deavoured to check by entreating him
to remember the ladies.

'Ah! you do well to remind me of the ladies, you dastardly deserter,'
cried he, shaking his formidable fist at his brother-in-law. 'If it were
not for them, you well know, I'd demolish you in the twinkling of an eye,
and give your body to the fowls of heaven and the lilies of the fields!'
Then, planting a chair by Lady Lowborough's side, he stationed himself in
it, and began to talk to her with a mixture of absurdity and impudence
that seemed rather to amuse than to offend her; though she affected to
resent his insolence, and to keep him at bay with sallies of smart and
spirited repartee.

Meantime Mr. Grimsby seated himself by me, in the chair vacated by
Hargrave as they entered, and gravely stated that he would thank me for a
cup of tea: and Arthur placed himself beside poor Milicent,
confidentially pushing his head into her face, and drawing in closer to
her as she shrank away from him. He was not so noisy as Hattersley, but
his face was exceedingly flushed: he laughed incessantly, and while I
blushed for all I saw and heard of him, I was glad that he chose to talk
to his companion in so low a tone that no one could hear what he said but
herself.

'What fools they are!' drawled Mr. Grimsby, who had been talking away, at
my elbow, with sententious gravity all the time; but I had been too much
absorbed in contemplating the deplorable state of the other
two--especially Arthur--to attend to him.

'Did you ever hear such nonsense as they talk, Mrs. Huntingdon?' he
continued. 'I'm quite ashamed of them for my part: they can't take so
much as a bottle between them without its getting into their heads--'

'You are pouring the cream into your saucer, Mr. Grimsby.'

'Ah! yes, I see, but we're almost in darkness here. Hargrave, snuff
those candles, will you?'

'They're wax; they don't require snuffing,' said I.

'"The light of the body is the eye,"' observed Hargrave, with a sarcastic
smile. '"If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of
light."'

Grimsby repulsed him with a solemn wave of the hand, and then turning to
me, continued, with the same drawling tones and strange uncertainty of
utterance and heavy gravity of aspect as before: 'But as I was saying,
Mrs. Huntingdon, they have no head at all: they can't take half a bottle
without being affected some way; whereas I--well, I've taken three times
as much as they have to-night, and you