the hint of the tip for winning, with the aid of
operatic arias; and though he was in Fleetwood's books ever since the
prize-fight, neither Fleetwood nor the husband nor any skittishness of
a timorous wife could stop the pursuer bent to capture the fairest and
most inflaming woman of her day.

'I prefer your stage Columelli,' Fleetwood said.

'I come from exile!' said Henrietta; and her plea in excuse of ecstatics
wrote her down as confessedly treasonable to the place quitted.

Ambrose Mallard entered the box, beholding only his goddess Livia. Their
eyebrows and inaudible lips conversed eloquently. He retired like a
trumped card on the appearance of M. de St. Ombre. The courtly Frenchman
won the ladies to join him in whipping the cream of the world for five
minutes, and passed out before his flavour was exhausted. Brailstone
took his lesson and departed, to spy at them from other boxes and heave
an inflated shirt-front. Young Cressett, the bottle of effervescence,
dashed in, and for him Livia's face was motherly. He rattled a tale of
the highway robbery of Sir Meeson Corby on one of his Yorkshire moors.
The picture of the little baronet arose upon the narration, and it
amused. Chumley Potts came to 'confirm every item,' as he said. 'Plucked
Corby clean. Pistol at his head. Quite old style. Time, ten P.M.
Suspects Great Britain, King, Lords and Commons, and buttons twenty
times tighter. Brosey Mallard down on him for a few fighting men.
Perfect answer to Brosey.'

'Mr. Mallard did not mention the robbery,' Henrietta remarked.

'Feared to shock: Corby such a favoured swain,' Potts accounted for the
omission.

'Brosey spilling last night?' Fleetwood asked.

'At the palazzo, we were,' said Potts. 'Luck pretty fair first off.
Brosey did his trick, and away and away and away went he! More old
Brosey wins, the wiser he gets. I stayed.' He swung to Gower: 'Don't
drink dry Sillery after two A.M. You read me?'

'Egyptian, but decipherable,' said Gower.

The rising of the curtain drew his habitual groan from Potts, and he
fled to collogue with the goodly number of honest fellows in the house
of music who detested 'squallery.' Most of these afflicted pilgrims to
the London conservatory were engaged upon the business of the Goddess
richly inspiring the Heliconian choir, but rendering the fountain-waters
heady. Here they had to be, if they would enjoy the spectacle of
London's biggest and choicest bouquet: and in them, too