calls the picturesqueness
of Charlestown by night, has seen him--well, it is enough that I
should have heard. You have been too intimate with the little Queen
lately. You never could stand it! Suffice it to say, that brandy, or
rum, or whatever he takes by the barrel, makes a madman of him."

"I have heard these stories, but I also know that he only drinks by
fits and starts----"

"Worse and worse."

"Well!" in tones of great decision, "since a woman, and a woman of our
own class ruined him, Constance Mortlake, I believe it to be the duty
of our sex and rank to redeem him. Do you," with high and increasing
impatience, "realise that the man is a genius, the poet of the age?"

"Haven't I always doted on poetry since I was in love with Byron? But
we can buy this young man's poetry for a guinea a volume--ten guineas
for special editions at Christmas. I hear that Lady Blessington paid
him a hundred pounds for three pages in last year's 'Book of Beauty.'
I am glad he is in no danger of starving, and am quite willing to do
my little share toward keeping him off the parish; but I prefer to
enjoy his genius without being inflicted by the horrid tenement in
which that genius has taken up its abode. Most undiscriminating
faculty genius seems to be. Besides, I have no respect for a man who
lets his life be ruined by a woman. Heavens, supposing we--we
women----"

"You can't have everything, and a man who can write like Byam
Warner----"

"Don't believe you ever read a line of him. What on earth has a leader
of _ton_ to do with poetry, unless, to be sure, to read up a bit
before caging the lion for a dinner where everybody will bore the poor
wretch to death by quoting his worst lines at him. As for Warner there
is no question that he writes even better than before he went to the
dogs, and that, to my mind, is proof that he holds his gifts in fief
from the devil not from Almighty God----"

"Out upon you for a bigot. I should think you had lived in this world
long enough----"

"Was there ever on this earth a more virtuous court than our young
Queen's, Maria Hunsdon?"

"It is too good to last. And it is not so long ago----"

"Let us be permitted to forget the court of that iniquitous man"--Anne
could see a large-veined hand wave in the direction of a long portrait
of George IV.--"since we are mercifully and at last permitted so
to do. Besides," changing the subject hastily, "I believe in
predestination. You forget that alth