its accuracy is its fault. I almost thought the man was in the
room."

"And then there is Mrs. Buscarlet: I never saw any one like Mrs.
Buscarlet," Maud Darley says, plaintively; "did you? There is so much
of her, and it is all so nasty. And, oh! her voice! it is like wind
whistling through a key-hole."

"Poor woman," says Luttrell, regretfully, "I think I could have
forgiven her had she not worn that very verdant gown."

"My dear fellow, I thought the contrast between it and her cheeks the
most perfect thing I ever saw. It is evident you have not got the eye
of an artist," Sir Penthony says, rather unfeelingly.

"I never saw any one so distressingly healthy," says Maud, still
plaintively. "Fat people are my aversion. I don't mind a
comfortable-looking body, but she is much too stout."

"Let us alter that last remark and say she has had too much stout, and
perhaps we shall define her," remarks Tedcastle. "I hate a woman who
shows her food."

"The way she traduced those Sedleys rather amused me," Molly says,
laughing. "I certainly thought her opinion of her neighbors very
pronounced."

"She shouldn't have any opinion," says Lady Stafford, with decision.
"You, my dear Molly, take an entirely wrong view of it. Such people as
the Buscarlets, sprung from nobody knows where, or cares to know,
should be kept in their proper place, and be sat upon the very instant
they develop a desire to progress."

"How can you be so illiberal?" exclaims Molly, aghast at so much
misplaced vehemence. "Why should they not rise with the rest of the
world?"

"Eleanor has quite a _penchant_ for the Buscarlets," says Marcia,
with a sneer; "she has quite adopted them, and either will not, or
perhaps does not, see their enormities."

Nobody cares to notice this impertinence, and Mr. Potts says, gravely:

"Lady Stafford has never forgiven Mrs. Buscarlet because once, at a
ball here, she told her she was looking very '_distangy_.' Is that
not true?"

Cecil laughs.

"Why should not every one have an opinion?" Molly persists. "I agree
with the old song that 'Britons never shall be slaves:' therefore, why
should they not assert themselves? In a hundred years hence they will
have all the manners and airs of we others."

"Then they should be locked up during the intermediate stage," says
Cecil, with an uncompromising nod of her blonde head. "I call them
insufferable; and if Mr. Buscarlet when he comes in again makes himself
agreeable to