‘Not so fast,’ said she, ‘not so fast. I am discussing possibilities, Master Randolph, and you are accepting them for certainties; but enough of this--amusement is our chief business to-night. See, the queen of the revels is looking anxiously this way, and you have not been to pay her your homage yet. Delay no longer, her displeasure to-night is far weightier and more implacable than mine.’ As she spoke she dismissed him with a courteous gesture, and Randolph, nothing loth, commenced paying his court most assiduously to Mary Beton, with the double object of spending his time agreeably and worming out of her, ere the night was past, some corroboration of the Queen’s vague hints as to her approaching marriage. It was with secret pride and exultation the Twelfth-night queen, in all her assumed splendour, beheld the ambassador approach the circle that formed her sham Court. It would be too much to say that Mary Beton was deeply in love with Randolph, but she experienced from his attentions certain agreeable feelings, that originated in gratified vanity and a sense of her own superiority to her companions. It was indeed no petty triumph to have secured the homage of the fastidious and cynical Thomas Randolph: the man who was the type of refinement and the incarnation of selfishness, avowedly a despiser of women and a free-thinker in love. The pleasure, too, was doubtless in no small degree enhanced by the care-worn face of Alexander Ogilvy, who continued to haunt the Court, with a hopeless perseverance truly edifying, and made himself miserable with the self-immolating regularity peculiar to a lover, and totally inexplicable on any grounds of reason or expediency. Mary Beton had no objection in the world; she liked to have two strings to her bow. Two! Where is the woman who would refuse half-a-dozen? With all their vanity and all their libertinism, thus much we may safely say in favour of the ruder sex--a man is usually indisposed to have more than one attachment on his hands at a time. He may behave ungratefully, unfeelingly, brutally, to Dora, but it is for the sake of Flora. For however short a period it may be, yet, _while_ he wears those colours, Nora looking out for prey in every direction, shall strive to fascinate him in vain. But how different is the conduct of the last-named personage: brilliant and seductive, it is no reason, because she is herself in love with Tom, that she should refrain from the massacre of Jack, Dick, and Harry; nay, if Bill be fortunate enough to spend an hour or two in her company, away with him to the shambles too! Shall we pity Nora so very much when she wears the willow for the faithless Tom, and finds out too late that she never really cared a pin for the other victims who, more or less damaged, have made their escape from the toils?