Mrs. Ricketts was perfect in all the skill of this peculiar game, and knew how, by the most ostentatious display of respect in public, not only to exalt the illustrious person--age who deigned to acknowledge her, but also to attach notice to herself as the individual so highly favored. What reverential courtesies would she drop before the presence of some small German “Hochheit,” with a gambling-house for a palace, and a roulette-table for an exchequer! What devotional observances would she perform in front of the chair of some snuffy old Dowager “Herzogin,” of an unknown or forgotten principality! How pertinaciously would she remain standing till some “Durchlaut” was “out of the horizon;” or how studiously would she retire before the advancing step of some puny potentate,--a monarch of three huesars and thirty chamberlains! Poor Peter was but a sorry pupil in this “School of Design.” He found it difficult to associate rank with unwashed faces and unbrushed clothes; and although he _did_ bow, and flourish his hat, and perform all the other semblances of respect, he always gave one the idea of an irreverential Acolyte at the back of a profoundly impressed and dignified high-priest. Dalton was far more at his ease when he paraded the rooms with Mrs. Ricketts on one arm, and Martha on the other, enjoying heartily all the notice they elicited, and accepting, as honest admiration, the staring wonderment and surprise their appearance was sure to excite. Mrs. Ricketts, who had always something geographical about her taste in dress, had this year leaned towards the Oriental, and accordingly presented herself before the admiring world of Baden in a richly spangled muslin turban, and the very shortest of petticoats, beneath which appeared a pair of ample trousers, whose deep lace frills covered the feet, and even swept the floor. A paper-knife of silver gilt, made to resemble a yataghan, and a smelling-bottle, in the counterfeit of a pistol, glittered at her girdle, which, with the aid of a very well arched pair of painted eyebrows, made up as presentable a Sultana as one usually sees in a second-rate theatre. If Dalton's blue coat and tight nankeen pantaloons----his favorite full-dress costume--did somewhat destroy the “Bosphorean illusion,” as Zoe herself called it, still more did Martha's plain black silk and straw bonnet,--both types of the strictly useful, without the slightest taint of extraneous ornament.