A home-thrust, as Lady Caroline well knew. The only time that Lord Hetherington during his life had managed to pluck up a spirit was on the occasion of some real or fancied slight offered by his wife to his sister. Tail-lashings and roarings, and a display of fangs are expected from the tiger, if, as the poet finely puts it, "it is his nature to." But when the mild and inoffensive sheep paws the ground, and makes ready for an onslaught with his head, it is the more terrible because it is so unexpected. Lord Hetherington's assertion of his dignity and his rights on the one occasion in question was so tremendous that her ladyship never forgot it, and she was extremely unwilling to go through such another scene. So her manner was considerably modified, and her voice considerably lowered in tone as she said---- "No, but really, Caroline, you provoke me into saying things which you know I don't mean. You are so thoughtless and headstrong----" "I never was cooler or calmer in my life! You complain of my conduct in your house. It would be utterly beneath me to defend that conduct, it requires no defence, so I take the only alternative left, and quit your house." "No; but, Caroline, can't you see----" "I can see this, Lady Hetherington, and I shall mention it once for all. You have never treated that gentleman, Mr. Joyce, as he ought to be treated. He is a gentleman, in mind and thought and education, and he comes here and does for poor dear stupid West what West is totally unable to do himself, and yet is most anxious to have the credit of. The position which Mr. Joyce holds is a most delicate one, one which he fills most delicately, but one which any man with a less acute sense of honour and right might use to his own advantage, and to bring ridicule on his employer. Don't fancy I'm hard on dear old West in saying this; if he's your husband he's my brother, and you can't be more jealous of his name than I am. But it's best to be plainspoken about the matter now, it may save some serious difficulties hereafter. And how do you treat this gentleman? Until I spoke to you some months since you ignored his presence; although he was domesticated in your house you scarcely knew his personal appearance. Since then you bow, and give him an occasional word, but you're not half so polite to him as you are to the quadrille-bandsman when he is in much request, or to the Bond Street librarian when stalls for some particular performance are scarce. I am different; I am sick to death of 'us' and our 'set,' and our insipid _fade_ ways, and our frightful conventionality and awful dulness! Our men are even more odious than our women, and that's saying a good deal; their conversation varies between insolence and inanity, and as they dare not talk the first to me, they're compelled to fall back on the second. When I meet this gentleman, I find him perfectly well-bred, perfectly at his ease, with a modest assurance