“Just as you saw her last. Thinner, perhaps, but looking admirably.” “And the dear Duke how is he?” “Gouty always gouty but able to be about.” “I am so glad to hear it. It is so refreshing to talk of old friends.” “They are always talking of you. I'm sure, 'Zoe' forgive me the liberty Zoe Ricketts is an authority on every subject of taste and literature.” “How did you come here, my Lord?” whispered Haggerstone. “The new opera broke down, and there is no house open before twelve,” was the hasty reply. “Is Jemima married, my Lord?” “No. There 's something or other wrong about the settlements. Who's the foreigner, Haggy?” “A Pole. Petrolaffsky.” “No, no not a bit of it. _I_ know him,” said the other, rapidly; then, turning to Mrs. Ricketts, he grew warmly interested in the private life and adventures of the nobility, for all of whom she entertained a most catholic affection. It was, indeed, a grand field-day for the peerage; even to the “Pensioners” all were under arms. It was a review such as she rarely enjoyed, and certainly she “improved the occasion.” She scattered about her noble personages with the profusion of a child strewing wild-flowers. There were Dukes she had known from their cradles; Marchionesses with whom she had disported in childhood; Earls and Viscounts who had been her earliest playmates; not to speak of a more advanced stage in her history, when all these distinguished individuals were suppliants and suitors. To listen to her, you would swear that she had never played shuttlecock with anything under an Earl, nor trundled a hoop with aught below a Lord in Waiting! Norwood fooled her to the top of her bent. To use his own phrase, “he left her easy hazards, and everything on the balls.” It is needless to state that, in such pleasant converse, she had no memory for the noble Viscount's own transgressions. He might have robbed the Exchequer, or stolen the Crown jewels, for anything that she could recollect! and when, by a seeming accident, he did allude to Newmarket, and lament his most “unlucky book,” she smiled complacently, as though to say that he could afford himself even the luxury of being ruined, and not care for it. “Florence is pretty much as it used to be, I suppose,” said he; “and one really needs one's friends to rebut and refute foolish rumors, when they get abroad. Now, you 'll oblige me by contradicting, if you ever hear, this absurd story. I neither did win forty thousand from the Duke of Stratton, nor shoot him in a duel for non-payment.” Both these derelictions were invented on the moment. “You 'll hear fifty other similar offences laid to my charge; and I trust to you and the Onslows for the refutation. In fact, it is the duty of one's own class to defend 'their order.'”