u for his change of clothes--he caught a
glimpse, as they passed through the hall, of the ladies taking their
preprandial cups of tea in the library, an enchanting group of lace and
silks, of delicate hue and scented hair, of blond cheeks and brunette
tresses, of dark velvets and gossamer tissue; and when he had changed
the scarlet for dinner-dress, went down among them to be the darling of
that charmed circle, to be smiled on and coquetted with by those soft,
languid aristocrats, to be challenged by the lustrous eyes of his
chatelaine and chere amie, to be spoiled as women will spoil the
privileged pet of their drawing rooms whom they had made "free of
the guild," and endowed with a flirting commission, and acquitted of
anything "serious."

He was the recognized darling and permitted property of the young
married beauties; the unwedded knew he was hopeless for them, and
tacitly left him to the more attractive conquerors, who hardly prized
the Seraph so much as they did Bertie, to sit in their barouches and
opera boxes, ride and drive and yacht with them, conduct a Boccaccio
intrigue through the height of the season, and make them really believe
themselves actually in love while they were at the moors or down the
Nile, and would have given their diamonds to get a new distraction.

Lady Guenevere was the last of these, his titled and wedded captors;
and perhaps the most resistless of all of them. Neither of them believed
very much in their attachment, but both of them wore the masquerade
dress to perfection. He had fallen in love with her as much as he ever
fell in love, which was just sufficient to amuse him, and never enough
to disturb him. He let himself be fascinated, not exerting himself
either to resist or advance the affair till he was, perhaps, a little
more entangled with her than it was, according to his canons, expedient
to be; and they had the most enchanting--friendship.

Nobody was ever so indiscreet as to call it anything else; and my Lord
was too deeply absorbed in the Alderney beauties that stood knee-deep in
the yellow straw of his farmyard, and the triumphant conquests that he
gained over his brother peers' Shorthorns and Suffolks, to trouble his
head about Cecil's attendance on his beautiful Countess.

They corresponded in Spanish; they had a thousand charming ciphers; they
made the columns of the "Times" and the "Post" play the unconscious role
of medium to appointments; they eclipsed all the page