Lady Hainault. "Sir Peter, here is a lady who wishes to congratulate you
on your deserved elevation."

"Well, I do not know what to say about it," said the former Mr. Vigo,
highly gratified, but a little confused; "my friends would have it."

"Ay, ay," said Waldershare, "'at the request of friends;' the excuse I
gave for publishing my sonnets." And then, advancing, he delivered
his charge to her _chaperon_, who looked dreamy, abstracted, and
uninterested.

"We have just been congratulating the new baronet, Sir Peter Vigo," said
Waldershare.

"Ah!" said Lady Hainault with a contemptuous sigh, "he is, at any rate,
not obliged to change his name. The desire to change one's name does
indeed appear to me to be a singular folly. If your name had been
disgraced, I could understand it, as I could understand a man then going
about in a mask. But the odd thing is, the persons who always want to
change their names are those whose names are the most honoured."

"Oh, you are here!" said Mr. St. Barbe acidly to Mr. Seymour Hicks. "I
think you are everywhere. I suppose they will make you a baronet next.
Have you seen the batch? I could not believe my eyes when I read it.
I believe the government is demented. Not a single literary man among
them. Not that I wanted their baronetcy. Nothing would have tempted me
to accept one. But there is Gushy; he, I know, would have liked it. I
must say I feel for Gushy; his works only selling half what they did,
and then thrown over in this insolent manner!"

"Gushy is not in society," said Mr. Seymour Hicks in a solemn tone of
contemptuous pity.

"That is society," said St. Barbe, as he received a bow of haughty grace
from Mrs. Rodney, who, fascinating and fascinated, was listening to the
enamoured murmurs of an individual with a very bright star and a very
red ribbon.

"I dined with the Rodneys yesterday," said Mr. Seymour Hicks; "they do
the thing well."

"You dined there!" exclaimed St. Barbe. "It is very odd, they have
never asked me. Not that I would have accepted their invitation. I avoid
parvenus. They are too fidgety for my taste. I require repose, and only
dine with the old nobility."

CHAPTER LXXXXIX

The Right Honourable Job Thornberry and Mrs. Thornberry had received
an invitation to the Montfort ball. Job took up the card, and turned it
over more than once, and looked at it as if it were some strange animal,
with an air of pleased and yet cynical perplexity; then he