if all conversaziones
were alike; wouldn't it? So I hope you will go and dance."

"There will, I presume, be another variation at feeding time," said
Mrs. Harold Smith.

"Oh yes, certainly; I am the most vulgar of all wretches in
that respect. I do love to set people eating and drinking--Mr.
Supplehouse, I am delighted to see you; but do tell me--" and then
she whispered with great energy into the ear of Mr. Supplehouse, and
Mr. Supplehouse again whispered into her ear. "You think he will,
then?" said Miss Dunstable. Mr. Supplehouse assented; he did think
so; but he had no warrant for stating the circumstance as a fact. And
then he passed on, hardly looking at Mrs. Harold Smith as he passed.

"What a hang-dog countenance he has," said that lady.

"Ah, you're prejudiced, my dear, and no wonder; as for myself I
always liked Supplehouse. He means mischief; but then mischief is his
trade, and he does not conceal it. If I were a politician I should as
soon think of being angry with Mr. Supplehouse for turning against me
as I am now with a pin for pricking me. It's my own awkwardness, and
I ought to have known how to use the pin more craftily."

"But you must detest a man who professes to stand by his party, and
then does his best to ruin it."

"So many have done that, my dear; and with much more success than Mr.
Supplehouse! All is fair in love and war,--why not add politics to
the list? If we could only agree to do that, it would save us from
such a deal of heartburning, and would make none of us a bit the
worse."

Miss Dunstable's rooms, large as they were--"a noble suite of rooms
certainly, though perhaps a little too--too--too scattered, we
will say, eh, bishop?"--were now nearly full, and would have been
inconveniently crowded, were it not that many who came only remained
for half an hour or so. Space, however, had been kept for the
dancers--much to Mrs. Proudie's consternation. Not that she
disapproved of dancing in London, as a rule; but she was indignant
that the laws of a conversazione, as re-established by herself in the
fashionable world, should be so violently infringed.

"Conversaziones will come to mean nothing," she said to the bishop,
putting great stress on the latter word, "nothing at all, if they are
to be treated in this way."

"No, they won't; nothing in the least," said the bishop.

"Dancing may be very well in its place," said Mrs. Proudie.

"I have never objected to it myself; that is,