plump upon--Lady Barbara Sinclair. She
flushed, he trembled, and in two minutes he had forgotten every human
event that had passed since he was by her side.

She seemed pleased to see him, too; she ignored entirely his obnoxious
proposal; he wisely took her cue, and so, on this secret understanding,
they were friends. He made his arrangements, and dined with her family.
It was a family party. In the evening Lady Barbara allowed it to
transpire that she had made inquiries about him.

(He was highly flattered.) And she had discovered he was lying hid
somewhere in the neighborhood.

"Studying the guitar?" inquired she.

"No," said he, "studying a new class of the community. Do you know any
of what they call the 'lower classes'?"

"Yes."

"Monstrous agreeable people, are they not?"

"No, very stupid! I only know two old women--except the servants, who
have no characters. They imitate us, I suspect, which does not say much
for their taste."

"But some of my friends are young women; that makes all the difference."

"It does! and you ought to be ashamed. If you want a low order of mind,
why desert our own circle?"

"My friends are only low in station; they have rather lofty minds, some
of them."

"Well, amuse yourself with these lofty minds. Amusement is the end of
being, you know, and the aim of all the men of this day."

"We imitate the ladies," said he, slyly.

"You do," answered she, very dryly; and so the dialogue went on, and
Lord Ipsden found the pleasure of being with his cousin compensate him
fully for the difference of their opinions; in fact, he found it simply
amusing that so keen a wit as his cousins s could be entrapped into
the humor of decrying the time one happens to live in, and admiring any
epoch one knows next to nothing about, and entrapped by the notion of
its originality, above all things; the idea being the stale commonplace
of asses in every age, and the manner of conveying the idea being a mere
imitation of the German writers, not the good ones, _bien entendu,_ but
the quill-drivers, the snobs of the Teutonic pen.

But he was to learn that follies are not always laughable, that _eadem
sentire_ is a bond, and that, when a clever and pretty woman chooses to
be a fool, her lover, if he is wise, will be a greater--if he can.

The next time they met, Lord Ipsden found Lady Barbara occupied with
a gentleman whose first sentence proclaimed him a pupil of Mr. Thomas
Carlyle, and he had the