In the round room we held separate levées. Amy always fixed herself near enough to me to see what I was about, and try to charm away some of my admirers. Heaven knows Fanny and I had plenty to spare her, for they did so flock about us they scarcely left us breathing room. Argyle looked as if he wanted to join us, but was afraid of Lady W----. "Are you not going home, pretty?" he would say to me, between his teeth, passing close to my ear. "Do speak louder, marquis," I answered, provoked that he should be afraid of any woman but myself. "I am not going home these three hours. I am going first to Amy's party." Lorne looked, not sulky, nor cross, as Fred Lamb would have done; but smiled beautifully, and said: "At three, then, may I go to you?" "Yes," answered I, putting my hand into his, and again I contrived to forget Lady W----. There was all the world at Amy's, and not half room enough for them. Some were in the passage and some in the parlour, and in the drawing-room one could scarcely breathe. At the top of it, Amy sat coquetting with her tall Russians. The poor Count Palmella stood gazing on her at an humble distance. The little delicate, weak, gentlemanlike Portuguese was no match for the three Cossacks. I do not believe he got in a single word the whole evening; but once, when Amy remarked that she should go the next evening to see the tragedy of _Omeo._ "What tragedy is that, pray?" drawled out the Honourable John William Ward, starting from a fit of the dismals, just as if some one had gone behind him and, with a flapper, reminded him that he was at a party, and ought to _faire l'aimable aux dames._ "You may laugh at me as much as you please," answered Amy, "and I must have patience and bear it, ight or ong; for I cannot pronounce the letter _r_." "How very odd!" I remarked. "Why, you could pronounce it well enough at home!" I really did not mean this to tease her; for I thought, perhaps, lisping might grow upon us as we got older; but I soon guessed it was all sham, by the gathering storm on Amy's countenance. The struggle between the wish to show off effeminate softness to her lovers, and her ardent desire to knock me down, I could see by an arch glance at me, from Fanny's laughing eye and a shrug of her shoulder, was understood by that sister as well as by myself. Fanny's glance was the slyest thing in nature, and was given in perfect fear and trembling. "Harriette's correctness may be, I am sorry to say,"--and she paused to endeavour to twist her upper lip, trembling with fury, into the shape and form of what might be most pure and innocent in virtuous indignation! Count Beckendorff eyed me with a look of pity and noble contempt, and then fixed his eyes with rapture on his angel's face! Joking apart he was a monstrous fool, that same Count Beckendorff, in the shape of a very handsome young Cossack.