Mr. Villars knew right well that with Lady Lochore, as with the other fair of his acquaintance, his favour fell with the barometer of certain little negotiations. But it was a characteristic—no doubt maternally inherited—that soft as he was upon the pleasure side of nature, when it came to business, he was invulnerable. At this point Mr. Herrick burst into song. He had a pretty tenor voice: Come, bring your sampler, and with art Draw in’t a wounded heart And dropping here and there! Not that I think that any dart Can make yours bleed a tear Or pierce it anywhere—— This youth was proud of tracing a collateral relationship with the genial Cavalier singer, whom he was fond of quoting in season and out of season. He was a poet himself, or fancied so; cultivated loose locks, open collars and flying ties—something also of poetic license in other matters besides verse. But as his spirits were as inexhaustible as his purse—and he was at heart a guileless boy—there were not many who would hold him in rigour. Lady Lochore looked at him with approval, as he lay stretched at her feet, just then pleasantly occupied in sticking his decapitated daisies into Miss Priscilla’s uncovered curls—a process to which that damsel submitted without so much as a blink of her demure eyelid. “Heart!” echoed Lady Lochore. She had received that morning a postal application for overdue interest, and Tom Villars had been so detachedly sympathetic that there were no tortures she would not now cheerfully have inflicted upon him. “Heart!” she cried again, “why don’t you know what is going to happen, when the poor old machine that is Tom Villars comes to a standstill at last——” “There will be a great concourse of physicians,” broke in Colonel Harcourt, whose wit was not equal to his humour, “and when they’ve taken off his wig and his stays and cut him open——” “Out will fall,” interrupted Herrick, “the portrait of his dear cousin Rebecca—whom he loved in the days of George II. ‘Be she likewise one of those That an acre hath of nose——’” “The physician will find a dreadful little withered fungus,” pursued Lady Lochore, unheeding. “Which,” lisped Priscilla, suddenly raising the most innocent eyes in all the world, “which they will send to Master Rickart to find a grand name for, as the deadliest kind of poison that ever set doctors wondering. And sure, ’tisn’t poison at all! Master Rickart will say, but just a poor kind of snuff that wouldn’t even make a cat sneeze.” Mr. Villars had met Miss Priscilla Geary upon the great oak stair this morning; and, examining her through his single eyeglass, had vowed she was a rosebud, and pinched her chin—all in a very condescending manner. “I think you’re all talking very great nonsense,” remarked the Dishonourable Caroline.