andsome creature answered to the name of Miss Merion; Irish; aged
somewhere between eighteen and nineteen; a dear friend of his wife's, and
he ought to have remembered her; but she was a child when he saw her
last.

'Dan Merion died, I remember, about the day of my sailing for India,'
said the General. 'She may be his daughter.'

The bright cynosure rounded up to him in the web of the waltz, with her
dark eyes for Lady Dunstane, and vanished again among the twisting
columns.

He made his way, handsomely bumped by an apologetic pair, to Lady
Dunstane, beside whom a seat was vacated for him; and he trusted she had
not over-fatigued herself.

'Confess,' she replied, 'you are perishing to know more than Lukin has
been able to tell you. Let me hear that you admire her: it pleases me;
and you shall hear what will please you as much, I promise you, General.'

'I do. Who wouldn't?' said he frankly.

'She crossed the Channel expressly to dance here tonight at the public
Ball in honour of you.'

'Where she appears, the first person falls to second rank, and accepts it
humbly.'

'That is grandly spoken.'

'She makes everything in the room dust round a blazing jewel.'

'She makes a poet of a soldier. Well, that you may understand how pleased
I am, she is my dearest friend, though she is younger than I, as may be
seen; she is the only friend I have. I nursed her when she was an infant;
my father and Mr. Dan Merion were chums. We were parted by my marriage
and the voyage to India. We have not yet exchanged a syllable: she was
snapped up, of course, the moment she entered the room. I knew she would
be a taking girl: how lovely, I did not guess. You are right, she
extinguishes the others. She used to be the sprightliest of living
creatures, and to judge by her letters, that has not faded. She 's in the
market, General.'

Lord Larrian nodded to everything he heard, concluding with a mock
doleful shake of the head. 'My poorest subaltern!' he sighed, in the
theatrical but cordially melancholy style of green age viewing Cytherea's
market.

His poorest subaltern was richer than he in the wherewithal to bid for
such prizes.

'What is her name in addition to Merion?'

'Diana Antonia Merion. Tony to me, Diana to the world.'

'She lives over there?'

'In England, or anywhere; wherever she is taken in. She will live, I
hope, chiefly with me.'

'And honest Irish?'

'Oh, she's Irish.'

'Ah!' the General was Irish to the