lookers-on from the outer world his triumphs may have appeared easy. It seemed as if he had only to elevate his voice with a certain emphasis, and to look round the court with a certain self-assured smile, and lo, his audience rejoiced and were merry. "The great question at issue, gentlemen of the jury, is the question of '_trimmings_.' (Laughter.) You have all of you heard, no doubt, of a leg of mutton and trimmings (renewed laughter); but the trimmings in question are of far greater value than the turnips of a Cincinnatus, or the potatoes of a Raleigh. The question in point, gentlemen, if I may venture upon that play of words which the great Samuel Johnson held in such detestation, is a question _of_ point. The point-lace flounce, for which my client charges one hundred and thirty-nine pounds fourteen and sixpence, was, I am told, one of the rarest specimens of the workmanship of the Beguines of Flanders. And who and what are these Beguines, gentlemen of the jury, by whose patient fingers this delicate fabric was manufactured? Were they common workwomen, to be recompensed at a common rate? No, gentlemen of the jury, they were ladies--ladies of honourable lineage and independent means, who of their own free will retired into a Beguinage--a religious house, which was yet not a convent; and there, free from the bondage of any formal vow, they devoted themselves to the consolation of the poor and afflicted, and the manufacture of that rare old lace which is now the proudest boast of our female aristocracy. Why, gentlemen, the price demanded by my client is something pitiful when we remember the circumstances under which that point-lace was made--the taper fingers that have toiled to fashion those intricate arabesques--the solitary tears that have bedewed the fairy fabric." And here it may be that the great O'Boyneville himself produced a palpable tear on the end of his finger, and gazed at it for a moment in absence of mind, as wondering what it was,--or seemed so to gaze, while in reality his piercing eye shot towards the jury to see whether they were laughing at him, or whether his rhodomontade had told. This was the man who had found himself so ill at ease in the society of one beautiful woman. The dowager appeared presently.