est, quietly extravagant and
sentimentally dissipated, had, after much flitting about the sunny
centres of the Continent, settled down to Paris and a happy place in the
English society that has agglomerated in the west of Napoleon's capital.
Fortunately for his "little peace of mind"--as he described a shrewd,
worldly head--he was put down by the dowagers, after some sharp
discussions of his antecedents, as "no match." There was the orphan
daughter of a Baronet who had some hundred and twenty a year, and tastes
which she hoped one day to satisfy by annexing a creature wearing a hat,
and a pocket with ten times that sum. She had thought for a moment of
Cosmo Bertram when she had enjoyed her first half-hour of his amusing
rattle; but she had been quickly undeceived--Bertram could not have
added a chicken to her broth, a pair of gloves to her toilette; so she
shut up the thing she called a heart, for lack of some fitter name, and
cruised again through the ominous gold rings of her glasses round the
_salons_, and hoped the growing taste for travel might send her some one
for annexation at last.

"We're jigging on pretty much as usual," Bertram said at Philippe's.
"Plenty of scandal and plenty of reason for it. The demand creates the
supply--is that sound political economy?"

"I am surprised that political economy, together with an intimate
acquaintance with hydrostatics, are not exacted in these mad examination
days from a queen's messenger; but I am not bound not to be a fool in
political economy, so I elect to be one."

"Chablis?"

"Ay; and about ice?"

"My dear Q. M., when you have had a headache, has it ever fallen to your
lot to be in the company of a pretty woman?"

"Else had I been one of the most neglected of men."

"Well, she has fetched the Eau-de-Cologne, bathed your manly brow, and
then blown her balmy breath over your temples. That sweet coolness, my
dear fellow, is my idea of the proper temperature for Chablis."

"It's a great bit of luck to pounce upon you, Bertram, when a man has
only a few hours to spend in Paris, after a year or two's absence.
Nearly upon two years have passed since I was here. Yes, November,
'62--now August, '64."

"In that time, my dear Q. M., reputations have been made and lost by the
hundred. I have had a score of eternal friendships. You can run through
the matrimonial gauntlet, from courtship to the Divorce Court, in that
time. We used to grieve for years: now we weep as w