Owing to the warmth of the weather, Thaddeus came out this morning without boots; and it being the first time the exquisite proportion of his figure had been so fully seen by any of the present company excepting Euphemia, Lascelles, bursting with an emotion which he would not call envy, measured the count's graceful limb with his scornful eyes; then declaring he was quite in a furnace, took the corner of his glove and waving it to and fro, half-muttered, "Come gentle air." "The fairer Lascelles cries!" exclaimed Euphemia, looking off her exercise. "What! does your master teach you wit?" drawled the coxcomb, with a particular emphasis. Thaddeus, affecting not to hear, continued to direct his pupil. The indefatigable Lascelles having observed the complacence with which the count always regarded Miss Beaufort determined the goad should fret; and drawing the knitting out of his pocket which he had snatched the night before from Mary, he exclaimed, "'Fore heaven, here is my little Beaufort's purse!" Thaddeus started, and unconsciously looking up, beheld the well-known work of Mary dangling in the hand of Lascelles. He suffered pangs unknown to him; his eyes became dim; and hardly knowing what he saw or said, he pursued the lesson with increased rapidity. Finding that his malice had taken effect, with a careless air the malicious puppy threw his clumsy limbs on the sofa, which Miss Dundas had just quitted to seat herself nearer the window, and cried out, as in a voice of sudden recollection: "By the bye, that Miss Mary Beaufort, when she chooses to be sincere, is a staunch little Queen Bess." "You may as well tell me," replied Miss Dundas, with a deriding curl of her lip, "that she is the Empress of Russia." "I beg your pardon!" cried he, and raising his voice to be better heard, "I do not mean in the way of learning. But I will prove in a moment her creditable high-mightiness in these presumptuous times, though a silly love of popularity induces her to affect now and then a humble guise to some people beneath her. When she gave me this gewgaw," added he, flourishing the purse in his hand, "she told me a pretty tissue about a fair friend of hers, whose music-master, mistaking some condescension on her part, had dared to press her snowy fingers while directing them towards a tender chord on her harp. You have no notion how the gentle Beaufort's blue eyes blazed up while relating poor Tweedledum's presumption!" "I can have a notion of anything these boasted meek young ladies do when thrown off their guard," haughtily returned his contemptuous auditress, "after Miss Beaufort's violent sally of impertinence to you last night." "Impertinence to me!" echoed the fop, at the same time dipping the end of the knitting into Diana's lavender-bottle, and dabbing his temples; "she was always too civil by half. I hate forward girls."