lackening it as to call forth the profanely circumstantial
exposition. Smirks, blushes, dead silences, and in the lower regions
roars, hung round it.

But the lady, though absent, did not figure poorly at all. Granting
Whitechapel and the shillelagh affair, certain whispers of her good
looks, contested only to be the more violently asserted; and therewith
Rose Mackrell's tale of her being a 'young woman of birth,' having a
'romantic story to tell of herself and her parentage,' made her latest
performance the champagne event of it hitherto. Men sparkled when they
had it on their lips.

How, then, London asked, would the Earl of Fleetwood move his pieces
in reply to his countess's particularly clever indication of the check
threatening mate?

His move had no relation to the game, it was thought at first. The world
could not suppose that he moved a simple pawn on his marriage board. He
purchased a shop in Piccadilly for the sale of fruit and flowers.

Lady Arpington was entreated to deal at the shop, Countess Livia had her
orders; his friends, his parasites and satellites, were to deal there.
Intensely earnest as usual, he besought great ladies to let him have
the overflow of their hothouses; and they classing it as another of the
mystifications of a purse crazy for repleteness, inquired: 'But is it
you we are to deal with?' And he quite seriously said: 'With me, yes, at
present.' Something was behind the curtain, of course. His gravity had
the effect of the ultra-comical in concealing it.

The shop was opened. We have the assurance of Rose Mackrell, that he
entered and examined the piles and pans of fruit, and the bouquets
cunningly arranged by a hand smelling French. The shop was roomy,
splendid windows lighted the yellow, the golden, the green and
parti-coloured stores. Four doors off, a chemist's motley in bellied
glasses crashed on the sight. Passengers along the pavement had
presented to them such a contrast as might be shown if we could imagine
the Lethean ferry-boatload brought sharp against Pomona's lapful. In
addition to the plucked flowers and fruits of the shop, Rose Mackrell
more attentively examined the samples doing service at the counters.
They were three, under supervision of a watchful-eyed fourth. Dame
Gossip is for quoting his wit. But the conclusion he reached, after
quitting the shop and pacing his dozen steps, is important; for it sent
a wind over the town to set the springs of tattle going as w