d, indeed, you owe your presence here at Mrs.
Harold Smith's first Cabinet ball altogether to me. I don't know
whether you are aware of that."

"Oh, yes: Lady Lufton told me."

"And are you grateful or otherwise? Have I done you an injury or a
benefit? Which do you find best, sitting with a novel in the corner
of a sofa in Bruton Street, or pretending to dance polkas here with
Lord Dumbello?"

"I don't know what you mean. I haven't stood up with Lord Dumbello
all the evening. We were going to dance a quadrille, but we didn't."

"Exactly; just what I say;--pretending to do it. Even that's a good
deal for Lord Dumbello; isn't it?" And then Lord Lufton, not being a
pretender himself, put his arm round her waist, and away they went up
and down the room, and across and about, with an energy which showed
that what Griselda lacked in her tongue she made up with her feet.
Lord Dumbello, in the meantime, stood by, observant, thinking to
himself that Lord Lufton was a glib-tongued, empty-headed ass, and
reflecting that if his rival were to break the tendons of his leg in
one of those rapid evolutions, or suddenly come by any other dreadful
misfortune, such as the loss of all his property, absolute blindness,
or chronic lumbago, it would only serve him right. And in that frame
of mind he went to bed, in spite of the prayer which no doubt he said
as to his forgiveness of other people's trespasses. And then, when
they were again standing, Lord Lufton, in the little intervals
between his violent gasps for fresh breath, asked Griselda if she
liked London. "Pretty well," said Griselda, gasping also a little
herself.

"I am afraid--you were very dull--down at Framley."

"Oh, no;--I liked it particularly."

"It was a great bore when you went--away, I know. There wasn't a
soul--about the house worth speaking to." And they remained silent
for a minute till their lungs had become quiescent.

"Not a soul," he continued--not of falsehood prepense, for he was not
in fact thinking of what he was saying. It did not occur to him at
the moment that he had truly found Griselda's going a great relief,
and that he had been able to do more in the way of conversation with
Lucy Robarts in one hour than with Miss Grantly during a month of
intercourse in the same house. But, nevertheless, we should not be
hard upon him. All is fair in love and war; and if this was not love,
it was the usual thing that stands as a counterpart for it.

"Not a so