ceased, Lady Angelica approached the table. “Ten millions of pardons!” said she, drawing some cards from beneath Miss Caroline Percy’s elbow, which rested on them. “Unpardonable wretch that I am, to have disturbed such a reverie--and such an attitude! Mr. Barclay,” continued her ladyship, “now if you have leisure to think of me, may I trouble you for some of your little cards for the attic of my dear Folly?” Mr. Barclay coolly presented the cards to her ladyship: then looked out of the window, observed that his horse was at the door, and was following Mr. Percy out of the room, when Lady Angelica, just as Mr. Barclay passed, blew down her tower, and exclaimed, “There’s an end of my folly--of one of my follies, I mean: I wish I could blow them all away so easily.” The sigh and look of penitence with which she pronounced these words were accepted as expiation--Mr. Barclay stopped and returned; while sweeping the wreck of her tower from the table, she repeated, “Easy, as when ashore an infant stands, And draws imagined houses on the sands, The sportive wanton, pleased with some new play, Sweeps the slight works and fancied domes away: Thus vanish at thy touch the tow’rs and walls, The toil of _mornings_ in a moment falls.” “Beautiful lines!” said Mr. Barclay. “And charmingly repeated,” said Sir James Harcourt: “are they your ladyship’s own?” “No; Homer’s,” said she, smiling; “Pope’s Homer’s, I mean.” To cover his blunder as fast as possible, Sir James went on to something else, and asked what her ladyship thought of Flaxman’s sketches from the Iliad and Odyssey? He had seen the book lying on the library table yesterday: indeed, his eye had been caught, as it lay open, by a striking resemblance--he knew it was very rude to talk of likenesses--but, really, the resemblance was striking between a lady he had in his view, and one of the figures in Flaxman, of Venus, or Penelope, he could not say which, but he would look for the book and see in a moment.