A handsome fly carried off the ladies to Fitzroy Square, and the two worthy Indian gentlemen in their company; Clive and I walking, with the usual Havannah to light us home. And Clive remarked that he supposed there had been some difference between his father and the bankers: for they had not met for ever so many months before, and the Colonel always had looked very gloomy when his brothers were mentioned. “And I can’t help thinking,” says the astute youth, “that they fancied I was in love with Ethel (I know the Colonel would have liked me to make up to her), and that may have occasioned the row. Now, I suppose, they think I am engaged to Rosey. What the deuce are they in such a hurry to marry me for?” Clive’s companion remarked, “that marriage was a laudable institution: and an honest attachment an excellent conservator of youthful morals.” On which Clive replied, “Why don’t you marry yourself?” This it was justly suggested was no argument, but a merely personal allusion foreign to the question, which was, that marriage was laudable, etc. Mr. Clive laughed. “Rosey is as good a little creature as can be,” he said. “She is never out of temper, though I fancy Mrs. Mackenzie tries her. I don’t think she is very wise: but she is uncommonly pretty, and her beauty grows on you. As for Ethel, anything so high and mighty I have never seen since I saw the French giantess. Going to Court, and about to parties every night where a parcel of young fools flatter her, has perfectly spoiled her. By Jove, how handsome she is! How she turns with her long neck, and looks at you from under those black eyebrows! If I painted her hair, I think I should paint it almost blue, and then glaze over with lake. It _is_ blue. And how finely her head is joined on to her shoulders!”—And he waves in the air an imaginary line with his cigar. “She would do for Judith, wouldn’t she? Or how grand she would look as Herodias’s daughter sweeping down a stair—in a great dress of cloth-of-gold like Paul Veronese—holding a charger before her with white arms, you know—with the muscles accented like that glorious Diana at Paris—a savage smile on her face and a ghastly solemn gory head on the dish. I see the picture, sir, I see the picture!” and he fell to curling his mustachios just like his brave old father.