'I am a sinner,
and in good society.' Sir Abraham Hartiston, a minor satellite of the
Regent, diversified this: 'I am a sinner, and go to good society.' Madame
la Comtesse de la Roche-Aigle, the cause of many deaths, declared it
unwomanly to fear anything save 'les revenants.' Yet the countess could
say the pretty thing: 'Foot on a flower, then think of me!'

'Sentimentality puts up infant hands for absolution,' said Diana.

'But tell me,' Lady Dunstane inquired generally, 'why men are so much
happier than women in laughing at their spouses?'

They are humaner, was one dictum; they are more frivolous, ironically
another.

'It warrants them for blowing the bugle-horn of masculine superiority
night and morning from the castle-walls,' Diana said.

'I should imagine it is for joy of heart that they still have cause to
laugh!' said Westlake.

On the other hand, are women really pained by having to laugh at their
lords? Curious little speeches flying about the great world, affirmed the
contrary. But the fair speakers were chartered libertines, and their
laugh admittedly had a biting acid. The parasite is concerned in the
majesty of the tree.

'We have entered Botany Bay,' Diana said to Emma; who answered: 'A
metaphor is the Deus ex machine, of an argument'; and Whitmonby, to
lighten a shadow of heaviness, related allusively an anecdote of the Law
Courts. Sullivan Smith begged permission to 'black cap' it with Judge
FitzGerald's sentence upon a convicted criminal: 'Your plot was perfect
but for One above.' Dacier cited an execrable impromptu line of the Chief
of the Opposition in Parliament. The Premier, it was remarked, played him
like an angler his fish on the hook; or say, Mr. Serjeant Rufus his
witness in the box.

'Or a French journalist an English missionary,' said Westlake; and as the
instance was recent it was relished.

The talk of Premiers offered Whitmonby occasion for a flight to the Court
of Vienna and Kaunitz. Wilmers told a droll story of Lord Busby's missing
the Embassy there. Westlake furnished a sample of the tranquil
sententiousness of Busby's brother Robert during a stormy debate in the
House of Commons.

'I remember,' Dacier was reminded, 'hearing him say, when the House
resembled a Chartist riot, "Let us stand aside and meditate on Life. If
Youth could know, in the season of its reaping of the Pleasures, that it
is but sowing Doctor's bills!"'

Latterly a malady had supervened, and Bob Busb