ms, this disinterested
woman was to receive eight hundred pounds per annum--so anxious was his
grace to prevent a mes-alliance in his family. But, alas for Harriette!
jealousy for once got the better of her love of gain; her pride was
wounded to see a sister flirting with her affianced lord, and in a
moment of irritation, she in a most unequivocal manner publicly asserted
her right to his person: the gallant yielded, the bond was __null and
void, the _promise burnt_, his grace relieved from the payment of eight
hundred pounds per annum, and his son the Marquis, profiting by past
experience, not so green as to renew the former obligation.

"My intention is not to pirate the lady's memoirs, and so rob her of
the fair gain of her professional ~50~~experience," said Crony, when I
mentioned these circumstances to him afterwards; "I only mean to supply
certain trifling omissions in the biography of Harriette and her family,
which the fair narrator has very modestly suppressed. It is but a few
months since, that passing accidentally into Warwick-court, Holborn,
to call upon an old friend, a navy lieutenant on half-pay, I thought I
recognised the well-known superlative wig of the dandy Rochforte, thrust
longitudinally forward from beneath the sash of a two pair of stairs
window.--Can it be possible? thought I: and then again, I asked myself,
why not? for the last time I saw him he was rusticating in Surrey,
beating the balls about in _Banco Regis_; from which black place he did
not escape without a little white-washing: however, he's a full Colonel
of some unknown corps of South American Independents for all that, and
was once in his life, although for a very short time, a full Cornet, in
Lincoln Stanhope's regiment, the 17th dragoons, I think it was, and has
never clipped his mustachios since, one would imagine, by their length
and ferocious appearance. To be brief, I had scarcely placed my glass
into the orifice before my imperfect vision, when Harriette appeared
at the adjoining window, and instantly recognizing an old acquaintance,
invited me up stairs. 'Times are a little changed,' said she, 'Mr.
Crony, since last we met:' 'True, madam,' I responded; and then to cheer
the belle a little, I added, 'but not persons, I perceive, for you are
looking as young and as attractive as ever.' The compliment did not seem
to please the Colonel in the wig, who turned round, looked frowningly,
and then twirled the dexter side of his lip w