rd Annesley.

Gwynplaine, either by chance or by the arrangement of his sponsors,
forewarned by the Lord Chancellor, was so placed in shadow as to escape
their curiosity.

"Who is it? Where is he?"

Such was the exclamation of all the new-comers, but no one succeeded in
making him out distinctly. Some, who had seen Gwynplaine in the Green
Box, were exceedingly curious, but lost their labour: as it sometimes
happens that a young lady is entrenched within a troop of dowagers,
Gwynplaine was, as it were, enveloped in several layers of lords, old,
infirm, and indifferent. Good livers, with the gout, are marvellously
indifferent to stories about their neighbours.

There passed from hand to hand copies of a letter three lines in length,
written, it was said, by the Duchess Josiana to the queen, her sister,
in answer to the injunction made by her Majesty, that she should espouse
the new peer, the lawful heir of the Clancharlies, Lord Fermain. This
letter was couched in the following terms:--

"MADAM,--The arrangement will suit me just as well. I can have Lord
David for my lover.--(Signed) JOSIANA."

This note, whether a true copy or a forgery, was received by all with
the greatest enthusiasm. A young lord, Charles Okehampton, Baron Mohun,
who belonged to the wigless faction, read and re-read it with delight.
Lewis de Duras, Earl of Faversham, an Englishman with a Frenchman's wit,
looked at Mohun and smiled.

"That is a woman I should like to marry!" exclaimed Lord Mohun.

The lords around them overheard the following dialogue between Duras and
Mohun:--

"Marry the Duchess Josiana, Lord Mohun!"

"Why not?"

"Plague take it."

"She would make one very happy."

"She would make many very happy."

"But is it not always a question of many?"

"Lord Mohun, you are right. With regard to women, we have always the
leavings of others. Has any one ever had a beginning?"

"Adam, perhaps."

"Not he."

"Then Satan."

"My dear lord," concluded Lewis de Duras, "Adam only lent his name. Poor
dupe! He endorsed the human race. Man was begotten on the woman by the
devil."

Hugh Cholmondeley, Earl of Cholmondeley, strong in points of law, was
asked from the bishops' benches by Nathaniel Crew, who was doubly a
peer, being a temporal peer, as Baron Crew, and a spiritual peer, as
Bishop of Durham.

"Is it possible?" said Crew.

"Is it regular?" said Cholmondeley.

"The investiture of this peer was made outside the House