to London, carrying with him hosts of
papers of the French authorities, which to our Foreign Office will
be very acceptable. De Vere meanwhile feels quite at his ease. He
was always afraid of his companion, yet can't forgive him his last
indignity.

'No! A blow!'

'Not at all; you mistake. His regrets have a different origin. It is for
not backing the "rouge" that he is inexorable towards him. Besides, he
is under the impression that all these confessions he has been making
establish for him a kind of moral insolvency act, by which he is to come
forth irresponsible for the past, and quite ready to contract new debts
for the future. At this moment his greatest point of doubt consists in
whether he should marry your cousin, Lady Julia, or Miss Bellew; for, in
his own phrase, "he must do something that way to come round."'

'Impudent scoundrel!'

'Fact, I assure you; and so easy, so unaffected, so free from
embarrassment of any kind is he, that I'm really quite a convert to this
modern school of good manners, when associating with even such as Burke
conveys no feeling of shame or discomfort. More than could be said some
forty years ago, I fancy.'

It was the hour of my mother's morning reception, and we found the
drawing-room crowded with loungers and fashionable idlers, discussing
the news of the day, and above all the Roni _fete_, the extraordinary
finale to which gave rise to a hundred conjectures--some asserting that
Monsieur de Roni's song was a violent pasquinade against the Emperor
Alexander; others, equally well informed, alleging it was the concerted
signal for a general massacre of the Allies, which was to have begun
at the same moment in the Rue Montmartre. She is a Bonapartist,
a Legitimist, a Neapolitan, an Anversoise,' contended one after
another--my only fear being that some one would enlighten the party by
saying she was the wife of an Irish attorney. All agreed, however, she
was _bien mauvais ton_; that her _fete_ was, with all its magnificence,
anything but select; her supper superb, but too crowded by half; and,
in fact, that Madame Roni had enjoyed the pleasure of ruining herself
to very little other purpose than that of being generally ridiculed and
laughed at.

'And this niece, or ward, or whatever it is--who can tell anything of
her?' said my mother.

'Ah, _pardieu!_ she's very handsome,' said Grammont, with a malicious
smile.

'Perfect,' said another; 'quite perfect; but a little, a very