Her mood was a match for the occasion. She clearly recognized the extravagant whimsicality of sitting down to dinner in such company, at such a season, and in such a place. It was a piece of mad folly, of cynical bravado; and she took her seat at the table with an air of reckless mischief that was wholly adorable. She played the game. To-morrow we must leave our native land for ever, but that night we contrived to forget everything--our perilous situation, our destitution and our desperate case, in quips and jests, good wine and boisterous laughter. Mr. Sadler afterwards, very deservedly I do not doubt, came to be hanged. But it was sound judgment in me to invite him to our last dinner. What a fine merry rogue he was, to be sure! What an instinct he betrayed for goodfellowship! He came to be hanged, it is true, but that night his laugh rang the loudest and frankest, his jests had the keenest edge, and it was from his eyes that the most whole-hearted humour beaconed. He was as merry a rascal as any with whom I ever had the honour to drain a glass. But he was a man of true breeding too, so that he neither embarrassed Mrs. Cynthia as a highwayman less of a gentleman doubtless would have done in such singular circumstances; nor did he once arouse anger or jealousy in me. "To your eyes, your ladyship, and to your lordship's nose," so far from provoking offence, became a source of mirth from the frank jovial tones with which it was uttered, and the inimitable gestures by which it was accompanied. For his own part, Mr. Sadler admitted that this meeting was highly piquant to him, since on a former occasion he had solemnly written us down in his own mind as a pair of cheats and impostors. It struck him as an entirely remarkable circumstance that after all we should prove to be the very persons we had purported to be; and as one no less so, that he should ever have presumed us to be otherwise. But as I pointed out to him, after all, his error was not so surprising. The judgment of the world is at the mercy of the obvious. It prefers to appraise a picture by its frame. Were it otherwise, our very titles, and material distinctions of that kind, would cease to have a meaning.