"A duel! How delightful to be the heroine of a duel!" exclaimed the volatile Dora. "And who is that pretty woman in the sacque and puffed cap?" asked Caradoc, pointing to a brisk-looking dame in a long stomacher. She was well rouged, rather _décolletée_, had a roguish kissing-patch in the corner of her mouth, and looked very like Dora indeed. "Papa's grandmother, who insisted on wearing a white rose when she was presented to the Elector at St. James's," replied Dora; "and her marriage to the heir of Craigaderyn is chronicled in the fashion of the Georgian era, by gossipping Mr. Sylvanus Urban, as that of 'Mistress Betty Temple, an agreeable and modest young lady with 50,000_l_. fortune, from the eastward of Temple Bar.' I don't think people were such tuft-hunters in those days as they are now. Do _you_ think so, Mr. Guilfoyle? O, I am sure, that if all we read in novels is true, there must have been more romantic marriages and much more honest love long ago than we find in society now. What do you say to this, Estelle?" But the fair Estelle only fanned herself, and replied by a languid smile, that somehow eluded when it might have fallen on _me_. So while we lingered over the dessert (the pineapples, peaches, grapes, and so forth being all the produce of Sir Madoc's own hothouses), Dora resumed: "And so, poor Harry Hardinge, in a few weeks more you will be far away from us, and face to face with those odious Russians--in a real battle, perhaps. It is something terrible to think of! Ah, heavens, if you should be killed!" she added, as her smile certainly passed away for a moment. "I don't think somehow there is very much danger of that--at least I can but hope--" "Or wounded! If you should lose a leg--two legs perhaps--" "He could scarcely lose _more_," said Mr. Guilfoyle. "And come home with wooden ones!" she continued, lowering her voice. "You will look so funny! O, I could never love or marry a man with wooden stumps!" "But," said I, a little irritated that she should see anything so very amusing in this supposed contingency, "I don't mean to marry _you_." "Of course not--I know that. It is Winny, papa thinks--or is it Estelle Cressingham you prefer?" Lowly and whispered though the heedless girl said this, it reached the ears of Lady Estelle, and caused her to grow if possible paler, while I felt my face suffused with scarlet; but luckily all now rose from the table, as the ladies, led by Winifred, filed back alone to the drawing-room; and I felt that Dora's too palpable hints must have done much to make or mar my cause--perhaps to gain me the enmity of both her sister and the Lady Estelle.