'And round and round the ghosts of beauty glide.' What a picture it conjures up! Who would not prefer a home and home duties to that perpetual round of pleasures which so soon cease to please?" And then Lady Cecil thought of the big dingy house in Bloomsbury, and wondered whether the serenity and quiet cheerfulness of the ideal home would ever pervade that dismal mansion. She had hung birds in the southern windows, and had bought rustic baskets of flowers, and perfumed caskets and workboxes, for the adornment of the dingy drawing-rooms; but she had not been able as yet to impart that homelike aspect to Mr. O'Boyneville's dwelling for which her soul yearned. The Pevenshall visitors were busy with the preparations for the comedy. The billiard-room was given up to rehearsals; the billiard-table was pushed into a dark corner, much to the annoyance of Mr. Lobyer, who fled in despair to Manchester. There was a rehearsal every day during the fortnight preceding the eventful evening; for it is astonishing how much rehearsing one of Scribe's comedies requires when the performers are pretty girls and elegant young men. The business might have been managed in less time, perhaps, had there not been considerable hindrance of one kind and another to the steady progress of the affair. There was one day upon which the arrival of a box of powdered wigs from London interrupted the course of rehearsal, and ultimately put a stop to it, for Mrs. Lobyer having run away to try on her wig, the other ladies followed her example, and then the gentlemen were seized with a like curiosity as to the effect of powder; and there was a general trying on of wigs, all of which were pronounced by the wearers to be hideously ugly and cruelly disappointing; for the effect of a powdered wig, combined with modern costume, in the chill winter sunlight, is by no means agreeable. Other rehearsals were interrupted by little squabbles about stage arrangements: for Sir Nugent Evershed and the West-end club-men were at variance upon many points; while one of the latter gentlemen was inclined to give himself airs upon the strength of having assisted at the getting up of the _School for Scandal_ at the Countess of Warlinghame's place at Twickenham; and then there was time lost by reason of feminine gigglings; and particular people were missing at important moments; and there was a great deal of trying back, and perpetual disputations as to entrances and exits. But it was altogether very delightful, and every one seemed to enjoy him or herself amazingly. Mr. Lobyer, looking into the billiard-room sometimes in the course of the morning, was wont to make some contemptuous remark upon the occupation of his wife and her guests, before taking his flight to Manchester. And so the days went by, until the last rehearsal took place on the evening prior to the performance, and every body was pronounced perfect in the words of the airiest and most delightful of modern dramatists.